How Iran and the Gulf Arab States Can Start a Dialogue Again
It’s hard to overstate the regional impact of the rivalry between Iran and several Gulf Arab states—most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—bordering in recent years on enmity.
It’s hard to overstate the regional impact of the rivalry between Iran and several Gulf Arab states—most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—bordering in recent years on enmity.
While these countries haven’t come close to direct warfare, tensions have impacted many regional conflicts in the Middle East including in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, and festering instability in countries like Lebanon, Bahrain, and even among the Palestinians.
More even than the struggle against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Turkish-Kurdish struggles, the confrontation between Iran and Gulf Arab countries has provided an ideological framework that generated proxy conflicts and greatly exacerbated existing ones. As a result, this has caused Iran and Gulf Arab countries to search for every opportunity to bedevil each other, and expand their own influence while limiting the other side.
These contradictions boiled over with the execution of the Saudi Shia dissident and secessionist cleric Nimr al-Nimr in January 2016, and the subsequent mob attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, which led Riyadh to end its ties with Tehran. But tensions have been a constant feature of the relationship since the 1979 Iranian revolution, and particularly following the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Saudi Arabia’s strategic defense agreement with Pakistan is part of a wider formation of alignments within the broader Muslim world meant to counter Israel’s expanding power and ambitions in the region, as the threat perception has shifted from Iran to Israel.
An Iraqi-born native of Najaf but an unmistakably Iranian nationalist, Ali Larijani is expected to leverage his record of bureaucratic competence and global fluency to coordinate Iran’s security bureaucracy.
An apology from Israel’s prime minister – delivered under the watchful eye of President Trump in the Oval Office – and a written promise of a U.S. response if Qatar is attacked go a long way toward restoring Qatar's deterrence and bolstering its security and stability following the Israeli attack.
The GCC states now consider an attack on one to be an attack on all, and Saudi Arabia may be covered by a Pakistani rather than U.S. military umbrella.
President Trump's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may or may not have irreparably damaged them, but the Al Udeid strike suggests Tehran is seeking to avoid a prolonged conflict with Washington.
