Reconvergence in the Middle East

Gulf countries have seemingly grasped that spending billions on purchasing arms cannot guarantee regional peace

More than two months after the world’s largest oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia was blitzed and forced to temporarily close down, it is still quite unclear where the drones and cruise missiles stemmed from and why the US Patriot failed to protect Riyadh’s biggest strategic asset.

Immediate pick-out for the attacks had to be Iran and so US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo singled out Tehran shortly after the flying objects sneaked through the rich American defence systems and hit Saudi Aramco oilfields.

Innately, the wearying Riyadh-Tehran bilateral relations were another cloaked objective of the rotten assaults. And with Iran and Saudi Arabia gruffly brawling diplomatically, at least the foremost and cardinal goal was met with near-perfect accuracy.

But once the tempers chilled, the two sides sat in quarantine to decipher the recipient of the Tehran-Riyadh standoff. While Iran was bogged down with the crippling US sanctions and the Saudi economy slowed over tumbling oil prices, the findings must have concluded that the attacks only favoured the non-regional stakeholders.

It was time to rethink plans and conceive new strategies. With regional entities on board, earlier this month Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reached out to six GCC countries and Iraq, inviting them to join his UNGA-proposed Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE) initiative for the stability and security of the region.

Named after the Strait of Hormuz — the world’s most vital maritime trade route — HOPE is furthered by Tehran as an important forum for dialogue and political negotiations among the region’s nations. It’s based on no use of force, settling crises peacefully, respecting each other’s sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs of other countries.

Meanwhile, announcing the peace deal between Yemini President Abdul Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the secessionist Southern Transition Council (STC), Saudi Crown Prince MBS called the ‘Riyadh Agreement’ “an important step towards a political solution to end Yemen’s bloody four-year war”.

Iran’s promotion of its HOPE initiative coincided with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain allowing their teams to participate in the Gulf Cup football tournament in Qatar alongside the visiting teams from Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen. The handshake was a major shift in the GCC countries’ foreign policy towards Qatar ever since the 2017 Riyadh-led regional blockade of Doha. Rifts among the regional countries are likely to ease as soccer-diplomacy could begin a new era of regional cooperation.

Since HOPE aims to forge an agreement of non-aggression and non-interference among the regional states, the GCC’s proclivity to Qatar signals a transformed regional approach to distance itself from the hawkish US Middle East strategy.

After re-convergence with the GCC and as a key Iranian ally, Qatar can now play a constructive role in brokering a new Middle East peace plan. Meanwhile, Rouhani’s letters to the Gulf States’ heads aim to highlight regional peace and shape multilateral and bilateral ties, and prevent the US from causing differences among the neighbours.

The Gulf countries have seemingly grasped that spending billions of dollars on purchasing arms from the US cannot guarantee regional peace and they have to get along and tone down the differences for durable regional security.

US interests in the Middle East have tremendously reduced, especially following its self-reliance in meeting domestic energy needs. Washington is now looking at the Gulf to expand its arms exports, which cannot be achieved without persistent conflicts.

But the GCC economies — likely to shrink from two to 0.7% in 2019 collectively — and the collapsing Iranian economy would turn out to be a major hitch in the realisation of US regional objective to push friction and boost arms sale. So over weakened GDP growth the stabilisation of economy will be Middle East’s priority rather than large weapon acquisitions from Washington.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2019.

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