Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East Paperback

Black Wave is an unprecedented narrative examination of the unraveling of the modern Middle East and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979.

Seamlessly weaving history, geopolitics, and intimate storytelling, Kim Ghattas tells the gripping and largely unexplored story of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a conflict born from the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution, fueled by American policy, and that, Ghattas argues, represents the true heart of the Middle East’s bloody turmoil.

With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, now mortal enemies, were once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the Middle East. But all of that changed after 1979. Distorting and deploying religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics, each side proceeded to strategically feed intolerance, suppress cultural expression, and encourage sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan. This ongoing war for cultural supremacy has led to Iran’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, the assassination of countless intellectuals, the birth of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS.

Ghattas introduces us to a riveting cast of characters whose lives were upended by decades of geopolitical drama: from the Pakistani television anchor who defied her country’s dictator, to the Egyptian novelist thrown in jail for indecent writings, to journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Black Wave is both an intimate and sweeping history of the region and will fundamentally alter our understanding of the Middle East.