The Gulf still wants a hug

Even though John Kerry made his pilgrimage to Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates last week, the Gulf  is still complaining.  Israel gets more face time.  Gulf complaints go unheard.  The US isn’t sufficiently committed and steadfast.  Abdullah al Shayji gripes:

The overture with Iran seems to be heading towards relaxing the crippling sanctions regime, which could embolden a beleaguered Iran. Moreover, the US is also making overtures to the sectarian government in Iraq as Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki was well received in the White House.

This is pretty rich.  Easing of sanctions would only happen if Iran freezes its nuclear program.  Would the Gulf really prefer war?  Or containment of a nuclear Iran?  Maliki may be sectarian, but the Gulf monarchies are not?  He was so well received in the White House that many here thought he went home chastened and empty handed.

But those are not the real issues.  As Professor Shayji puts it:

What worries the GCC states regarding the US Middle East policy is not only over Iran’s nuclear programme, but US lack of concern for GCC’s interests by limiting negotiations over the nuclear issue and not factoring in Iran’s meddling in the GCC affairs. The haste with which US tries to allay the Israelis fears and not the GCC’s is also disconcerting.

This too is pretty rich.  Even if I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is way off base in demanding that Iran give up all enrichment, I’d have to regard Israeli fears as more profound and existential than the GCC’s.  And anyone in the Gulf who hasn’t understood that Israeli security is first among Middle East issues when it comes to American diplomatic priorities must have slept through the last sixty-five years.

The GCC is right however to be concerned with Iran’s meddling.  The US will have to deal with that as well as a host of other issues:  support for terrorism in general and Hizbollah in particular, military engagement in Syria, and domestic human rights violations just to name a few.  But the nuclear issue comes first because it is the one most threatening to US national security.  I’d have expected the Gulf to agree with that priority, not join forces with Netanyahu in resisting any sort of nuclear agreement.

It is striking how comfortable the GCC has gotten with the umbrella of American hegemony. The US has sidelined Iran, the Arab Gulf’s historical antagonist, for decades.  President Bush, not the current administration, gave Iran its biggest diplomatic break of modern times with the invasion of Iraq.  President Obama has ratcheted up the sanctions in a way that the Gulf should appreciate.

But Iranian isolation is not the natural state of affairs, and it is not one that will persist forever.  The Gulf needs to be thinking hard about how it will deal with Iran once it emerges from sanctions and begins to compete again for power, influence and oil market share.  A few more pipelines circumnavigating Hormuz would be one attractive option, for example.

I’d have thought that the tens of billions in arms purchases the GCC have made would provide a modicum of self-confidence.  If Iran can be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons, it will be decades before it even comes close to matching the current level of GCC military power.  But the GCC seems to wear its armaments like a thawb:  more elegant and prestigious than practical.

If the Gulf wants a hug, the best way to get it from Washington today would be to demonstrate that its sympathy with the Syrian uprising can be turned into  success both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.  From a Washington perspective, that would mean Gulf countries should cut off support to Sunni extremists and instead strengthen the relative moderates prepared to run a democratic, non-sectarian Syria.  That’s a tall order for the Sunni monarchies, but it would get a big hug.  Complaining about an agreement that freezes Iran’s nuclear program will not.