The 2017 Gulf Crisis: Mahjoob Zweiri MD Mizanur Rahman Arwa Kamal Editors

Gulf Studies 3
Mahjoob Zweiri
Md Mizanur Rahman
Arwa Kamal Editors
The 2017 Gulf

Crisis
An Interdisciplinary Approach
Gulf Studies
Volume 3
Series Editor
Md Mizanur Rahman, Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
This series is dedicated to serving growing academic interests in the dynamic,
complex and strategically important Gulf region, offering a publication platform to
scholars in the region and globally. The series takes an interdisciplinary approach to
documenting the changes taking place in the Gulf societies, and examines the
evolving relationship between the Gulf and other regions. The series advances non‐
Western perspectives in studying the Gulf societies, and their interactions with the
rest of the world. The series includes work being done on the member states of the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), namely: Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, in addition to Iran, Iraq, and Yemen.
The series accepts proposals for monographs, edited volumes and handbooks that
provide an understanding of the Gulf societies’ contemporary social, economic, and
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Demography, migration, citizenship, gender, culture and identity, urbanization,
education, new media, unemployment, youth, family, women empowerment,
leadership, aging, human rights, sports, Islamic ethics, and Islam and society
Politics and Security in the Gulf:
Gulf defence and security, the GCC integration, democracy and political reform,
Gulf politics and political systems, the GCC’s foreign policy
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The political economy of the Gulf, economic diversification, international
investments, international trade, knowledge economy, energy security and geopol-
itics of energy, renewable energy development, environmental regulations,
infrastructure and urban planning, Islamic finance
The GCC and the World:
The GCC and Iran, the GCC and Africa, the GCC and South Asia, the GCC and
East Asia, the GCC and Southeast Asia, and the GCC and Western Powers
More information about this series at https://www.springer.com/series/16417

Mahjoob Zweiri Md Mizanur Rahman
• •
Arwa Kamal
Editors
The 2017 Gulf Crisis

An Interdisciplinary Approach
123
Editors
Mahjoob Zweiri Md Mizanur Rahman
Qatar University Qatar University
Doha, Qatar Doha, Qatar
Arwa Kamal
Qatar University
Doha, Qatar
ISSN 2662-4494 ISSN 2662-4508 (electronic)

Gulf Studies
ISBN 978-981-15-8734-4 ISBN 978-981-15-8735-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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Singapore
Preface and Acknowledgements
The political rift that opened between the Gulf countries in 2017 may be considered
unique in its nature. In the holy month of Ramadan, without forewarning, three Gulf
countries plus Egypt lay siege to Qatar, expelling Qatari citizens from their own
territories and banning their citizens from travelling to Qatar, or indeed from
expressing any sympathy or support towards that country. This unprecedented act
by the Gulf countries, as well as from other states which joined the offensive,
created what has come to be known as the Gulf Crisis 2017—although the crisis is
ongoing as of writing—and set in motion events which have had serious political,
economic, and social consequences. While the dispute created a security dilemma
for the region, casting a shadow over the status as well as the future of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), and throwing Gulf relations into turmoil, it was also
felt more widely, in view of the fact that the Gulf region has 60% of the world’s oil
reserves, so impacting the dynamics of the international community; the regional
instability has therefore become a crucial global issue.
This volume has thus been produced with the aim of providing a comprehensive
understanding of the Gulf Crisis, covering its influence on the economy, politics,
security, and society of the Gulf States, and surveying how it impacted domestic,
regional, and international relations. Hence the selection of our title, The 2017 Gulf
Crisis: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Although a number of books and articles
have been written about the Gulf Crisis, what is exceptional about the present
volume is that it offers wider scope to think about the conflict. The holistic as well
as the interdisciplinary nature of the book facilitates viewing matters from different
angles, which is prudent as well as practical when studying such multilayered and
multifaceted events. This text was a year and a half in the making and has been
reviewed carefully by academics renowned in the fields represented therein. The
chapters have been authored by knowledgeable and productive scholars from dif-
ferent disciplines, hailing from different academic institutions worldwide. They
have all contributed to putting a vast amount of integrated information together in
one text. The three editors of the volume are academics in the Gulf Studies Center
at Qatar University. We hope that this volume will be a valuable reference for
researchers and policy experts, and a useful source for scholars, academics, and
v
vi Preface and Acknowledgements
advanced students in the wider field of social sciences, who desire to ask questions
about the causes, consequences, and reality of the Gulf Crisis 2017.
We would like to acknowledge the proof-reading assistance of Qatar University
Press.
Doha, Qatar Mahjoob Zweiri

Md Mizanur Rahman
Arwa Kamal
Contents
1 The 2017 Gulf Crisis: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Mahjoob Zweiri, Md Mizanur Rahman, and Arwa Kamal
Part I Gulf Security

2 Underlined Vulnerabilities of the Gulf Region:
A New Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Mahjoob Zweiri and Betul Dogan-Akkas
3 Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement: Challenging the Regional Status
Quo in the Gulf Security Sub-complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin
4 Qatar Crisis: GCC States’ Perception of Regional Powers . . . . . . . 51
Noof Rashid ALDosari
5 Transformations of the Gulf Security Landscape After the Gulf
Crisis: A Geopolitical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Nayef bin Nahar Al-Shamari and Hamad Al-Mohannadi
6 The Cyber Operation Against Qatar News Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
James Shires
7 Trans-Gulf Resonances: The Central Role of Egypt in the Saudi
Dispute Over Qatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Moisés Garduño García
Part II Threat Perception

8 Evolving Threat Perceptions and Changing Regional Dynamics
in a “Post-GCC” Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Kristian Ulrichsen
vii
viii Contents
9 Popular Sentiments and Elite Threat Perception in the Gulf:

Iran in the Public Discourse in Saudi Arabia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Éva Ádám
10 The GCC, Iraq, and Iran: Perception of Threats Before
and After the Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Shaikha Majed Al-Moslemani
Part III Developing Strategic Relations and Shifting Political

Alliances
11 The Qatar–Iran–Turkey Nexus: Shifts in Political Alliances
and Economic Diversification in the Gulf Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Robert J. Riggs
12 Look Middle, Look East! The Future of GCC Strategic
Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Shareefa Al-Adwani
13 The Malaysia–Qatar Relationship: The Perspective from
Malaysia—An Emerging Middle Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Ishtiaq Hossain and Syaza Farhana Mohamad Shukri
Part IV Foreign Policy Dynamics in a Post-GCC Era

14 Competing Radicalisms: A Comparison of Saudi and Iranian
Foreign Policies After 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Mahjoob Zweiri and Majed Al-Ansari
15 The Gulf Crisis: Turkey’s Soft Power in the Gulf . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Nesibe Hicret Battaloğlu
16 Iran’s Pragmatic Foreign Policy in Response to Regional Crises:
The Case of the Blockade Against Qatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Mehran Haghirian
Part V Qatar’s Economic Strategies in the Face of the Blockade

17 The Gulf Blockade: A Fifth Qatari Economic Stage
is Imminent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Moustafa Amin Mohammed Ali
18 To What Extent Has the Sovereign Wealth Fund Assisted Qatar’s
Security and Foreign Policy in Resisting the Blockade? . . . . . . . . . 303
Fahad Al-Marri
19 The Role of Qatar Airways in the Economic Development
of Qatar: Before and During the Gulf Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Catalina Petcu
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Mahjoob Zweiri is the Director of the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University,
where he is also an Associate Professor in Contemporary Politics of the Middle
East. Before joining Qatar University in 2010, Dr. Zweiri was a Senior Researcher
in Middle East Politics and Iran at the Center for Strategic Studies, University of
Jordan. He was also a visiting professor at the School of Government and
International Affairs at Durham University. From March 2003 to December 2006 he
was a Research Fellow and then Director of the Centre for Iranian Studies in the
Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University. Dr. Zweiri
has more than 60 publications in the areas of Iran and Contemporary Middle East
History and Politics. In addition to Arabic, Dr. Zweiri is fluent in Farsi and English.
Md Mizanur Rahman is Associate Professor at the Gulf Studies Program, Qatar

University. Rahman is a sociologist by training, working on international migration
of labour, diaspora, migration policy, and other related fields of migration with a
focus on the Gulf states and South and Southeast Asian countries.
Arwa Kamal was a research Assistant at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar
University. She earned BA in English Literature from Qatar University and MA in
Audiovisual Translation from Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. She was
involved in language editing and translation at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar
University. She is currently pursuing Ph.D. program.
Contributors
Éva Ádám is an international relations manager and a researcher at the Antall

József Knowledge Center in Budapest, Hungary. He is an expert on international
relations with a specialization in Arab and Iranian affairs. He holds degrees from the
ix
x Editors and Contributors
Corvinus University of Budapest and from Eötvös Loránd University. He is a Ph.D.

candidate at Eötvös Loránd University, focusing on the relationship between
Islamic legal theory and modern political thought in Tunisia.
Moustafa Amin Mohammed Ali is a research scholar at the Gulf Studies pro-
gram, Qatar University. His areas of research interest include Islamic finance,
sovereign funds, and wealth management. He holds an MSc in Islamic Economics
and Finance from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). Prior to enrolling in
Ph.D. studies, Moustafa worked as a research assistant in the Faculty of Islamic
studies at HBKU. Moustafa has received several awards for research excellence,
some of which culminated in publishing his research on “Educational Readings in
the Thoughts of Ibn Taymiyyah.”
Shareefa Al-Adwani is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the
Department of International Relations and the Director of the Center for Gulf
Studies at the American University of Kuwait (AUK). She completed her Ph.D. in
Political Science at the University of California, Davis in June 2016, focusing on
the two fields of International Relations and Quantitative Methods. She earned her
second MA in Political Science from the same university in March 2016. Her
current research projects involve (1) the investigation of GCC socio-political
phenomena and their changes over time using recently available government data,
and (2) the use of various new and existing cross-sectional time-series data to
investigate domestic factors in international cooperation, treaties, and agreements.
She has written for Kuwait’s RAI Institute for Strategic Studies and Research,
earned a grant from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, and is
a member of the Advisory Board for the New Kuwait Public Relations Committee
(NKPRC). In her current position at AUK she teaches courses related to Kuwaiti
foreign policy, international law and organisations, politics and women in the
Middle East, and quantitative methods, and has served as the Acting Chair of the
Steering Committee for the Masters in International Relations.
Majid Al-Ansari is an Assistant Professor of Political Psychology, and is manager
of the Policy Department at the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute
(SESRI), Qatar University. He received his Ph.D. and master’s degree in social
change from the University of Manchester, his thesis being entitled “A Minority of
Citizens: The Effects of Religious, Social and Political Values on Trust in
Expatriates in Qatar.” Al-Ansari has previously served at the Qatari Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and with various civil society institutions. His research interests
include public opinion surveys, social resources, political and religious values,
charity work, and political analysis of domestic and regional issues. He has
contributed extensively as a political analyst on different television channels such as
Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic, Russia Today, Al Araby TV, and Qatar TV. In addition,
Al-Ansari writes weekly political articles for the Qatari daily Al Sharq.
Editors and Contributors xi
Noof Rashid Al-Dosari is a research scholar at the University of Essex,

