Iran has supposedly made threats to Saudi Arabia concerning their coverage of the protests happening in Tehran due to the morality police. The US has received word of the conceived threat and have publicly stated that they would be willing to act in defense for the interests of the US and their middle east partners. Iran obviously denies that these threats had any real notion behind them and have labeled the statements as attacks on the image of Tehran. The main issue arises because Saudi Arabia had been covering the protests in Tehran via Farsi satellite news. Iran considered this meddling in their domestic affairs. The actual threat arose in this statement about Saudi Arabian coverage of the protests, “You (Saudi Arabia) are involved in this matter and know that you are vulnerable.”
In recent news, a lot of what comes out of Tehran seems to be accusations of news sources and statements being aimed at “tarnishing” the image of Tehran. In this case, Iran seemed to make an empty threat, more like a “know your place” statement towards Saudi Arabia. Understandably, Iran is very upset about the situation because I assume that Tehran has no intention of actually fixing their issue of morality police because it is a part of their religion. And the constant coverage of media concerning the ongoing protests have done nothing but added more fuel to a fire and gathered more attention focused at Tehran. While it may seem that Saudi Arabia was doing no harm by simply broadcasting, widespread media coverage has a very large impact on the image of a country in the eyes of others. For example, ask the question how much weight would the Ukrainian war have if it wasn’t as heavily publicized as it is. Us Americans have no cause or concern for Ukranians so why are we so aware and why is it that we all hold the opinion of “Russia bad?” It has to do entirely with the bias in the media and the effect it can have on people. So, understandably, Iran’s ideally hush hush domestic issue is now being blasted into the world eye and now Tehran is suffering a bad image. Another question that arose when I read the article was with the discovery of shale rock oil, how much longer is the US going to be allied with Saudi Arabia. It seems we are only tied by the import and export of oil so if America doesn’t have the need to import oil anymore, how much weight would we place on the “alliance” with our partners in the middle east?
To connect to class, alliances are merely created out of necessity and common national interests. Never are they created merely because “we like you”, however, a case could be made for US and UK ties. In this specific article, Saudi Arabia felt threatened by Iran and made a call to the Pentagon and asked for a public statement of defense. Needless to say, the Pentagon followed through and I think the statement alone is enough to ward off any potential Iranian attacks. However, if Iran were genuinely considering an attack, they would have to weigh the issue of America being willing to sacrifice more of its soldiers for a cause that Americans don’t really care about.