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The Al-Jazeera article linked below gives a decent overview, but it's surface-level. I'll try to give a more in-depth summary. After WWII, there was significant local resistance to the traditional Middle-Eastern monarchies. These were seen as decadent, old-fashioned stooges to Western sugar daddies. Arab Nationalism, and related ideologies like Nasserism and Ba-athism, sought to cast off the yoke of these monarchies and institute modern, socialist-leaning, authoritarian governments that wouldn't be afraid to play the US and USSR against each other. Egypt was the most dramatic of these. Nasser skillfully kicked out both the monarchy and the British, and while Western governments initially had confidence in him as a reformer, he was soon regarded as a loose cannon; when the US refused to sell him arms for use against Israel, he had no problem turning to the USSR, who had no problem accommodating him. Iran would have its own shot at this in the early 1950s, which was famously cut short by the US's own covert restoration of the monarchy.
Nasser's own pan-Arab dreams would lead him to advocate for similar revolutions in other countries. Iraq and Syria would see their own revolutions, and Aden would kick out the British along similar lines. But monarchies still remained, most notably Saudi Arabia, whose close ties with the United States were regarded as suspect. When dispossessed Palestinians formed the PLO in 1964, they looked to the Pan-Arab revolutionaries for inspiration. It was a nationalist movement, but it was also socialist.
When Israel occupied the West Bank following the 6-day war in 1967, the PLO was forced into Jordan, from where they staged terrorist attacks into Israel. The problem was that Jordan was a monarchy under King Hussein. The other problem was that while Jordan was officially at war with Israel, Hussein was a pragmatist who enjoyed good relations with the United States, and he didn't like the idea of the PLO turning his country into a terrorist state. The last straw came with the PLO's attempted assassination of Hussein and overthrow of the Jordanian government in 1970. Jordanian troops would expel the PLO, who then took up in Lebanon.
So now the PLO is in southern Lebanon, and Yassir Arafat is gaining notoriety as the world's preeminent Arab terrorist. The situation is much the same as it was in Jordan, except that the Lebanese government is a mess and isn't equipped to do anything about it, giving the PLO essentially free-reign in the South. When Lebanon erupts into civil war in 1975, Israel, who supported the existing Maronite government, took the opportunity to invade and establish a buffer zone. While they got their buffer zone, it didn't eliminate the PLO, but drove them further north. By 1981, and international peacekeeping force had brokered a ceasefire agreement, which ended the war but left a peacekeeping force in place.
In the meantime, Pan-Arabism was on its last legs. Following Nasser's death, Anwar Sadat took control of Egypt in the early 1970s. With Soviet help, he took one last shot at Israel in the Yom Kippur War, but was soundly defeated. Realizing that the only hope at regaining any of the lost territory was through a negotiated settlement, he agreed to the Camp David Accords in 1978. While this didn't mean the immediate fall of the other secular states, it cast a pall on the movement as a whole. Egypt would no longer be the alpha dog in the region.
But who would? Among the remaining secular states, Iraq was the most obvious candidate, with its central location, large population, and large army. In a couple years Sadaam Hussein would rise to power in an attempt to assert this vision. Syria was small and was wrapped up in wars in Israel and Lebanon it couldn't win. Jordan had its own Israel problems; while officially at war, Hussein was too pragmatic about his relationship with the country to be openly hostile. The other monarchies were small and weak, and some were barely independent. The one that wasn't was Saudi Arabia, awash in American arms and domestic oil money. But as a monarchy, it had a credibility problem similar to Egypt's. The ruling family was significantly more conservative than most of the various Kings and Emirs, and while this meant they didn't seem as decadent as the others, it did make them seem more old-fashioned. It would be hard to unite the people around a King, of all things.
