Gulf Countries Strike a Delicate Balance on Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian Proposal

Responses from Gulf Arab states to Trump’s plan have differed, but they all praised U.S. efforts without endorsing the proposal.

Most Gulf Arab countries responded to President Donald J. Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan announced January 28 with cautiously worded statements that balanced thanks and encouragement for U.S. efforts with a noncommittal stance toward the details of the proposal. This delicate balance reflects the intricate mix of political and strategic interests these countries are seeking to juggle more than emotional or ideological ambivalence, illustrating the underlying concerns for Gulf Arab states on one of the Middle East’s most volatile and intractable conflicts, as well as relations with Washington.

Gulf Reactions to the Trump Plan

The most supportive among the Gulf Arab states of Trump’s proposal have been the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain, which sent their ambassadors to attend the announcement ceremony. And though these countries, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, issued formal statements that struck appreciative and encouraging notes, they avoided embracing the plan itself, let alone any of its specifics.

The most important of these countries from the U.S. and Israeli perspectives, Saudi Arabia, set the tone by issuing a statement that was appreciative of U.S. efforts and urged Palestinians and Israelis to re-engage in direct negotiations. It did not endorse the plan or any of its details or even say it should be the basis of new talks. But, notably, neither did it repeat the centrality of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that Saudi Arabia has championed in the Arab League for over 15 years, and the provisions of which stand in stark contrast to Trump’s proposal. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia issued a second statement reporting a telephone call between King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which Saudi Arabia says its monarch reiterated its “steadfast stance on the Palestinian issue and the rights of the Palestinian people.” Palestinians have said that the Saudi monarch confirmed that the kingdom would support any decision taken by the Palestinian people regarding their future.

Saudi Arabia has been notably silent on the status of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem under the Trump plan, which remains unresolved. On the one hand, Trump and other U.S. officials have repeatedly emphasized that there will be no changes to the status quo at the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, the third holiest site in Islam, which is under the control of a Muslim Waqf religious trust. Under current arrangements, Jews and other non-Muslims can visit the site, which many believe once contained the holiest of Jewish temples, but they cannot pray or hold religious ceremonies there. The written version of the Trump plan appears to suggest that people of all faiths should be allowed to pray at the site, which would be a radical deviation in the status quo. Under agreements from the 1990s, Jordan is designated as the custodian of Muslim holy places in occupied East Jerusalem, but there have been rumors that the United States, and possibly Israel, have been trying to entice Saudi Arabia into supporting the new U.S. approach by offering to replace Jordanian custodianship with that of Saudi Arabia. Nothing of the kind has been referred to in public by any of the parties, and there is no mention of it in the Trump proposal. However, Riyadh’s silence on these questions reflects the uncertainty of the U.S. position and the delicacy of these questions regarding the kingdom’s relations with Washington, Israel, and even Jordan.

Other Gulf Arab states fell on either side of Saudi Arabia’s down-the-middle approach. The three most invested in better ties with Israel, and hence more leverage with Washington and ballast against Iran, are the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain. By dispatching their ambassadors to the Trump plan rollout event, they were signaling stronger investment in the bid to restart negotiations, if not the specifics of the proposal itself. All of them have urged Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. Their positions tend to put the onus on Palestinians to agree to a new round of talks in the context, if not on the basis, of the new U.S. initiative. The UAE’s foreign minister even retweeted a New York Times article highly critical of the Palestinian position by former Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens – “Every Time Palestinians Say ‘No,’ They Lose.”

Qatar and Kuwait, feeling more vulnerable than their neighboring monarchies to various Arab and regional pressures, also applauded U.S. efforts, but hedged much more toward reiterating traditional Arab baseline positions. Both emphasized the importance of previous agreements, implicitly the 1993 Declaration of Principles and its five permanent status issues framework that the Trump proposal effectively abrogates. They cited the need for peace based on the 1967 borders, a reasonable agreement on Palestinian refugees, and the necessity of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem and respect for non-Jewish holy places there. These traditional Gulf Arab touchstones were generally missing from the other four formal responses.

This caution comes from specific interests that distinguish Qatar and Kuwait from the other Gulf Arab states, but also from each other. Kuwait, with a relatively open political system and a delicate balance between ideological and religious constituencies, is loath to be dragged into any regional or transnational controversies. Kuwait, therefore, feels a stronger need than many other Gulf countries to protect its pro-Palestinian bona fides. Meanwhile, no Gulf country has been more forthcoming on building closer ties to Israel than Qatar, and the high point of Israel’s diplomatic representation in Gulf Arab states was its formal presence in Doha in the 1990s. Since then, however, and particularly after the boycott by three of its Gulf Arab neighbors and Egypt was launched in the summer of 2017, Qatar has had to pay careful attention to its increased dependence on Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Iran for support. Qatar also has strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Arab nationalist groups, including leading Palestinian politicians and commentators, to which it must attend. Qatar’s regional strategy for years, including during the period when it grew much closer to Israel, has included consistent outreach to populist groups and movements throughout the Arab world, almost all of which are categorically anti-Zionist and anti-Israel.

Competing Concerns in the Gulf

Gulf Arab countries are keen on maintaining the strongest possible relations with Washington, especially considering the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. They are aware that Trump’s modus operandi can involve sudden reversals in which former enemies, like North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, suddenly are portrayed as beloved friends. Therefore, it is not just a matter of encouraging Washington to be tough with their Iranian rival; they are also hedging against any potential sudden shift by the White House if a dialogue with Tehran abruptly develops.

Israel has become an important factor in staving off Iranian hegemony in the Middle East and the potential rise of Turkey as another regional power with interests often opposed by many Arabs and Israelis. Israeli spokespeople and officials exaggerate when they speak about an “alliance” with various Arab countries against Iran, or even “our Sunni Arab allies,” but there is a potentially viable understanding between them to counter Iranian, and possibly Turkish, influence in the region. There is more quiet cooperation than is publicly acknowledged by Gulf Arab countries, especially on security and intelligence matters. Therefore, a degree of sensitivity about Israeli, as well as U.S., perceptions influence Gulf Arab responses to the White House proposal.