Department of Government. She holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from
Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, and has a Bachelor’s degree in English
Literature and Linguistic/International Affairs. In her Ph.D. thesis, which deals with
Iranian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign policy discourse, she
examines Gulf States’ political discourses and the role of Khalijism in influencing
GCC foreign policy-making towards Iran. She is currently on leave to lecture at the
Qatar University Department of International Affairs Public Policy Program. She
was an associate at the Silatech organization, 2014, and a part-time research
assistant in the Research Centre for Islamic Legislation and Ethics, Education City,
2013. Her research interests include: public policymaking, policy studies, institu-
tionalism, government, foreign policy, discourse theory and discourse analysis,
political ideology, Iranian political studies, and Arabian Gulf politics.
Fahad Al-Marri is a research scholar at the University of Warwick, and Senior
Advisor in the President’s Office at Qatar’s Pension Funds, as well as a member
of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Al-Marri holds a master’s degree in
Public Administration (MPA). He has published articles in several prestigious
journals and made research contributions at international conferences. His latest
research paper is “The Impact of the Oil Crisis on Security and Foreign Policy in
GCC Countries: Case Studies of Qatar, KSA and UAE,” published with the Arab
Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS). His Ph.D. thesis is titled: “The
Role of Sovereign Wealth Funds in GCC Countries’ Security & Foreign Policy,”
and his research interests are: security studies, international relations, foreign policy
analysis, Middle Eastern security and foreign policy, sovereign wealth funds, and
soft power.
Shaikha Majed Al-Moslemani is working as an Administrative Coordinator at
Qatar University. Her research concentrates on Gulf issues and international affairs,
particularly between Iran and the Gulf region. She started her career as an
Academic Adviser in 2013, and has been involved in different research projects
involving society, culture, and regional integration in the GCC states.
Nayef bin Nahar Al-Shamari is the Director of the Ibn Khaldon Center for
Humanities and Social Sciences at Qatar University. He holds a BA in Sharia and
Islamic Studies from Qatar University, and an MA and Ph.D. in Islamic Banking
from the International Islamic University, Malaysia, as well as a Ph.D. in Political
Science from the same university. He has authored seven books and more than a
dozen articles on various topics including Islamic and Sharia studies, political
science, and the geopolitics of the Gulf.
Nesibe Hicret Battaloğlu is a research scholar at the Middle East Technical
University (METU) Area Studies Program. Battaloğlu completed her master’s
studies at the Qatar University Gulf Studies program in 2016. Her research interests
are the international relations of the Gulf, Iran–GCC relations, and identity and
xii Editors and Contributors
foreign policy in the GCC states. Battaloğlu’s most recent publication is titled
“Alliances and Regionalism in the Middle East after Arab Uprisings: An
Assessment of the Durability and Fragility of the Gulf Cooperation Council,” in
Gulf Cooperation Council Culture and Identities in the New Millennium, edited by
Magdalena Karolak and Nermin Allam (Palgrave, 2020).
Betül Doğan Akkaş is a Ph.D. candidate at Qatar University Gulf Studies Center,
from where she also obtained her MA, with a thesis entitled “Securitization of
Qatari Foreign Policy.” She completed her BA in International Relations at Bilkent
University. Following her undergraduate studies, she conducted field research in
Jenin, Palestine. Her research interests include foreign policymaking, security, and
social transformation in the Gulf Countries. Her contributions, mainly focusing on
international relations in the Middle East region, have appeared as op-eds, journal
articles, and book chapters.
Moisés Garduño García is a full-time professor at the Faculty of Political and
Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He
holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Arab and Islamic Studies from the Autonomous
University of Madrid, a master’s degree in Asian and African Studies with a
specialization in the Middle East from El Colegio de México, and has a BA in
International Relations from UNAM. After conducting postdoctoral research in the
Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS),
Mexico, he served as head of the Department of Asian Languages of the National
School of Linguistics, Translation, and Foreign Languages of UNAM. He belongs
to the National Research System of Mexico, and he holds certificates in Arabic
language from the National School of Translators of Toledo, and in Persian
Language Studies from the Dekhoda Institute of the University of Tehran.
Mehran Haghirian is a Ph.D. student at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies program
and a Graduate Research Assistant at the Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and
Social Sciences. He has a master’s degree in International Affairs from the
American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC, with a
research focus on Iran and the Persian Gulf region.
Ishtiaq Hossain is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), teaching courses
in International Relations while also serving as postgraduate coordinator in the
department. He is the editor of Intellectual Discourse, a Scopus-listed flagship
journal of the IIUM. Author of nearly 60 articles in indexed journals, as well as
books, in 2018 he was recognised as one of the top researchers and postgraduate
thesis supervisors in the IIUM. Before joining the IIUM, Dr. Ishtiaq served as a
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the National University of
Singapore. He was also a visiting professor at the Elliott School of International
Affairs at George Washington University, and the Department of Politics at the
University of Waikato, New Zealand. His latest major research report, published in
Editors and Contributors xiii
2018, was entitled “Malaysia’s Foreign Policy under the Pakatan Harapan
Government: The First Hundred Days.” Dr. Ishtiaq Hossain is currently engaged in
writing research reports on China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) policy, and is
writing a textbook titled Muslim International Organizations.
Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Selçuk
University and has an MA in Political Science from the University of
Missouri-Columbia, where he was a Fulbright scholar. Currently he is an Assistant
Professor at Necmettin Erbakan University in Konya. His primary research interests
include politics in the Middle East and Africa, international political economy,
international security, and human rights and democratisation.
Catalina Petcu is a Research Associate at Qatar University. Her research expe-
rience extends across a variety of topics, such as communication technologies,
political economy, and mental health in Qatar. Her master’s thesis on the economic
development of Qatar focused on the aviation industry, and she has published three
co-authored chapters on media development and communication. She is currently
involved in several projects concerning media in Qatar, culture and economy in the
Gulf, and mental health in the non-clinical population of Qatar.
Robert J. Riggs is a geopolitical risk analyst and an independent scholar whose
primary research focuses on the construction and maintenance of socio-political and
religious authority in Arabic-speaking Shi‘i communities the interplay of identity
politics and the political economies of the MENA region. He also has published
research articles on the history, power, and economics in Ottoman-controlled Najaf
(ca. 1500-1920), globalisation’s effects on Shi‘a leadership structures, and the Shi‘a
shrine cities of Iraq. He is the founder of Global Intelligence Insights LLC, a firm
specialising in cultural and geopolitical risk analysis.
James Shires is a Research Fellow with the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. His research
examines cybersecurity in the Middle East, focusing on the interaction between
threats to individuals, states, and organisations, new regional dynamics, and
cybersecurity expertise. He also holds a DPhil in International Relations from the
University of Oxford, having submitted his thesis on cybersecurity in Egypt and the
Gulf states in August 2018. He has won awards for cybersecurity papers from
the German Marshall Fund and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He
holds an MSc from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a BA from the
University of Cambridge.
Syaza Farhana Mohamad Shukri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Political Science at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). She
received her Ph.D. from IIUM, her master’s degree from the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE), and her undergraduate degree from the
University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include political Islam, Middle
Eastern politics, political parties, and democratisation. Her latest publication is
xiv Editors and Contributors
entitled “From Political Islam to Democrat Muslim: A Comparison between Rashid

Ghannouchi and Anwar Ibrahim,” in Intellectual Discourse, vol. 26, no. 2 (June
2018). She is currently conducting research entitled “Gender Discrimination among
Professionals in the State of Selangor, Malaysia.”
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is a Baker Institute Fellow for the Middle East.
Working across the disciplines of political science, international relations, and
international political economy, his research examines the changing position of
Persian Gulf states in the global order, as well as the emergence of longer term,
nonmilitary challenges to regional security. Between 2006 and 2008 he worked as
senior Gulf analyst at the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies, and was co-director
of the Kuwait Program on Development, Governance, and Globalisation in the Gulf
States at the London School of Economics from 2008 until 2013. Having published
extensively on the Gulf, his books include Insecure Gulf: The End of Certainty and
the Transition to the Post-Oil Era (Columbia University Press, 2011) and Qatar
and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2014). In addition, he is the author
of The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914–22
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and The First World War in the Middle East (Hurst &
Co, 2014). His most recent books include The Gulf States in International Political
Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and The United Arab Emirates: Power,
Politics, and Policymaking (Routledge, 2016). His articles have appeared in
numerous academic journals, including Global Policy and the Journal of Arabian
Studies, and he consults regularly on Gulf issues for Oxford Analytica and the
Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center. He also writes regularly for the
Economist Intelligence Unit, openDemocracy, and Foreign Policy, and authors a
monthly column for Gulf Business News and Analysis. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
holds a doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge.
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Illustration of different research approaches to the question

of perception in international relations and foreign policy
analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 56
Fig. 15.1 Positive perception towards Turkey: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar,
the UAE, and Oman (Source TESEV polls 2011, 2012,
and 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 262
Fig. 18.1 Composition of real GDP by Sector
(Source Callen et al. 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 304
Fig. 18.2 Economic share of GCC countries
(Source Al-Mawali 2015). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 306
Fig. 18.3 Ranking: liquified natural gas exporters
(Source Krane and Wright 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 309
Fig. 18.4 SWF types and asset allocations (Source IMF 2012) . . . . . . . .. 312
Fig. 18.5 GCC country allocation of direct investments
(Source Boston Consulting Group 2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 315
Fig. 19.1 Qatar Airways’ air corridors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 338
xv
List of Tables
Table 1.1 A 13-point list of demands, presented to Qatar, to resolve

the crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3
Table 5.1 Area of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia compared to the GCC
Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85
Table 5.2 Population of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia compared
to other GCC Countries (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85
Table 6.1 Suggested search terms on “Qatarileaks” website in English
and Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 109
Table 12.1 2016 Top import and top export destinations for each GCC
member (World Bank Data 2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 200
Table 12.2 2016 top import and top export destinations for each GCC
member, excluding superpowers and other GCC members
(World Bank Data 2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 201
Table 12.3 2016 Top import and top export destinations and amounts
for each GCC member, excluding superpowers and other
GCC members (World Bank Data 2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 202
xvii
Chapter 1
The 2017 Gulf Crisis: An Introduction
Mahjoob Zweiri, Md Mizanur Rahman, and Arwa Kamal
On 5 June 2017, three member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain—as well as Egypt, issued a
coordinated statement severing all relations with Qatar. This “Quartet” closed their
airspaces to the Qatar national airline (Qatar Airways), as well as banning Qatari
vessels and vehicles from their territorial waters and lands. The boycott soon became
a “Qatar blockade,” as the Quartet closed off access to Qatar, with an embargo on air,
sea, and land traffic to and from the peninsula. At the same time, they declared Qatari
officials and nationals stationed in their countries persona non grata and ordered them
to leave, while calling urgently on their own citizens living in Qatar to return home.
Among the countries of the GCC, Oman and Kuwait were the only GCC nations
not to break off ties with Qatar: refusing to align with any party, these two countries
called for restraint and took initiatives to resolve the crisis (Krieg 2019a; Ulrichsen
2018; Doumar et al. 2017).
In prosecuting the blockade, the Quartet accused Qatar of assisting Islamist groups
such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza, and Islamist fighters in
Syria, Libya, and Yemen. They also accused Qatar of supporting terrorist groups and
having an overly close relation with Iran, the regional rival of Saudi Arabia, and of
using Qatar’s national network Al Jazeera to foment protest, especially during the
Arab Spring in 2011 (Al Khalifa 2019; Baabood 2019; Davidson 2019; Doumar et al.
2017). In its initial reaction, Qatar asserted that there was “no legitimate justification”
for the blockade, adding that it constituted a “violation of its sovereignty.”1,2
The response by the international community initially was mixed, with global
powers generally asserting that this was an internal matter for the GCC (Bakir 2019;
Boussois 2019; Kettner 2019). The South China Morning Post quoted analysts as
saying the crisis would complicate China’s efforts to reach a free-trade deal with the
region (Wong 2017); while Germany’s foreign minister sought to defuse the crisis by
M. Zweiri · M. M. Rahman (B) · A. Kamal

Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: mizan@qu.edu.qa
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 1

M. Zweiri et al. (eds.), The 2017 Gulf Crisis, Gulf Studies 3,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_1
2 M. Zweiri et al.
meeting with his Saudi counterpart.3 There was no doubt, however, that this sudden
move by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt had engendered a crisis that not
only affected the region but had implications for the entire world.4
The initial six months saw significant efforts by the Qatari Government to resolve
the crisis: in an interview with CBS News, the Emir of Qatar said that he would be
willing “to walk 10,000 miles toward the brothers, if they walk one meter toward
reconciliation.”5 Yet the blockading countries, led by Saudi Arabia, continued to
increase the pressure, using their global influence to persuade other countries (mostly
third world) to sever relations with Qatar (for a comprehensive analysis, see Quilliam
2019). Yemen, Maldives, Mauritania, Comoros, and the eastern government of Libya
led by Khalifa Haftar responded positively to the Saudi request. For a time Senegal did
likewise, although it would later restore full relations with Qatar. Jordan, Djibouti,
Chad, and Niger chose to downgrade their diplomatic ties with Qatar rather than
break off completely. The Quartet also embarked on a campaign across the globe,
and in particular in Washington, to damage the image of Qatar.6
The blockade aimed ostensibly to extract concessions from Doha, including the
closure of Al Jazeera, curtailing its international influence. A 13-point list of demands
was drawn up and presented to Qatar on 22 June 2017, in essence requiring Qatar to
do the following: scale down diplomatic and military ties with Iran and shut down
the Turkish military base; sever ties with regional ideological organizations (Muslim
Brotherhood and others); cease funding to groups and individuals that the Quartet
considered terrorists, and hand over their nationals who had fled to Qatar for fear of
political persecution; shut down Al Jazeera and other news outlets such as Arabi21,
Rassd, and others; stop granting citizenship to wanted nationals from the Quartet and
stop aligning Qatar’s military, political, social, and economic policies with them; and
cease contact with opposition groups in the Quartet (see Table 1.1).
Qatar denied the accusations that it supported and financed terrorism, demanding
that the Saudi-led bloc present evidence to the contrary; it also refused to shutter the
state-sponsored news channel Al Jazeera, citing the right of the freedom of the press.
The list prompted Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera, to remark
“This is clearly not just a question of demands, but an insult.”7 Perhaps realizing
that the excessive nature of the 13 demands rendered them in effect superfluous, on
18 July 2017 the Quartet withdrew them in favor of what came to be known as “six
broad principles,” by which the Quartet meant: combating extremism and terrorism;
prohibiting all acts of incitement which spread and promote hatred and violence;
committing fully to the Riyadh Agreement; accepting and following all outcomes of
the Arab–Islamic–US summit held in Riyadh in 2017; refraining from interfering in
internal affairs of the Quartet; and agreeing to confront all forms of extremism and
terrorism that posed a threat to international peace and security (Table 1.1).
Qatar also sought international assistance, turning to the Turkish and Iranian
governments for their support. Saudi Arabia regards the Islamic Republic of Iran,
which is majority Shi’ite, as its main rival in the region, and sees it as a threat to
regional stability. Within the context of their long-running rivalry, Iran stands to gain
from Saudi Arabia’s ongoing blockade on Qatar. The Saudis and Emiratis, in turn,
came to realize that isolating Qatar would not be easy and could ultimately backfire
1 The 2017 Gulf Crisis: An Introduction 3
Table 1.1 A 13-point list of demands, presented to Qatar, to resolve the crisis
1 Scale down diplomatic ties with Iran and close the Iranian diplomatic missions in
Qatar, expel members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and cut off military and
intelligence cooperation with Iran. Trade and commerce with Iran must comply with
US and international sanctions in a manner that does not jeopardise the security of the
Gulf Cooperation Council
2 Immediately shut down the Turkish military base, which is currently under
construction, and halt military cooperation with Turkey inside of Qatar
3 Sever ties to all “terrorist, sectarian and ideological organisations,” specifically the
Muslim Brotherhood, ISIL, al-Qaeda, Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as the Nusra
Front) and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Formally declare these entities as terror groups as per
the list announced by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt, and concur with all
future updates of this list
4 Stop all means of funding for individuals, groups or organisations that have been
designated as terrorists by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, US and other countries
5 Hand over “terrorist figures,” fugitives and wanted individuals from Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, Egypt and Bahrain to their countries of origin. Freeze their assets, and provide
any desired information about their residency, movements and finances
6 Shut down Al Jazeera and its affiliate stations
7 End interference in sovereign countries’ internal affairs. Stop granting citizenship to
wanted nationals from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. Revoke Qatari
citizenship for nationals where such citizenship violates those countries’ laws
8 Pay reparations and compensation for loss of life and other financial losses caused by
Qatar’s policies in recent years. The sum will be determined in coordination with Qatar
9 Align Qatar’s military, political, social and economic policies with the other Gulf and
Arab countries, as well as on economic matters, as per the 2014 agreement reached
with Saudi Arabia
10 Cease contact with the political opposition in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and
Bahrain. Hand over files detailing Qatar’s prior contact with and support for opposition
groups, and submit details of their personal information and the support Qatar has
provided them
11 Shut down all news outlets funded directly and indirectly by Qatar, including Arabi21,
Rassd, Al Araby Al Jadeed, Mekameleen and Middle East Eye, etc
12 Agree to all the demands within 10 days of list being submitted to Qatar, or the list will
become invalid
13 Consent to monthly compliance audits in the first year after agreeing to the demands,
followed by quarterly audits in the second year, and annual audits in the following
10 years
Six Broad Principles, presented to Qatar
1 Commitment to combat extremism and terrorism in all its forms and to prevent their
financing or the provision of safe havens
2 Prohibiting all acts of incitement and all forms of expression which spread, incite,
promote or justify hatred and violence
(continued)
4 M. Zweiri et al.
Table 1.1 (continued)

