Holy War

The 155,000 Iranian Shias who made the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia’s Islamic shrines this year had been exhorted by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself to make their presence and their allegiance felt when they got to Mecca. The Saudis, sensitized by Iranian provocations in earlier years, knew what to expect. What they probably didn’t foresee was how bloody the confrontation would prove to be. When the Iranian pilgrims defied the ban on political demonstrations, they set off a melee that claimed more than 400 lives. Among the dead were at least 275 Iranians.

Was this carefully staged provocation, complete with posters extolling the ayatollah and slogans condemning his enemies, political or religious in motivation? The best evidence, inferred from Iran’s official response to the clash, is that it was both. Its religious basis can be traced back almost to the beginnings of Islam, to the 7th-Century schism that saw the Shias separate from the dominant Sunni branch and that ever since has provided the dark and bloody ground for periodic battles, recurrent persecutions and mutual charges of heresy. At the same time, planners in Tehran certainly had to have been alert to the multiple political advantages to be gained by creating a fresh batch of Iranians “martyred” for their religious convictions. Not least among these was the chance to embarrass the hated Saudi regime by again calling into question its role as the faithful custodian of Islam’s holiest sites.

The Mecca riot has again given Iran a pretext to threaten Saudi Arabia with domestic upheaval supported from the outside. A substantial minority of the Saudi population is Shia, mostly concentrated in the eastern oil fields. By insisting that the clash at Mecca was a confrontation between Shias and Sunnis, rather than between trouble-seeking Iranians and Saudi security forces seeking to control them, Tehran is moving to exploit latent religious hostilities that exist within the kingdom.

The riot has also given Iran a new excuse to try to inflame regional passions against the United States, beginning with its bizarre allegation that American agents were somehow behind the fighting at Mecca. By attempting to emboss its continuing anti-American campaign with an overt religious significance, Iran hopes to bolster its claim that it is conducting a crusade in behalf of all Islam against the Great Satan of the United States. The suggestion that the United States was involved in the Mecca incident is of course incredible. That doesn’t rule out its being believed by many in the Middle East, with a consequence that American interests in the region could be put more greatly at risk.