Iran is the most populous country in the Persian Gulf by far.
Its rainfall means it far outstrips other nations in food production, but the mountains
that bring that rainfall also cleave the plateau into a thousand valleys.
No major river connects major portions, so from early on Persia was fractured - economically
and culturally.
An empire had to overcome both of these problems by brute force.
Any time they got the opportunity, a Persian empire expanded beyond this land to the areas
of rivers and riches.
Like Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq.
The Persian culture was the empire's way to hold onto that.
Assimilation.
But that terrain meant cultures could resist being consumed.
Persia never finished the job.
The modern age of empires rose and fell, As of the 20th C, the Persian Empire remained,
but empires themselves couldn't -- because around the world, nations had emerged.
Any people with a language and the ability to declare could have their own country.
In Persia, there were a lot of those.
Empire was now a no-no.
You had to convince them to stay.
The Persian Empire faced a branding problem.
Only half of the population was actually Persian.
The core is surrounded by Kurds, Balochis, Azeris and Arabs who all could all find loyalty
away from Tehran.
The priority: to unify these people.
For that job, what better tool than a nationalist fiction?
The word 'Iran' comes from the same root as the word 'Aryan', and the name harkens back
to the idea of an original people.
This was used by Iran as a message, saying "We aren't Persian, Kurdish, Azeri, Armenian,
Turkmen, Georgian, Assyrians and Jewish -- we're all Iranian."
"Except you, Kurds."
Other countries have consciously unified different people into a 'super-ethnicity', so don't
just be put off by the word 'Aryan'.
Just as in Turkey, this nationalism tried to go hand-in-hand with secularism.
The government fought hard to limit the role of the Shia clergy in government, and outlawed
many political parties that sought to moderate this secularism, or compete with another religious
fiction.
We've seen images of people across the region wearing western clothes during this period
- and many have idealised it as an era of freedom - but this was as oppressive as any
regime that outlaws forms of dress and suppresses religion or freedom of expression.
Leaders of Iran copied Ataturk's work, but there was one crucial difference.
Foreign powers weren't showing up on Turkish shores to secure their own country's energy
supply.
While western ideologies had only eyes for each other, Iran
was pingponged around as a pawn in a mixed metaphor of epic proportions.
Every year was evidence that plain Iranian Nationalism and reliance on their monarchy
wasn't a strong enough anti-imperialist movement.
In 1979, a new movement would get its own crack at that whip.
Islamism is many things.
There are Islamists and people who practice political Islam from all over the political
spectrum.
From the 'Muslim Democrats' of Ennahda in Tunisia to the rabid jihadists of Hamas, and
everyone in-between.
As an outsider, the crucial distinction to keep is the difference between the religion,
and the select ideals as used in politics: Islam or Islamism.
That distinction is useful.
Iran is split between a dozen nations, but almost completely unified about one thing:
Shia Islam.
The area was religiously converted by the first Caliphate, from Arabia, which spread
Islam far and wide.
Early on, Islam split into two major branches, Sunni and Shia.
And Persia eventually settled on the latter, along with the lands of common Persian excursions.
In 1979, the Iranian government was toppled for the ninetieth time in the century.
But this time, Islamists assumed power.
The majority of citizens then voted for their country to become an Islamic Republic.
Ayatollah Khomeini, that little rascal, set about exporting this revolution.
Meanwhile, 50 years previously...
That Turkey didn't go south again left a power vacuum.
So guess what happened.
Someone tried to build an empire.
And it just so happened that there were a bunch of tribal
families fighting for just that.
One of them was the Sauds.
Early on, the Sauds allied with the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a preacher
of the most Amish form of Islam.
Rejecting change was okay for an isolated desert warlord on the fringes of an Empire,
but all of a sudden circumstances allowed them to take power.
Very quickly, this 7th Century Kingdom annexed their way, as far as they could, only bumping
up against the British Empire in the North and South.
No other opposition put up resistance.
With their capital in the centre of the peninsula, the Sauds reached every direction.
To the west, the Hedjaz region: with the only real agriculture in the country, bordering
the Red Sea and providing access to meddle in Yemen.
It also gave the Wahhabis religious legitimacy by controlling Mecca and Medina, the cradle
of Islam.
To the north and the south, great deserts buffer the capital from foreign powers.
But they also break up the population centres, discouraging infrastructure building, preventing
any serious national identity and creating the Bedouin nomad existence from which the
Family Saud emerged.
To the east, a huge Shia minority - just inside their borders - didn't take kindly to the
radical Saudi interpretation of their religion.
The peninsula could easily have broken up again (like it had twice before under the
Sauds) had it not been for a discovery in the east that would provide the Sauds with
enormous power.
Bring on the tankers.
1901.
Oil is discovered in Persia.
The King sells it to the British for a packet of Monster Munch and a high-five.
After all, it's just a bit of paraffin, right?
All of a sudden: Cars, tanks, and oil-driven ships.
The British powered their wars using the gulf.
And while the British in Persia were performing coup, coup and counter-coup against any
leader who dared to challenge this arrangement, the Americans were striking a deal just across
the water.
By the time of the Second World War, the US needed a secure source of energy that could
be bought easily and was as-of-yet relatively untapped.
Cue the Family Saud.
The land they occupied didn't support the type of country that they had built.
Luckily, their eastern sands held the world's largest oil deposits.
And all they wanted in return was stability and security.
In exchange for the oil, the Americans willingly provided all the arms they could carry.
And a more equal share of the profits than the British gave their 'partners'.
The Saudi military isn't designed for long-range excursions across the planet.
