After two failing wars to spread democracy and a messy Arab Spring, America has finally eased its pressure on its allies to democratize. Today, a brutally pragmatic Washington realizes that the record of human rights and press freedom — whether in Turkey, Egypt, Saudi and maybe soon Iran — does not make or break alliances.

This is why America’s campaign against the Saudi execution of 47 of its citizens stood out. If Washington were protesting capital punishment in principle, such objection did not square with the 27 executions that America saw in 2015. If Washington were objecting that Riyadh had killed dissidents, the US often does the same by raining death from above — without due process — on terrorists around the world.

So America has no problem with capital punishment per se, which makes protesting the Saudi execution political, and strategically problematic.

The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not one between Sunnis and Shiites as such, but rather a confrontation between a state and a revolution.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was the brainchild of its founder Ayatollah Khomeini. It also borrowed Marxist ideas that were circulating amongst dissidents as evident in the literature of revolutionaries like Ali Shariati. Iranian revolutionaries transformed Marx’s slogan “workers of the world unite” to “downtrodden of the world unite.” Hussain, the third Shiite Imam who was slain in Karbala in 680 CE and whose memory is observed annually, became the symbol of these downtrodden.

Iran’s Islamism is similar to communism, in that Iran believes in the expansion of its brand of Islam through non-state actors or “popular militias,” modeled after its own Basij and Pasdaran.

Just like how Iran’s Supreme Leader and Revolutionary Guards overshadow the president and the regular army, Iran has seen to it that Lebanon’s Hezbollah becomes stronger than the Lebanese state and army.

In Iraq too, Iran has been copying its “militia state” model by creating, arming and funding groups that can outmuscle the state and the army. And since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, Iran has poured money, arms and training on newfound militias that will certainly replace, or at least undermine, President Bashar al-Assad and his regime should the Iran-Assad alliance prevail in the ongoing Syrian war.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, hangs on to the model of the nation state and strives to empower neighboring governments.

After the murder of pro-Saudi Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Riyadh invested in the creation of a UN tribunal that indicted five Hezbollah operatives, who stay defiantly at large and under their party’s protection.

After the 2006 war, while Iran reimbursed Lebanese Shiites with cash, Saudi Arabia parked $300 million at the Central Bank to shore up Lebanon’s Foreign Currency reserves and protect the national currency against collapse.

After the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Islamist terrorist bombers found their way to Beirut’s Shiite neighborhoods. Iran’s response was to double down on Hezbollah fighting in Syria. Saudi Arabia, for its part, donated $3 billion to the Lebanese Army to buy French arms.

In Iraq, as Iran strengthened its Shiite militias that fight both ISIS and the Sunnis, Saudi Arabia reopened, last week, its embassy in Baghdad for the first time in 25 years. After Washington vouched for him, Riyadh now bets on Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi state and hope that the two can subdue Iran’s militias and restore Iraqi sovereignty.

In Yemen, where the pro-Iranian Houthi militia had invaded Sanaa and ejected the government of Abdrabbu Mansour, Saudi Arabia sent in its army to reign in Yemen’s insurgents and reinstall the government.

Only in Syria, Saudi Arabia’s policy has stood out in supporting armed opposition factors. Yet this Saudi policy came only after Riyadh had jumped through hoops in an attempt to solve the crisis through diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia first went to the Arab League, then to the UN General Assembly since Russia had shut down the Security Council. Despite all its efforts, Saudi Arabia was left with one choice: To arm Syrians that are defending themselves against Assad’s atrocities, including his chemical attacks.

And yet, under pressure from Washington, which clearly prefers Assad to prevail, Saudi Arabia’s arming of opposition factions had been subdued and minimal.

When Washington said that Riyadh should not have executed that Saudi Shiite cleric, America was effectively helping Iran export its Islamic revolution. If Riyadh has to take into consideration Tehran’s position on how to deal with its Shiite citizens, then Saudi sovereignty will be undermined in favor of pan-Shiism.

Had Riyadh held back on executing Nimr — regardless of how repugnant capital punishment is — then it would have set a precedent that whenever it wants to deal with its Shiite citizens, it has to go first through Tehran. Such a dynamic would ensure Iran’s status as the cross-border leader of all Shiites, just like the Soviet Union saw itself as the sponsor of communists anywhere around the globe.

Before America’s government and mainstream media get all riled up against the deplorable execution of Saudi citizens and take Iran’s side, they better understand what they are getting themselves into