The UK has a key role to play in easing historic tensions in the Middle East between rival nations Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A presentation at the Houses of Parliament by Lancaster University’s Dr Simon Mabon will outline the need to facilitate trust and dialogue between the two major regional powers in order to end conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and bring stability to the area.

As part of the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation (SEPAD) project, being run by Lancaster University’s Richardson Institute and funded by Carnegie Corporation, project leader, and director of the Richardson Institute, Dr Mabon will present the report Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Struggle to Shape the Middle East to a Westminster seminar on Tuesday. The event will be attended by Labour Shadow Minister for Peace Fabian Hamilton MP and Lib Dem Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Baroness Northover.

The report’s author and editor, Dr Mabon will outline his hopes that the UK and the SEPAD project can help work towards reducing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which would see ceasefires in Yemen and Syria, and end divisive sectarian, ethnic and tribal splits that undermine stability across the Middle East.

“This is a project that seeks to engage with and propose solutions out of the increasingly intractable conflicts in Syria and Yemen, underpinned by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran that is mobilising sect-based difference across the Middle East,” said Dr Mabon, whose report has been compiled in collaboration with the Foreign Policy Centre.

“The rivalry is largely oversimplified. People try to reduce it to power politics – ignoring religion – or reduce it to religious difference – ignoring power politics. In actual fact, it is a combination of the two, and domestic factors; religion is instrumentally used by the two states, in different ways, to justify their actions and increase their legitimacy to domestic audiences.

“The report’s recommendations are essentially trying to de-escalate tensions between the Saudis and the Iranians, pushing to move away from an increasingly divided form of politics in Syria, Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen, that is all too often occurring along sectarian lines.

“We need to avoid sectarian language, avoid the idea of communal groups over national interests. We want to try to develop a cross-sectarian, cross-communal project that people can start to rally behind.”

The present rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia dates back to the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, but the situation across the Middle East has become increasingly violent since the Arab Uprisings in late 2010.

The nations have been on the opposite side of conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Iraq, as well as in political rivalries in Lebanon.

“It is a rivalry built on both sectarian and geo-political differences,” added Dr Mabon. “They vie for influence with both oil and economic investment, and they use religion to do it. With continued purchase of oil, sale of arms, and diplomatic efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation, the international community has a vested interest in the stability of the Middle East but must do more to broker peace”.

The next step in the SEPAD project will see fieldwork in Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon to examine the effects of the Saudi-Iran rivalry on the countries’ populations.