Several regional states geopolitically situated between Tehran and Riyadh, including Pakistan and Oman, have expressed an interest in helping patch up the broken Iranian-Saudi relationship. However, Iraq is perhaps the most suited among the prospective mediators, for several reasons.
First, discourse on the Iranian-Saudi rivalry conveys that much of it is directly related to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which upturned the regional power balance. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed this perspective on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, arguing that the regional instability “is caused by a panic in Saudi Arabia that believes there is a disequilibrium in our region after the fall of Saddam Hussein and after the Arab Spring.” Iraq — or at least past Iraq-related developments — has also been featured in Iranian calls for engagement. Senior Iranian officials, including Zarif, have repeatedly made reference to UN Security Council Resolution 598, which ended the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and its provisions relating to the establishment of regional dialogue forums.
