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The Gulf and its foreign policies
Abstract
The nine states of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula – Iran, Iraq, Yemen and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – are bound together in a regional system but not a security community. Four major conflicts in the region since 1980 have contributed to a volatile set of relationships which feed into perceptions of risk, threat and interest, and have shaped the conduct of foreign, defence and security policy-making accordingly. Other factors, such as revolutionary upheaval, sectarian politics and the roles of non-state actors as well as external powers, have added to an already combustible mix and made it harder to reach consensus on key issues of foreign policy. This article examines the foreign policy landscape in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula and assesses a range of factors which determine the context in which measures are framed, formulated and implemented. There are two major parts to this article. An opening section argues that the myriad connections among the nine states together constitute a definable sub-regional complex, to adapt the concept developed by Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, and as evidenced by the patterns of conflict in recent decades, albeit one based on an imbalance of conventional forms of power in which three larger states coexist alongside five smaller ones with Yemen separate yet intimately linked. This leads into a second section which explores the many interconnections which have provided the contextual backdrop to the conduct of foreign policy-making in regional states over the past four decades, and which continue to resonate today. The article focuses throughout on the linkages between domestic and foreign policy and between perceptions of interest at national and regional levels as guiding factors for policy-makers in each of the states involved.
Textual analyses of Saudi Arabian films serve to deepen our understanding of the shifting boundaries of permissibility that exist between artists and the state. Where new cultural industries have been developed as part of broader national efforts toward economic diversification, Saudi auteurs such as Meshal Al-Jaser have sought to use film to facilitate society-wide discussions on contentious issues such as war, women’s rights and religion. These priorities intersect at the point where social liberalization is conducive with job market expansion and the new globally projected image of moderate Saudi nationalism. Yet the tentative exploration of boundaries plays out in much finer detail on the screen, pointing to how new freedoms give rise to new forms of representation in the cinematic treatment of Saudi history and politics. Al-Jaser’s first feature film, Naga , defers polemical commentary on the capricious bond between state and religion through its use of symbolism and multi-genre aesthetics. As a text, it highlights the cultural interplay between filmmakers and the state, as well as the repertoire of tactics that artists may use to facilitate discussion and positive social changes.
This chapter examines the implications of the local conflict in Gaza (Hamas vs. Israel) that expanded regionally and with global implications. On 7 October 2023, Hamas led an invasion of Israel, killing, wounding, and abducting 253 people of various nationalities. Progressively Hezbollah joined from Lebanon and Syria with rockets, others in terror attacks in the West Bank, and Yemen's Houthi at international shipping. Two international naval forces deployed there. Israel found itself waging a war on eight frons (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, cyber, and the West Bank). Over 40 other states with vested interests became involved, but not participating militarily. The chapter contributes to the volume showing how a local conflict expanded to the regional and global, providing an appreciation of the full spectrum of the prism of broader debates on the local-to-global architecture of power as a valuable tool for understanding and tackling violent conflicts.
For years, mounting instability had led many to predict the imminent collapse of Yemen. These forecasts became reality in 2014 as the country spiralled into civil war. The conflict pits an alliance of the Houthis, a northern socio-political movement that had been fighting the central government since 2004, alongside troops loyal to a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, against supporters and allies of the government overthrown by the Houthis in early 2015. The war became regionalized in March 2015 when a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of ten mostly Arab states launched a campaign of air strikes against the Houthis. According to Saudi Arabia, the Houthis are an Iranian proxy; they therefore frame the war as an effort to counter Iranian influence. This article will argue, however, that the Houthis are not Iranian proxies; Tehran's influence in Yemen is marginal. Iran's support for the Houthis has increased in recent years, but it remains low and is far from enough to significantly impact the balance of internal forces in Yemen. Looking ahead, it is unlikely that Iran will emerge as an important player in Yemeni affairs. Iran's interests in Yemen are limited, while the constraints on its ability to project power in the country are unlikely to be lifted. Tehran saw with the rise of the Houthis a low cost opportunity to gain some leverage in Yemen. It is unwilling, however, to invest larger amounts of resources. There is, as a result, only limited potential for Iran to further penetrate Yemen.
Rather than identifying them as either Persian or
I want to make the case for the individuals living on the Southern Iranian and Northern Arabian Peninsula as Gulf residents, independent of an exclusive Arab or Persian identity. I very much like a term that the people of the region use themselves on occasion: Khaliji, from the word for Gulf, khalij, which has the virtue
of working in Arabic, Persian, and South Asian languages, and is very expressive. This paper shows the common Arabian and Persian elements that bind these people into a single population
For decades, the regional order in the Gulf was shaped by a triangle formed by Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. If one of them gained too much weight, the other two tried to compensate. Yet the 2003 Iraq War has created an entirely new situation since the indefinite US presence has virtually transformed the triangle into a square. Yet in reality this impression is misleading because Iraq's role has actually been usurped by the United States. This has resulted in a new, artificial triangle comprised of the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Strangely enough, within this new triangle, external, or at least non-Arab powers, i.e. the US and Iran, are the most powerful actors, even hinting at the emergence of a bilateral system. Nevertheless, history, tradition, and geography would suppose a renaissance of the traditional triangle. Washington would probably not object to an Iraq acting as its strategic partner in the region as imperial Iran did in the 1970s.
