Saudi Arabia’s Conflict Policy Against Iran, During The Bin Salman’s Government

Graduate student of international relations, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Assistant Professor of International Relations, Islamic Azad University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

ABSTRACT

By the start of governing Saudi Arabia in 2015, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Salman of Saudi Arabia) shows that he is keen on leadership in the Middle East. Also, his thirty-year-old prince, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, considers gaining the power behind the throne as a major goal in the country’s future. Saudi Arabia assigns the Islamic Republic of Iran as the biggest obstacle in achieving these goals. After the “Mina catastrophe”, the execution of Nimr al-Nimr (Sheikh Nimr) who was a prominent Shia cleric, and the attack on the Saudi Arabia embassy in Tehran, the relations between these two countries was damaged and eventually suspended. The quality of relations between these two countries determines the region’s level of security. So, investigating the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia after Salman’s inauguration can bring a clearer perspective on the future of these two countries’ relations. There is a question here that is what are the motivations and reasons for creating tension in relations of the two countries and the offensive policy of Salman’s government against Iran? The hypothesis of this paper is that after Salman’s inauguration, the principles of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy were changed; and, in order to prevent the penetration of Iran after the Arab Spring, it turned into a completely aggressive approach. Accordingly, by using the theory of “motivational realism”, the present paper has come to this conclusion that Saudi policies were formed in a variety of ways such as association politics and new alliance, the spread of proxy wars, the development of Wahhabism thinking, the arisen of racial differences, and the use of economic capacity and effective ways to renew war zone in order to reverse Iran’s penetration‎‎‎.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia , offensive policies , Mohammad bin Salman , motivational realism , regional competition.

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AGHAMOLAEI M A & JAVANSHIRI A. Saudi Arabia’s Conflict Policy Against Iran, During The Bin Salman’s Government. Journal Of Organizational Behavior Research 2020;5(1):255-78

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