3 Full commitment to Riyadh Agreement 2013, the supplementary agreement, and its
executive mechanism for 2014 within the framework of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) for Arab States
4 Commitment to all the outcomes of the Arab-Islamic-US Summit held in Riyadh in
May 2017
5 To refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of States and from supporting illegal
entities
6 The responsibility of all States of international community to confront all forms of
extremism and terrorism as a threat to international peace and security
Source The Peninsula, Saudi-led block drops the list of 13 demands: now call for six principles,
19 July 2017: retrieved on the 13 January 2020: https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/19/07/2017/
Saudi-led-bloc-drops-the-list-of-13-demands-now-calls-for-six-principles; Al Jazeera, ‘Arab states
issue 13 demands to end Qatar-Gulf crisis’, 12 July 2017, Al Jazeera News/Qatar, retrieved on
5 Dec 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/arab-states-issue-list-demands-qatar-crisis-
170623022133024.html
on them. Meanwhile, the government of Qatar continued to pursue unconditional

talks as the means of resolving the crisis, with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
remarking, “[I]t is indeed unfortunate that the ongoing Gulf crisis revealed the failure
of the GCC to attain its objectives and meet the aspirations of our Gulf peoples …
[H]istory teaches us that crises are destined to pass but their mishandling may linger
and leave behind long-lasting repercussions. … [W]e need to solve the problem but
the dignity and sovereignty of Qatar come before any considerations.”8
After three years, the Gulf blockade could be seen to have had multiple negative
and positive outcomes. While the enmity between the countries involved mounted,
Qatar made significant progress towards self-sufficiency. On multiple fronts—food,
international relations, trade, and others—it has shown increasing self-reliance. This
introductory chapter is accordingly divided into three broad sections: the next section
discusses the 2017 Gulf crisis in relation to the animosity and rivalry between Qatar
and its neighbors over the last few decades. This is followed by a section on how
Qatar has managed the crisis since the early days of the blockade and has emerged as
a stronger nation as a consequence. In this context, we focus on the challenges that
the Gulf crisis posed to Qatar, and some of the opportunities that Qatar was thereby
able to seize. We briefly offer a timeline of the crisis and the major shifts in internal
and external affairs. The final section gives an outline of the present volume, with a
brief discussion about each of the main parts therein.
The 2017 Gulf Crisis: A Continuity of the Animosity

and Rivalry Against Qatar
In terms of scope and impact, the 2017 Qatar blockade may be unprecedented;
however, in terms of the nature of the intervention and the underlying intentions it
cannot be said to be anything new—it is simply a continuation of the long-running

rivalry between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain on the one hand and Qatar on
the other (Gengler 2012; Pradhan 2018; Quilliam 2019; Al-Hashemi 2019; Davidson
2019; Krieg 2019b; Ulrichsen 2019;). We can trace the antecedents of the 2017 Gulf
Crisis back to the coup in Qatar in 1996, and the antagonistic relations that have been
perpetuated thereafter (Wright 2019; Roberts 2017; Doumar et al. 2017; Ulrichsen
2018). A proper understanding of the blockade, therefore, is quite impossible if we
do not review the history of recent decades.
Qatar gained its independence from Britain in 1971, and in 1972 Sheikh Khalifa
bin Hamad Al Thani became the Emir of Qatar. Qatari foreign policy during his
leadership remained essentially within the sphere of Saudi influence. When Sheikh
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, father of the current ruler, became Emir in 1995, a
fundamental change could be perceived in Qatar’s economic and foreign policy.
Qatar’s new focus on natural gas set the country on a different path from its predom-
inantly oil-producing neighbors, and it gradually emerged from the Saudi sphere.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Hamad, whom Qataris refer to as Father Emir,
Qatar accumulated immense wealth, allowing the country to take on many devel-
opment projects and materialize the Emir’s development vision within a relatively
short span of time. Alongside the transformation in the economic sphere, Father
Amir implemented ambitious programs designed to transform Qatar into an interna-
tional power, including conflict resolution and facilitating dialogue between warring
factions. Thus, Qatar strengthened its own socio-political foundations while also
cementing its international reputation.
However, the reign of Sheikh Hamad was not smooth: he immediately had to face
two coup attempts, in 1995 and 1996, both of which were foiled, with responsibility
at least partly ascribed to Saudi Arabia. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the United
States made efforts to reduce the animosity between Qatar and its powerful Gulf
neighbors but was not entirely successful. In 2002 Riyadh recalled its ambassador
from Doha after complaining about anti-Saudi content on Al Jazeera. However, when
the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, these countries again blamed Al Jazeera
for fueling the unrest in the region. According to Kabalan (2018: 35), the 30 June
2013 coup against Mohamed Morsi finally exposed the rift between Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and Bahrain, and Qatar.
Following a period of heightened tension after the Egyptian coup, Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar in early 2014, insti-
gating a diplomatic crisis that endured for nine months. Arguably, it was the Obama
Administration which restrained Saudi Arabia and the UAE from taking further
action during this tense period. However, Qatar had to opt for reconciliation, allowing
a transfer of power from Sheikh Hamad to his son Sheikh Tamim, the current Emir
of Qatar. Qatar signed the Riyadh Agreement in November 2014 and the three GCC
countries restored relations with Doha (Kabalan 2018: 35).
On 23 May 2017, the website Qatar News Agency (QNA) was hacked, and began
releasing statements purporting to be by Emir Tamim which hailed Qatar’s relation-
ship with Iran, expressed support for both Hezbollah and Hamas, and suggested that
the newly elected President Trump would not last long in office (Kirkpatrick and
6 M. Zweiri et al.
Frenkel 2017). Although the Qatari authorities vehemently denied the authenticity
of the statements, the news was disseminated throughout the region by outlets in the
UAE and Saudi Arabia. Email messages by the Emirati envoy in Washington were
subsequently leaked, indicating that the hack had been planned and executed by the
UAE with international assistance, but this did nothing to defuse the crisis.9 Less
than two weeks after the cyberattack, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, along
with Egypt, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar.10 Thus, on 5 June 2017, the current Gulf
Crisis began.
Despite divergences on the cause of the 2017 diplomatic onslaught on Qatar, there
is strong agreement among analysts that the Saudi-led blockading Quartet would
not have acted as it did without the implicit, if not explicit, support of President
Trump (Cafiero 2019; Kabalan 2018). The night before Trump’s visit to the kingdom,
former US defense secretary Robert Gates openly criticized Qatar for supporting
Islamists, despite the fact that Qatar hosts the Al-Udeid Camp, the biggest American
airbase in the region. Marwan Kabalan argues that the election of Donald Trump in
2016 encouraged Saudi Arabia and the UAE to resume the conflict and bring it to a
decisive conclusion, and hence provided the catalyst that sparked the 2017 Gulf Crisis
(Kabalan 2018: 35). However, after almost two and a half years of blockade, Qatar’s
foreign minister was able to say that he hopes for “progress” in the efforts to resolve
the crisis, following talks with Saudi Arabia on 6 December 2019.11 However, the
UAE later dismissed any potential to resolve the crisis soon.
Qatar Under the Blockade
Since the beginning of the crisis, Qatar has taken significant steps to mitigate the
impact of the international blockade. The Qatar Government took various steps to
lessen the impact of the blockade on Qatari citizens and resident population.12 Food
supplies, a key dependency of Qatar on neighboring countries, were secured through
the promotion of self-sufficiency. The emphasis was given to self-production, which
was welcomed by many local businesspeople for whom it increased economic oppor-
tunities.13 One of the most prominent impacts of the blockade was thus related to
food and other basic necessities. The Quartet, in imposing the blockade, had expected
that because of over-dependence on other countries for food, Qatar would be placed
in extremis. However, within a few days Iran started sending food by plane, which
proved vital in weathering the initial stages of the crisis. Over only a few days, five
planes of vegetables along with three ships with 350 tons of food were sent by Iran.14
On the economic front, it was expected that the blockade would have a destructive
impact on Qatari business. In the first week of the crisis, the Qatar Stock Exchange
fell more than seven percent. That first week was marked by chaos and confusion
among governments, administrators, political figures, businesses, and migrants.15
The crisis impacted seriously upon the import sector, which fell by nearly 40%. Mean-
while, Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers, which routinely
flies through Saudi airspace, diverted flights through Iranian airspace. Premier UAE
airlines Etihad and Emirates announced they would suspend flights to Qatar, as did
budget carriers Air Arabia and FlyDubai. Bahrain’s Gulf Air and Saudia joined
them.16
Further, within six months of the imposition of the blockade the Qatari admin-
istration moved towards other sources of economic development. One of these is
tourism. Qatar announced a program to allow visa-free entry for citizens of 80
countries, in order to encourage air travel and tourism. Nationals from dozens of
countries in Europe and elsewhere—including India, Lebanon, New Zealand, South
Africa, and the United States—need only present a valid passport to enter Qatar. The
liberalization of the visa regime gave Qatar the most liberal border controls in the
region.17
One of the important areas of concern was the impact of the blockade on the
proposed 2022 football World Cup, slated to be hosted by Qatar. It is important to
note that Qatar has invested heavily in football and this investment has reshaped
football boundaries globally (Thani and Heenan 2017). Although the crisis cast a
dark shadow over the possibility of the games, for the period of the first six months
the preparatory constructions were unaffected, and the FIFA President maintained
that the Qatar World Cup was not under threat.18
Among the grievances cited by boycotting countries, the Doha official news
channel Al Jazeera loomed large. Yet despite the insistence by the Saudi-led coali-
tion that Al Jazeera be closed, during the first six months the news broadcaster flatly
refused to be a bargaining point in any of the negotiations to end the blockade.
As the Qatari foreign affairs minister insisted, the Al Jazeera Media Network is an
“internal affair” and there would be no discussion about its future with nations that
were imposing a blockade on Qatar.19 At the same time, the demand for the closure
of Al Jazeera was unequivocally condemned by international, regional, and national
rights organization (Al Khalifa 2019).
Overall, the first six months of the blockade had a lighter impact on Qatar than
was expected. In fact, many economic developments were registered in the period.
The inauguration of the Hamad Port notably conferred positive benefits for locals as
well as the international community, having the potential for direct trade with Turkey,
Oman, Pakistan, and India. Qatar’s leadership was also able to generate sympathy
from the international community, and in fact bilateral relations with other countries
have almost doubled.20 Thus, after the initial confusion, the international community
extended more support than it had before. Many countries—France, United States,
Russia, Germany, Pakistan, Turkey, and others—expressed a desire for peace in the
Gulf,21 while the United Nations urged Gulf countries to “de-escalate the tensions
and to engage in direct dialogue”22 and called for “no unilateral steps” following the
major diplomatic fallout in the region.23
More interestingly, far from dividing public opinion, the crisis has united Qataris
and made Qatar’s relatively young ruler extremely popular. In an illustration of how
the crisis has brought Qataris together across tribal, sectarian, or political differences,
images of Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani can be seen everywhere, on domestic
and commercial buildings, vehicles, street signs, social media posts, etc. (Oruc 2019).
It was perhaps in view of these developments that the Saudi foreign minister Adel
8 M. Zweiri et al.
Al Jubeir acerbically remarked: “We must recognise that Qatar emerged from this
crisis faster than we expected and succeeded in winning international and regional
support in its favour due to our aggressive demands … the situation does not allow
any new measures to be taken against Qatar and we should not stop any mediation
because closing the door does not serve us.”24 Middle East expert Miroslav Zafirov
commented that “one thing is certain—so far, the blockade has failed” (Zafirov 2017:
200). Speaking to Al Jazeera, Saad al-Kaabi, CEO of Qatar Petroleum, went even
further, saying “I would like to thank the four countries for their blockade, because
it has made Qatar stronger, the people of Qatar stronger, their businesses stronger.
We will come out of this much stronger than before.”25
In the next six months of the crisis, from January 2018 till June 2018, we observe
an escalation of the tensions between Qatar and the boycotting countries. Prominent
efforts were made to demean the Qatari government’s efforts for self-sustainability
and empowerment, and there was a significant increase in propaganda against Qatar,
with a number of attempts to malign the image of Qatar using fake Twitter accounts
and hashtags.26 This period of the crisis also saw significant attempts by the Qatar
Government to ease the tension through collective efforts. Qatar urged the UN’s top
court to intercede against the UAE which, according to Qatar, had spread a “climate of
fear” among Qataris living resident therein, splitting families and causing “substantial
pain.” Doha thus appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to
order emergency measures to lift the restrictions imposed on Qataris in the UAE.27
The support of Iran and Turkey was also sustained in the second six months,
a support which was acknowledged by the Emir of Qatar on several occasions.28
Gradually, some countries began to restore their relationships with Qatar, Senegal
reinstating its ambassador to Qatar in August 2017 in a bid to encourage a resolution
to the crisis.29 And although most of the GCC countries remained opposed to Qatar,
Kuwait and Oman took significant steps to resolve the crisis and end the boycott.30
Remarkably, in this period the crisis indirectly enhanced the economic activity
in Qatar. During the first year, the national economy of Qatar saw a significant
increase: according to the Qatar National Bank, the national current account surplus
had widened to 6.4% of GDP, while the financial deficit had also narrowed by the
end of the first year of the conflict.31 The fiscal account deficit continued to be a
source of worry, but the impact decreased because of higher oil prices. The Ministry
of Finance reported that Qatar was estimated to go from a deficit of 1.6% GDP in
2017 to a surplus of 2.8% in 2018, based on the Economic Outlook Brief released by
the IMF in May 2018.32 As reported by the IMF, the economic blockade had not had
a serious impact on Qatar, and what impact it had was fading. Interestingly, the IMF
described the crisis as a catalyst for economic self-reliance by Qatar.33 Overall, Qatar
had competently managed growth performance despite the rift with major regional
powers.34
At no point in the first year did food become a problem for the Qatari Adminis-
tration. While Iran and Turkey actively transferred food and other products for local
consumption, Greece also offered its agro-tech expertise in support of Qatar’s self-
sufficiency plans.35 Sales of Qatari products increased 300% in the first quarter of
2018 compared with the same period in 2017.36 Local dairy companies worked to
increase their production to cover the needs of the local market, aiming to meet 92%
of local demand for milk by the end of the first half of 2018.37 In pursuit of making
Qatar self-reliant, local farms had more than doubled their aggregate production.38
Despite the crisis, assets and revenues at Qatar’s Islamic banks had in fact grown
over the previous year. The state’s four full-fledged Islamic banks, Qatar Islamic
Bank, Masraf Al Rayan, Qatar International Islamic Bank, and Barwa Bank, held
a combined 358.6 billion riyals ($96 billion) in assets in the first quarter of 2018,
an 8.8% increase from a year earlier. Their focus on Qatar’s domestic market had
clearly helped them to withstand the crisis.39 Yet despite the positive outlook for many
sectors of the economy, the aviation sector, and in particular Qatar Airways, took a
serious hit. Qatar Airways reported a loss of more than $69 m due to the blockade, in
what the airline called the “most challenging year in its 20-year history,” recording
a 19% decrease in seat occupancy on departure flights.40 The closure of Bahrain’s
airspace had been the most critical factor in this decline.41
The war of words in this period did not let up. In response to a comment by the
Saudi Crown Prince that the “Gulf crisis is a very, very, very small problem,” the head
of the Qatar Media Corporation wrote that although Qatar is geographically a very,
very, very small country, it is an independent state and is not led by outsiders; and he
commented that there was “a very, very, very big country which is not independent
and is being controlled by a very, very, very small emirate.”42
The year 2018 came to an end with another appeal by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh
Tamim to the four countries imposing the blockade to hold “unconditional” talks to
end what he described as a “flagrant” violation of international law. “The blockade
on Qatar has harmed the reputation of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the ensuing
paralysis has reflected negatively on the council’s aspired role towards regional and
global issues,” the Emir said in his speech at the 73rd UN General Assembly.43
Qatar continued to receive mild international support, and the international
community took steps to restore peace in the region; France, in particular, had been
making sustained attempts to resolve the crisis.44 Chinese diplomats and academics
praised the efforts of the Qatar Government: as the Chinese authorities observed,
Qatar had acted competently and responsibly in response to the blockade, and its
innovative approach had made the country self-reliant and mitigated the worst effects
on the Qatari population.45 Yet while the shadow of uncertainty remained, it was
decreasing in significance over time as Qatar continued to take steps towards self-
reliance. Media coverage declined in the period June to December 2018, and the
international discussion now seemed to shift away from the question of whether
Qatar supported terrorism, to cover instead matters related to Qatari self-sufficiency
and its resilient economic development.
After two years of crisis, a decline in media attention and a normalization of
the blockade could be observed. The attempts by both Qatar and the international
community to bring about a resolution having had no results, discussions of the
blockade or the cessation of the crisis dwindled. The boycotting countries maintained
their demands and held no fruitful talks, despite the continuous requests by Qatari
officials to work out a mutually advantageous way to exit the crisis.46
10 M. Zweiri et al.
At the end of the second year, Qatar officially withdrew its membership of the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The breaking news
slightly rekindled interest in the issue, since it was thought that the move would
again increase the tension in the region.47
Overall, then, it is fair to say that the Qatar crisis seems to have been trans-
formed from a tragedy to an opportunity for the Qatari people. In May 2019, the
Swedish envoy to Qatar, Her Excellency Ewa Polano, praised the improvements in
food production, noting that Qatar has seen a significant increase in homegrown
agricultural products, especially vegetables and fruits, and that precisely because the
products are homegrown, prices have also decreased considerably. And alongside
food products, she noted, Qatar has become near to 100% self-reliant in the produc-
tion of milk and dairy products.48 According to the Global Competitiveness Report
2019, Qatar ranked as the second most competitive Arab economy, and globally 29th
out of 141 countries. In fact, Qatar moved up one rank from the previous year’s 30th
place and this clearly reflects the country’s continued global competitiveness.49 In
fact, the end of the second year showed that Qatar had in effect survived the assault
on its sovereignty and economy and utilized the opportunity to better position itself
on the global stage. In the face of the boycotting countries, the crisis had ironically
proved a trigger point for Qatar to become self-sufficient. Thus, it can be said that the
crisis has made Qatar stronger and more independent, not only in the areas of food,
but also in business partnerships, exports, international relations, and other important
international issues.
Structure of the Book
This book, the 2017 Gulf Crisis: An Interdisciplinary Approach, discusses the Gulf
Crisis from a range of different academic perspectives. The overall focus of the book
is to document the changes that have occurred on different frontiers in the course
of the 2017 crisis, including security, threat perceptions, strategic alliances, foreign
relations, and socio-economic conditions. While not unaware of the risk of high
ambition, this book sets out to be a key reference for the 2017 Gulf Crisis. It is an
outcome of a conference organized in December 2018 in Qatar University by the
Gulf Studies Center, which saw presentations and in-depth debates on a wide range
of themes ranging from cyber and information security, to the role of media and
information technology in aggravating conflicts and creating political cultures, the
shifts of alliances in the region, and the long-term economic implications of this crisis
for all parties. Above all, the conference sought to offer a holistic understanding of
the siege in its political, economic, and social aspects. Reflecting the efforts of that
conference, the present volume draws on a range of different disciplines to address
the crisis from historical, political, security, societal, and economic perspectives.
The book can claim to have unique importance in documenting a Gulf Crisis which
differs from any other crisis in the history of the region. In all previous diplomatic
rifts, the maximum extent of hostilities has amounted to withdrawing ambassadors
and closing embassies in the target country. With the international siege, and in pitting
neighboring and regional countries against one country, the 2017 Gulf Crisis stands
out as a unique historical event which requires detailed analysis. The book can also
claim uniqueness through its close temporal proximity to the events it documents.
Drawing on a variety of academic frameworks, it is an attempt to set in historical
perspective, and provide a deep understanding of, events which were still very much
in development at the time of publication.
The book is divided into five parts: (I) Gulf security, (II) Threat perception, (III)
Developing strategic relations and shifting political alliances, (IV) Foreign policy
dynamics in a Post-GCC era, and finally (V) Qatar’s economic strategies in the face
of the blockade.
Part I is dedicated to Gulf Security, which was being shaken even before the 2017
Gulf Crisis broke. Part I includes six chapters that focus on a new understanding
of the vulnerability of the Gulf region, Qatar–Turkey rapprochement, GCC states’
perceptions of regional powers, transformations of the Gulf security landscape, cyber
operation, and trans-Gulf resonances. Chapter 2, “Vulnerability of the Gulf Region:
A New Understanding,” by Mahjoob Zweiri and Betül Doğan Akkaş, argues that
major disagreements and conflicts in the Gulf are affiliated with the Arab Spring and
elaborates the Gulf crisis in relation to the ramifications of those uprisings. The paper
proposes that the Gulf crisis occurred as a result of the accumulation of conflicting
approaches among the GCC states since the Arab Spring. It discusses the GCC
countries’ positions on Libya and Bahrain, and then moves on to the ramifications
of the Arab Spring, drawing on the examples of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi
interventionism, and intra-GCC rivalry. The chapter thus offers a new understanding
of the vulnerability of the Gulf region.
Chapter 3, “Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement: Challenging the Regional Status Quo
in the Gulf Security Sub-Complex,” by Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin, argues that Turkey
and Qatar sought to change the regional status quo in order to forge a new regional
security order, and to achieve this goal they cemented an alliance based on their
respective qualities as military and financial powers. The chapter claims that the
transformation in the domestic politics of the Gulf States played a decisive role in
shaping the Turkey–Qatar alliance, and contends that the Gulf security sub-complex
was reshaped in the wake of the Arab Spring. This chapter discusses the Qatar–Turkey
alliance, elaborates the concept of the security complex with specific reference to
the Gulf security sub-complex, and points to the implications of the Qatar–Turkey
alliance for the regional security sub-complex.
Chapter 4, “Qatar Crisis: GCC States’ Perception of Regional Powers,” by Noof
Rasid Al-Dosari, sheds light on the role of perceptions in the field of international
relations and foreign policy analysis with a focus on the Qatar crisis. Noof Rasid
applies discourse theory and analysis to GCC foreign policy making. The chapter
explains how actors’ perceptions have an influence on the GCC’s foreign policy
decisions.
Chapter 5, “Transformations of the Gulf Security Landscape in the Post-Gulf
Crisis: A Geopolitical Approach,” by Nayef bin Nahar Al-Shamari and Hamad bin
Ali Al-Mohannadi, examines the shifts in the Gulf security scene following the
12 M. Zweiri et al.
2017 crisis, looking primarily at three waves of security transformations: in the

