Irans Biggest Enemy isn't who you think

Quick quiz. What’s the biggest, most volatile religious-political rivalry on Earth right now?

Your first instinct is probably India and Pakistan. Two nuclear powers, a partitioned subcontinent, six decades of border skirmishes. Reasonable guess, but in my opinion you’d be wrong.

Your second instinct is Israel and the Palestinians. Also reasonable, because if you listen to the news it seems like no other conflict exists anywhere else on Earth.

Or maybe you land on Russia and Ukraine. The body count there is in the hundreds of thousands, billions upon billions torched, oil refineries burning on both sides of the border. Also a fair guess.

And yet I still think there is one rivalry that has shaped the Middle East by war and blood for the better part of half a century, one most Western audiences have never been taught to see clearly, and it isn’t any of the above. It’s not the Indians and the Pakistanis. It’s not even the Israelis and the Palestinians. It’s the Iranians and the Saudis.