Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The Gulf Arab states are almost as fearful of a deal between the US and Iran as they are of no deal.  As the Saudi al-Riyadh put it last Friday (20 April): “If Iran ends its crisis with the West it will be the new good ally in the long-term, replaying the experience with the Shah when the US set him up as the Arabian Gulf's policeman and the buffer that repulses Soviet schemes.”

The nightmare future that the Gulf Arabs are contemplating is one in which Iran is rehabilitated with the West following a nuclear deal but maintains its ambitions in Iraq.  These ambitions, which have never been in doubt, were articulated by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in comments reported on 22 April, following a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.  He said: "Should Iran and Iraq stand together, there would be no place for the enemies of the people in the region, including the US and Israel.”

Rihaimi met with Maliki during the latter’s two-day visit to Tehran, and he added that both countries were facing “international conspiracies due to their beliefs and goals”.  The “beliefs” to which Rihaimi refers are clearly the Shia beliefs shared by Iran and the majority of Iraq’s Arab population.

Ostensibly Turkey is aligned with the Gulf states, but Jordanian sources say that there are concerns about Ankara’s apparent willingness to contemplate a partition of Iraq.  Ankara is consolidating a strange relationship with Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani in return for Barzani’s pledge to help pacify the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey; and as part of Ankara’s play against Iran, having had its overtures to Tehran rejected, Turkey is said to be prepared to back a split between the Sunni Iraqis (Arab and Kurdish) and the ruling pro-Iranian Iraqi Shias.

For the Gulf Arabs, the key point is that all this is going on beyond their control.  They have been weakened by the Arab Awakening and they appear powerless in the face of a combination of populist forces and major-power machinations, including those of the US, which is no longer trusted.

The almost total confusion is perhaps best summarized by the 20 April commentary in the pro-government Saudi daily al-Riyadh quoted above.  It foresees a Western deal with Iran in which the first step “was handing over Iraq's affairs to Iran and total cooperation with it over Afghanistan”, and in which the end result will be “once again tightening the bilateral [Israeli/Iranian] cordon around the Arabs’ neck...to be followed by full recognition of the Zionist entity and Iran as a regional power”.  This seems a very long way from the present reality, but it does reflect the extent to which the Gulf Arabs are feeling isolated and buffeted.  At the moment, they appear to see disaster whichever way the present confrontation with Iran plays out.