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Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-10/what-iran-means-to-the-arab-world
What Iran Means to the Arab World
(Bloomberg) Hussein Ibish - Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 Iranian Shiite revolution radicalized and emboldened Sunni Arab Islamists throughout the region. The new Islamic Republic gave those Arab Islamists, ranging from Muslim Brothers to those who would emerge as al-Qaeda and Islamic State, a model of success. From their perspective, Iranian Islamists may get many aspects of religion wrong, but if they could overthrow a strong government of a powerful state against the wishes of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then surely the sky was the limit for those with a better version of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary politics. Iran might be the biggest single external problem for the Arab world, but internal problems remain the greater challenge. Much of the Arab world would be a mess with or without the Iranian revolution. The writer is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.