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| Gutted remains of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, Iran |
4 January 2016: How does a foreign nation know if the Islamic Republic of Iran has formally declared war upon it? Their sovereign embassy in Tehran is invaded, pillaged and gutted by fire. It's been a tradition of the Shi'a Twelver regime in Tehran since 1979; it's what they do.
This is how the new year of 2016 begins for Saudi Arabia and Iran. Following years of sectarian Sunni versus Shi'a conflict and outright proxy warfare in the eastern al-Awamiyah province of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and, as of 2015, Yemen, the two leading adversaries of the opposing camps of Islamist ideology (Wahhabi jihadists vs. Khomeinist-Twelver messianism) are now directly at each others throats. Any pretense of diplomatic relations between the two are as burnt out as the image of the above structure. War is inevitable.
The key event was the Saudi government's execution on Saturday, 2 January of a Saudi-born Shi'a figurehead cleric and instigator of Shi'a insurrection known as Nimr al-Nimr. Along with al-Nimr the Saudi government executed a total of 47 Sunni al-Qaeda terrorists and common criminals. The subsequent rioting by Shi'a throughout the Gulf region belies the fallacy of the claims of Islamic martyrdom. If al-Nimr was truly an Islamic martyr as declared by none other Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, then what is behind all of the rage exhibited by thousands of Shi'a? Thus a spiritually bankrupt ideology is on full display and is likely to fan the flames of war between Sunni and Shi'a in an already at-war Middle East.
