Saudi Arabia’s sudden denunciation and isolation of Qatar on June 5 plunged the region into uncertainty. Soon followed by Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and other smaller nations—as well as the Hadi government in Yemen and the Haftar government in Libya—the kingdom broke off diplomatic relations and imposed an air, sea, and land blockade on Qatar. Though the current crisis echoes the 2014 GCC rift, the rapid escalation of tensions over the past few weeks carries significant implications for unity, security, and balance of power in the Gulf and beyond.
Four experts provide different perspectives on the crisis and what it means for the region. Please join the discussion by sharing your own views in the comments.
The Gulf’s Zero-Sum Game
Mohamed Elmeshad
Mohamed Elmeshad, an Egyptian journalist and PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.
Regardless of Qatar’s foreign policy in the region or its record on human rights issues (and there is much to say on both), the notion that the axis of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt could credibly castigate it on these very topics is almost absurd. Granted, Qatar has offered asylum to some very unsavory characters lately, including some of the more militant members of Islamist organizations from Egypt, and has meddled in local politics. However, a quick look under the hood of every other regime involved in this debacle reveals a significant amount of arguably similar activities, such as funding extremist militant groups in Syria and helping prop up dictatorships across the region. This move is not driven by any moral objections to Qatar’s activities but is an unprecedented means to force Qatar to fall in line, to silence its media outlets, or to extract some revenge for its political adventures.
In the case of the Egyptian regime, it is probably all three. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi saw yet another opportunity to ride on the coattails of a Saudi monarchy that has commanded his obedience since even before he was president. He wants Qatar to pay for their continuing support of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group Sisi is fighting tooth and nail to get the United States to list as a terrorist organization. Taking unilateral measures against a country that his Saudi patrons often referred to in familial terms risked landing him on the wrong side of their good graces. Despite taking measures against Qatari media outlets such as Al-Jazeera and its (often Egyptian) employees, taking broader aim at a GCC country was too risky for him. The fact that no one is really mentioning Sisi’s role in the current crisis is perhaps an indication of his backseat role and how Egypt’s perceived status as a regional power has diminished in recent years.
Though understandable, the severity of the rift with the GCC countries is slightly less expected. Much had held these ruling powers together in ways that made this level of escalation inconceivable. It is true that GCC leaders have been far from cooperative recently, especially vis-à-vis the region’s shifting political makeup. However, the generally similar nature of each sovereign’s power structures indicates that they have a mutual interest in propping each other up. This was quite evident when all six GCC countries participated in the Peninsula Shield forces to intervene on behalf of the king of Bahrain during the Arab Spring protests.
In fact, the prevailing fear among these ruling families was that the Arab Spring domino effect could reach them, especially in Saudi Arabia, where numerous movements have historically opposed the House of Saud. The Saudi government was so adamant about not disturbing the status quo in general that it led a call to include Morocco and Jordan into the GCC to strengthen the hand of the region’s collective “sovereign” establishments.
Qatar went from being a manageable nuisance within this establishment to (in the eyes of the axis) an out-and-out detriment to their future plans. Qatar’s House of Thani had perhaps also overplayed its hand, believing that the blowback from breaking rank would always be softened by their political maneuvering. This extended beyond political and economic tools to a media and intellectual assault that has left a significant mark on regional communications and academia.
The only way such drastic measures could be taken against a traditional power structure would be with a coalition acting in unison. Each of these governments had individually been convinced that something needed to be done, but they needed reassurances that it would not affect their global standing. Enter Donald Trump, with his “just do it” message. The manner of the move against Qatar has all the hallmarks of a Trump maneuver: it was sudden, it was severe, and its consequences were not entirely thought through.
By doing this, the axis is creating exactly the kind of precedent it had been trying to avoid. The unspoken rule among Arab autocrats was that no one would directly challenge another’s claim to power. While Qatar has tacitly done just that through its media, its leadership maintained pretenses with other ruling structures. Now the demands on Qatar have created a zero-sum game where there must necessarily be a loser.
If Qatar agrees to the demands—and it would be extremely harmful for them to permanently lose their standing among their peers in the GCC—it would mean the end of the grand project that Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani had embarked on in the 1990s to establish Qatar as a bona fide regional diplomatic and intellectual powerhouse. If Qatar does not agree, and if Trump does not back further action against Qatar, it would mean another blow to Saudi Arabia and its regional claim to supremacy, which is already suffering the consequences of its other endeavors namely the war in Yemen.
