Interview de Toby Matthiesen "Research Fellow at Cambridge University", et auteur de deux livres sur le confessionnalisme, qui est considéré comme un "expert sur les Shiites dans le Golfe" :
Saudi Arabia and “The Shia Threat”
▻http://en.iranwire.com/features/6614
Saudi Arabia and Iran are well-established regional rivals. Why is this?
Looking at it from a geostrategic perspective, they dominate one of the most important regions in the world, the Persian Gulf. So regardless of ideology and religion, they are bound to be natural rivals for regional hegemony. The vast oil resources at the disposal of both countries have also allowed them to export their rivalry throughout the wider MENA region and beyond in a way that resource-poor countries could never have done. Having said that, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is complicated by a religious and ideological rivalry that overlaps with the strategic and geopolitical rivalry. Both countries have used their particular interpretation of Islam in their foreign policies.
Saudi Arabia “invented” Islamic foreign policy under King Faisal so as to better withstand Arab Nationalist denouncements led by Egyptian President Nasser. It established a whole range of international Islamic organisations and wanted to be seen as the unrivalled leader of the Islamic World. The Islamic Revolution in Iran undermined this notion, because the revolution sought (and in the beginning sometimes did) appeal to all Muslims, regardless of whether they were Sunni or Shia. So the sectarian card was very much a way in which Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni-led states that felt vulnerable to the appeal of the Islamic revolution) could undermine the umma [Muslim]-wide appeal of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Having said that, Iran immediately tried to export its revolution, and found this task easiest amongst Shia groups around the world. Arab Shia were a particular focus of Iran’s efforts to export the revolution, as symbolised by the establishing of Hizbullah in Lebanon. But Iran also supported Shia in the Gulf monarchies Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So both sides have in a way led a sectarian foreign policy that has inflamed sectarian relations across the Arab and Islamic worlds.
Nevertheless, the Sunni-Shia rivalry is not the root cause of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. In many ways, the Sunni-Shia rivalry that we see today is an outcome of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry for regional hegemony.