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| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 2 |
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ABSTRACT
Mutual Threat Perceptions in the Arab/Persian Gulf: GCC Perceptions
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| Thomas R. Mattair |
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Dr. Mattair (tmad@rocketmail.com) is an independent author and consultant.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are concerned about threats from several quarters: terrorism, Iraq, Iran and U.S. policy in the region. The Sunni Arab GCC regimes are concerned that Sunni Arab extremist followers of al-Qaeda pose a threat to their rule. The threat was obvious in the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and in the bombing of the Saudi Arabian National Guard facility in Riyadh in 1995. It became more obvious with the attacks on New York City and Washington on September 11, 2001. Indeed, the level of cooperation that GCC states gave to the United States in the fields of intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulations after these attacks illustrated their level of concern. The bombings in Riyadh on May 12, 2003, also brought this threat home and have led to greater efforts to dismantle these networks.
GCC states are also dismayed that the Iraqi bulwark against Shia Iran has been removed by the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s predominantly Sunni Baath regime in Iraq, and the civil war and growing Iranian influence in Iraq that have followed this regime change. They have been concerned that Sunni Arabs have been marginalized in the new Iraq, that Iran exercises too much influence over the Shia Arab parties that dominate the new government there, that Iranians in Iraq may engage in subversive activities against them, and that the civil war may actually spill over into their own states.
GCC states are uneasy that Iranian influence is growing in a “Shia crescent” across the region, particularly in the Levant, and particularly because of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflicts. They have been concerned about Iran’s conventional military acquisitions and exercises in the Gulf; its insistence on occupying the strategic islands of Abu Musa and the Tunbs, which lie along the critical shipping lanes of the Gulf; its past efforts to subvert GCC regimes; and rumors that Iran has increased its contacts with the Shia populations in GCC states. They are worried that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would make it more assertive in the Gulf and throughout the region. But their relations with Iran are complex, involving considerable trade and the possibility of cooperation in many areas, and there has been a thaw in recent years. As they said at a GCC meeting in May 2006 — and as they say in private — they want problems with Iran resolved through diplomacy rather than force. They fear they otherwise would be targets of Iranian retaliation.
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