Yet three broad sets of issues ensure that even the most enthusiastic of the Gulf Arab countries remain unwilling to engage in a broader and open rapprochement with Israel.

The first is the potential political blowback they face, largely from domestic opposition groups. After decades of fulminating against Israel and the occupation, to grow closer to Israel without any major progress on Palestinian rights or the occupation would be politically dangerous.

The second consideration involves values. Even if they privilege their national interests and personal and political concerns, they remain Arabs and Muslims with genuine sympathies for the dispossession and exile of the Palestinians. Even those leaders or individuals who lack patience with the Palestinian leadership nonetheless remain moved by many decades of suffering by the Palestinian people and are deeply concerned about the fate of Muslim holy places, particularly in Jerusalem.

Third, and most important, these governments are concerned about the strategic threat posed by the continued Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and the persistence of the Palestinian plight as a destabilizing political variable in their region. The unresolved question of Palestine remains highly contentious and allows a wide range of actors – from Iran and Hezbollah, to Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, to even al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – to score political points through angry rhetoric and appearing to outbid others regarding opposition to Israel, Zionism, the West, and, therefore, the existing Arab political order. Gulf Arab governments understand that until there is a resolution of the Palestinian issue and a mutually acceptable end to the occupation, they will not enjoy the stability and security to which they aspire. 

Israel May Be Squandering a Limited Opportunity

For these reasons, Gulf Arab countries cannot abandon Palestine or openly embrace a strategic alliance with Israel despite the evident incentives for doing so. Israel is arguably making a dangerous assumption that the Gulf Arab interest in pursuing closer relations will continue to intensify as it has over the past decade. This presumes that tensions with Iran, and possibly Turkey, will persist or increase in the coming years. That is possible. But there could alternatively be a change of government or policy in Tehran or some sort of reconciliation between Gulf Arab countries and Iran. And the rise of Turkey as a regional threat remains largely hypothetical.

Under such circumstances, Israel could find itself in much less demand in Gulf Arab countries and could discover that the leeway it has enjoyed of late on the Palestinian issue has diminished. Alternatively, Gulf Arab countries could find themselves in a crisis, including an existential armed conflict with Iran, in which the necessity of a closer strategic relationship with Israel becomes irresistible and considerations regarding the Palestinians are pushed even further to the margins.

No one can be sure in which direction this relationship is headed. But one thing is certain: The mutual attraction between Israel and Gulf Arab countries is, like all commodities, contingent on a range of variables and could become more or less intense depending on a range of factors. And while many Israelis may feel that the Trump administration’s proposal presents a historic opportunity for annexation and territorial expansion, taking advantage of that opening may badly damage the broader goal of reconciliation with key Arab countries and integration into the Middle East region. What happens in the coming months in the occupied Palestinian territories will be watched closely by the Gulf states. Several of them are evidently intent on exploring the possibility of a strategic arrangement with the Israelis. But the broader context will, no doubt, transform over time.

The Palestinian Authority has, not surprisingly, expressed disappointment at the Arab, and particularly Gulf, response to the Trump proposal, and will be pushing for greater unity behind its rejection of the plan at the upcoming Arab League summit. Despite their differences, all the Gulf Arab countries’ reactions shared certain features. They all welcomed the U.S. effort and called for more negotiations. But none of them endorsed any of the plan’s specific provisions, strongly suggesting that they aren’t preparing to abandon the Palestinians or embrace Israel anytime in the foreseeable future.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-30/trump-s-peace-plan-leaves-palestinians-few-nonviolent-options?srnd=opinion

It’s hard to imagine any other credible response to Trump’s “peace plan.”  

For Palestinians, a long-dreaded day of reckoning is fast approaching. The so-called peace plan unveiled by the Trump administration on Tuesday invites Israel to immediately annex large chunks of the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wasting no time in doing just that, possibly as early as next week.

For Palestinians, that would signal the end of all hope for a genuinely independent state alongside Israel. The Trump proposal envisages an Israeli-dominated, non-sovereign Palestinian “state” that is an enclave within a hyper-empowered greater Israel. And even that can only be accomplished after Palestinians meet an unheard-of set of conditions to Israel’s satisfaction.

When the Camp David summit in July 2000 failed, my father asked me what I thought. I said Israelis would eventually enforce the highly circumscribed “statehood” Palestinians had just rejected. They would try to use their overwhelming power to gobble up large parts of the occupied territories, without absorbing the Palestinian population or allowing genuine Palestinian independence.

Until this week, they were blocked from doing this because the U.S. was a third signatory to the 1993 Declaration of Principles that prohibits unilateral annexation. Now David Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel is openly encouraging Israel to annex big chunks of Palestinian territory.

The Palestine Liberation Organization for decades sought to negotiate a two-state agreement with Israel. If the Israelis go ahead with this annexation and Washington perseveres with the new Trump policies, they will look like the biggest dupes imaginable. Hamas, which insists on armed struggle, will appear vindicated despite the continuous disasters their violence have wrought on Palestinian lives and fortunes.

How should Palestinians respond?

The clever move would be to thank Trump for his ideas, and welcome the opportunity to sit down with the other parties to discuss how, if at all, these new proposals fit with the formal and binding framework signed and agreed to in 1993. (Spoiler: they don’t.)

If life were a debating society or courtroom, all Palestinians need do is hold up the signature page of the Declaration of Principles and win the argument every time.

But life isn’t like that. For years Palestinians were harangued and punished by Israelis and Americans for supposedly violating the spirit of the Oslo agreements by “unilaterally” seeking greater international recognition. Now Israel and the U.S. have blithely wrecked those agreements, which evidently aren’t sacred after all.

Besides, Palestinian politics won’t allow the PLO to play that game. Their constituents are too outraged to be satisfied with debate-hall arguments, and Hamas will capitalize on any perceived PLO weakness.

Palestinians might be able to recuperate their diplomatic position if Israel doesn’t go ahead with annexations in the coming weeks and Trump is defeated in November. Then it would be up to the Democrats to urgently restore sanity to U.S. policy. That is not impossible, but it requires Palestinians to simply wait and see what happens.