range of security, in security standards, and in the balance of security. This study
evaluates and addresses existing problems in the Gulf and concentrates on three
transformations that are needed in the Gulf security scene: the transformation from
tactical security to strategic security; the transformation from traditional security to
geostrategic security; and the transformation from securitization to rational security.
The chapter concludes that the costs associated with the crisis are much higher than
that of the intra-GCC differences.
Chapter 6, “The Cyber Operation against Qatar News Agency,” by James Shires,
argues that the Qatar blockade was catalyzed by a novel use of cyber tools—the
planting of a fake story about the Qatari Emir HH Sheikh Tamim Al-Thani on the
website of Qatar News Agency (QNA), portraying the Emir as expressing support
for Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. James Shires describes this operation as an
extreme case of what he calls “hack-and-leak operations.” The chapter elaborates
how hack-and-leak operations involve both an intrusion into specific digital systems
and networks, and an attempt to influence certain audiences through the public
release of information. The impact of hack-and-lead operations is analyzed in a
tripartite framework focusing on the context, characteristics, and audiences of the
QNA operation.
Chapter 7, “Trans-Gulf Resonances: The Central Role of Egypt in the Saudi
Dispute on Qatar,” by Moisés Garduño García, provides a context to study current
relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt in order to show the importance that Cairo
has for Riyadh’s economic and strategic plans in the Red Sea. The chapter presents
the extension of the dynamics of conflict in the Gulf region as a strategy to curb
the Iranian influence there. The chapter sheds light on the connections between the
Saudi security apparatus and the “deep state” in Egypt, the relations between Cairo
and Riyadh in the context of the Syrian conflict, the role of Egypt in the Saudi–
Qatar crisis of 2017, and finally the current situation in the Red Sea and the growing
strategic importance of Egypt in the new balance of power between Saudi Arabia–
UAE–Egypt, on the one hand, whose strategic policies in the Red Sea are closer to
Israel; and Qatar, Iran, and Turkey on the other.
Part II addresses the changing threat perceptions in the Gulf before and after
the crisis, and the changes in political dynamics within the GCC. Part II includes
three chapters. Chapter 8, “Evolving Threat Perceptions and Changing Regional
Dynamics in a ‘Post-GCC’ Era,” by Kristian Ulrichsen, argues that the blockade
of Qatar has widened existing cracks in the Gulf into a chasm, and has generated
unintended consequences that risk inflicting generational damage on its political and
social fabric. The chapter examines the second-order consequences of the blockade
of Qatar, arguing that there is no simple binary division within the Gulf States on any
of the regional flashpoints—such as the role of Islamists in domestic political land-
scapes, political and economic ties with Iran, or complicated relationships between
the smaller Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The chapter maps the web of overlap-
ping flashpoints, actors, and interests at stake, and argues that any attempt to impose
uniformity risks generating a further backlash both between states and, in the case
of the United Arab Emirates, among the seven constituent emirates.
Chapter 9, “Popular Sentiments and Elite Threat Perception in the Gulf: Iran in the
Public Discourse in Saudi Arabia,” by Éva Ádám, identifies two significant devel-
opments in Saudi Arabia’s foreign and domestic policies prior to King Salman’s
rule and links these developments to the reframing of multiple issues in public and
official Saudi discourse: inter alia, American–Saudi, Israeli–Saudi, and Saudi–GCC
relations. The chapter argues that the Saudi elite has put a lot of effort into establishing
a regime of truth based on Iran’s perceived or real hegemonic intentions. Éva Ádám
assesses the development of the Saudi narrative on Iran starting from the founders’
narrative on the Shia and Iran, and concluding with examples of contemporary polit-
ical discourse. The chapter reports that the Saudi elite and the public have never been
so consensual on any issue as they are during King Salman’s era with regards to the
Iranian threat. The chapter concludes that this change in the mindset might result
in a permanent transformation of the domestic setting, which might contribute to a
deterioration of the regional conflicts.
Chapter 10, “The GCC, Iraq, and Iran: Perception of Threats Before and After the
Crisis,” by Shaikha Majed Al-Moslemani, emphasizes the sources of GCC states’
enduring alliance with the United States, as well as the nature of political relations
between the three regional axes: Iraq, Iran, and the GCC. The chapter elaborates
how the Gulf crisis has affected the perception of threat in the region. As this section
affirms, for as long as Iran is considered a threat, regional unrest will continue.
Part III addresses the shifts in political alliances and the developments in strategic
relations that have occurred as a result of the crisis. In response to the blockade by
the Saudi-led coalition, which involved other countries in the MENA region such
as Egypt, of course with the support of the current US administration, Qatar sought
to strengthen its relations with Turkey and Iran, especially in sourcing food that it
had previously imported from the countries that were now imposing the blockade.
Qatar also began to build relations with Asian countries such as Malaysia. These
shifts in alliances among the GCC countries challenged the regional status quo in
the Gulf, mitigating the effects of the blockade, while at the same time serving to
cement the dispute among the GCC countries. Chapter 11, “The Qatar–Iran–Turkey
Nexus: Shifts in Political Alliances and Economic Diversifications in the Gulf Crisis,”
by Robert Riggs, argues that the emergence of stronger trilateral relations between
Qatar, Turkey, and Iran is an unexpected result of the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar.
This chapter shows that Qatar’s enhanced trilateral relations with Iran and Turkey
has been both a cause and result of the blockade.
Chaper 12, “Look Middle, Look East! The Future of GCC Strategic Partnerships,”
by Shareefa Al-Adwani, points out that the members of the GCC currently have long-
term strategic relations with the superpowers: the United States, China, Russia, and
the EU. Al-Adwani argues that the GCC members should foster higher-level relations
with other stable states in order to ensure continuity in areas such as diplomacy,
trade, and even security. The chapter highlights the importance of forging strategic
partnerships between the GCC and other middle power states to realize common
GCC goals and to build a stronger negotiating position for the GCC in the long run.
Chapter 13, “The Malaysia–Qatar Relationship: The Perspective from Malaysia—
An Emerging Middle Power,” by Ishtiaq Hossain and Syaza Farhana Mohamad
14 M. Zweiri et al.
Shukri, argues that Malaysia’s relationship with Qatar should be understood within
the context of the foreign policy behavior of an emerging middle power within
an international environment, and a domestic context in Malaysia which has also
undergone major changes in its political order following the change in leadership in
2018.
Since one of the main drivers of the Gulf Crisis is in fact foreign policy, the
book dedicates Part IV to discussing the foreign policy goals and challenges of the
GCC states. The chapters in this section set out how each Gulf State as well as
Iran were exposed to internal and regional developments, such as the Arab Spring,
which led them to develop their foreign policies in specific ways. This change in
foreign policies and the reluctance to unify around a set of specific goals has created
tensions, especially since 2015. This section also records how other countries that
have interests in the Gulf region have changed their foreign policy in pursuit of their
own benefits. Turkey has sided with Qatar since the blockade was declared, and
accordingly its relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deteriorated. It has
had to modify its foreign policy and to maintain a complex web of relations with
the world powers. Turkey, a country that is now focusing on the projection of soft
power, will not use hard power unless it considers the need to be extreme.
Chapter 14, “Competing Radicalisms: A Comparison of Saudi and Iranian Foreign
Policies after 2015,” by Mahjoob Zweiri and Majed Al-Ansari, compares foreign
policy dynamics after 2015. The chapter sheds light on how revolutionary ideology
in Iran and the ruling Al-Saud family in Saudi Arabia are largely responsible for
defining foreign policy priorities and courses of action in the respective states.
Chapter 15, “The Gulf Crisis: Turkey’s Soft Power in the Gulf,” by Nesibe
Hicret Battaloğlu, examines Turkey’s soft power policies and impacts in the six
Gulf Cooperation Council member states through analytical, normative, ideological,
and empirical measures, with a focus on the Gulf crisis and Turkey’s engagement
with Qatar.
Chapter 16, “Iran’s Pragmatic Foreign Policy in Response to Regional Crises: The
Case of the Blockade against Qatar,” by Mehran Haghirian, analyzes Iran’s foreign
policy decision-making process with respect to the Persian Gulf region by looking
at the level of pragmatism in its approach towards regional crises. Merhan uses the
blockade as a case study to examine Iran’s policy shift towards Qatar from mere
rivalry to a practical, win–win relationship. The chapter reveals that Iran’s decision
to assist Qatar at a critical juncture in the geopolitical environment of the Persian
Gulf has shaped the relations between Iran and Qatar.
Part V discusses Qatar’s economic strategies in its attempts at facing down the
siege. Since the siege cut off the import of goods from the blockading countries, while
also stopping businesses and trade, Qatar had to take the necessary measures to ensure
a prosperous and sustainable life for its citizens. This section explores the way Qatar
met its economic challenges, which later contributed to the development of all the
sectors of the country’s economy. Chapter 17, “The Gulf Blockade: A Fifth Qatari
Economic Stage is Looming,” by Moustafa Amin Mohammed Ali, explores some of
the crucial economic challenges that have contributed not only to the development
of Qatar’s economy but also to the emergence of a fifth economic phase. The chapter
examines the Gulf Crisis from an economic perspective, shedding light on the four
phases of Qatar’s economy. Moustafa suggests that Qatar’s economy is embarking
on a fifth economic phase, an era that is very likely to trigger fundamental changes
to the traditional rentier GCC economic model.
Chapter 18, “To What Extent has the Sovereign Wealth Fund Assisted Qatar’s
Security and Foreign Policy in Resisting the Blockade?” by Fahad Al-Marri, suggests
that the Gulf crisis should be a lesson for Qatar and other countries in the region
concerning the need to accumulate emergency funds in sovereign wealth funds to
support governments in times of need.
Finally, Chapter 19, “The Role of Qatar Airways in the Economic Development
of Qatar: Before and During the Gulf Crisis,” by Catalina Petcu, examines the role
of Qatar Airways in the economic development of Qatar with a focus on the post-
crisis period. Petcu reports that Qatar airways faced challenges in the initial period
of the crisis, but later managed to cope with the loss. However, the chapter shows
that the greatest contribution of Qatar Airways to the national economy comes from
the improved connectivity, which stimulates connections with foreign markets and
develops the tourism sector.
The long-term goal in putting this volume together has been to reflect on the
2017 Gulf Crisis and to provide an assessment of its political, security, social, and
economic aspects. Our goal is to offer the reader the material for a comprehensive
understanding of a crisis that cannot be grasped by adopting any one perspective
alone.
Notes
1. Gulf crisis: Seven nations cut diplomatic ties to Qatar as rift deepens, Macau
Daily Times, June 6, 2017. Retrieved July 26, 2019, from https://macaudailyti
mes.com.mo/gulf-crisis-seven-nations-cut-diplomatic-ties-qatar-rift-deepens.
html.
2. Al Jazeera, Gulf diplomatic crisis: Qatar’s reaction in full, 5 June
207, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/gulf-diplomatic-crisis-qatar-rea
ction-full-170605071246160.html.
3. Al Jazeera English (13 August 2017). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest updates.
5. Gulf Times (31 October 2017). Emir ready to go the extra mile for reconciliation.
6. See, UAE led a ‘Demonization Campaign’ Against Qatar, Al Jazeera Docu-
mentary, September 19, 2017.
7. Arab States issue 13 demands to end Qatar-Gulf crisis, Al Jazeera, 12 July
2017, retruved on the 18 January 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/
06/arab-states-issue-list-demands-qatar-crisis-170623022133024.html.
8. Qatar Tribune. 7th November 2018. Crisis will pass, Qatar will prosper.
9. See UAE used Israeli spyware ‘to target Qatari emir, Al Jazeera English, 1st
September 2018; and ‘Saudi and UAE created crisis to usurp Qatar’s wealth’
Qatar Tribune English, 20th January 2018.
16 M. Zweiri et al.
10. Divided Gulf pp 1-18, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-

