Asian Pacific Middle Eastern Research Project wm.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wm.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Project MUSE - The Middle East Journal-Volume 76, Number 2, Summer 2022 jhu.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jhu.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Ever since Turkey accused its neighbor, Greece, of locking onto Turkish fighter jets with its Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems deployed on the island of Crete and placing Turkish aircraft under a radar lock over the eastern Mediterranean during a NATO mission in August 2022, tensions between the two treaty allies have escalated. Indeed, the two countries have come close to war several times in the past, with Turkey’s president issuing a thinly veiled threat and Athens responding with readiness to defend Greece’s sovereignty.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saudi Arabia has been concerned about the potential influence of Iran’s supreme leader among its Shi’a population, especially since Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei took on the title of Vali-ye faqih, or “guardian-jurist.” Such concern is understandable given that the two countries are both neighbors and rivals: Khamenei is a marj’a, the highest-ranking Shi’a religious authority, but he is also the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Armed Forces. This concern over Iranian influence among the Saudi Shi’a community reached its peak following the Khobar Towers bombing on June 25, 1996, a terrorist attack that targeted members of the United States Air Force’s 4404th Wing (Provisional). This paper aims to investigate the Iranian influence within the Shi’a community in Saudi Arabia by focusing on the followers of the supreme leader’s marj’aiyyah, known as “Khat al-Imam,” and its military wing, “Hezbollah Al-Hejaz,” often he