Middle East

Saudi Arabia-Iran Break Threatens Syrian Peace Process

After Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric on Saturday, Iranian protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran, leading Riyadh and several other Sunni-majority Muslim governments to cut diplomatic ties with Shiite Iran. The rivalry between the Saudi monarchy and Iranian theocracy — thinly veiled in conflicts from Bahrain to Yemen to Iraq — now threatens a narrow path to peace in Syria.

That roadmap, unveiled Dec. 18 as a unanimous Security Council resolution, was touted by the U.S., Russia, and others as the first real breakthrough in the nearly half-decade-old Syrian civil war because it was the first one backed by the biggest players on opposing sides of the conflict: Saudi Arabia, which supports the rebels, and Iran, which supports strongman Bashar al Assad.

But the resolution’s goals depended on a joint effort by Riyadh and Tehran to help usher the various parties to the bargaining table and meet an ambitious, roughly two-year timeline for elections. That effort now seems in doubt.