Beyond that, Palestinian options are highly limited. Unless the international community moves quickly to restore hope for genuine Palestinian statehood through diplomacy, the arguments against another major uprising will be crippled.

If it becomes obvious that Palestinians are indefinitely trapped as noncitizens in a formalized, apartheid-style greater Israel, and that the international community isn’t going to rescue them from such a fate, they are essentially left with two choices.

In the abstract, what would make most sense would be to, in effect, declare themselves conscripted Israelis and fight through uncompromising but nonviolent means for full political as well as civil rights in the de facto greater Israel. But Palestinian nationalist narratives don’t provide the basis for such a strategy. And there is little historical precedent for a people securing their rights in this way.

Armed struggle is the other option; Hamas and others will be clamoring for it. If Trump and Netanyahu get their way, Hamas will probably succeed at last in taking over the Palestinian movement. Or, to prevent that, the PLO itself will return to armed struggle.

The only thing that may give the Palestinians pause is the fear that any violence might invite disproportionate Israeli response, including a widening of the annexation horizon and mass expulsions of people from these areas.

But it’s hard to imagine any people simply accepting the fate to which Trump and Netanyahu are sentencing the Palestinians. If my father were to ask me about the likeliest outcome of the latest “peace plan,” I would tell him that violence is coming, if not right away then soon enough. Effective arguments against such a path, reckless and self-destructive as it is, are dwindling rapidly.

To understand this, ask yourself if you would accept a permanent subjugation. If the answer is “no,” then you can anticipate the disastrous consequences of Trump’s peace plan.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-28/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-for-israel-will-create-more-violence

This election-year charade will only inflame tensions on the West Bank.

The Trump administration’s plan for Israel and the Palestinians is the biggest blow to any hopes for peace since the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993. It may even be fatal.

Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz, Donald Trump purported to outline a two-state solution. But what he proposed is apartheid: a single state of Israel with limited Palestinian autonomy in some regions.

The “Palestinian state” outlined in the Trump plan isn’t a state at all, but the box that a state might have arrived in. This entity would be surrounded by areas annexed by Israel; demilitarized; forbidden from entering into agreements or joining multilateral institutions; lack control of its airspace, coastal waters and electromagnetic spectrum; and be subjected to a range of other limitations. Israel could even veto which Palestinian refugees could enter this Palestinian “state.”

The Trump plan acknowledges this deception by claiming that “Sovereignty is an amorphous concept that has evolved over time.” Netanyahu has long called for a “state-minus” for the Palestinians, who are presumably “humans-minus.” The Prime Minister then seized the annexationist moment, pledging that Israel will “apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and all settlements” in the occupied West Bank. An actual two-state solution could never survive that.

Palestinians in areas annexed by Israel would not be granted Israeli citizenship. Yet Israel would retain full extraterritorial jurisdiction over the tiny number Jewish Israelis who would find themselves living in this Palestinian non-state.

The obvious historical analogy is the fictional Bantustans in apartheid-era South Africa, nominally independent African countries that were in fact political and legal fictions for the convenience of white rule.

As they say, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Sally, but it’s still a pig.

The plan’s deep cynicism is exemplified by the claim that Palestinians would get a capital in Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem would remain undivided and under complete Israeli sovereign control.

The shell game goes like this: a few Palestinian villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem which Palestinians have never considered part of Jerusalem would be renamed “Al Quds” (Jerusalem in Arabic) and made the nominal Palestinian capital. Thanks to this artful rebranding, Palestinians would magically have their capital in “Al Quds” but Israel would retain complete control of an undivided actual Jerusalem.

The plan thus gives Israelis everything they could want, except for those few extremists demanding total annexation of all Palestinian areas rather than just de facto control of them. And it gives Palestinians virtually none of their core goals. No Palestinians were even present for the announcement.

The truth is, it’s not a real proposal at all. It’s pure domestic politics for both leaders.

The timing gives the game away. Trump is facing impeachment, and Netanyahu is facing indictment, and both of them are relying on reelection to avoid serious legal threats. Trump and Netanyahu were doing a victory dance, with Gantz thrown in as window-dressing on the off chance he might win the upcoming Israeli election.

Trump got to pose as a peace-making statesman and pander to his evangelical base. And Netanyahu got to pose as the man who could deliver the occupied territories and annexation at last to Israeli voters.

But although the plan is a fake, the damage will be real and profound — even if nothing, including annexation, ever comes of it.

What Trump is purporting to do is breathtaking. In 1993 the Palestinians, the Israelis and the United States all signed a Declaration of Principles that laid out the basic framework of the peace process, including five final-status issues. All of them have now been abrogated by the United States and the entire agreed-upon negotiating framework is in ruins.

That’s been the main aim all along. The Israeli right never accepted the Oslo agreements, and now the Trumpian right doesn’t either.

When the Israelis failed to get the Palestinians to accept this kind of limited, compromised statehood at the Camp David summit in 2000, this moment probably became inevitable. The asymmetry of power is so stark that it was virtually certain that one day Israel would try to impose by force and fiat what they could not get Palestinians to agree to voluntarily.

Until now, the Israelis have been constrained by the fact that their American patrons were co-signatories to the 1993 agreement. Trump has just effectively freed Israel from all limitations imposed by Oslo and done away with the logic of two genuinely sovereign, independent states in favor of a radically separate and unequal Greater Israel. The main questions now are whether the damage can be repaired, and how much blood will be spilled as a direct result of this political malpractice.

This isn’t a peace proposal. It is an anti-peace proposal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-28/iraq-s-shiite-elite-close-ranks-against-protests

Moqtada al-Sadr’s about-face leaves the demonstrators vulnerable, and the country in greater peril.

Over the past weekend, the anti-government protests in Iraq reached a critical juncture, with the Shiite political elite uniting to put down this rebellion. The leaderless protest movement, its ranks made up mainly of Shiite youths, now finds itself confronting a solid block of organized political opposition.

The turning point came when the volatile Shiite cleric-politician Moqtada al-Sadr withdrew his support for the protesters, paving the way for a bloody crackdown by security forces.

