{"id":16121,"date":"2016-01-06T20:16:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T01:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16121"},"modified":"2016-01-06T20:16:36","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T01:16:36","slug":"one-map-that-explains-the-dangerous-saudi-iranian-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16121","title":{"rendered":"One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam,\u00a0cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim theocracy.<\/p>\n

To explain what\u2019s going on, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0provided a\u00a0primer<\/a>\u00a0on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam, informing us that \u201ca schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632\u201d \u2014 i.e., 1,383 years ago.<\/p>\n

But to the degree that the current crisis has anything to do with religion, it\u2019s much less about whether Abu Bakr or Ali was\u00a0Muhammad\u2019s rightful successor and much more about who\u2019s going to control something more concrete right now: oil.<\/p>\n

In fact, much of the conflict can be explained by a fascinating\u00a0map created by\u00a0M.R. Izady<\/a>, a cartographer and adjunct master professor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School\/Joint Special Operations University in Florida.<\/p>\n

What the map shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf\u2019s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.<\/p>\n

As a result, one of the Saudi royal family\u2019s deepest fears is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Shiite Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n

This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein\u2019s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself\u00a0said in 2009<\/a>\u00a0that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn\u2019t improve its treatment of them.<\/p>\n

\"shia-oil-cropped-2\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam,\u00a0cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[6618,441,588,701,1633,1634,1899,5567],"class_list":["post-16121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-house-of-saud","tag-iran","tag-oil","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shia","tag-shiite","tag-sunni","tag-the-intercept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16122,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16121\/revisions\/16122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}