'The Saudi king's harsh vendetta towards Assad is not unifying the region, it is souring it!'

"...Instead of yielding hope, its subsequent metamorphosis now gives rise to a mood of uncertainty and desperation - particularly among what are increasingly termed "'the minorities" - the non-Sunnis, in other words. This chill of apprehension takes its grip from certain Gulf States' fervor for the restitution of a Sunni regional primacy - even, perhaps, of hegemony - to be attained through fanning rising Sunni militancy [1] and Salafist acculturation.
At least seven Middle Eastern states are now beset by bitter, and increasingly violent, power struggles; states such as Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are dismantling. Western states no longer trouble to conceal their aim of regime change in Syria, following Libya and the "non-regime-change" change in Yemen.
The region already exists in a state of low intensity war: Saudi Arabia and Qatar, bolstered by Turkey and the West, seem ready to stop at nothing to violently overthrow a fellow Arab head of state, President Bashar al-Assad - and to do whatever they can to hurt Iran.
Iranians increasingly interpret Saudi Arabia's mood as a hungering for war; and Gulf statements do often have that edge of hysteria and aggression: a recent editorial in the Saudi-owned al-Hayat stated: "The climate in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] indicates that matters are heading towards a GCC-Iranian-Russian confrontation on Syrian soil, similar to what took place in Afghanistan during the Cold War. To be sure, the decision has been taken to overthrow the Syrian regime, seeing as it is vital to the regional influence and hegemony of the Islamic Republic of Iran." [2]
What genuine popular impulse there was at the outset of the "Awakening" has now been subsumed and absorbed into three major political projects associated with this push to reassert primacy: a Muslim Brotherhood project, a Saudi-Qatari-Salafist project, and a militant Salafist project. No one really knows the nature of the Brotherhood project, whether it is that of a sect, or if it is truly mainstream [3]; and this opacity is giving rise to real fears.

[...all these projects, whilst they may overlap in some parts, are in a fundamental way, competitors with each other. And they are all essentially "power" projects - projects intended to take power. Ultimately they will clash: Sunni on Sunni. This has already begun in the Levant - violently. ...]

At times, the Brotherhood presents a pragmatic, even an uncomfortably accomodationist, face to the world, but other voices from the movement, more discretely evoke the air of something akin to the rhetoric of literal, intolerant and hegemonic Salafism. What is clear however is that the Brotherhood tone everywhere is increasingly one of militant sectarian grievance. And the shrill of this is heard plainly from Syria.
The joint Saudi-Salafist project was conceived as a direct counter to the Brotherhood project: the Saudi aim in liberally funding and supporting Saudi-orientated Salafists throughout the region has been precisely to contain and counter the influence of the Brotherhood [4] (eg in Egypt) and to undermine this strand of reformist Islamism, which is seen to constitute an existential threat to Gulf state autocracy: a reformism that precisely threatens the authority of those absolute monarchs.
Qatar pursues a somewhat different line to Saudi Arabia. Whilst it too is firing-up, arming and funding militant Sunni movements [5], it is not so much attempting to contain and circumscribe the Brotherhood, Saudi-style, but rather to co-opt it with money; and to align it into the Saudi-Qatari aspiration for a Sunni power block that can contain Iran...
Syria has become the crucible of these external coercions; with events in Syria [12] being defined by this hugely potent deployed Gulf power for the purpose of building their "new Middle East"; rather than being defined by some over-simplistic narrative of reform versus repression, which sheers Syria away from its all-important context.
Many Syrians see the struggle now not so much as one of reform - though all Syrians want that - but now as a more primordial, elemental fight to preserve the notion of Syria itself, a deep-rooted self-identity amidst fears that touch on the most sensitive, inflamed nerves within the Islamic world. Not surprisingly for many, security now trumps reform.
Undoubtedly the region is entering a profound and turbulent struggle to define its future, and that of Islam. But this phase may not prove as defining as some may think (or hope): Whilst the Gulf has pursued its objectives a outrance, it is also vulnerable.
The Saudi king may aspire to unify the Sunni world to his vision, but he is unlikely to succeed in this way: his harsh vendetta towards Assad is not unifying the region, it is souring it; and the recourse to militant Sunnism is fomenting civil, violent struggle in many states: in the Levant, and beyond, it is already pitting Sunni against Sunni.
Syrian self-identity, as for many others in the region, was never a sectarian one, but was rooted in a belonging to one of the great nations of the region with a "model of society" which had "more religious freedom and tolerance … than in any other Arab country". [13]
Syrians did not view themselves as primarily identified by sect. Wahhabi-style sectarian intolerance is foreign to the Levant, even to Levant Sunnism. We are already witnessing, in Egypt, for example, push-back against movements seen to be motivated primarily by considerations of sect - even from those who see themselves as Islamist. They seek not another type of strait-jacket. The question is being asked: has the Brotherhood switched from "patience" to "domination"? There is a sense now of something fundamentally lost: with this authoritarian re-culturization - where now is any real reforming, revolutionary zeal?"