The Shia-Sunni divide has existed from the dawn of Islam, but the geographical and ethnic isolation of non-Arab Shiite Iran, together with Sunni Arab countries’ dominance of their Shia minorities, mostly kept this rivalry in the background. These tensions further receded in the tide of the “Islamization” created by the Iranian revolution, for in its wake Arabs’ sectarian identity as Sunni was pushed further into the background as a generalized “Islamic” assertiveness appeared.