For regional adversaries at loggerheads over the crises in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the disaster at the hajj is unlikely to be a game changer in the contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia, merely adding venom to their mutual acrimony.
But a deepening of already profound mistrust between the conservative Sunni kingdom and the revolutionary Shia theocracy will make the task of stabilising the Middle East’s many trouble spots even harder to achieve than it already is.
While the Gulf rivals have managed to put aside bad blood after past flare-ups, such moments of detente happened in a much more stable Middle East, years before turmoil in Iraq and Arab Spring uprisings unleashed sectarian hatreds across the region.
Today, Iranian and Saudi participation would be crucial in stabilising Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Lebanon, where the two sides back sectarian proxy forces that are either at daggers drawn or openly at war in conflicts killing thousands each month.
Riyadh also accuses Tehran of fomenting trouble in Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia itself. Tehran accuses Riyadh of plotting its destruction with Washington.
The animosity worsened in the wake of the deadliest disaster to befall the annual hajj pilgrimage in 25 years.
Iran says it lost at least 169 pilgrims when two large groups of pilgrims converged on Thursday at a crossroads in Mina, a few kilometres east of Mecca, on their way to perform the “stoning of the devil” ritual at Jamarat.
Iran demanded an apology. Demonstrators protested in Tehran, chanting “Death to the Saudi dynasty.” Saudis commentators insinuated that Iranian pilgrims themselves were at fault.
“It’s a lie that Satan’s representative, Khamenei, mourns the Mina incident victims,” Saudi prince Khaled Al Saud tweeted, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
‘Dirty hands’
A cartoon published by Iran’s Tasnim news agency showed King Salman of Saudi Arabia as a camel trampling pilgrims.
Even before the hajj tragedy, prominent figures in both countries exchanged critical tirades. In May, Khamenei denounced Saudi Arabia for its military campaign in Yemen by comparing the kingdom to the pagans who ruled the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam in the seventh century.
At the UN, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday lamented that Riyadh had rebuffed his repeated attempts at reconciliation since his election in 2013.
“We are disappointed about the cold relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
“Also when Saudis started killing people in Yemen, Riyadh drifted even further away from Iran and many other Islamic countries,” Rouhani told an audience of US think-tanks and journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Analysts across the region agree the depth of the crisis may be determined largely by the results of the Saudi probe and how much is published.
‘Mismanagement’
Saudi commentators point the finger at Tehran for the tragedy.
Jamal Khashoggi, head of a Saudi news channel, said investigators were looking at the actions of a large number of Iranian pilgrims who “happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time.”
“I think Saudi Arabia will speak very loudly on the issue when the result of the investigations come out. It seems that the Iranians will be blamed because they took their hajjis in the wrong direction at the wrong time,” he said.
Influence
Not only are the two competitors openly tussling for influence in Arab countries, but Saudi Arabia is worried that Washington has realigned with Tehran at Arab expense by backing a deal settling Iran’s long-standing nuclear dispute.
Alive to what he sees as a US-Iran detente, Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, is pushing for Sunni Muslim Middle East countries to set aside differences over political Islam and focus on what it sees as the more urgent threat from Tehran.