The man who may ignite the next Middle East war
Beheaded Shiite cleric antagonized Saudi royalty for years
The cleric whose execution has ignited a geopolitical crisis that threatens to turn the Middle East into an explosive sectarian conflict has been described as a “small-town” religious leader, but has also been one of the biggest thorns in Saudi Arabia’s side for decades.
Allies of Saudi Arabia followed the kingdom’s lead and scaled back diplomatic ties to Iran on Monday after the ransacking of Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, violence sparked by the execution of Shiite cleric Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, 56.
Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late Sunday. Within hours, the United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the chargé d’affaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.
Meanwhile, Shiite protesters took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan with the violence and tension threatening to derail hopes of kick-starting peace talks to end civil war in Syria.
So who is the cleric who has created so much volatility?
Al- Nimr was born in the Qatif region of eastern Saudi Arabia. He studied at a seminary in Iran after secondary education and when he returned to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, tensions arose almost immediately.
From 2003 to 2008, al-Nimr was jailed eight times for his involvement in protests, according to news reports.
A friend described the cleric as an outspoken opponent of the Saudi monarchy but someone who championed individual liberty over government oppression.
“His grandfather was also a fiery cleric who stood in the face of the Saudi oppression of the Shia minority 50, 60 years ago. So he inherited this zeal and the resolve to object to this oppression,” Ali al- Ahmed, founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, told the news program Democracy Now.
He described his friend as “a religious leader from a small town in the eastern shore of Arabia” who was unknown to most people outside of Saudi Arabia.
According to the Guardian newspaper, the cleric once urged his supporters to resist police bullets using only “the roar of the word.”
In 2009, he threatened to lead Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Muslims to secession, provoking a government crackdown in the minority’s eastern heartland. In his sermons, al- Nimr was critical of Sunni and Shiite autocratic rulers alike, though he reserved some of his most scathing attacks for the Saudi and Bahraini royal families.
In a meeting with U. S. diplomats in 2008, al- Nimr sought to distance himself from Tehran, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks. The report describes him as a “second- tier political player” in the eastern province.
He was arrested in 2012, a year after popular uprisings swept parts of the Middle East, and sentenced to death in 2014.
On Monday, f ollowing his execution, world powers sought to calm the tensions, with leaders in Europe and Washington calling for calm and a resumption of ties. Russia agreed to act as a mediator in the escalating conflict.
While s ome analysts thought the execution of alNimr — one of 47 people beheaded on the weekend by Saudi Arabia — was a direct challenge to Iran, Ahmed said he believed it was an attempt to quell unrest within the kingdom.
“The Saudis spread their executions across the country ... to spread terror in the heart of the population,” he told Democracy Now. “The Saudi monarchy fear is that the population will rise against them. And the best way they think that they can silence this opposition and the aspiration of the young people in that country for people’s power is to execute people and to ... behead them, so the people will not rise.”
One Middle East analyst said the death of al- Nimr could provide a rallying point for Shiites inside the kingdom.
The execution “institutionalizes tension in Saudi Arabia by creating a symbol for Shiite grievances,” I brahim Fraihat, senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, said. “Not many people in the past saw him as the representative of the Shiite community, but now he has become one of the symbols of the tension between Shiite and Sunnis.”