It has now been just over a year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which kicked off a growing conflagration currently reshaping the Middle East. The Arab Gulf states have largely been out of the geopolitical spotlight as the regional conflict has grown, but they remain quiet power players in the region, and are ushering in a new era of below the radar economic power projection. At the same time, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) have cemented their foreign policies of non-alignment, remaining friends to all and enemies to none on the global stage. Both of these positions – back-seat diplomacy in the Middle East, and subdued non-alignment with global power players - represents a shift from the last several decades, during which regional leaders Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) trialed a more confrontational foreign policy in their regional spheres of influence. The Gulf is entering a new strategic era, demanding global attention.
Gulf Perspectives on the Regional Conflict
Historically supporters of the Palestinian cause and rivals of Israel, all of the GCC states have sharply condemned the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza – even the states, like the UAE and Bahrain, that only a few years ago established a "warm peace" with Israel under the Abraham Accords. Despite this tension, Gulf perspectives on the regional conflict are a mixed bag.
On one hand, the Gulf has not been directly drawn into hostilities, and the spreading conflict has brought Western strategy on Iran into alignment with Gulf assessments for the first time in years. Israel and Western partners are targeting Iran's powerful proxy network, which Saudi Arabia and the UAE consider an existential threat. Israel has backed off threats against Iran's nuclear development infrastructure, but the Gulf states are aligned in seeing Iran's nuclear program as deeply threatening. Earlier this month, the US directly attacked Houthi arms depots in Yemen, citing increased attacks on Israel and on international trade; the move was welcomed in Riyadh, where leaders have for almost a decade been calling for increased US support to fight the Iranian proxy which was kept up a hostile presence on Saudi's border since 2014. Further, Gulf states do not consider attacks in Palestine or Hamas to be existential – support for the Palestinian cause, while strong amongst Arab publics, is not the supreme concern that it was the Arab capitals in the last century, when Israel was new and pan-Arabism a more recent memory. Lebanon is also no longer a priority in the Gulf, as Hizballah has cemented itself within the country and Iran has emerged as the country's primary foreign patron.
On the other hand, the regional conflict certainly has risks for the Gulf – the chief one being expanded fighting endangering key oil shipping routes, with physical damage to Gulf infrastructure from more audacious Iranian proxies also on the table. Iranian ballistic missile proliferation has long been a concern for Gulf capitals, and while Gulf targets have not been directly attacked, Tehran has become much more liberal in regional missile attacks. There are worries that a battered Iran may ramp up its nuclear development program once again as a deterrent measure. More broadly, Gulf leaders worry that a prolonged regional war could derail their ambitious domestic economic transformation plans, which will be crucial if the region is to continue to thrive economically as global demand for traditional energy sources begins its forecasted decline.
Meanwhile, Gulf states' relationships with Israel are strained, but at no real danger of being cut off. Both Bahrain and, most prominently, the UAE have trade and diplomatic ties with Israel, and many of the other Gulf states maintain backdoor channels with Israel. Further expansion of the Abraham Accords, however, has stalled out: Saudi Arabia, which the Biden Administration was hoping to add to the Accords as a pre-election foreign policy win, has indicated that it will not consider normalization until the implementation of a Palestinian state. Hopes that the US could tie Israeli normalization to a Saudi security pact formalizing US defense commitments to the Kingdom appear to have gone nowhere.
Global Relationships and Non-Alignment
As regional conflict realigns strategy at home, Gulf Arab states are also seeking to cement their diversified partnerships abroad. Efforts in the last several years to build relationships with various global power players reflects the regional feeling that the United States – the primary diplomatic and economic partner and security guarantor for the Gulf since the middle of the last century – is abandoning its commitments to the region in favor of expanding its focus on competition in the Indo-Pacific. While the US remains a significant partner for all the GCC states, they have in recent decades sought increased partnerships elsewhere – namely with China and Russia – to hedge against overreliance on a retreating America.
Those relationships have grown in recent months. At the end of 2023, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – alongside Argentina, Egypt, and Iran – were offered membership in BRICS, the intergovernmental organization founded by Brazil, Russia, India, and China that has emerged as a potential counterweight to the US-led G7 and G-20. The UAE opted to join the group, much to Washington's consternation, and attended its BRICS+ summit in Kazan last week.
Saudi Arabia, for reasons that are not quite clear, has not yet made a decision on joining, and did not send an observer to the summit, as had been floated. Saudi Arabia may not have wanted to further strain its Western relationships, or simply not wanted to share a venue with Iran (the two countries experienced a thaw in the relationship, and resumed diplomatic contact, last year, but remain rivals). For the UAE, joining BRICS+ expands its diplomatic options and economic relationships, both crucial as the country establishes itself as an independently powerful geopolitical actor.
While BRICS has traditionally been a loose economic grouping, Russia appears to be trying to cement it as a more cohesive, more geopolitically-focused organization of like-minded states – a proposition that will be problematic for some of its members. One of the stated goals of Russia in this BRICS+ summit was making progress on an alternative payment platform that would accelerate the splintering of the global economy and more fully insulate Russia and other countries from Western sanctions. Members are varyingly interested in the full implementation of such a platform (some countries, like India, still enjoy strong relationships with the US and other Western states), and the UAE is unlikely to take a strong position either way.
The Gulf is not only seeking expanded relationships with the US' strategic competitors. Earlier this month, Gulf and European leaders attended the first-ever summit between GCC and EU states in Brussels, meeting to fortify relations and discuss alignment on geopolitical and economic issues. The chief achievement of the summit is simply that it happened, especially with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in attendance. The two groups called for increased cooperation and multilateralism on a variety of topics, and promised progress on several long-desired joint projects, like an EU-GCC free trade agreement. The summit was a hopeful step in the multilateral relationship, which for years has mostly existed at an inconsistent, bilateral level with the largest achievements in arms sales. European-Gulf relationships suffered the same setbacks as the US-Gulf one following the signing of the Iran nuclear deal and then the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but did not have the foundation of decades of strong partnership to fall back on. Today, closer relations offer both organizations economic opportunities, while the Gulf gathers more diverse diplomatic options and Europe seeks to strengthen its relationship with states potentially drifting to the Russian camp.
A New Geostrategic Era for the Gulf
Despite challenges posed by the ongoing conflict in the Levant, Gulf leaders are establishing a strong foundation for a new strategic era. When – if – the war concludes, the Gulf states will likely be in a strong position. Gulf-Israeli ties will still be in place, Iran and its extensive proxy system will be weakened, global perspectives on the region will largely be in line with Gulf assessments, and the GCC will have expanded and deepened its global relationships. The Gulf's muted involvement with regional conflict, and accelerating attempts to establish and deepen diverse diplomatic partnerships, sheds light on the new regional ethos: coexistence. Power players Saudi Arabia and the UAE have eschewed aggressive foreign policy in exchange for economic-driven bid for regional prosperity to bring about regional coexistence. Gulf leaders hope that geopolitical non-alignment will insulate the region from the global East-West pull, in which the region has feet in both camps, and that valuing regional dialogue and mediation above political conflict will smooth the way for regional prosperity.
Despite this presentation of a united front, divisions still exist within the GCC – and risks remain. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are in pitched, if unspoken, competition to become the region's premiere economic hub, a largely zero-sum race. Qatar and its neighbors continue to disagree on the threat of political Islamism, and engagement with Iran is resultingly varied. Further, prolonged conflict between Israel and Iran's proxies could make the Gulf's regional prosperity goals moot, as spreading violence threatens global shipping routes and regional business infrastructure.
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