Since they began in early October, Sadr had been trying to co-opt the protests by feigning solidarity with their anti-corruption message: his supporters joined the demonstrations in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square and other Iraqi cities. This served his interests in the internecine competition within the Shiite political elite, where his main rival is the Iran-backed Hadi al-Amiri. Sadr and Amiri have been locked in a contest to name Iraq’s next prime minister since the resignation of Adel Abdul Mahdi.

The pro-Iranian faction, targeted for special derision by the protesters, had hoped that the killing of Qassem Suleimani and other key figures in a U.S. drone strike would turn national attention away from Tahrir Square. But the protests continued, demonstrating that Iraqi youth were not about to forget their grievances against their government in favor of a campaign focused on driving U.S. forces out of the country.

Sadr, perhaps alarmed that his rivals were stealing his anti-American thunder, called on his followers to come out last Friday in their “millions” against the U.S. military presence. This was also calculated to show up the Tahrir Square protesters, who had planned their own demonstration that day.

The crowds that came out for Sadr were impressive, and they were enthusiastic in chanting anti-American slogans and hanging effigies of President Donald Trump. But on Saturday, the squares were again filled by protesters calling for the ouster of the entire political elite. Sadr was alarmed to discover that he was not exempted from the list of leading “tails,” the protesters’ epithet for all corrupt politicians.

Sadr then made common cause with Amiri and ordered his followers to leave Tahrir Square and other protest venues. Some reports suggest that, in return, the pro-Iranian faction will let him pick the next prime minister. Whatever Sadr’s motives, his withdrawal was a signal for the government to unleash hell.

This is not the first time the protesters have endured such attacks. Security forces and militias have been responsible for the deaths of at least 500 demonstrators in recent months. The killings were often targeted and tactical, with snipers picking off protest leaders while others tried to violently disrupt their logistical support network for food, water and other supplies.

But the crackdown on Saturday turned up the dial several notches, attacking protesters and destroying their tents. In the southern city of Nasiriyah, several protesters were killed.

If the Shiite elite now remain united and break the back of the protests, they can preserve the self-serving status quo in which they carve up government ministries amongst themselves, to plunder as they please. But if the protests persevere despite the crackdown, the political parties may eventually be compelled to make some of the demanded changes.

A key role will likely be played by Iraqi President Barham Salih. The Kurdish leader is respected by all political factions; among the protesters, he may be the least-loathed of the major national figures. He also has strong ties to Washington, and a good working relationship with Tehran. The Kurds retain the swing vote in parliament, which will be crucial for the prospects of government reform. If a broader deal needs to be struck between the politicians and the protesters, Salih is one of the few who could broker one.

Meanwhile, the febrile political climate poses risks for the U.S. Pro-Iranian groups, with open support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, have outlined a three-pronged approach to driving out the American military presence: political efforts in parliament, popular protests in the street and violent attacks. The rockets that struck the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Sunday will not be the last. In the absence of a new deal with the Iraqi government over the American troops, the Trump administration could return to the brinksmanship with Iran that led to the Soleimani killing.

Sadr’s volte face on the protests may have united the Shiite political class, but it may prove to have set Iraq on a more dangerous course.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/there-will-be-no-winners-in-the-us-impeachment-proceedings-1.970466

By rushing to impeachment because of their own election calendars, Democrats are committing a significant blunder.

The first week of US President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial concluded on Saturday morning, and none of the main players seem poised for a meaningful victory. The question is rather how much each stands to lose.

The Democratic “managers” (in effect, prosecutors) from the House of Representatives, which impeached Mr Trump in December, presented the case against the president on two counts: abuse of power by allegedly attempting to leverage military aid to Ukraine to secure an investigation announcement into the son of one of his rivals, Joe Biden; and obstruction of Congress for withholding documents and trying to block major testimony.

Because of that obstruction, there were significant holes in the prosecution’s case, but, overall, the factual narrative against Mr Trump was overwhelming and largely unchallenged.

On Saturday, the president’s defence team began its own presentation, which was strikingly thin on facts but long on categorical declarations and misleading claims – for instance, the allegation that Republicans were not allowed to participate in House hearings in secured areas when, in fact, they were.

Public opinion remains about equally divided for and against convicting Mr Trump. Consequently, Republican senators don’t seem prepared to resist Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s push for a trial without witnesses, documents or any fact-finding.

The Senate appears unwilling to demand testimony from key figures, such as former national security advisor John Bolton – whose unpublished memoir reportedly confirms that Mr Trump withheld Ukraine aid to secure a smear against the Bidens – acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others, or to demand the documentary paper trail that would irrefutably demonstrate what happened.

Republicans are adamantly opposed to such evidence because the case is already extremely strong and most of the factual assertions are not being challenged. Instead, they are simply denounced and dismissed.

The last thing Republicans want is to confront the mounting evidence, including text messages and recordings recently released by Lev Parnas, which seem to corroborate the case against Mr Trump.

House managers’ arguments that by withholding military aid to Ukraine Mr Trump was acting in his own interests, and not those of the United States, were almost irrefutable. This is not a legitimate policy dispute, as his lawyers claim, but the hijacking of policy by personal politics.

But Republicans do not want Mr Trump removed and, unless compelled by public opinion, will acquit him as soon as possible. The danger posed to them by the existing evidence explains why they want no further information whatsoever. It cannot possibly help them.

Yet this will not be a victory for Mr Trump. He will have been exonerated not in fair or open proceedings, but through the modern-day US equivalent of Stalin-era Moscow political show trials in which the verdict is a foregone conclusion and most factual evidence is prohibited.

He will claim vindication, but under the circumstances, it will be hollow. He will live under the shadow, not only of impeachment, but of acquittal through farce. If Mr McConnell gets his way, this will be the first of scores of impeachment trials of US officials – including those of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – that excludes any witness testimony.

Mr Trump will enjoy a technical, legal acquittal, but face a moral, and probably historical, conviction.

Many Senate Republicans are also worried. Several are facing re-election in swing states that may not reward their adamant refusal to face the facts or consider the truth. Mr McConnell may not care, but a number of these Republican senators probably realise they are helping to badly damage the US constitution and political system.

