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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew into the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Feb. 24 to hold talks with King Abdullah on the situation in Lebanon and the Saudi-Syrian rivalry on the subject. Given the Iranian connection to Hezbollah and the Syrians, Tehran will have ranked high on the agendas for these talks. The Iranians, in fact, have been talking directly to the Saudis regarding Lebanon and Iraq; they also have reached out to the Egyptians.
The Iranians realize that two obstacles block them from realizing their geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East. First, unlike most Middle Eastern states, Iran is ethnically Persian, rather than Arab. Further complicating matters, its Shiite majority puts Iran on the wrong side of the Muslim sectarian divide as far as most Arabs are concerned. Therefore, Iran must exploit intra-Arab fault lines if it wishes to become a regional player, something made feasible now that Iraq has gone from being a security threat to a launching pad for Tehran’s bid for regional dominance. Iran’s strategy depends on playing a number of cards — including pan-Islamic, Islamist, anti-Israel and sectarian ones — depending on the situation, which has allowed it some success in picking up allies such as Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.
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