Qatar’s Foreign Policy Leverage
Neil Partrick
Neil Partrick, editor and main contributor to Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict & Cooperation (IB Tauris, 2016). Follow him on Twitter @neilpartrick.
The crisis at the heart of the GCC is encapsulated by the blunt attempt to curtail Qatari independence. Led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with Bahrain along for the ride, this development represents the total failure of the Gulf Union project. Under King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, integration was by rhetorical assertion, but de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman has an actionable strategy: turn your foreign policy on its head or we will snuff out your economy and your independence. Even more disturbingly, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been encouraged in this reckless gambit by a hapless U.S. Middle East policy based on ill-informed notions of its own interests and those of its Gulf allies.
The Qataris are refusing to define the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as the root of all regional terrorism or to define Iran as their greatest security threat. This is because the MB isn’t, Iran isn’t, and, from where Qatar sits, claiming this would be irrational. While the Qataris have created enemies in the GCC, Al-Jazeera is old news and Qatar’s backing of Islamist militants in Syria has been downsized in favor of a Saudi monopoly on that role. Inviting Turkey, a fellow MB admirer, to install a few troops in Doha angered the Saudis and Emiratis, but it hardly compares to the military platforms that the Qataris, Saudis, and Emiratis all give the United States. In the last Qatar-related intra-GCC crisis in 2014, Doha got itself off the hook by exiling some MB figures and promising to tone down sympathetic Al-Jazeera coverage. This time, some senior Hamas figures have already been sent to Turkey or told they cannot set up home in Qatar. However, these measures are not enough for a new Saudi approach that accepts no deviation among the rest of the GCC.
Faced with a Saudi-led squeeze, the Qataris paradoxically have been obliged to extend their relations with Iran, as its airspace and port facilities are now crucial for access to the outside world. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani just visited Russia, and Moscow seems assured that Qatar will maintain its investment in Russian energy giant Rosneft. Absurdly, the Saudis and Emiratis may welcome these developments, which might encourage the United States to shut down the regional military command center at al-Udeid in Qatar.
Qatar needs the U.S. base as a continued hedge against Saudi dominance; the United States wants to keep it for fear that, without it, Qatar will become the very thing its neighbors already accuse it of being: a “door” for Iran. What is more, if abandoned by the United States, Qatar could turn the token Turkish troop presence into a garrison and, even worse from the perspective of the U.S. security establishment, the Russians might set up shop too. With Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others in the U.S. administration aware of the dangers of what the president unleashed in the Gulf, the U.S. base near Doha may be the lever that Washington will use to encourage the Qataris to change aspects of their foreign policy.
Before 1990, it was Kuwait that the Saudis tried to boss around and that the United States got paranoid about. Lacking a U.S. base because of Arab nationalist posturing, Kuwait had to shut down its troublesome parliament under Saudi pressure in 1976. Qatar knows that the huge U.S. military facility is what stops the Saudis running its domestic and foreign relations in the same way today. A few leaders within the MB may have to pay the price of keeping it. Yet Qatar probably will not concede much else, and it has some leverage of its own. Should its hand be forced, its importance to regional and global gas access means that its Western friends and the UAE (its biggest Gulf customer) could be made to suffer. Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed will need to back down substantively to avoid escalating the crisis further. This is a diplomatic challenge that the United States will need to actively get behind so that the Kuwaitis and other would-be mediators have something meaningful to discuss.
Iran’s Golden Opportunity
Tamer Badawi
Tamer Badawi, a research fellow at the Istanbul-based Al-Sharq Forum specializing in the political economy of the Middle East with a focus on Iran. Follow him on Twitter @TamerBadawi1.
The first unofficial reactions in Iran to the Saudi-led embargo on Qatar suggested implicit sympathy for Doha. While Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs took an ostensibly neutral stance on the crisis, later developments showed that Tehran was clearly tilting towards Doha in the crisis. The trio’s saber-rattling against Qatar could prove to be a gold mine for Iran amid the Trump administration’s continuous diplomatic attempts to isolate Tehran.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, flew to Ankara on June 7 to discuss the Gulf crisis with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Two days later, Zarif and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, agreed during a summit by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to present a unified stance on the crisis in the Gulf, reflecting Russia’s interest in preserving Qatar’s investments in its oil sector and maintaining a balance in the region. The same day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Turkey, Iran, and Gulf countries to resolve the crisis. With this wide garnered support, Iran was thereby able to reposition itself as a key stakeholder in the game even though its ties with the Gulf trio are tense—at best—especially with Riyadh.