6314-6_1.
11. Aljazeera News report, ‘Qatar foreign minister: Gulf crisis has moved from
stalemate’, retrieved on the 7th December 2019: https://www.aljazeera.com/
news/2019/12/qatar-foreign-minister-gulf-crisis-moved-stalemate-191206192
335553.html.
13. Al Jazeera English (13 August 2017). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest updates,
The Peninsula (15 August 2017). Siege helps Qatar gain real political indepen-
dence; Al Jazeera English (31 August 2017). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest
updates.
14. NDTV. (2017, June 11). Iran Sends 5 Planes Of Vegetables To Qatar
Amid Concerns of Shortages. Retrieved August 7, 2019, from NDTV.com
website: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-has-sent-5-planes-filled-with-
food-supplies-to-qatar-iran-air-1710652; Smith, Reiss (22 June 2017). Qatar
news LIVE: Saudi Arabia gives list of demands to Doha—Gulf crisis latest.
express.co.uk.
15. The Punch (27 July 2017). Gulf crisis: UAE freezes accounts of Qatar-linked
entities.
16. The Gulf News, 6 June 2017, Emirates, ‘Etihad Airways, Air Arabia, Fly Dubai
suspend flights to, from Doha’.
17. The Peninsula (15 August 2017). Siege helps Qatar gain real political indepen-
dence.
19. Jazeera, A. (2017d, June 13). Al Jazeera off the table in any
Gulf crisis talks: FM. Retrieved August 9, 2019, from Aljazeera.com
website: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/al-jazeera-table-gulf-crisis-
talks-fm-170613023203310.html..
20. Gulf Times (31 December 2017). Qatar defies siege; emerges stronger and
respectful among nations.
21. Jazeera, A. (2017d, June 11). US and Russia call for dialogue over
Qatar-GCC dispute. Retrieved August 9, 2019, from Aljazeera.com
website: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/russia-call-dialogue-qatar-
gcc-dispute-170611132858154.html.
22. US and Russia call for dialogue over Qatar-GCC dispute. Retrieved August 9,
2019, from Aljazeera.com website: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/
russia-call-dialogue-qatar-gcc-dispute-170611132858154.html.
24. Qatar Tribune. 23rd September 2017. Qatar emerged out of the crisis faster than
expected.
25. Talk to Al Jazeera—Saad al-Kaabi: The blockade has made Qatar Stronger’,
July 22, 2017.
26. The Peninsula (2 February 2018). Propaganda through bots.
27. Agence France Presse (30 June 2018). Qatar urges UN’s top court to end UAE
‘climate of fear’.
28. Agence France Presse (18 May 2018). Qatar emir thanks Iran for support in
Gulf crisis.
29. Tehran Times (6 March 2018). Saudi-led blockade on Qatar falling apart.
30. Al Jazeera English (14 March 2018). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest updates.
31. The Peninsula, Qatar current account surplus widens to 6.4% of GDP,
17 May 2018, https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/17/05/2018/Qatar-
current-account-surplus-widens-to-6.4-of-GDP retrieved on the 15 January
2019.
32. Al Jazeera English (18 May 2018). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All latest updates..
33. Al Jazeera English (7 March 2018). Businesses in Qatar booming since Gulf
crisis began.
34. Gulf Times (31 May 2018). Qatar has managed impact of siege: IMF.
35. Gulf Times (30 April 2018). Solution to Gulf crisis must be based on ‘respect
to sovereignty’.
36. Al Jazeera English (23 May 2018). Qatar-Gulf crisis: All latest updates.
37. Al Jazeera English (7 June 2018). Gulf crisis one year: Qatar steps up self-
sustainability.
38. Yangyuanyong (23 June 2018). Qatar to become self-sufficient in food
production amid Saudi-led siege. Xinhua News Agency.
39. PANAPRESS—Pan African News Agency (31 August 2018). Qatari Islamic
banks grow despite Gulf crisis: IFSB data.
40. BBC Monitoring Middle East (20 September 2018). Qatar Airways reports
$69 m loss amid Gulf boycott.
41. How airspace is distributed in the Gulf.
42. Gulf Times (25 February 2018). ‘Though geographically small, Qatar is still
independent’.
43. BBC Monitoring Middle East (26 September 2018). Qatar emir calls for
unconditional’ talks to end Gulf crisis.
44. BBC Monitoring Middle East (5 July 2018). Qatari emir to meet French
president in Paris.
45. The Peninsula (8 December 2018). Chinese diplomats, academics hail Qatar’s
success over siege.
46. Gulf Times (6 January 2019). FM calls for dialogue based on mutual respect to
solve Gulf crisis.
47. Voice of America Press Releases and Documents (2 January 2019). Experts
Warn Gulf Rift Widening as Qatar Quits OPEC.
48. Qatar Tribune (2 May 2019). Blockade a blessing in disguise for Qatar, feels
Swedish envoy.
49. The Peninsular, Qatar, 2nd most competitive Arab economy: WEF report,
accessed on the 12 January 2020: https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/
10/10/2019/Qatar,-2nd-most-competitive-Arab-economy-WEF-report.
18 M. Zweiri et al.
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Part I
Gulf Security
Chapter 2
Underlined Vulnerabilities of the Gulf
Region: A New Understanding
Mahjoob Zweiri and Betul Dogan-Akkas
The rift between the Gulf States that opened in 2017 has served to intensify centuries-
old debates and tensions in the Middle East. The Gulf crisis has also engendered
significant diplomatic tensions between GCC countries, resulting in economic sanc-
tions, the closure of intraregional borders, and even the unleashing of new political
struggles upon the region. Since the very beginning of the dispute, studies have seen
the Gulf crisis as emerging out of the Arab Spring, and in particular the disagree-
ments between GCC countries on the future of these Arab revolts. This chapter takes
a similar perspective, examining the Gulf States’ conflicting approaches in relation
to the Arab Spring. Our aim here is to rectify the under-theorization of the Gulf,
and provide a structure for analyzing the regional conflicts that have deepened in the
last three years in response to the Qatar Blockade. These conflicts are explored in
relation to the various effects of the Arab Spring.
When major disagreements and conflicts in the Gulf are associated with the Arab
Spring, an immediate question comes to mind: Is it right to start from the Arab
Spring? Although Gulf States are relative latecomers to the realm of international
politics, even prior to 2011 they cooperated, disagreed, and engaged in alliances and
rivalries. Additionally, given the fact that the history of the Gulf region has witnessed
a series of crises, beginning with the early state formation process, we might well
ask: What makes the current Gulf crisis unique in comparison to previous crises?
In this study, we argue that the Arab Spring rapidly and unexpectedly provoked the
Gulf countries to adopt conflicting stances in respect of regional politics. The GCC
countries’ disagreements have grown since the Arab Spring revolutions, which in turn
has prompted a political earthquake in the Gulf, with far-reaching consequences for
M. Zweiri (B)
Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: mzweiri@qu.edu.qa
B. Dogan-Akkas
Gulf Studies Program, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_2
22 M. Zweiri and B. Dogan-Akkas
both Arab and non-Arab countries within the Middle East. Hence, gaining an insight
into the regional ramifications of the Arab Spring can help us to better understand
the reasons behind the Gulf crisis. Put differently, this study argues that the current
crisis can be seen as an outgrowth of the GCC states’ conflicting approaches in the
wake of the Arab Spring. To structure the argument, we investigate the involvement
of regional players in the Gulf crisis. The chapter begins by analyzing the GCC
countries’ positions as regards Libya and Bahrain, and then considers the impact of
the Arab Spring in order to highlight the conflicting approaches of Gulf States, using
the examples of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi interventionism, and intra-GCC
rivalry.
Honeymoon of the Arab Spring
The 13 demands of the Saudi-Emirati-led anti-Qatar bloc speak to the GCC states’
divergence of opinion on key regional issues, which came to surface with the eruption
of the crisis. This is especially evident in the demand for Qatar to eliminate its
alleged “relations with terrorist organizations,” to pay compensation, to cease its
interference in GCC states’ internal affairs, to cut ties with Iran, and to close the
Turkish military base. The anti-Qatar bloc has made their disagreements with Qatar
very clear (see Arab states issue 13 demands to end Qatar-Gulf crisis 2017). In
addition, their defining the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, spurred
by Egypt’s involvement in the anti-Qatar bloc, highlights the cracks that began to
emerge in the fragile unity of the GCC countries following the Arab Spring (Roberts
2017). Before the ramifications of this regional upheaval became evident, in the early
period of the Arab Spring the Gulf countries had indeed cooperated (Kamrava 2012;
Ulrichsen 2012).
From the first day of the Arab revolts, Qatar had supported this wave of change
that was sweeping through the authoritarian regimes. From the end of 2010 to 2013,
when the Arab Spring started to devolve into violence with the onset of civil war
in Syria and the military coup in Egypt, Qatar opted to support anti-regime groups
financially, politically, and militarily (Ulrichsen 2014). In doing so, Qatar can be seen
as actively intervening in the situations in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria.
In Bahrain and Libya, Qatar was in line with the GCC: the international intervention
in Libya was led by NATO, with the UAE also being part of it (Young 2013). In
Bahrain, although Qatar’s intervention was purely symbolic, it took place under the
aegis of the GCC and was directed at Bahrain’s political survival (Friedman 2012).
Qatar and UAE joined the NATO-led intervention in Libya in March 2011.
This was Qatar’s first direct and active military intervention abroad (aside from
the symbolic interventions in the 1990–91 Kuwait War and the Bahrain uprising)
and was part of a declaration of “Arab solutions to Arab problems,” a policy which
emphasizes Qatari regional leadership (Young 2013). In analyzing this event, it is
worth recalling Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim’s statement: “Qatar will partic-
ipate in military action because we believe there must be Arab states undertaking
2 Underlined Vulnerabilities of the Gulf Region … 23
this action, because the situation there is intolerable” (Ulrichsen 2014). As clarified
by HH Sheikh Hamad in an interview for CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Qatar did not see
the opposition group in Libya as illegal or terrorist; rather, it saw them as “freedom
fighters.” HH Sheikh Hamad stated that it was for this reason that Qatar sent military
and financial aid under UN Security Council Resolution 1973. HH Sheikh Hamad
also said in the interview that some military equipment even required training, and,
as such, Qatar was provided training to the Libyan opposition in order to defeat
Qaddafi’s forces (The Emir of Qatar on arming Libyan rebels 2011). The studies
also claim that Qatar helped the opposition to sell Libyan oil (Khatib, 2013; The
Military Balance 2016 2016; Ulrichsen 2014). Even before military intervention,
Qatar was the trigger behind the Arab League’s demand that the UN instigate a no-
fly zone over Libya, which is an indication of their political power (Echague 2014).
There is insufficient literature, whether academic or official documents, concerning
Qatar’s role in Libya; however, reports by the RAND Cooperation and International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) on the Libya operation provide some details on
the intervention. Qatar participated in the Libyan conflict on three levels; first, Qatar
sent aircraft (six Mirage fighter jets from Qatar, six F-16 s and six Mirages from the
UAE); second, it transported materiel and humanitarian aid to the Libyan opposi-
tion; and lastly, it sent special forces to fight and help organize the opposition (The
Military Balance 2016 2016; Mueller 2015). In addition to this material support, Al
Jazeera played a crucial role in spreading the voice of the opposition, while offering
a platform for another small Libyan television channel, broadcast from Doha, to
convey the real situation on the ground.
In the case of Bahrain, Qatar’s official stance was in support of the Kingdom of
Bahrain, sending a symbolic police force to help suppress the rebels (Gulf states
send forces to Bahrain following protests 2011; The Military Balance 2016 2016).
This was a critical situation for the Gulf monarchies, because any political problem
in Bahrain regarding the Al-Khalifa family would have a knock-on effect on other
GCC countries. Qatar was in fact supportive of change, and perceived the need for
good governance in other Middle Eastern countries; however, when it came to the
GCC, the official reaction became a “bandwagon” led by the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia.
In an attempt to explain Qatar’s official approach to Bahrain and Libya, Ulrichsen
(2014) summarizes the reasoning behind the policy changes, stating that “the upris-
ings in North Africa did not present a material or ideological threat to Qatari inter-
ests in the same way that a revolt against a fellow ruling family just 25 miles off
Qatar’s western shore did” (Ulrichsen 2014). Therefore, in response to the upris-
ings in Bahrain, it was crucial for the monarchies of the Gulf to present a common
stance against the world and in particular Iran, which was responsible for the unrest.
In addition, intervention in Bahrain reflected three dynamics within Qatari political
and military security policy. First, as stated earlier, it represented a common GCC
stance, whereby Qatar emphasized its ties with the GCC in terms of the political
security apparatus. Second, the deployment of Qatari police in Bahrain was an indi-
cation of military power, even if such support was merely symbolic. Third, this can
be defined as de facto nationalism, in other words an instantaneous set of actions

