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Mohammed in the year 632; Sunnis have regarded them as a heretical
sect ever since. Arabs and Persians, along with many others, have
vied for the land and resources of the Middle East for almost as long.
These days, geopolitics also plays a role. The two sides have
assembled loosely allied camps. Iran holds in its sway Syria and the
militant Arab groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the
Palestinian territories; in the Saudi sphere are the Sunni Muslim-led
Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Morocco and the other main Palestinian
faction, Fatah. The Saudi camp is pro-Western and leans toward
tolerating the state of Israel. The Iranian grouping thrives on its
reputation in the region as a scrappy "resistance" camp, defiantly
opposed to the West and Israel.
For decades, the two sides have carried out a complicated game of
moves and countermoves. With few exceptions, both prefer to work
through proxy politicians and covertly funded militias, as they
famously did during the long Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s and
1980s, when Iran helped to hatch Hezbollah among the Shiites while
the Saudis backed Sunni militias.
But the maneuvering extends far beyond the well-worn battleground
of Lebanon. Two years ago, the Saudis discovered Iranian efforts to
spread Shiite doctrine in Morocco and to use some mosques in the
country as a base for similar efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. After
Saudi emissaries delivered this information to King Hassan II,
Morocco angrily severed diplomatic relations with Iran, according to
Saudi officials and cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks.
As far away as Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country,
the Saudis have watched warily as Iranian clerics have expanded their
activities—and they have responded with large-scale religious
programs of their own there. The 1979 Iranian revolution was a major
eruption that still looms large in the psyches of both nations. It

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