BLACK WAVE: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, AND THE FORTY-YEAR RIVALRY THAT UNRAVELED CULTURE, RELIGION, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

• Author: Abu, Albadr
• Position: Book review

BLACK WAVE: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, AND THE FORTY-YEAR RIVALRY THAT UNRAVELED CULTURE, RELIGION, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

BY: Kim Ghattas

Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, is a Lebanese journalist who has covered the Middle East for decades. The book, published in 2020, draws on her long career as a reporter for many well-respected news outlets such as BBC and the Financial Times.

She writes the book as a Lebanese and an Arab trying to unravel the events that have dominated the last four decades of the Middle East. "What happened to us?" she asks. In that search for an answer Ghattas has written a book, that is, according to her, "neither a work of historical scholarship nor an academic study," but "more than a reported narrative."

Answering the question of what happened to us, led Ghattas to the pivotal year of 1979. That year, notes Ghattas, saw three major events in three countries: The Iranian Revolution, the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi religious zealots, and the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the birth of Jihadism in the region.

Ghattas comments that "The combination of all three was toxic, and nothing was ever the same again." The Saudi-Iran competition was the consequence of these three momentous events. The rivalry of Saudi Arabia and Iran over the leadership of the Muslim World ledthe contesting countries to "wield, exploit, and distort religion in the more profane pursuit of raw power." Ghattas concludes that this rivalry "is the constant from 1979 onward, the torrent that flattens everything in its path."

If the author believes that 1979 was an annushorribilis for the Middle East, then one has to add three other events in 1979 that catalyzed this outcome. The first was oil prices that had jumped to record highs giving the Saudis the financial wherewithal to influence the region and contain Iran's expansionism. The second was the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty: as Egypt exited the lingering conflict, the way was paved for Iran's entrance into the region. Ghattas later makes a similar point when she contrasts the image of Sadat negotiating peace with Begin as Khomeini was hosting the Palestinian leader Yasser

Arafat. The third was the rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq--the man who would reignite Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shiite acrimony when he declared war on Iran the following...