page_title: Iran–Saudi Arabia relations
section_title: Sectarian basis for tensions
hierarchical_section_title: Iran–Saudi Arabia relations / Sectarian basis for tensions
caption_attribution_description: English: Saudi Arabian woman with Burqa taking photo from Mosque of Mohammad al Mahruq - Nishapur 1
context_page_description: Iran and Saudi Arabia have no diplomatic relations following an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 after Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric. Bilateral relations between the countries have been strained over several geo-political issues such as the interpretations of Islam, aspirations for leadership of the Islamic world, oil export policy and relations with the United States and other Western countries.
  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 a Twelver Shia Islamic republic founded in 1979, with a political system that includes elements of a parliamentary democracy vetted and supervised by a theocracy governed by a "Supreme Leader".
  Both countries are major oil and gas exporters and have clashed over energy policy. Saudi Arabia, with its large oil reserves and smaller population, has a greater interest in taking a long-term view of the global oil market and incentive to moderate prices.
context_section_description: Historically, Iran–Saudi relationships have always been uncertain, something attributed to the different sects that the majority populations in both the countries follow. Saudi Arabia which is a predominantly Sunni society has always been skeptical of Shi'ite Iran's activities in the Persian Gulf region, thus labeling Iranian ambitions to dominate the Muslim world as a form of Safawid/Safavid rule. It is in this context that Iran-Saudi hostilities are sometimes seen as being the successor to Ottoman–Safavid relations.
  Leading Sunni and Shi'ite Clerics in both the countries deemed each other's religious beliefs as incorrect for decades. An attempt was made by the Sunnis to take the Tomb of Imam Hussein, one of the important religious leaders of Shi'ite theology and the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad whose life is considered the main difference between Sunni and Shi'ite sects. Since then, tensions between both major sects of Islam, their followers and their affiliates, have increased and this tension is considered unlikely to be resolved any time soon. According to Le Figaro, on 5 June 2010, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Hervé Morin, then Defense Minister of France that: "There are two countries in the world that do not deserve to exist: Iran and Israel."
  In 2016, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh was replaced by Sheikh Saleh bin Hamid as the giver of the hajj sermon. The Grand Mufti had given the sermon every year since 1981, but was replaced in 2016 after claiming that the Shi'ite leaders of Iran "are not Muslims."
caption: A Saudi Arabian woman in Nishapur, Iran
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