intended to prevent any spill-over into other GCC countries (Friedman 2013).
Conflicting Approaches to Regional Politics
Amid the new atmosphere of the Arab Spring, the Gulf States’ conflicting approaches
to regional politics were shaped by the ramifications of this political earthquake for
the GCC countries. In this section we elucidate three key effects of the Arab Spring on
Gulf politics: the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood; Saudi interventionism; and
intra-GCC rivalry. The reasons and motivations behind the Gulf crisis will become
clearer by way of these three cornerstones of antagonism in the GCC.
A series of unexpected changes in the Middle East fostered tension between the
GCC countries, due in part to the conflicting stances taken by Qatar and some of the
GCC countries. This divergence began immediately following the military coup in
Egypt, which also coincided with HH Sheikh Tamim’s accession to power. When the
Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected as president, Qatar
made donations to Egypt totaling $5 billion, and planned to invest $18 billion in the
country for the next five years (The Associated Press 2013). QInvest, Qatar’s leading
investment group, declared that it would purchase a majority stake in Egypt’s biggest
investment bank, EFG Hermes (Giglio 2013). As opposed to Qatar’s positive and
supportive reaction to an elected Islamist leader, the UAE and Saudi Arabia did not
stand behind the idea of democratic governance promoted by political Islam and the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Hence, when the military coup happened in July 2013, Saudi Arabia cut ties with
Morsi, and military cooperation with the Egyptian Armed Forces continued. The
largest joint Egyptian–Saudi military action, named Tabouk 3, took place, and joint
air forces exercises, named Faisal 10, were also conducted (Saudi Arabia and Egypt
carry out joint drills 2014). Although the Saudis were able to develop these relations
under Morsi’s governance, when Sisi took power Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE
pledged $12 billion in aid to Egypt. Saudi King Abdullah defended the Egyptian
military’s violent repression of protestors, defining them as supporters of terrorism,
while the Saudi foreign minister announced that additional economic aid would be
provided to Egypt since its US aid had been withdrawn (Hearst 2013). Hence, Egypt
was the first case to spark intra-GCC tension regarding the ramifications of the Arab
Spring for two reasons: the divergent positioning of Arab Gulf States; and the Muslim
Brotherhood being a key player in the region.
Is the Muslim Brotherhood the Fault Line of the GCC?
The Qatari role in Egypt reveals its long-term political cooperation with the Muslim
Brotherhood. When members of the Muslim Brotherhood started to encounter prob-
lems in Egypt during the period of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Qatar was one of their
preferred destinations. Many scholars and supporters, including Yousef Al-Qaradawi,
arrived in Doha and started to coordinate their activities from there (Roberts 2017;
Ulrichsen 2014). Hence, the fact that Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood
were supported by Qatari foreign policy after January 25 was not surprising.
Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood has given rise to criticism and accu-
sations concerning the state’s foreign policy after the Arab Spring. Initially, Qatari
policy towards changes in the authoritarian regimes in the region was interpreted as
re-orienting foreign policy towards a more interventionist approach (Roberts 2012).
When the coup in Egypt led to a power shift, anti–Muslim Brotherhood approaches
in the UAE and Saudi Arabia became more visible. While these countries began to
see the movement as a threat to their internal security, Qatar did not share this view of
the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the region. The Saudis blame Muslim Brotherhood
for supporting Saddam Hussein in 1990, for radicalizing the youth, and for publicly
criticizing the regime and Saudi policymaking in Egypt and Syria (Roberts 2017).
This contradictory approach triggered a diplomatic crisis, including the with-
drawal of Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini ambassadors from Qatar on 5 March 2014,
“which is the most vivid example of the backlash against Qatari policies” (Echague
2014). As Echague records, the GCC countries collectively announced that they
would “implement a November 2013 agreement not to back anyone threatening the
security and stability of the GCC whether as groups or individuals—via direct secu-
rity work or through political influence,” and would not support “hostile media”
(Echague 2014).
Following this, in 2014 the Saudi government issued a new terrorism law and the
Muslim Brotherhood was officially designated as a terrorist group. The UAE added
the Muslim Brotherhood to the list of terrorist organizations in November with its
new terror law. The underlying reason for this anti–Muslim Brotherhood stance is
rooted in the security of the regime. This transnational and religiously driven group
has the power to mobilize people, especially the youth. The Arab Spring, at the very
beginning, had visibly enhanced this power. For Arab countries, the crucial thing in
the response to the Arab Spring was to provide for regime survival, since these revolts
were against the Arabs’ own rulers, not those favored by the West or Israel (Gause
2011). This put transnational organizations at the heart of the risk register for those
countries that looked on these activities as a threat to their regimes. However, Qatar
was not concerned in this regard, which in turn led to a divergence of its political
stance towards the Brotherhood from its GCC counterparts.
Since Muslim Brotherhood members were accused of participating in under-
ground anti-regime activities in these states, in addition to their actions in support
of democracy in the region, Qatar’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood can be
interpreted in relation to the domestic affairs of the UAE and Saudi Arabia (Al
Qassemi 2013; Echague 2014). Qatar was also accused of “picking winners” and
supporting only Muslim Brotherhood–based solutions in Syria and Egypt, rather
than maintaining a neutral stance, due to its long-term relation with the Brother-
hood. Al Qassemi (2014) claims that Qatar focused only on backing the Muslim
Brotherhood, instead of taking a step back and reshaping its policy in Egypt, which
prompted “an annus horribilus for Qatar” (Al Qassemi 2014). As such, the Syrian
case became a source of tension between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, reflecting widening
disagreements rather than cooperation in policy approaches. However, some scholars
(Echague 2014; Roberts 2014) have interpreted the Qatari–Muslim Brotherhood rela-
tions as a pragmatic part of the small state’s foreign policy, which might be re-oriented
when Qatari priorities change.
Saudi Interventionism in the Region: Yemen
The GCC policy towards Yemen has been mired in controversy, and thus may provide
a good illustration of the underlying reasons for the tensions between Gulf States.
Internal problems in Yemen began in 2004 and continued until 2010, with Houthis
revolting against the government in the Northern Saada Province. The initial reason
behind Qatar’s involvement in the conflict was its 2007 mediation policy (Barakat
2014). Former Qatari Emir HH Sheikh Hamad went on a state-level visit to Yemen
and announced Qatar’s willingness to mediate between disputants, upon an invita-
tion by President Ali Abdullah Saleh. HH Emir Sheikh Hamad added that if the
countries ended the war, Qatar would invest in Yemen for reconstruction. Although
the concerned parties gathered in Doha twice (in 2007 and in 2010), and reached
ceasefires in 2007 and 2010, the Qatari mediation effort in Yemen was less successful
and enduring than the one in Lebanon (Barakat 2014).
Qatar’s peace support agreements between disputants included providing $300–
500 million in reconstruction assistance for Saada province, securing the release of
Yemeni prisoners, granting amnesties, and disarming Houthi rebels. President Saleh
wanted control over this foreign aid fund. However, Qataris did not give this power
to him as they did not invest the time needed for managing the fund properly. This is
one reason for the failure of mediation, and it led to discord between the Qatari and
Yemeni governments, reaching a point where Qatar withdrew its promise of financial
aid to Saada. After this first era of mediation, Qatar made a second attempt in 2010,
but this time Saudis were also present with their military force (Barakat 2014). In
Barakat’s (2014) study, Qatar’s role in Yemen is described as follows, quoting the
International Crisis Group: “the initiative essentially amounted to throwing money
at a problem, hoping it would disappear” (Barakat 2014). Whether this is the real
reason for failure, or whether the Saudi intervention was more to blame, Qatar’s
diplomacy-oriented policymaking has not been adopted and the process has been
conducted with less personal intervention on the part of HH the then Emir Sheikh
Hamad. Thus, this prominent example of Saudi interventionism in Qatari political
strategy and maneuvering in the Middle East began in the mid 2000s and provides
us with some useful insights into the dynamics of the current crisis.
The 2011 uprisings, part of the larger Arab Spring movement, prompted a second
level of Qatari involvement in Yemen. President Saleh was not happy with Qatar’s
involvement and declared so publicly, even before the Arab Spring. Saudi Arabia
was operating in support of the central government and Saleh’s power in the country;
however, this did not prevent the GCC from initiating a Transition Agreement on 23
November 2011, and Saleh left the presidential office (Yemen Transition Agreement
2011 2011). This signified a breaking point in the GCC, because although it looked
like a collective decision, it later transpired to have been a Saudi-led agreement,
the political process in general, including the coalition, was also Saudi-led (Karim
2017). After the Houthis took control of Sanaa in 20l4, an Arab coalition was formed,
consisting of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco,
Pakistan, and Sudan, with American logistical support, and on 26 March 2015 Oper-
ation Decisive Storm commenced. This operation came about following a request by
Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and was followed by Operation Restoring
Hope in April 2015, to provide humanitarian aid to the Yemeni locals (Zweiri 2017).
There has been little official information released with regard to Qatari opinion on
Saudi-led policymaking starting with the 2011 Transition Agreement and followed
by the military operation. An exception is Defense Minister Khalid bin Mohammed
Al-Attiyah’s speech on TRT World after the Gulf Crisis:
We are … a member of the GCC and at [the same] time we have our own opinion on
how to solve the situation in Yemen. We always believe in dialogue. We always believe in
development as the shortest way to solve issues such [as] the one in Yemen. And when people
start to find hope, they can forget about extremism. But unfortunately, we find ourselves
obliged to join the coalition.
This could be understood as saying that Qatar was supportive of non-military