It is not just that they are conducting a sham of a trial. Worse is that they will be effectively endorsing Mr Trump’s behaviour regarding Ukraine and the election, and essentially greenlighting future presidents to leverage all manner of foreign policy tools for their personal political benefit.

Mr Trump’s lawyers claim a statutory crime is required for impeachment and are casting the whole process as an attack on democracy and elections. That’s not only constitutional nonsense, it is an unprecedented assault on the impeachment powers of Congress.

If affirmed, Mr Trump’s actions would constitute one of the most astonishing expansions of the power of the presidency, at the expense of Congress, in the country’s history.

Republicans surely tell themselves they will just reverse their position if a Democratic president ever did something like this. But it is not that simple. Like it or not, they are setting a precedent that could hardly be more dangerous or less attuned to the spirit of the Constitution.

But by rushing to impeachment because of their own primary and election calendars, Democrats are committing a significant blunder.

Their political hastiness has contributed mightily to this constitutionally cancerous development, as I have repeatedly warned in these pages, and many others also foresaw.

Unless there is a sudden reversal by Senate Republicans, in which they vote to hear testimony and examine documents, the only thing that could recuperate this impeachment trial for the Democrats would be if it can be said to have contributed to a victory in November.

But the political impact of this process is extremely hard to predict. It might, and certainly should, further tarnish Mr Trump’s image with many voters. But it also might enrage and rally his base, and stoke the bitter national divisions on which he depends.

This is only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history, and seems set to be the shortest, least credible and most insubstantial. It may not have any long-term political impact at all, especially if the lack of movement in the opinion polls over the past week is anything to go by.

The president will almost certainly remain in office, but he will be badly tarnished. Senate Republicans could hardly appear more compromised and cynical. And the Democrats, yet again, will look like losers.

If there are any winners in this fiasco, they are hiding brilliantly.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-23/lebanon-s-new-government-is-set-up-to-fail?srnd=opinion

Hezbollah, Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s main backer, doesn’t want him to succeed.

After more than three months of political wrangling amid the backdrop of massive street protests, Lebanon finally has a new government. But the cabinet assembled by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, almost entirely composed of Hezbollah’s allies, is unlikely to succeed.

Indeed, it may have been set up to fail by its own backers.

Hezbollah cannot be comfortable with an arrangement that puts it—along with its Maronite allies in the Free Patriotic Movement—front and center of the new government. The Iran-backed group has historically preferred a time-tested arrangement of power without responsibility: its rivals nominally ran the government, but allowed Hezbollah to maintain its independent militia and to exercise its will on all issues it deemed crucial.

In the new setup, Hezbollah finds itself in the unfamiliar position of responsibility. This means it risks being directly blamed for the state’s dysfunction, which it can do very little to fix.

Even most credible and competent government, with full public support, would be hard-pressed to deal with Lebanon’s multiple crises, especially with a looming default on bond payments. The lira has collapsed in value and banks have been forced to restrict the ability of ordinary account holders to withdraw their money, particularly in U.S. dollars. Basic services are moribund. The supply of electricity has become intermittent, and a telecommunications crisis, including Internet outages, seems probable.

Diab’s government was born under a bad sign—several bad signs, in fact. His nomination was met with intense opposition from the protesters, and this has grown even more intense since the 20-member cabinet was announced. It is also politically lop-sided: instead of the traditional blend of pro- and anti-Hezbollah factions, Diab is banking on only one side of the Lebanese equation.

Worse, the formation of the cabinet was midwifed by discredited political figures closely associated with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, including Jamil Al-Sayyed, who was driven out of the political centerstage after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. If the growing Iranian influence in Beirut wasn’t bad enough, many Lebanese will be even more alarmed and dismayed by the return of Syrian leverage in their country’s politics.

It is certain to inflame the protesters, who for months have been demanding radical reforms and denouncing the entire social and political elite of the country. One of their few clear demands has been for a technocratic government of experts rather than political cronies. Diab claims to have assembled exactly such a “rescue squad,” but in fact his cabinet is almost composed mainly of political operatives or their proxies. Not even the large number of women in prominent roles will buy him much credibility on the street.

Nor can Diab expect much foreign help in bailing Lebanon out of its financial problems. The U.S. and Europe will be very cautious in providing aid to a pro-Hezbollah government. Diab says he’s headed to the Gulf Arab states soon, but they too will be uncomfortable with a pro-Iranian militia calling the shots in Beirut.

None of this can have escaped the attention of Hezbollah and its allies: They must know that this government cannot last very long. But they did not have a better option.

All political elites have been discomfited by the protests but Hezbollah stood to lose more than most from real reform. Setting Diab up for failure is the first step in a process that, it hopes, will restore the status quo. This has been Hezbollah’s goal since the protests began last fall. Its ideal outcome was for former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who resigned in October, to return to the job.

Now, Hezbollah is likely calculating that once Diab fails, it can step forward and propose, in the name of national unity, the reinstatement of Hariri, or the elevation of another politician acceptable to the international community—who would allow things to go back to the way they used to be.

The main obstacle to this will probably be the protesters, who may well hold out for a more thorough-going reform of Lebanon’s political structures and traditions. If so, Hezbollah will have to offer something more substantial than Diab’s government as a sacrificial lamb.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-s-removal-from-office-is-far-from-certain-but-neither-is-his-acquittal-1.966947

A trial, like a war, is a social process whose outcome cannot be predicted and looks very different at the end than at the start.

On the eve of his impeachment trial which will begin in the Senate next week, time is clearly not on the president’s side, even if the rushed schedule, which suits both Republicans and Democrats, might be.

US President Donald Trump finally secured a Ukrainian criminal investigation announcement, although certainly not the one he was hoping for. He wanted Ukraine to investigate his rivals, but the Kiev government has announced a criminal probe into his allies instead.

Unsettling information continues to accumulate about the activities of the president’s close associates, particularly Mr Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani and the latter’s operatives. Leaked text messages recently revealed, for instance, that this gang may have had the movements of former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, under surveillance during 2019.

The people involved claim to have been joking, under the influence of alcohol, or “playing.” But these and other astonishing revelations leave little doubt that there is much more about the Ukraine scandal that remains to be discovered.

The obvious need for additional information, and the well-known sources from which it could be obtained, will be at the heart of what is only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history.

