Iran's Arabian ambitions

Amir Taheri:

For almost a decade, Arab regimes have worried about alleged Iranian plans to create a "Shiite crescent" from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and a yet-to-be liberated Palestine. Now fresh fears have grown that the "crescent" may take another shape as well -- from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, and including chunks of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Since January, for instance, Iran has intensified pressure on Bahrain, where a Shiite majority has grievances against the Arab Sunni ruling elite. An archipelago connected with the Saudi mainland by a bridge, Bahrain provides the natural link to the oil-rich kingdom's Asharqiyah province, where Shiites form a majority.

But Yemen may be a better example. Inside Saudi Arabia, the Empty Quarter, a desert the size of Texas, separates the Asharqiyah Shiites from their co-religionists in the Najran, Jazan and Assir. Until 1932, those provinces were under the suzerainty of the Shiite Imam of Yemen. In that year the new Saudi Kingdom incorporated them -- an act the Yemenis didn't recognize until 2005.

On the Yemeni side of the border, Iran has been trying to create a branch of the pan-Shiite Hezbollah movement. The aim is to control a chunk of territory along the Saudi border and use it to destabilize the kingdom while exerting pressure on the Yemeni government.

This would echo Iran's 1982 creation of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which controls an enclave on the Israeli border, using it as a base for periodical attacks on Israel and continued political pressure on the Lebanese government in Beirut.

The Iran-inspired rebellion in Yemen started in 2007 under a tribal leader named Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

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There is more.

This report gives an added dimension to the recent fighting on the Saudi Yemeni border. Yemen still has to deal with the problem, but it now has an ally in the Saudis who are already patrolling the waters off the coast of Yemen to stop Iran from resupplying the rebels.