action, but did not depart from the GCC line (Lennie, 2017).
The military operation in Yemen has caused some consternation in the interna-
tional community on account of its highly negative impact on civilians, while also
causing significant destruction of historical sites and neighborhoods in Yemen. These
humanitarian crises include a wave of food insecurity for almost 18 million people
(Yemen conflict: How bad is the humanitarian crisis? 2017) and a cholera epidemic
(Asrar 2017). This has put the military operation at the center of criticism. Many
articles were published after 5 June holding Qatar responsible for the failure of the
military operation in Yemen. These articles blame Qatar for sharing the coalition’s
intelligence with Al-Qaida and the Houthis (Al Deen 2017; Arab coalition suspends
Qatar’s participation in Yemen 2017; Qatar helped Al Qaida target UAE troops in
Yemen: diplomat 2017). In a speech to the BBC, Omar Saif Ghobash, the UAE’s
ambassador to Russia, publicly alleged that Qatari intelligence shared information
with Al-Qaida in Yemen (Omar Saif Ghobash, Ambassador of the United Arab
Emirates to Russia 2017); however, there is no documentary evidence in support
of these accusations. In speeches made by HH Emir Sheikh Tamim, including his
first speech to the public after the crisis and his second speech at the UN General
Assembly, allegations of Qatar’s cooperation with terrorist groups are denied (Emir
speech in full text: Qatar ready for dialogue but won’t compromise on sovereignty
2017; In Full Text: The speech of Qatar Emir at the opening session of UN General
Assembly 2017). Defense Minister Khalid bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah states that
“we’ve never been inside Yemen by the way; we’ve been defending the border of
Saudi … But after the recent aggression on Qatar, they asked us to leave the border
of Saudi Arabia, which we did, and all our soldiers are back” (Lennie 2017). The
Economist also defines the Qataris’ role in the military coalition in Yemen as “fairly
limited,” but adds “nevertheless, [it could] prove distracting and disruptive” (Qatar
Crisis Complicates Yemen Civil War 2017).
Allegations of Qatari involvement in Yemen are crucial because they seek to use
Qatar as a scapegoat for what is happening in Yemen, in terms of both the military
failure of the coalition and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. For instance, the Yemeni
political analyst Najib Ghallab states that “had it not been for Qatar’s backing of the
Houthis, the extremist group would have been destroyed a long time ago,” and blames
Qatar for the military failure (How did Qatar back the Houthis in Yemen? 2017).
However, Defense Minister Al-Attiyah describes Qatari involvement as symbolic
border support, and states that if an investigation committee were to look into the
details, it would “find out that we’ve never been engaged in any operation which
comes near or in a field of operation where there [are] civilian deaths” (Lennie
2017).
In addition to this, the internal conflict in Yemen has been affected by the Gulf
crisis, which manifests particular disagreements as regards policymaking in Qatar and
Saudi Arabia (Colombo 2017). According to Reuters, when the Gulf crisis erupted, a
message of solidarity with Qatar was released from the Yemeni state agency website
(El Yaakoubi 2017). Ministers linked to the Islah party were seen as the actors
behind this message. The message of support was deleted two hours later and, the
next day, the Yemeni government was added to the list of blockading countries.
Even inside Islah, the assistant secretary-general Minister of Planning Mohammed
al-Saady supported the blockade against Qatar; however, other members of Islah did
not follow suit. In addition, Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, the head of the Revolutionary
Committee of the Houthis, condemned the embargo against Qatar and expressed his
support for Qatar while emphasizing its role as a mediator. Hence, this regional rift
has concretized divisions, even within the factions of the Yemeni conflict, by forcing
them to take sides, all of which makes the prospects of peace seem more distant
(Baron 2017; Qatar Crisis Complicates Yemen Civil War 2017).
The Saudi–Iranian proxy war in Yemen is seen as part of a “regional cold war,”
due to its highly sectarian tone. However, the Qatari stance in Yemen is in support
of a diplomatic approach rather than military action, and does not partake of the
Saudis’ emphasis on the “Iranian threat agenda.” Moreover, the Saudis were not
willing to relinquish their king-maker role in Yemen, which, according to Al Monitor,
was damaged when President Hadi visited Doha in July 2013 before heading to
Washington, and in light of the catastrophic levels of civilian suffering in the country
after the start of the military operation (Al-Muslimi 2013). Saudi policymaking in the
region has become more control-oriented since the Arab Spring, where the regime’s
survival was under threat. This might also explain why Saudi policymaking moved
toward the integration of the GCC countries, when they suggested creating a Gulf
union in place of a cooperation council after 2011 (Friedman 2013).
Simply an Intra-GCC Rivalry?
When considering the Gulf crisis and the impact of the Arab Spring, intra-GCC
rivalries are certainly a key part of the picture. The Arab Spring served to reinforce
existing rivalries in the GCC, forcing each state to take sides. This is not necessarily
done collectively; rather, it reflects and emphasizes state-level interests. So-called
regional security complexities, first defined by Buzan et al. (1998), have been applied
to the Gulf sub-system by Gause (2010) and Kamrava (2013). Based on this sub-
system analysis, the politics of the Gulf has been defined by unique security calcu-
lations being made against one another (Wehrey 2013). Tensions in the Middle East
after the Arab Spring have been categorized into three blocs: the Iranian-led coali-
tion (Syrian regime, Hezbollah); the group sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood
(Turkey, Qatar); and the anti-Muslim Brotherhood or newly emerged anti-Qatar bloc
(Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Egypt, and others) (Zweiri 2017). Civil wars in Syria and
Yemen, military governance in Egypt, and the current regional rift with Qatar have
exacerbated the disagreements between these three blocs.
In a similar vein, Abdulla (2014) splits the Arab Gulf States into three groups,
depending on their affiliations with the Arab Spring: the most influenced (Oman
and Bahrain); the least influenced (Qatar and the UAE); and the partially influenced
(Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). When these two equations combine, the heterogeneous
nature of Arab Gulf States becomes more visible. This is reflected not only in their
reactions to this regional change, but also in their balancing, hedging, and deploy-
ment of foreign policy. According to Abdulla’s (2014) categorization, both the UAE
and Qatar are winners in relation to the Arab Spring. Accordingly, this raises a ques-
tion: Does this strengthen their rivalry, which erupted amid the Gulf crisis? There
is no certain answer to this, but it is undeniable that the Arab Spring made subtle
disagreements and rivalries between Gulf States significantly more visible.
The Riyadh agreements of 2013 and 2014, which Qatar signed with GCC states,
are also examples of intra-GCC tensions which have been in existence—and have
at times been erupting—since before the Gulf crisis. These agreements are still
not publicly available; however, the Al Arabiya news channel published a couple
of pages of the agreements on 10 July 2017. With the help of this leak, several
demands made of Qatar and the Riyadh agreements have come to light. In the first
Riyadh agreement in 2013, Kuwait was the mediator and was called on to establish
“a new phase of fraternal relations” between GCC countries (Exclusive: Documents
prove Qatar failed to comply with GCC agreements 2017). In his speech to TRT
World, Defense Minister Al-Attiyah mentioned that after HH Emir Sheikh Tamim’s
accession to power, his Kuwaiti counterpart called him and relayed Saudi complaints
about Qatar, reportedly saying: “Qatar is making trouble in the region and we have
to come together quickly to solve this issue” (Lennie 2017). In all likelihood, this
comment refers to the 2013 Riyadh agreement. According to Al Arabiya, the second
phase of the agreement was in November 2014 with the participation of the King of
Bahrain, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and the Prime Minister of the UAE. The
GCC states signed the agreement on the basis of seeking to eliminate the diversity
in approaches that arose with the Arab Spring (Exclusive: Documents prove Qatar
failed to comply with GCC agreements 2017). This takes us to our main argument
here, namely that GCC-level positions are strongly divided, with countries adopting
diverse stances in the region, whereas Qatar has been forced to change its position
first.
“Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood,” the expulsion of all affiliated non-
citizens from Qatar, and the promise to not harbor any person with harmful agendas
toward GCC security and the legitimate regimes in Yemen and Egypt, were all on
the agenda for the agreement. However, all these definitions of “harmful agendas,”
the Muslim Brotherhood, and affiliated non-citizens are created by other parties
in the agreement excluding Qatar. Hence, there was an extreme tension over these
demands between Qatar and its GCC partners. Furthermore, an emphasis on Yemen
and Egypt supports our argument that sees these two cases as major cracks in GCC
policymaking in the region.
When Defense Minister Al-Attiyah was asked about the roots of the current crisis,
he remarked clearly that this tension dated back to 1996 (when a Saudi-supported
coup attempt was made in Qatar against HH the then Emir Sheikh Hamad), and was
renewed in 2013–14 when ambassadors were withdrawn. Furthermore, Al-Attiyah
argued that this strain is about “the attitude of the state of Qatar,” rather than the ruling
personalities (HH Emir Sheikh Tamim or the Father Emir HH Sheikh Hamad). What
constitutes the Qatari attitude, then? In discussions of the impact of the Arab Spring on
the Gulf States, a “normalist” perspective would see those states as not immune to the
impact of these events, whereas an “exceptionalist” one countenances the possibility
of immunity. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla (2014) argues that both of these views can be
accommodated in the discussion by saying that “these states are probably revolution
resistant, but not political reform resistant,” in spite of how wealthy they are. Qatar
and Kuwait did not resist the change in the region and supported these movements
and people, as opposed to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, including Bahrain, which
chose to support the regional status quo. Hence, this demonstrates the conflicting
approaches and rivalries within regional politics, which are underlined by foreign
policy preferences after the Arab Spring.
Given the unique social and political structure of the Gulf region, the issue of iden-
tity politics regarding neo-nationalism also requires some attention. While discussing
the disunity of the Gulf States, we can say that transnational identity of being Khaliji
(i.e., people of the Arab Peninsula) has been challenged by an emphasis on being
Saudi, Emirati, or Qatari. Diwan (2016) calls this a “new nationalism,” which is seen
as reflecting “the decline of the power of the welfare state to engender gratitude and
loyalty.” With economic changes, demographic timebombs, and the rise of regional
conflicts, these oil monarchies have begun to invest more in cultural policies and
national identity. Diwan (2016) includes museums, national days, and even military
operations as part of this phenomenon. Yet this was also the case before the crisis,
and this form of micro-nationalism has exerted its power on society through an unex-
pected rift in the region. Hence, identity politics can be interpreted both as a reason
for intra-GCC rivalry and as an outcome of the Gulf crisis. Saudi nationals can thus
be proud of their military operation in Yemen against their enemy—Iran—and can
hold Qatar responsible for the intervention’s failure.
The emphasis on national identities was already heightened prior to the crisis, with
national visions and national day celebrations; however, the blockade has revealed an
entirely new side to it. Qataris were isolated by their neighbors and left to live under
an embargo in the holy month of Ramadan. When HH Emir Sheikh Tamim left the
country for the first time after the blockade, his return to Qatar was celebrated with
a national parade in the Corniche and a live broadcast on the national TV channel
Al-Rayyan. This was just one day after the 87th celebration of the national day in
Saudi Arabia, on 23 September 2017. Thus, it is no surprise that new iterations of
nationalism in the Gulf countries have contributed to the disunity and the fragile
nature of the politics of the region, especially after the Arab Spring.
Where Iran and Turkey Stand in This Regional Complexity
Although both the Arab Spring and the Gulf crisis are primarily anchored in the
Arab states, both Iran and Turkey—major non-Arab players in the Middle East—
have joined the division in the region. Disagreements are evident not just in the Arab
context; they also feature across the Middle East in terms of how these states have
perceived the Arab Spring and its various ramifications. While Turkey adopted a more
pro-change approach, Iran stood with the status quo (Elik 2018). The Arab Spring
split these two regional powers; however, both Iran and Turkey were on the list of the
13 demands, which make them part of the Gulf crisis (Arab states issue 13 demands
to end Qatar-Gulf crisis 2017). This time, neither Iran nor Turkey have yet to choose
a side; instead, they have been brought to the crisis due to their positioning in relation
to the Arab Spring. Although Iran and Turkey adopted divergent positions during
the Arab Spring, neither of them aligned with the direction of the Saudi-led bloc.
In other words, while Turkey and Qatar were supportive of change and the policies
oriented around the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran backed the status quo alongside an
accommodation of a Shia-oriented sectarian policy. This suggests that the Gulf crisis
is an after-effect of the Arab Spring not only for Arab states, but also for the non-Arab
powers of the Middle East, compelling the latter to become partisan.
Conclusion
Surveying the rivalry or disagreement between the GCC states which became mani-
fest with the advent of the Arab Spring, our underlying question was what were
the roots of these conflicting approaches? In response, we have sought to show that
the diverse stances of the Gulf countries have been constructed incrementally and
were triggered during the successive ramifications of the Arab Spring. The coun-
tries of the Middle East have been faced with devastating situations throughout the
twentieth century; yet the GCC states have nevertheless remained in relatively stable
positions. The Arab Spring provoked a region-wide rift, encompassing both the Arab
and non-Arab powers of the Middle East. What is more, it has still not come to an
end. The effects of the Arab Spring continue to be felt in the influence of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the civil war in Yemen, and intra-GCC rivalries. Iran and Turkey are
also forcibly joining this crisis in the Gulf, and the processes of fragmentation in the
region are overlapping. Since 2011 these divisions in the Middle East have come to
penetrate the realm of regional politics, and the GCC countries seem to be affected
by this development, with no easy exit from the Gulf crisis on the horizon. The tense
relations between the oil monarchies in the Gulf are no longer immune to the diver-
gence of approaches, divided as they are between pro- and anti-Qatar blocs, which
could well lead to total disunity in the Gulf Cooperation Council. The influence of the
Muslim Brotherhood, the Yemeni civil war, and GCC-wide rivalries over the scope
of the current crisis all demonstrate that the Middle East has yet to move beyond the
repercussions of the Arab Spring. In light of this, there is no clear contingency plan
for the Gulf.
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Chapter 3
Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement:
Challenging the Regional Status Quo
in the Gulf Security Sub-complex
Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin
With the election of the Justice and Development Party (JDP hereafter)1 and Qatar’s
leadership change in 1995, there is no doubt that interactions between Turkey and
Qatar have gained pace. The Turkey–Qatar alliance reached a new high after the Arab
Spring, with these two countries emerging as two pro-revolutionary states that are
disturbing the status quo in the Middle East. The ties established between Turkey and
Qatar have continued even after the Arab uprisings: Turkey stood by Qatar during
the 2017–18 diplomatic crisis between Qatar and the Gulf states including Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain. Similarly, Qatar supported
Turkey financially after the devastating currency crisis in August 2018. Moreover,
Turkey has established a military base in Qatar, which is of critical significance in
the history of Turkish foreign policy. Therefore, one can safely argue that Turkey and
Qatar have formed an alliance based on their diverse military and economic needs.
This analysis argues that Turkey and Qatar sought to change the regional status
quo in order to forge a new regional security order. Accordingly, to achieve this goal,
Turkey and Qatar cemented an alliance based on their diverse qualities as military and
financial powers respectively. Nevertheless, the fundamental cause of the Turkish–
Qatari alliance in challenging the regional status quo lies not only in concerns related
to their security or power-seeking behavior, but also in certain shared values and
common visions based on their ideas and identities. Therefore, it can be claimed
that the transformation in the domestic politics of these states played a decisive
role in shaping the Turkey–Qatar alliance, which in turn has had a major impact on
the regional mosaic in the Middle East. In a nutshell, this paper contends that the
Gulf security sub-complex was reshaped in the wake of the Arab uprisings, notably
through the emergence of Turkey and Qatar as revisionist states. Accordingly, it
1 In Turkish, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, commonly abbreviated AK Parti or (unofficially) AKP.
M. C. Özşahin (B)
Department of International Relations, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey
e-mail: mustafacuneytozsahin@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_3
36 M. C. Özşahin
can further be maintained that the Gulf security sub-complex acquired a multi-polar
configuration with the changing power distribution and arising of new amity–enmity
relationships.
This paper is divided into several sections: first, the Qatar–Turkey alliance will
be analyzed by focusing on the transformation of each country individually; second,
the concept of a security complex will be defined with specific reference to the Gulf
security sub-complex; and third, the implications of the Qatar–Turkey alliance for
the regional security sub-complex will be examined.
Foreign Policy Change and Its Structural Ramifications
The Arab Spring created a new security environment, and the regional landscape
changed dramatically with the emergence of non-state actors in addition to newly
assertive regional powers. Turkey and Qatar were no exceptions as they sought to
take advantage of the new international environment emanating from the creative
destruction caused by the Arab uprisings. Certainly, the Gulf security sub-complex
was dramatically transformed in line with this overall regional change. Nevertheless,
in order to understand the transformation in this region, it is imperative to analyze
the international system—particularly the postures of the power poles. As a matter
of fact, the politics of the Gulf region cannot be fully understood without taking non-
regional influences into account. As succinctly noted by Oktav (2011, p. 139), “Gulf
security is a sub-regional complex constructed around the position of the United
States.” In this regard, the attitude of the United States towards the Middle East is
an important parameter that needs to be taken into consideration. This is particularly
true as regards Obama’s foreign policy during the Arab Spring, with some theoretical
accounts suggesting that his foreign policy strategy must be linked to the isolationist
trends within US policy (Metzger, 2011). As Hinnebusch (2014, pp. 54–72) contends
in a similar way, it can safely be argued that the United States played the role of game-
maker in the Middle East from the Gulf War up until Obama’s gradual withdrawal
from the region. According to Kamrava (2018), rising multi-polarity coupled with
the retrenchment of the United States caused further fragmentation in this region.
From this perspective, it can be maintained that Turkey and Qatar, as two regional
powers, strove to fill the power vacuum after the United States left (Phillips 2017,
p. 37).
However, despite the structural reasoning described above, one needs to answer the
question of why Qatar and Turkey saw the regional change after the Arab uprisings
as an opportunity to form an alliance, whereas other regional powers dismissed
it altogether. In order to understand these changes, it is imperative to delve into
these states’ domestic politics, which enabled their foreign policy revisionism. This
means that an actor-specific theory is necessary to account for the foreign policy
activism of these two states. In this sense, it should be noted that both Qatar and
Turkey underwent a dramatic change that served as the basis of their foreign policy
3 Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement: Challenging the Regional Status … 37
activism. While the rise of the JDP in Turkey brought about a more engagement-
oriented foreign policy encompassing the Middle East, the foreign policy of Qatar’s
reformist leader HH Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani adopted a similar line in terms of
its active foreign relations. Palmer and Morgan (2011) offer a pertinent account of
foreign policy behavior: states either opt to maintain the status quo or to change it
with revisionist aspirations. The decision to change or keep the status quo is based on
decision makers’ cost–benefit analyses. As they aptly put it, “leaders have to decide
whether they want to protect something they like or attempt to bring about a change
in some situation to conform more to their preferences” (Palmer and Morgan 2011,
p. 2).2 In the cases of Turkey and Qatar, both countries took revisionist positions in
the face of the developments that unfolded in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab
Uprisings (Başkan 2016, p. 35; for Turkey’s revisionism, see Özpek and Demirağ
2014; Öniş 2014). It is obvious that such revisionism has brought about a change in
regional affairs.
The Roots of the Change in Turkish Foreign Policy Towards