Democrats are insisting that there is no such thing as a trial that does not involve testimony by witnesses and the subpoenaing of relevant documents. The impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives was akin to a grand jury investigation or the preparation for an indictment, which the House adopted in the two articles of impeachment adopted on December 18.

Indeed, there has never been an American impeachment trial without witness testimony or new documents, including both previous presidential impeachments. Yet such an unprecedented scenario is exactly what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues are hoping to engineer.

Mr McConnell and most of his GOP colleagues have made it clear that they intend to acquit Mr Trump no matter what, and that they are not interested in any evidence whatsoever. Indeed, he derisively says that House Democrats did a “rushed and incomplete job” and are asking the Senate to “do their homework for them.”

This elides the obvious point that the House’s motivation for handing the Senate a remarkably incomplete file to support the “high crimes and misdemeanours” (for which presidents may be impeached) is that the White House has flatly refused to share any documents with the impeachment inquiry. Furthermore, it has attempted to block all executive-branch officials from testifying. Some relatively junior or former officials testified anyway, but all the key witnesses who dealt directly with Mr Trump have not been heard from, and a raft of crucial documents remains unexamined.

Mr Trump has asked the Senate to quickly dismiss these charges, and while Mr. McConnell doesn’t appear ready to do that, he is clearly determined to prevent any more information coming to light. Given the revelations in the past few weeks, and the obvious fact that Republican senators have no idea what else may be discovered, their anxiety is understandable.

During the House hearings, a parade of witnesses managed to paint a remarkably intricate picture of a president determined to hijack US military aid to Ukraine to secure the announcement of a baseless criminal investigation into the son of his political rival, Joe Biden. But because the White House successfully blocked all the senior-most potential witnesses, the president’s own role was not described in great and direct detail.

Obviously, if Mr Trump and Mr McConnell were confident he had done nothing wrong, they would welcome a closer examination of the facts.

The problem is particularly acute for Mr McConnell. As damning recent revelations demonstrate, additional facts are liable to put him in an impossible situation, given that he simply does not care what the president may have done and is determined to acquit him no matter what.

Worse, Mr Trump knows exactly what he did and didn’t do, but Senate Republicans don’t. They really have no idea what remains to be discovered and what is already on the record is bad enough to place them in an awkward position. Despite their best efforts, this problem is only likely to get worse.

Like war, a trial is among those social processes in which the outcome and, in retrospect, the underlying realities appear very different at the end of the process than they did at the beginning. Mr McConnell knows this, and that explains his insistence on a short and essentially meaningless “trial.”

Even though he commands a Republican majority in the Senate, he may not get his way, at least not entirely.

Mr Trump’s Senate trial will hinge upon the procedural rulings of a Senate majority, with Chief Justice John Roberts serving as a tiebreaker when necessary. In practice, this means that only three or four Republicans need, at any stage, to side with Democrats on a motion to hear certain witnesses – one example being former national security advisor John Bolton, who has said he would testify and that he has significant new information.

As things stand, few if any Senate Republicans appear willing to convict Mr. Trump and remove him from office. However, a small group might be amenable to siding with Democrats, and possibly the Chief Justice, in insisting on additional testimony and documents. Once that process is unleashed, there is no telling where it might lead.

Under the current circumstances, it’s very hard to imagine the Senate voting to convict and remove Mr Trump from office, despite an already strong case that he did, indeed, abuse the powers of his office for personal political gain and, as his defiant attitude suggests, would likely do so again.

But one thing is certain on the eve of this momentous Senate trial: anyone who has complete confidence in its outcome and impact is living in a fool’s paradise.

What we are about to witness is a process that isn’t wholly predictable or under anyone’s firm control.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-15/iran-u-s-confrontation-fosters-gulf unity

The prospect of war has had a calming impact on squabbling GCC states.

As they breathe a collective sigh of relief that the U.S. and Iran have not stumbled into a war in their backyard, the bickering Gulf Arab countries have been reminded they still have powerful common interests.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman – have worked to reduce tensions since the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani and several key henchmen.

One of the biggest disagreements within the GCC has been over attitudes towards Tehran. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, along with the U.S. and Israel, make up the core of the international coalition opposing the Islamic Republic. Oman, Kuwait and Qatar maintain much better relations with Iran.

Oman has long served as a mediator in disputes with Iran; Muscat hosted some of the initial meetings that eventually produced the 2015 nuclear deal. Kuwait, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, is determined not to get dragged into regional disputes, especially of the sectarian kind.

Qatar has been aligned with Sunni Islamists like Turkey’s ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has actively opposed Iran in Syria and Iraq. However, since Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed an embargo on Qatar in June 2017, Doha has drifted closer to Tehran. In addition to sharing a natural-gas field that provides almost all of Qatar’s income, the emirate is now dependent on Iran for commercial air routes and other critical support.

Unsurprisingly, Qatar was quickest off the blocks after the Soleimani killing: its Foreign Minister and Emir made visits to Tehran to express solidarity and condolences. There is widespread speculation that the Reaper drones used in the strike were launched from the U.S. base at Al-Udeid, near Doha. The Qataris were anxious to tell the world, and especially Iran, that they were not a party to the attack. (Incidentally, if Washington and Tehran weren’t sending messages to each other via the Qataris, it would be tantamount to diplomatic malpractice; Doha is unusually both a key U.S. ally and friendly to Iran.)

Similarly, Oman announced a mediation effort, only to quickly conclude there was “no room” for negotiations at present.

More striking were efforts by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to calm nerves and contribute to de-escalation. While many have assumed that these two countries, along with Israel, have been pressing the U.S. into a war with Iran, that was never true. While they welcomed the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign on Iran, these countries know that they would be among the first targets Iran would strike in the event of an all-out fight. Last year’s attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities and UAE-related international shipping were stark reminders of their vulnerability.

The UAE’s chief diplomat, Anwar Gargash, made early and repeated, public pleas that all parties put “wisdom, balance and political solutions above confrontation and escalation.” Behind the scenes, the message to Washington was that the UAE has no interest in anybody starting a war with Iran. Last summer, for the first time in years, the UAE dispatched several diplomatic delegations to Iran to reopen dialogue on issues such as maritime security and other matters of mutual concern.

