By MOHAMMAD JAVAD ZARIF

By MOHAMMAD JAVAD ZARIF
Tehran — Public relations firms with no qualms about taking tainted petrodollars are experiencing a bonanza. Their latest project has been to persuade us that the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, is no more; and as a Nusra spokesman announced on CNN, the rebranded rebel group, supposedly separated from its parent terrorist organization, has now become “moderate.”
Thus is fanaticism from the Dark Ages sold as a bright vision for the 21st century. The problem for the P.R. firms’ wealthy, mostly Saudi, clients, who have lavishly funded Nusra, is that the evidence of their ruinous policies can’t be photoshopped out of existence. If anyone had any doubt, the recent video images of other recently rebranded “moderates” beheading a 12-year-old boy were a horrifying reality check.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, militant Wahhabism has undergone a series of face-lifts, but underneath, the ideology remains the same — whether it’s the Taliban, the various incarnations of Al Qaeda, or the so-called Islamic State, which is neither Islamic nor a state. But the millions of people faced with the Nusra Front’s tyranny are not buying the fiction of this disaffiliation. Past experience of such attempts at whitewashing points to the real aim: to enable the covert flow of petrodollars to extremist groups in Syria to become overt, and even to lure Western governments into supporting these “moderates.” The fact that Nusra still dominates the rebel alliance in Aleppo flouts the public relations message.
Saudi Arabia’s effort to persuade its Western patrons to back its shortsighted tactics is based on the false premise that plunging the Arab world into further chaos will somehow damage Iran. The fanciful notions that regional instability will help to “contain” Iran, and that supposed rivalries between Sunni and Shiite Muslims are fueling conflicts, are contradicted by the reality that the worst bloodshed in the region is caused by Wahhabists fighting fellow Arabs and murdering fellow Sunnis.
While these extremists, with the backing of their wealthy sponsors, have targeted Christians, Jews, Yezidis, Shiites and other “heretics,” it is their fellow Sunni Arabs who have been most beleaguered by this exported doctrine of hate. Indeed, it is not the supposed ancient sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, but the contest between Wahhabism and mainstream Islam that will have the most profound consequences for the region and beyond.
While the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq set in motion the fighting we see today, the key driver of violence has been the ideology of hate promoted by Saudi Arabia — even if it was invisible to Western eyes until the tragedy of 9/11.
The princes in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, have been desperate to revive the regional status quo of the days of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq, when a surrogate repressive despot, eliciting wealth and material support from fellow Arabs and a gullible West, countered the so-called Iranian threat. There is only one problem: Mr. Hussein is long dead and the clock cannot be turned back.
The sooner our Saudi neighbors come to terms with this, the better for all. The new realities in our region can even accommodate Riyadh, should the Saudis choose to change their ways.
What would change mean? Over the past three decades, Riyadh has spent tens of billions of dollars exporting Wahhabism through thousands of mosques and madrasas across the world. From Asia to Africa, from Europe to the Americas, this theological perversion has wrought havoc. As one former Kosovar extremist told The Times, “The Saudis completely changed Islam here with their money.”
Though it has attracted only a minute proportion of Muslims, Wahhabism has been devastating in its impact. Virtually every terrorist group abusing the name of Islam — from Al Qaeda and its offshoots in Syria to Boko Haram in Nigeria — has been inspired by this death cult.
So far, the Saudis have succeeded in inducing their allies to go along with their folly, whether in Syria or Yemen, by