Analysis of Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the Basis of Motivational Realism (2005-2015)

After the victory of Islamic revolution in Iran the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia as two regional powers moved in a conflicting direction. There are several reasons for this trend. Reasons like Iran's competition with Saudi Arabia for leadership of Islamic world, leadership of Shiites versus leadership of Wahhabi and Saudi's cooperation with West versus Iran's anti-West stands but there has been change and fluctuation in these policies due to change of governments in Iran. The present paper wants to examine the relations between the two countries from a different perspective and distinct from the existing international relations theories and is called motivational realism. The paper examines the relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran from the time of coming into power of Ahmadinejad till now and studies the relations between the two countries in these two periods by a comparative method. The paper wants to know that despite considerable differences between the foreign policies of Ahmadinejad and Rouhani government what has been the Saudi Arabia's reaction to moderate foreign policy of Rouhani? What has been the impact of moderate foreign policy orientation of Rouhani on regional policies of Iran and Saudi Arabia?