Qatar’s geoeconomic vulnerabilities, as revealed by the crisis, bolstered Iran’s position given the two countries’ geographic proximity. Iran has already sent large food shipments to Qatar—although much of the airlifted food aid to Qatar is coming from Turkey. With Qatar keen to diversify its food supply sources from now on, bilateral trade between Qatar and Iran will probably increase. In Persian year 1394 (2015-2016), Iran exported only $165.4 million to Qatar in non-oil commodities. Moreover, the crisis may allow Iran to become a regional transportation hub in the future, even though it does not yet currently have the necessary capacity. When Egypt and the three Gulf countries closed their airspace to Qatari airlines, Iran opened its airspace to allow the airlines to redirect their flights to Europe via Turkey.
Standing by Qatar in the face of the immense pressures put on it by its three fellows in the Gulf Cooperation Council, might allow Iran to score several geopolitical gains. By supporting Turkey’s key ally in the Gulf, Iran is broadening the ground that Tehran and Ankara can stand on to cooperate in the region. Some observers think that the renewed Kurdish insurgency by PKK-affiliated militants in Iran can bring both capitals closer, since they are tackling the same issue, though it affects them to different degrees. Furthermore, the Islamic State’s June 7 attacks carried out by Kurdish militants in Tehran will probably lead to increased Iranian security presence in the country’s northwest border region with Turkey. Moreover, for Iran, widening the gap between Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia could mean that the Syrian opposition will have an even weaker position in future negotiation rounds with the Syrian regime and its backers, as the competition between its sponsors will probably sow further dissension within the opposition camp.
Iran is eager to invest in differences between players in the bloc that is increasingly becoming politically and economically dysfunctional. Unlike the 2014 diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, this crisis will have far-reaching implications for the Middle East’s political configurations.
Saudi Arabia’s Line of Defense
Mansour Almarzoqi
Mansour Almarzoqi, a researcher on Saudi politics at Sciences-Po de Lyon. Follow him on Twitter @0albogami.
Two elements, often neglected, brought about the current Arab Gulf crisis. There is what I call a psychological strategic deficit, which causes Qatari officials to feel a chronic vulnerability. Some of that is justified: because of its geographic size, Qatar is unable to absorb shocks like a military assault (a situation known as the lack of strategic depth). To compensate for that, I believe Qatar persistently tries to balance between two camps: one that adheres to the regional order and a revisionist one, comprising of actors such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks to restructure the regional order because the current one is not compatible with their interests or vision of the world.
As an absolute monarchy and a fully pledged member of the regional order, Qatar is using its only strategic asset—that is, its financial capabilities—to build a network of alliances with revisionist actors. The ultimate goal is to create a dynamic of checks and balances between the regional order and revisionism. Saudi Arabia has made it clear since March 2014 that it will not tolerate the consequences of Qatar’s actions.
Iran intervenes in other countries under sectarian banners, relying on non-state actors, such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Abdali Cell in Kuwait, and the Houthis in Yemen. By emphasizing sectarian identities in the region, Iran seeks to mobilize these non-state actors, which undermines central governments and advances Tehran’s revisionist regional goals. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood, bolstered by the Arab Spring, has a vision of the Islamic World united under one leadership, to which the Arab Gulf monarchies are an obstacle. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is against such a vision and fears that domestic affiliates could be used to that end.
Qatar has sought a security umbrella, which it found in the U.S. military presence at al-Udeid air base. It has diversified its energy alliances based on gas to distance itself from Saudi Arabia’s oil hegemony. While active within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League, it simultaneously built a patronage relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region, including branches within Saudi Arabia—while believing itself safe from the group’s influence domestically because of al-Udeid military base and because it has a small population it can placate relatively easily. From 2000 through the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Qatar also maintained close cooperation with Turkey, Iran, and Iranian clients Hezbollah and the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Obstructed many times by this cooperation, Riyadh tried to put an end to it. The Qatari quest for influence then escalated into a cold war with Saudi Arabia. In 2014, leaked recordings of an old meeting between Muammar al-Qaddafi and Qatari leaders—allegedly former Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa and his former foreign minister Hamad bin Jassim—revealed a plan to topple the Saudi regime and divide the kingdom into several smaller states. Then the cold war escalated, resulting in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar for a period of eight months in 2014. Though Qatar then signed the Riyadh Agreement, in which it agreed to distance itself from revisionism, it did not abide by it. Hence the current crisis, the keyword of which is: revisionism.
Saudi Arabia expects Qatar to stop bolstering revisionist actors within Saudi zones of influence—that is, Yemen, Egypt, and the Arab Gulf states. Only then can we see an end to the crisis.
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