Foreign Affairs - 11.2019 - 12.2019

Beyond Great Forces

November/December 2019 151

but at the cost o¡ millions o° lives. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, trans-

formed the country again by dumping Mao’s state-centric economic

model, thus enabling China’s remarkable rise.

THE DECIDERS

Across the Persian Gulf, MBS’ great rival is a very di
erent kind o¡

leader, but one who also exercises an outsize impact. Ayatollah Ali

Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is a cautious old man. I ́ MBS is

defying the impersonal forces o° both Saudi Arabia’s domestic politics

and its traditional foreign policy, Khamenei sits at the crossroads o¡

Iran’s intersecting domestic and international pressures and directs

the tra¼c as he sees ̄t.

Today, it is simplistic, but not entirely inaccurate, to say that Ira-

nian politics is a struggle between two opposing camps. A group o¡

reformists and pragmatists seeks to reform Iran’s foreign and economic

policies to address the dire needs o¡ the Iranian people. Their ap-

proach represents a natural response to Iran’s circumstances: it is a

resource-rich country that has been impoverished and immiserated

by its own aggressive behavior. Opposing the pragmatists is a group

o° hard-liners devoted to both aggression abroad and repression at

ALASTAIR

GRANT

/ AP

Prince Charming: Mohammed bin Salman in London, March 2018