The causes of the uprising that has been rocking the Islamic Republic of Iran for a week now are unsurprisingly both structural and contingent. Initially kicked off by the economically dispossessed youth and joined by lower sections of the middle class, students and also some pensioners, it has reached an unprecedented geographical scope with protests spanning across 70 mainly smaller cities and towns in all four corners of the country.  Besides the structural factors that have been an almost constant feature of the Islamic Republic's rule, the past months and weeks have added a new level of discontent with the regime as a whole, which led me to speculate the recent waves of protests "may only be a forerunner of more to come." 

Eight long days after the shocking resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister out of Saudi Arabia, Saad Hariri made his first public appearance. On the evening of Sunday, 12 November, the Arab world gathered in front of the TV, for not only the future of Lebanon was at stake but that of the entire region. The small country on the eastern Mediterranean coast had again been catapulted onto the main stage of the region’s heated geopolitical rivalries. The interview Hariri gave also took place in the Saudi kingdom, which had spurred speculations that he was held there against his will. During that interview, he could barely invalidate that impression: The tensions in the room were palpable. Too clearly his body language and his contradictory statements were a display of massive pressure that lied on him.

During the Cold War, Iran and Saudi Arabia formed the twin pillars of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but this changed abruptly with the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Ever since, the IRI has pursued a foreign policy independent from the West, which pitted Tehran against the West, and the U.S. in particular, as well as with pro-Western states in the region, including Saudi Arabia. In this blog post to Iran Matters, Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Associate at the Iran Project, examines the mutual perspectives of Iran and Saudi Arabia towards one another and how recent regional developments in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere have impacted this "hegemonic rivalry."
 

Iran's missile test has provoked harsh reactions from Washington. The White House might try to use this incident for its own agenda, says political scientist Ali Fathollah-Nejad in an interview with DW.