Saudi Arabia repeatedly called for restraint and dispatched deputy defense minister—and former ambassador to the U.S.—Khalid bin Salman, to encourage Washington to de-escalate. Riyadh recently established a new diplomatic back channel to Tehran.

So, after years of bitter bickering and confrontation, the Gulf Arab countries suddenly found themselves operating in concert. This is appropriate, since the GCC was founded in 1981, in large part to deal with the challenges posed to the peninsular states by the then fledgling Islamic Republic.

Iran remains an overarching, unifying threat: for some GCC states, the threat of war is more real than the threat of Iranian hegemony. In practical terms, that might amount to the same thing. All of them have had to develop a more robust conversation with Tehran than previously in recent years.

Another challenge is to keep talking among themselves. Tentative steps have already been taken towards reconciling the split with Qatar, especially since the participation of the national soccer teams of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain in the Gulf Cup in Doha late last year. The differences, especially over Doha’s support for Islamists, are some way from being reconciled, but the combined response to the flare-up between Washington and Tehran shows that, on existential questions, the Gulf Arab states can—and must—act in harmony.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/iran-is-a-crucial-test-case-on-us-engagement-in-the-middle-east-and-beyond-1.963179 

Donald Trump, as well as both the country’s major political parties, seem torn between internationalism and isolationism.

Iran might not have decided yet whether to escalate or de-escalate tensions with the US following the targeted killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, as Raghida Dergham reports in these pages. But question marks also hover over both the Donald Trump administration’s long-term approach to Tehran and even over the broader trajectory of the US international role in coming decades.

Iran will be a crucial test case for American engagement.

Underneath the extraordinary outcry on both the left and the right in response to the killing of Suleimani lies a huge rift between internationalists, whether hawks or doves, who want to sustain the kind of global engagement Washington maintained during the Cold War era versus neo-isolationists, who reject a robust American international profile except, perhaps, regarding trade.

The Republican Party can normally be expected to rally around Mr Trump under any and all circumstances. And one would particularly expect a degree of robust unanimity when it comes to kinetic military actions overseas, particularly in response to the killing of an American military contractor and the besieging of the US embassy in Baghdad by cadres of the pro-Iranian Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah.

The Democratic Party can be expected to always critique the president’s performance. Its leaders focused on the lack of customary briefings of senior congressional leaders in advance of the action, or satisfactory ones after.

Others went further. Many Democrats decried the “recklessness” of the killing and claimed that Mr Trump was dragging the US into a new Middle Eastern war for political purposes. Democratic leaders, essentially products of Cold War multilateralism who prize alliances and international institutions, sounded very different from those who reject the legacy of US global leadership as wasteful, corrupt, immoral or imperialistic.

This division is strikingly mirrored among Republicans. Internationalists such as senator Lindsey Graham – who are generally more hawkish and unilateralist than their Democratic counterparts – applauded the strike. But libertarian and isolationist senators, led by Rand Paul who has been one of Mr Trump’s key allies, did not disguise their doubts and dismay.

Numerous American reactions to the drone strike reflected ideological and political orientations, frequently having nothing to do with the event itself, viewed either strategically or tactically. Many seem either cynical or neurotic, or both.

The problem has been exacerbated by typically poor messaging from this White House, which failed to clearly explain that beginning in late October, Kataib Hezbollah and other Iraqi militias operating under the supervision of Suleimani had launched rocket attacks on US-related military targets in Iraq on an almost weekly basis, eventually leading to the death of a contractor. Demanding, as both left and right isolationists did, specific intelligence about an imminent threat therefore seems silly.

To the contrary, the normal burden of proof in this instance is inverted. Given what Suleimani and the other leading Iraqi and Iranian figures killed in the strike have been doing in recent months, any suggestion that they did not pose an “imminent threat” is baffling. That claim must posit a sudden shift in their modus operandi, and that they were going to start behaving very differently all of a sudden than they have been for many weeks. It is possible but hardly likely.

This obvious point should have been easily communicated to Congress and the public but the Trump White House, as it so often does, failed to make a sound policy case, preferring to indulge in undignified chest thumping.

This mistake invited facile neo-isolationist arguments, with their own preposterous buzzwords such as “endless wars” – which Mr Trump himself has unwisely used to criticise his predecessors – to try to insinuate that the US-Iranian confrontation was effectively manufactured, exaggerated or is somehow pointless.

A good case could be made that the nuclear deal Iran signed with the world’s powers had secured the international community a valuable breathing space on the country’s nuclear programme, and withdrawing from it was rash and imprudent. However, there is really no question that if the US wishes to be a major global power it has no choice but to confront Iran’s expanding hegemony in the still strategically vital Middle East.

Yet many Americans on both the right and the left do not wish the country to remain a major global power at all. The isolationist streak runs deep. A majority demanded it between the first and second World Wars, leaving the country dreadfully weakened at a time of growing peril.

It was only the consensus about an existential threat posed by the erstwhile Soviet Union during the Cold War that established internationalism as a hegemonic and mainstream position in US foreign policy.

Those days are obviously over and the current confrontation with Iran is arguably the most vivid demonstration of that yet. The Trump administration may be committed to continuing to challenge Iran’s regional agenda, missile programme and nuclear ambitions. But much of the rest of the country wants nothing to do with anything like that.

At stake, ultimately, is whether the US intends to remain a global power or not. If so, it is not necessary to kill people like Suleimani or go to war with Iran. But it is essential to maintain the kind of engaged leadership that placed Washington at the centre of global affairs for the past 80 years.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are badly split on this issue, and Mr Trump himself appears to be deeply conflicted between internationalist (or at least mercantilist) and neo-isolationist tendencies. He is constantly tacking between the two positions. Thus divided, Washington is incapable of the foreign policy focus it needs.

