t h e i s l a m i c r e p u b l i c ’ s r u l i n g e l i t e s a r e f i x a t e d o n wa h h a b i s m f o r good reason. For all its sloganeering about vahdat, much of the drive behind Tehran’s pan-Islamic outreach is first and foremost political, and it is undertaken with a view toward enhancing Iran’s geopolitical position. This occurs in the context of the Iran- ian regime’s ambitions to become the leader of the Islamic World, a goal hindered by the Persian and Shia characteristics of the Islamic Republic.19
Further, in the Iranian understanding of the realities of the Middle East and the Islamic World, no state is a greater challenger in undermining Tehran’s goals and delegitimizing its Islamic credentials than Saudi Arabia. Countering the House of Saud and the influence of the religious Wahhabi establishment that gives legitimacy to the monarchy’s rule have therefore become top priorities for Iranian foreign pol- icy, and an abundance of Iranian official statements are at hand to demonstrate this.
First, the official Iranian narrative as evident in the material published by state- controlled media does not hold back in denouncing almost everything linked to Wahhabism. For instance, the Wahhabis, a broad term that includes the Saudi gov- ernment and the clergy in Saudi Arabia, are said to be in an alliance with the “West and the Zionists.”20Claims that Wahhabism is a foreign-made conspiracy against
the Muslim Nation are not limited to fringe elements among the Iranian Shia clergy. Senior Shia figures regularly and strongly condemn all things Wahhabi and depict the sect as “contemptible” and deliberately “planted” in the midst of the umma by the West to create a rift among Muslims.21
For example, one of Iran’s most senior Shia figures, Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, branded Wahhabis as “heartless extremists” who give “Islam and Muslims a bad reputation” through the violent operations of jihadist groups that are carried out in Iraq and elsewhere.22At their core, such denunciations by Iranian clergy are
in fact a reaction to the anti-Shia positions of the Wahhabi establishment, which has included the issuing of anti-Shia fatwas or insulting Shia clergy such as Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. But Iranian anti-Wahhabism also clearly reflects the ri- valries between Tehran and Riyadh as they seek to advance their competing interests among various Muslim populations in the Middle East and beyond.23
In fact, the gap between the Iranian Shia clerical hierarchy and that of the Wah- habi leadership is so great there are virtually no prominent examples of the two groups reaching out to each other since the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. If the Iranian authorities have all but given up on their ideals of Islamic unity when it comes to Wahhabis, it is clearly due to the diametrical positions that Tehran and Riyadh hold regarding most regional political competitions, such as their support for opposing parties (e.g., Hamas versus Fatah among the Palestinians or Hezbollah versus the “March 14” movement in Lebanon). But the gap between the Shiite hie- rocracy and the Wahhabi leadership is due to fundamental differences of a religious nature between Shiism and Wahhabi teachings. The reality of this deep-seated reli- gious antagonism, however, is often underestimated in the standard narrative that explains the Iranian-Saudi or Iranian-Arab rivalry in merely political terms.24
Today, the Wahhabi doctrine dominates the religious makeup of the Arabian Peninsula, and thus has effectively negated Tehran’s pan-Islamic outreach to the Arab states to its south. As a consequence, Iranian officials have focused their efforts to present Wahhabism as an aberration to the rest of the Sunni world and to main- tain that genuine reconciliation with Sunnis is both desired and possible.
Shia clergy have therefore begun to speak more forcefully against some of the cultural and other idiosyncrasies in Shiite practices that might be off-putting to Sun- nis, in the hope of streamlining the sect’s image and improving it in their eyes. This is in marked contrast to Tehran’s anti-Wahhabi message, which accentuates the dif- ferences between Wahhabism and the Iranian conception of mainstream Islam. For example, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Taskhiri, the head of the Taghrib, has repeatedly urged the Shia faithful to refrain from “acts and superstitious beliefs” that damage other Muslims’ perceptions of the Shia and asked the Shiite ulema to stand at the forefront of this campaign. Such calls are not isolated or limited to the established clergy, but in fact reflect a larger trend in Shiite ritual practice that has grown par- ticularly well among segments of the religiously-minded Iranian Shia youth.25
There can be little doubt that these Iranian efforts to present Shiism in a favorable light to Sunnis are spurred on by the important linkages and alliances that Tehran
has formed with Islamist movements that are rooted in Sunnism such as Palestinian Hamas, elements of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey’s ruling AKP. Since the beginning of 2011, Tehran’s outreach has also been driven by the popular unrest that has swept through the Arab world on an unprecedented scale. Tehran views this unrest as an opportunity to work through its Sunni allies to further ex- tend its influence among Sunni Arabs.