And then there was Iran. Persian where the rest of the region is Arab, Shia where the rest of the region is Sunni. Still one of the monarchies, but things are changing. An exiled Ayatollah has found something for the people to cling to that's a far cry from Pan-Arabism: Religious fervor. Guys like Nasser saw this kind of thing as detrimental to their countries' modernization, but by 1979, its day had come. Kohmeni would swoop into Tehran and depose the Shah, instituting his own ideal form of religious-led government. I'm going to assume you know about the Iranian revolution so I won't recount the story here. But there was a lesser-known revolution in Saudi Arabia around the same time. In the wake of the Ayatollah taking power, Juhayman al-Otaybi and a group of 600 fanatics seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca in an attempt to overthrow the House of Saud. The attempt was unsuccessful, but it spooked the royal family enough that they abandoned the meager steps they had taken towards modernization in favor of an increasingly Islamist policy.
By the early 1980s, there were three powers squaring off to dominate the region: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Iraq, sensing weakness in the chaos surrounding the Iranian Revolution, struck first, invading Iran in 1980. Meanwhile, Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982, laying siege to Beirut, in an attempt to drive out the PLO for good. By the end of the year, Arafat agreed to move operations to Tunis, far out of striking distance of Israel. But that didn't solve Lebanon's problems. Shiites in the south had become resentful of the constant occupations, whether from the PLO, Israel, or international peacekeepers. This resentment culminated in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and the formation of Hezbollah.
Iraq, having committed itself to a war that was looking increasingly like a stalemate, and not being too keen on the whole religious fanaticism thing, was looking less and less like the new alpha dog. Iran's chance didn't look much better. It was bogged down in the war itself, and it would be hard to find followers of Shiites in a region that was overwhelmingly Sunni. There were plenty of Shiites in Iraq, but the situation on the ground made it inconceivable that Iran would be able to draw them into its sphere. But Iran did have one advantage that Saudi Arabia didn't. In 1983, Egypt was at peace with Israel, and Hussein was unwilling to get too involved. Assad in Syria blamed Israel for everything, but he was a secular Ba'athist and his military situation wasn't great. But now there was Hezbollah, Shiites in a land of Sunnis, in perfect position to pick up where the PLO left off before being exiled to Tunis.
So Iran decided to become Hezbollah's sugar daddy. This became readily apparent to the United States relatively early. As Hezbollah started taking Americans hostages in the 1980s, it became clear to negotiators pretty quickly that they took their marching orders from Iran (the Iran-Contra Affair was an attempt to negotiate the release of these hostages). As the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown more acute over the decades, Iran has used its position as a supporter of Iran and enemy of Israel to gain support among the wider region. Consider the Abraham Accords. The basic idea behind them is that if Muslim-majority countries establish diplomatic relations with Israel, it will isolate Palestinian hardliners and force them to the negotiating table. The one potential weakness in such a policy is that, while the governments of these countries know that peace with Israel benefits them in the long run, the position is still wildly unpopular among the Arab public.
Iran knows that keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going on as long as possible is to its long-term benefit. While I agree with the Trump's policy in this area generally, I shake my head when he or Jared Kushner says that the October 7 attacks wouldn't have happened had he been president. Biden continued Trump's diplomatic policy in the region, and a year ago it looked like Saudi Arabia would be establishing relations with Israel in the not-too-distant future. October 7 provoked a response from Israel that made any chance of recognition politically impossible. A policy of alienating Hamas terrorists has been replaced by a policy of simply eliminating them. The more support Iran can give to those who are on the front lines, the more credibility they build with the Arab public, while Saudi Arabia, beholden to the United States, is forced to stand aloof. They're also far enough away from Israel that the risk of direct conflict is relatively low. This is why Israel assassinated Haniyeh in Iran. Beyond being a high-value target, it sends a message — You're not safe. We can waltz into your country any time and kill anyone we want to, and there's nothing you can do about it. Lob all the poorly-guided missiles you want to.
Whether this strategy plays out for Iran is anyone's guess. Power politics has completely overtaken religious fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, and the more extreme fanaticism of Al-Qaeda and ISIL has given the movement a bad name locally in some of these places. After 45 years, Iran's sphere of influence is limited to Hezbollah, Yemen, parts of Iraq, and Hamas, and the last of those is very recent and not exactly in a good position right now. The Saudis, meanwhile, have all the weapons and all the money. They have the West; Iran has Russia and North Korea. They've also seen internal resistance in recent years that, while it was never close to bringing down the government, was much more than Saudi Arabia has had to deal with.
Just wanted to express my appreciation of this post.
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