The export strategies of political or cultural models in the Middle East since the second half of the twentieth century are a striking phenomenon, the analysis of which allows for a better understanding of the evolution of internal political processes and relationships between states. Whilst the Nasserite legacy did not survive its initiator in Egypt, declining even further in Syria following the collapse of the United Arab Republic (1958–1961), the expansion of Saudi Salafism has been relatively but undeniably successful. The Nasserite Arab nationalist and Saudi Salafist nationalist models were at the heart of the “Arab Cold War” which dominated power relations in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s (Kerr 1971). Nasser’s death in 1970 made room for the Saudi model to flourish until the Iranian revolution broke out in 1979, by proclaiming to export its own. The Islamic Republic of Iran has accentuated the competition between these models in the Middle East and reactivated the Shia/Sunni antagonism which had been pushed into the background in the twentieth century when nationalist ideology and the mimicry of “imported models” were hegemonic (Badie 1987).