Before the Iranian Revolution the usually pro-American, anti-Communist and largely Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabians were somewhat wary of the pro-Soviet relations held by the Ba'athist socialist and relatively secularist republican dictatorship of Iraq, the latter of which is a majority Shiite Muslim Arab nation which was ruled by a Sunni Muslim Arab minority before the Iraq War, and how that affected the Saudis' own relations with the Iraqis, because these two oil-rich Arab nations share a long land border with each other.Joseph McMillan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq: Oil, Religion, and an Enduring Rivalry, January 1, 2006, in United States Institute of Peace. http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/McMillan_Saudi%20Arabia%20and%20Iraq_SR%20157.pdf
