For Iran, ideology was a tool of state power and the allies and proxies that Tehran groomed answered to the Supreme Leader. On the Saudi side, the dark forces were the product of Saudi money, both private and from the government, that had made its way to the Afghan mujahedeen, the Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan, even the coffers of Al-Azhar in Egypt and the pockets of hundreds of clerics from around the Muslim world who had trained in Saudi Arabia. From militancy to intellectual terrorism, the forces fed by Saudi Arabia had no return address; they were not state-run, and they could not be
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