The country needs a robust, thoroughgoing national conversation about international relations. Foreign policy professionals and others who favour international engagement have simply failed to make the case to ordinary Americans that global leadership is in their interests. Far too many consider it all a detestable, outrageous burden. As long as that persists, and absent an existential and unifying foreign threat, the US is likely to remain an indecisive international actor that hamstrings itself time and again to the benefit of much weaker adversaries.

https://agsiw.org/u-s-iran-crisis-promotes-sudden-gcc-unanimity-and-common-purpose/

GCC states all oppose any escalation with Iran, but it remains unclear if that will help heal other rifts.

Nothing has united the Gulf Cooperation Council member states in many years like the flare-up of tensions and exchange of attacks between the United States and Iran. All six countries oppose any further escalation of the crisis. And all of them took action of some kind, including constructive diplomatic or public messaging, to try to ensure this didn’t happen. It is the most unanimous, and in some ways most united, the GCC has been on any major issue since at least the boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt began in June 2017. And it comes on the back of additional moves to try to heal the GCC rift and repair the Gulf Arab states’ ability to operate with a degree of common purpose.

Before the recent crisis began, all the Gulf countries had expressed some degree of alarm about rising tensions between Tehran and Washington. Tehran’s political and strategic crises – with anti-Iran sentiments rising in Lebanon and Iraq, as well as anti-regime protests domestically – helped prompt moves to restore travel and cooperation between Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE and Qatar. But the buildup to the crisis did not produce the strong sense of unanimity and implicit common purpose that emerged following the January 3 U.S. precision guided drone strike that killed Major General Qassim Suleimani, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of the pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah Iraqi militia, and several other senior Iranian and pro-Iranian militia figures.

That attack, and concern about Iran’s potential response to the targeted killing, produced a flurry of Gulf Arab diplomatic and public diplomacy activity that left little doubt that, for all their differences, the GCC countries shared the urgent common goal of reducing temperatures and curbing the risk of a wider set of military clashes and even a U.S.-Iranian war. Given their differences regarding relations with Iran and varying positions in the regional strategic landscape, Gulf Arab countries were both able and required to play significantly different roles in pursuit of that mutual goal. This allowed for a range of Gulf Arab interventions from varied vantage points that provided different forms of leverage or influence.

Qatar has always been compelled to maintain reasonable relations with Iran because of the shared natural gas field between the two countries that provides most of Doha’s income. Since the boycott began, Qatar has also increasingly relied on Iran for access to critical commercial air routes and other, more subtle, forms of support. So it is no surprise that Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani traveled to Tehran the weekend after the attack to express condolences to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Because Doha’s position was very strongly in favor of restraint and de-escalation, presumably there was at least some form of indirect messaging to Tehran from one of the few countries that considers itself a very close ally to the United States and a warm friend of Iran.

The GCC squabble did slightly reassert itself in the middle of the efforts to avert a larger crisis between Washington and Tehran when some Saudi media outlets made much of the claims that the drone strike that killed the Iranian commander and his allies was launched by U.S. forces from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The implication is that there was a form of duplicity in Qatar’s supposed complicity in the attack followed by statements of sympathy and calls for restraint. But, in fact, even if the strike was launched from Al-Udeid, it is extremely unlikely that Qatari officials played any role in the decision making at any stage.

Oman and Kuwait also maintain better relations with Iran than the other three GCC members and seemed to be implying that they were ready to proactively help moderate tensions. Oman said it was actively seeking to mediate between the parties to restore calm. It ultimately appeared to conclude room for such a direct mediation did not actually exist, but was clearly willing to play that role when possible. Kuwait was apparently initially directly critical of the targeted killing, although those statements were deleted after being posted, and the country has repeatedly called for restraint and calm. Kuwait also quickly asserted that the drone strike was not launched from its territory.

More instructive were the responses by Iran’s primary regional antagonist, Saudi Arabia, as well as the UAE and Bahrain. UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that it was imperative to put “wisdom, balance, and political solutions above confrontation and escalation.” Almost all major UAE newspapers also called for de-escalation and the restoration of calm. Saudi Arabia, too, called for restraint, said it was not consulted in advance about the attack, and said Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman would travel to Washington in the coming days to urge restraint. Bahrain essentially echoed the sentiments, although in a more muted fashion.

It’s not surprising that Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait were keen on avoiding the U.S.-Iranian escalation. But it is more noteworthy that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain – which regarded Suleimani and his Iraqi clients as deadly enemies – would be similarly committed to de-escalation and the avoidance of further conflict. Yet the prospect of a broader regional conflict has been alarming to these states for many months, if not years.

In the summer of 2019, Iran’s “maximum resistance” campaign of deniable attacks on pro-U.S. targets accelerated. The UAE, which had long been quietly calling for a “political path” forward with Iran along with the sanctions campaign, then reached out to Tehran with diplomatic exchanges designed to create a bilateral dialogue. After the Iranian attack on its oil facilities on September 14, 2019, Saudi Arabia, too, began its own low-key exploration of the potential for direct back-channel communication with Tehran.

Whatever their specific views about and bilateral relations with Iran might be, all the Gulf Arab states are nervous about the impact any broader conflict between the United States and Iran might have on their interests. The UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia could find themselves caught in the crossfire and subjected to direct Iranian attack as indeed happened in September. Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait have their own concerns about political and even economic destabilization arising from increased violence. And even those states that most strongly oppose Iran’s regional role and see a strategic opportunity arising from Tehran’s ongoing crises realize that they have little to gain and much to lose from a further intensification of armed conflict with Tehran.

The GCC was founded in May 1981 in direct response to the formation of the Islamic Republic following the revolution in Iran. From its outset, then, the Islamic Republic has been perceived by the Gulf Arab countries as a unifying threat. Over time, the perceptions of that threat and the best ways of dealing with it have significantly diverged and have been joined to other differences in interests and perspectives between Gulf Arab countries. However, given that the emergence of the Islamic Republic was the proximate cause for the Gulf Arab countries to unite in the first place, it is logical that a major crisis involving Iran has been the cause of a sudden eruption of unity of purpose and common interest between countries that have often found themselves on opposite sides of major regional developments in recent years. How far this will go to help heal GCC divisions, if at all, remains to be seen. But it is at the very least a salutary reminder of how much the Gulf Arab countries still have in common and how strongly their interests can converge in times of crisis.