This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, May 8th, 2021. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's notable that the leadership of Saudi Arabia and Iran are talking to one another and it should be

encouraging but those discussions do have applications for US policy.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Doug Bandau says the US does have a role to play and the US should take a

step back. One of the biggest problems we have in the Middle East is essentially a

Sunni-Shia Civil War that is highlighted by the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The U.S. has been dragged in as a partisan on behalf of Saudi Arabia, one of the reasons the Trump administration took a hard line to Iran.

Everyone would be better off if those two countries came to some sort of a peaceful relationship, even if not terribly friendly.

The fact they are talking is a dramatic change from a few months ago or a year ago,

and it gives us hope that there might be you

some kind of a even cold piece in the offing.

Americans probably who you know don't pay attention much to the Middle East would say, well, aren't Iran and Saudi Arabia just the best of friends?

Now, these are countries that have long been antagonistic.

They've come out, number on the different sides of the

religious issue. Americans tend to think of Muslims, but Islam is split very dramatically

between Shiites and Sunnis. They're amazing, you know, they all

believe in the Quran and the prophet Muhammad, but they follow kind of different lines of authority

coming down.

They have different religious practices.

And while there are more Sunni nations

among the most populous Shiite nations,

one of them is Iran.

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