Juan Cole: A New Middle East Cold War? Ahmadinejad slams Saudi Arabia over Yemen, Gaza

While American security officials are focused laser-like on the 300 or so al-Qaeda members in rural Maarib province of Yemen, and worry about further strikes on the US planned by this small group, a regional food fight has broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia about a different sort of local insurgency, the Huthis, who have so far not been seen by the US as an international terrorism threat.

Yemen is on the face of it an unlikely object of contention between Shiite Iran and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. This country of about 23 million in the southwest corner of the Arabian peninsula is about 53% Sunni and 47% Zaidi. Most of the Sunnis belong to the rationalist Shafi'i school of jurisprudence rather than to the fundamentalist Hanbali school favored by Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. Many Yemeni Sunnis are traditionalists or even mystical Sufis, schools that the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia hate.

The Zaidis are a kind of Shiite, though some have seen them as in between Sunnism and Shiism. In Christianity, Roman Catholicism tends to honor Peter more and Paul less, whereas most Protestants foreground Paul. Neither wholly rejects either apostle-- it is a matter of emphasis. Likewise the Zaidis favor Ali (the son-in-law and first cousin of the Prophet Muhammad), but they have nothing against the early caliphs or religious leaders honored by the Sunnis-- Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman. Zaidis have a doctrine that Ali should have been the first caliph, but the others were also qualified and it was basically all right if Ali was passed over 3 times before he became the leader of Islam in 656 CE. In contrast, Twelver Shiites believe that only Ali and his descendants should have headed up early Islam.

Zaidis often study Sunni works and some have been influenced by Sunni schools of thought. They are more rationalist than the Sunnis in theology, many favoring the Mu'tazili school, which maintained that God is always rational and good in ways human beings can understand, rather than being arbitrary and inscrutable, as many Sunnis insist. Zaidis do not believe that there were only Twelve Imams, or leaders of the Muslim community drawn from the ranks of the descendants of the Prophet, nor do they insist on primogeniture. The Prophets' progeny, or Sayyids, have a special place of honor and often are asked to mediate tribal feuds. Many become clergymen. In each generation, one could become the over-all religious leader or Imam....