Just like the leaders of Egypt and Iran before them, they use the military to quiet dissent
and fight rebellions.
That's what the army is there for.
And tTat came in handy in 1979, when Iran's Khomeini began his campaign of export.
The Shia in the oil-producing Saudi East fell easily under the influence of Iran's Shia
leadership.
And while they were revolting, insurgents with the very same anti-Saud goal
seized of the Grand Mosque of Mecca.
All of a sudden, everything could come crashing down.
After some pretty bloody 'pacification', the Saudis halted what little westernisation they
had been doing, and went into lockdown.
They banned non-Muslim worship, put restrictions on Shia worship, and punished offenders dearly.
But the country wasn't just held together by force.
They also had:
[singing in foreign]
Islamism.
Specifically, Fundamentalism.
So far, the combination of Oppression and the bolstering of their Religion has really
worked to keep the country together, to keep that oil flowing and to prevent the areas
descending once again into tribal warlords, like some other places that had nation-forging
dictators ousted.
Ever since that year, the current fight has been brewing.
Religion has forever been used as a tool to gain and reinforce power.
Monotheists are very good at that.
Polytheist Rome was more than willing to adopt swathes of Greek Gods, but Monotheists insist
their god is the one, true God.
Other gods - what they call 'false idols' - are unacceptable.
That's what makes it a robust fiction.
But unlike plain Nationalism, Islam doesn't stop at national borders, and neither does
Islamism, that blend of Islam and Power.
Unlike the religion with the Pope, Authority is more fluid.
Islam has very little hierarchy, and is rather decentralised.
You can prove God is on your side by possessing Religious sites.
Shia Islam having many holy sites outside of Arabia, makes Iran an alternative to Saudi
domination of the religion.
And achieving contemporary political goals does that too.
For example, Iran's revolution.
Non-state actors know this all too well.
As a beneficiary of some of this oil money that Iran and Saudi Arabia use, some of these
non-state actors go a bit rogue.
But to these two governments, that's anacceptable risk.
These Islamists all agree the Islamic World should be united under Islam.
They just disagree about who it should be to unite them, and how.
In order to export their version of theocracy, Iran and Saudi Arabia use the weaker states
around them as pawns.
And that's not only in politics.
Where they can't buy their way into power in a deep corrupt regime, they buy their way
into a war.
In Lebanon and Palestine, by supporting Guerrilla fighters.
And following the Arab Spring and the downfall of regimes from Libya to Iraq to Yemen, by
sponsoring different sides in the ensuing civil wars.
The aims here are very wide.
Either they set up a functional friendly government, or they simply keep the chaos going long enough
so the other side can't.
The only necessity is that the war doesn't spill over into their own country.
And that comes back to internal force.
The money used to support the power projection all comes from the thing that gave them power
in the first place: OIL.
Saudi Arabia have deep, deep pockets.Their sovereign wealth is one of the largest in
history, and the country is resilient to anything.
Financially, they can survive impossible dips in oil revenue, and have intentionally caused
crashes in the past to force competitors out of the market.
Iran, by comparison, has triple the population, and one-third of the daily output of oil.
Since the revolution, the US and the UN have found any excuse to levy sanctions against
Iran, which has dearly harmed their market access and their power in this realm.
The Saudis have welcomed that with open arms.
But Iran has something that the Saudis don't: Geography.
Even if other countries can't directly import energy from this gulf, the radiating ripples
on the market can cause havoc.
Cue the United States.
Everywhere from Panama to the South China Sea, the US Navy were the first in history
to police the global water without direct benefit.
They were intentionally making themselves the lynchpin in the world system.
And the lynchpin within that lynchpin is the #1 commodity, in its #1 crucial location.
The choke point of global oil is the Strait of Hormuz, at the eastern end of the gulf.
Iran's position makes it the only local country with the ability to blockade this strait,
making it the country most able to challenge US Naval power.
Remember that next time you hear about sanctions on the news.
America supports any regime of any ideology that can help it complete its goals.
For challenging Islamic Iran, that meant supporting Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the bloodiest, most
futile war of the late 20th Century.
And when Hussein didn't play along, they took him down directly.
...in effect, allowed Islamists to take over.
There is no other country in the region that wants to take on Iran like that.
Even for the vastly wealthy Saudi Arabia, the cost-benefit analysis points sharply away
from Total War.
Neither side wants it.
Yet.
So why doesn't the US invade, then?
Well, since Iran has problems occupying itself, an invasion here would be invading Afghanistan
on steroids.
Not even the most interventionist president wants that.
The Saudis, however, are deep in the process of circumventing the event of Iran succeeding
in closing the gulf.
Pipelines across the peninsula link the oil-producing east to the West coast on the red sea, another
major shipping lane also kept open by other countries.
Iran's backdoor options are far fewer.
Saudi disadvantages are only overcome with lots and lots of free trade cash, but Iran
gets their problems and benefits for free.
The mere existence of these two countries in their current state pits them as natural
enemies and competitors in energy, religion and the global sphere.
This situation -- all of it -- allows both countries to keep their own states stable
while exporting chaos to manipulate the world around them against each other.
The motive (and potentially the means) to topple the opposing regime, and assert themselves
on top of the Gulf.
If you fancy learning more about these two countries, and especially about a future war
that is increasing in likelihood every single day, then why don't you try reading
'The Absent Superpower' by Peter Zeihan: the book that inspired this video?
If I get ten more patrons on Patreon by the end of the week, I'll buy someone a copy.
It's a proper good book, I really recommend it if you're into this kind of stuff.