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The Cold War in the Middle East: Iranian Foreign Policy, Regional Axes, and Warfare by Proxy

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The Arms Race in the Middle East

Part of the book series: Contributions to International Relations ((CIR))

Abstract

This chapter traces how both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia employed “sectarianism” as ideational weapons, along with accruing ever more conventional, material armaments. However, sectarianism is not a causal variable in the region’s ideological cold war. Rather, from the Islamic Republic’s perspective, the regional rivalries between it and Saudi Arabia are part of its constructed division of the Middle East into two political-ideological axes. The “resistance axis,” led by Iran, including Sunni Islamist groups, is opposed to the “US-Israeli international order” and the “compromise axis,” with Saudi Arabia at its core. The competition between these two axes and their reliance on militia groups in a proxy war constituted a cold war in the Middle East that began in 1979. This chapter, within this volume, examines how Iran’s reliance on its regional allies and militia client proxies has been a parallel dynamic in a continuous arms race between the Islamic Republic and the Saudi Kingdom.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Mohammad Eslami

  2. University of California San Marcos, San Marcos, CA, USA

    Ibrahim Al-Marashi

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  1. Mohammad Eslami
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  2. Ibrahim Al-Marashi
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Mohammad Eslami

  2. CICP (Centro de Investigação em Ciência Política) Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Alena Vysotskaya Guedes Vieira

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Eslami, M., Al-Marashi, I. (2023). The Cold War in the Middle East: Iranian Foreign Policy, Regional Axes, and Warfare by Proxy. In: Eslami, M., Guedes Vieira, A.V. (eds) The Arms Race in the Middle East. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32432-1_7

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