Saudi Arabia is a conservative Sunni absolute monarchy established in 1932, with a tradition of close ties to the United States and the United Kingdom. Modern Iran is previously a Twelver Shia constitutional monarchy founded in 1925 but became a revolutionary Islamic republic in 1979, with a political system that includes elements of a presidential democracy vetted and supervised by a theocracy governed by a "Supreme Leader". Both states were aligned with the Western Bloc in the Cold War preventing Soviet influence in these countries.