The thesis was just about gaining ground that the bitter legacy of the Arab spring is going to be the reawakening of the rough beast of sectarianism in the Muslim Middle East. Sectarian strife, it was prophesied, would lead to a Sunni-Shi'ite confrontation involving Saudi Arabia and Iran.
That specter helped deflect attention momentarily from the existential threat posed by the Arab spring to the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East. It also helped the United States to distract the Arab street while Western intervention is under way in another oil-rich Muslim country, and to reinvent the containment
strategy toward Iran. Most important, it gave the Barack Obama administration in Washington a fig-leaf with which to cover up the comprehensive failure of the Middle East peace process.
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