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Originally Posted by Pinhead
Wouldn't surprise me. While I have no doubt they'd love to see the Caliphate restored an Islamic world order, I doubt they want to see it run by Persians. Kind of like how the Soviets didn't really want the world brought to the Chinese flavor of socialism, "fraternal socialist allies" notwithstanding.
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Neither al-Assad in Syria, the Houses of Saud and Al-Sabah, Mubarak in Egypt , or any other government in the Middle East wants the return of the Caliphate. To do so would be to relinquish power; this is why all these governments have aided in the fight against AQ, albeit to different degrees. Yes, this includes Syria.
The greater objection from the region to Iranian control of the Caliphate would not be over ethnicity, but rather the fact that the region is predominantly Sunni while the Iranians are Shiite. This is why revolutionary Iran has largely abandoned its efforts to export its ideology to the Muslim world and focused on consolidating its influence with sectarian Shiite groups in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in its neighborhood.
IMHO, I think the Sino-Soviet split was a result of competing national interests and think the analogy is not a good fit.
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Originally Posted by gaijinsamurai
I remember in the 1980's it was fear of Iranian power which lead so many Arab governments to support Saddam Hussein.
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It wasnt just the Arabs. I often forget how ugly Realpolitik can get.
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Originally Posted by COLAW
And what US policies in the region would you agree they should be critical of?
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If I were a Muslim living in an Arab country what US policy would I be critical of? How much time do you have?
Once you overcome mirror imaging it’s easier to answer that question.