This paper examines the role of Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran, in the secret Anglo-Iranian negotiations over Bahrain from January 1968 to March 1970. Despite a clear strategic imperative for abandoning Iran's claim to Bahrain in the wake of the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the Shah feared that such an act would be seen by the Iranian public as collusion with the British to surrender Iranian territory, thereby further eroding the Pahlavi monarchy's precarious legitimacy. Drawing on British official papers and Iranian oral histories and memoirs, this paper explores for the first time the story of these secret negotiations and the extent to which the Shah's diplomacy was constrained by domestic considerations.
Domestic regime security has explained Iraq's foreign policy to the Gulf since the birth of the nascent Hashemite kingdom in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia presented one of the first security threats to the Iraqi monarchy, and both King Ghazi and ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim sought to invade Kuwait in order to bolster their nationalist credentials at home. Baghdad's policy to Gulf prior to the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War reflected a perceived threat from the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Thus, ensuring regime security in Baghdad has resulted in tensions with Iraq's Gulf neighbours since the creation of the Iraqi state.
For seven dramatic days in late November 1979, bloody street violence between state security forces and thousands of frustrated Shiites rocked the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Sparked by the Saudi regime's brutal repression of those peacefully celebrating 'Ashura - the annual mourning of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein - the fury resulted in an unknown number of dead and wounded. Among the destruction, demonstrators burned the British bank in Qatif as well as the offices of the Saudia National Airline. They destroyed state-owned vehicles, attacked police, raided the coast guard office in the village of al-'Awamiyya, seized weapons from soldiers, and even occupied the old city in downtown Qatif, from which they held off the Saudi military for days. One report relates that a group even burned a toy store owned by a government official. Women as well as men marched in anger. The security forces, which included 20,000 Saudi National Guard, cordoned off the major roadways, particularly those in Qatif, Sayhat, and Safwa to localize the protest, control the flow of information, as well as to prevent nearby oil facilities from being destroyed. Reports swirled that soldiers fired on virtually any public gathering of people, including at least one funeral procession in Safwa, forcing the mourners to flee and abandon the corpse in the street. State and hospital officials refused to release other bodies from the morgue for burial until the uproar quieted, leveraging the dead as blackmail. The National Guard relied on the heavy firepower of helicopter gun ships for crowd control, turning the area into a deadly conflict zone characterized by terror, hostility, and fear.
Surprisingly little has been written about the century-long relationship between Saudi Arabia and Europe, beyond snapshots of certain periods or certain aspects. Similarly, very few attempts have been made to seek long-term patterns in Saudi foreign policy. This article aims to fill this double gap. It shows that these patterns link even the earliest days with the present day, that they are inter-twined with the very building, consolidation and survival of the Saudi state and Al-Saud rule, and that they have implications for the future of Saudi-European relations.
The article also aims to draw lessons from the Saudi case for the understanding of the foreign policy of developing/small states more generally. The Saudi-European relationship provides an illustration of the extent to which small/?dependent? actors in the international system can acquire a measure of autonomy. The room for manoeuvre which adept local leaders can turn into relative autonomy at the domestic, regional and international levels emerges from the combination of particular domestic circumstances (the availability of material and political resources) with external ones (including limitations on, and competition between, great powers; and the global scattering of great-power interests, as opposed to local actors? regional concentration). Such relative autonomy for the state at all three levels has allowed the Al-Saud to pursue the survival imperative and other interests through the long-term foreign policy patterns of managed multi-dependence and pragmatism.
Saudi Arabia, homeland of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, experienced low levels of internal violence until 2003, when a terrorist campaign by ‘Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula’ (QAP) shook the world's leading oil producer. Based on primary sources and extensive fieldwork in the Kingdom, this article traces the history of the Saudi jihadist movement and explains the outbreak and failure of the QAP campaign. It argues that jihadism in Saudi Arabia differs from jihadism in the Arab republics in being driven primarily by extreme pan-Islamism and not socio-revolutionary ideology, and that this helps to explain its peculiar trajectory. The article identifies two subcurrents of Saudi jihadism, ‘classical’ and ‘global’, and demonstrates that Al-Qaeda's global jihadism enjoyed very little support until 1999, when a number of factors coincided to boost dramatically Al-Qaeda recruitment. The article argues that the violence in 2003 was not the result of structural political or economic strains inside the Kingdom, but rather organizational developments within Al-Qaeda, notably the strategic decision taken by bin Laden in early 2002 to open a new front in Saudi Arabia. The QAP campaign was made possible by the presence in 2002 of a critical mass of returnees from Afghanistan, a clever two-track strategy by Al-Qaeda, and systemic weaknesses in the Saudi security apparatus. The campaign failed because the militants, radicalized in Afghan camps, represented an alien element on the local Islamist scene and lacked popular support. The near-absence of violence in the Kingdom before 2003 was due to Al-Qaeda's weak infrastructure in the early 1990s and bin Laden's 1998 decision to suspend operations to preserve local networks. The Saudi regime is currently more stable and self-confident—and therefore less inclined to democratic reform—than it has been in many years.
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