The Oil Drum

This article's title is taken from The Revenge of the Shia by Martin Walker, published in Autumn 2006 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.

In December 2004, as the United Nations Security Council began to grapple with the challenge of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and as Iraq started its slow topple into civil war, one of the closest and most trusted American allies in the Middle East began to warn publicly of the emergence of a “Shia crescent” in the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah, a Sunni who claims direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, sounded the alarm that a vast swath of the region, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean and from the ­oil-­rich Caspian Sea to the even richer Persian Gulf, was coming under the sway of the Shia branch of Islam. More ominously, he implied that this looming Shia empire would take its direction from Tehran. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt echoed this warning last year when he said, during an interview on ­al-­Arabiya television, “Most of the Shias are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in.”

The geopolitical situation in the Middle East is becoming more complicated and riskier all the time. This article primarily discusses Iran's geopolitical strategy, energy policies and energy predicament. In the final analysis sections, Saudi Arabia's reactions, in the context of the Iraqi civil war, are discussed. The outcomes are not known but it is not a pretty picture, especially for Japan, China and the EU, which depend on Iranian oil exports. Nor, probably, for the rest of us.