The Gulf disappoints

President Trump’s first trip abroad was, infamously, to Saudi Arabia in May 2017. This was intended to signal support for the Gulf and enlist Gulf support for the new Administration’s belligerent posture towards Iran. The pomp was notable and pleased President Trump no end. He thought it promised a new era in US/Gulf relations. More than three years later, it is high time to consider what has been achieved.

In a word, virtually nothing. Saudi Arabia took the President’s visit as a green light to embargo Qatar, which escaped a Saudi invasion only because the US military stood in the way at Al Ubeid air base near Doha. The Gulf crisis continues unabated, despite more than a year of skilled efforts by Ambassador and General Anthony Zinni. Qatar has not yielded but instead allied itself with Turkey and survived more or less unscathed. Recent contacts and talks, which Washington has encouraged, have so far produced nothing substantial.

The Saudis have remained at war in Yemen, despite American efforts to get them out and refocus on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which continues to thrive in the hinterlands. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman engaged in a “sheikh” down of Saudi princes in 2017 and then had dissenting journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered in 2018. This year the Crown Prince has arrested prominent members of the royal family. His reforms have been real–Saudi women can now drive and popular music concerts happen–but they are cultural and economic rather than political. The Saudis have consistently ignored US concerns about the Crown Prince’s crackdowns.

Gulf support for President Trump’s hostility to Iran waxes and wanes. While the Gulfies complained that President Obama had not consulted them sufficiently on his nuclear deal with Tehran, Trump’s withdrawal from the deal and saber-rattling has unnerved the Arab Gulf states and caused some back-pedaling. They want toughness towards Iran, but not war, which would threaten their shiny capitals. The Iranian attacks on ships off the coast of the Emirates and on Saudi oil-processing facilities in 2019 have caused both countries to soften, as has the removal of American Patriot batteries from the Kingdom.

The United Arab Emirates have visibly warmed towards Israel, which has been providing grateful Arab Gulf states with technology to protect their regimes. But Israeli plans to annex part of the West Bank have drawn a sharp Emirati rebuke, published in Hebrew by the Emirati ambassador to the US. The Emirates, always quick to see the Muslim Brotherhood behind every hostile Islamist, are heavily engaged in supporting Khalifa Haftar, the would-be successor of Qadaffi in Libya, to no good effect.

Pretty much the only good news story in the Gulf during the last few years was the transition of power in Oman to Sultan Haitham on the death of Sultan Qaboos early this year. The Americans played no role in that. The Omanis, along with the Qataris, are occasionally helpful to the US. Muscat is no powerhouse, but a messy transition there would have created serious tensions and possibly instability that Iran and others might have tried to exploit.

The other Gulf states remain stable, but only by virtue of continued repression. In Bahrain the human rights situation has worsened. In Kuwait, where it is better than in much of the rest of the region, the situation is more or less stable.

The overriding concern of the Trump Administration in the Gulf has been to counter Iran. But Tehran has met maximum pressure with maximum resistance, even after Covid-19 hit hard. Ratcheting up economic sanctions further has little prospect of success. You get what you want from sanctions when you negotiate relief from them, not when you impose them. Trump has repeatedly signaled willingness to negotiate, but Tehran is uninterested until the US reenters the nuclear deal, which Trump has been unwilling to contemplate. At this point, it behooves the Iranians to wait to see what happens on November 3.

A final word on oil, notable so far for its absence from this post: the Trump Administration departed from traditional US policy on oil prices when the President tried to get the Saudis to raise them in the midst of their price war this spring with the Russians. Prices have recovered to around $40 per barrel, a historically low number that doesn’t satisfy the Saudis, American oil producers, or the Russians. Trump seems to have given up on his jawboning, but Americans should remember that their President did his best to raise prices at the pump.

Trump Administration Gulf policy can only be rated a disappointment. Things could be worse there, for sure, but a skeptic would be right to wonder why we are maintaining upwards of 60,000 troops (let’s not count the number of contractors) in the Greater Middle East, from which we get relatively little oil. The Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans take much more. Maybe we should worry a bit less about the Gulf, and let them worry a bit more.