the Gulf
Putting the imperial period aside, the relationship between the Turkish Republic
and the Gulf countries has a historical background that goes back to the middle of
the 1960s. Until then, prevalent Western-oriented and threat-based elite perceptions
had prevented Turkey from engaging in positive relations with the Middle Eastern
countries (Altunisik 2005, pp. 173–174; Aydın 2000). From the mid 1960s onwards,
Third Worldism gained in popularity amid recurring tensions between the United
States and Turkey. During those years, Turkey started to show a considerable interest
in the Middle East. Concomitantly, not only did Turkey join the Organization of
the Islamic States but also adopted pro-Palestinian politics (Aydin 2000; Balcı 2013,
pp. 152–155; Taspinar 2008, pp. 8–9; Özcan 2008, pp. 93–94). Thereafter, the energy
crises of the 1970s, which had a devastating impact on Turkey, reinforced its relations
with the Gulf states and more specifically with Saudi Arabia (Köni 2012, pp. 100–
101). As well as all of these events, another tumultuous occasion for the region—in
addition to the shift in Turkish foreign policy—was the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Since then, Iran as a revolutionary power has been considered the ultimate threat to
the whole region—not only for Turkey, but also for other Sunni nations of the region
(Aras 2001, p. 106).
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Turgut Özal, who served first as premier and
later as president of Turkey, had a considerable influence on making foreign policy,
and was the one who formed close ties with the Gulf states via his pragmatic foreign
policy (Aral 2001). However, relations with the Gulf countries have undergone an ebb
and flow ever since. For example, Turkey’s dam-building on the rivers extending into
Syria and Iraq has led to anxiety on the parts of the latter, and their revindications
2 For further refinement of the status quo versus revisionism debate, see (Schweller, 1994).
38 M. C. Özşahin
were also supported by the Gulf States in regional forums during the 1980s and
1990s (Olson 1997, pp. 169, 176). Another watershed moment in the history of the
Middle East was the Gulf War of 1991, which compelled Turkey and other Gulf
countries to collaborate with each other as regional allies of the United States (Hale
1992). During the second half of the 1990s, on the other hand, the Islamist Necmettin
Erbakan, along with his Welfare Party, became visible in Turkish politics as another
actor challenging the contours of Turkish foreign policy. However, even after the
establishment of the Developing Eight (D-8) national alliance, which was designed
to generate economic integration for Muslim countries, the Gulf nations stayed out
of this alliance (Aral 2005; Robins 1997; Özkan 2006, pp. 171–176).
The rise of the JDP in the new millennium, and its landslide victory in 2002,
ushered in a new era in terms of Turkey’s domestic politics and its foreign policy.
During this period, Turkey did not only civilize its military-dominated politics in
terms of civil–military relationships, but also attained high levels of economic growth
during the early years of JDP rule. With respect to its foreign policy, by rejecting
traditional foreign policy implying neutrality and detachment, new cadres of Turkish
foreign policy-makers opted to envisage Turkey as a “central country.” As one of the
architects of Turkish foreign policy, former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu asserts
that:
In terms of geography, Turkey occupies a unique space. As a large country in the midst of
Afro-Eurasia’s vast landmass, it may be defined as a central country with multiple regional
identities that cannot be reduced to one unified character. Like Russia, Germany, Iran, and
Egypt, Turkey cannot be explained geographically or culturally by associating it with one
single region. Turkey’s diverse regional composition lends it the capability of maneuvering in
several regions simultaneously; in this sense, it controls an area of influence in its immediate
environs. (Davutoğlu 2008, p. 78).
From this perspective, Turkey under the JDP followed a foreign policy aimed at
enhancing relations with its immediate neighbors in addition to broadening its foreign
policy horizons to encompass new geographies, including Asia and Africa (Özkan
2011). During this period, Turkey entered into mediation efforts, mended its ties with
adjacent countries, and increased its overall trade volume. With regards to the Middle
East, there is no doubt that the Gulf region has been a major significant influence on
Turkey’s new foreign policy activism. Coupled with the intensification of relations
with the Islamic states, the Gulf countries certainly appealed to Turkish decision
makers. The main reason why the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were
crucial for Turkey was that Turkey aimed to attract those countries in order to boost
their market shares (Hürsoy 2013, pp. 509–516; Kardaş 2012, p. 2). Therefore, a
Turkey–GCC strategic dialogue was established during this period to further the
Turkey–Gulf interaction (Aras and Akpınar 2017, p. 3; Başkan 2016, p. 54; Başkan
2011, p. 163; Kardaş 2012, p. 1). However, during this time, Turkey and the Gulf
countries not only established strong economic ties but also engendered relation-
ships which had both diplomatic and security dimensions. For example, there were
intense diplomatic exchanges between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the most important
of which is undoubtedly King Abdullah’s visit to Istanbul, which resulted in further
intensification with respect to diplomatic and security cooperation (Ataman 2012,
p. 126; Başkan 2016, p. 53; Başkan 2011, p. 163; Hürsoy 2013, p. 510). In addition to
bilateral ties, in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium the Gulf coun-
tries and Turkey opened communication channels through regional organizations.
For instance, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries elected Ekmeleddin
İhsanoğlu of Turkey as its secretary-general in 2005, with the support of the Gulf
countries (Kösebalaban 2011, p. 94; Özkan 2006, p. 183).
However, Turkey’s intimate relations with the Gulf countries gradually started
to deteriorate as a result of the Arab uprisings that began in 2010 and continued
for several years afterwards. As Phillips (2017) argued, despite the fact that Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey had formed an alliance to topple the Assad regime in
Syria in the early stages of uprisings, their collaboration did not last long because
of the division emerging between the Qatar–Turkey bloc and the rest of the Gulf
monarchies over the Arab Spring and the region’s future. Similar tensions appearing
between Turkey and Saudi Arabia influenced the Gulf monarchies after the uprisings
subsided. As Ataman (2012 p. 121) pointed out along the same lines, Turkey and
Saudi Arabia were not in agreement on “the pace and scope of change” during the
Arab Spring. In other words, during the uprisings, while Turkey played the role of
a pro-revolutionary democratic state with Muslim rulers, Saudi Arabia showcased
an introverted Sharia state that resisted change (Ennis and Momani 2013). However,
Turkey’s identification of itself as an “agenda setter” state waned with the unfolding
events in the Syrian civil war (Özpek and Demirağ 2014).3 Congruent with this, it
can be advanced that in contrast with its ambitious policy agenda, Turkey has taken
a more defensive posture in regional affairs especially after the rising influence of
the PYD, the Syrian branch of the Kurdish separatist movement, on its Syrian border
(Dalay 2016).
Changing Qatar’s Foreign Policy: The Rift Between the Gulf

States
In order to understand the impetus behind the Turkey–Qatar alliance and its regional
implications, it is vital to comprehend Qatar’s internal transformation. Qatar’s foreign
policy showed signs of change during the reign of HH Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.
Nevertheless, the advent of HH Hamad Al-Thani was not welcomed by all regional
powers—especially not by Saudi Arabia. Such discontent paved the way for a palace
coup allegedly orchestrated by the Saudi government and its regional allies. There-
after, in order to counterbalance the Saudi influence in the region, Qatar set about
to enact an assertive and independent political agenda encompassing remarkable
endeavors both in domestic and foreign policy (Abu Sulaib 2017, p. 41; Başkan
2016, p. 41; Roberts 2012, pp. 234–235).
The creation of municipal and advisory councils that allowed women to partici-
pate were important steps towards partial democratization in domestic politics (Bahry
3 For a similar emphasis on Turkish Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring, see Öniş (2014).
40 M. C. Özşahin
1999). On the other hand, with respect to foreign policy, Qatar, as a country taking
advantage of public diplomacy and, in more general terms, soft power sources,
has made its foreign policy agenda assertive (Antwi-Boateng 2014; Brannagan and
Giulianotti 2018 pp. 1139–1143). There is no doubt that the Doha-based Al Jazeera—
dating back to 1996—has been a flagship institution in the Arab World (Başkan 2016,
p. 42). As Bianco succinctly stated:
Since its establishment in 1996, Al Jazeera was a formidable instrument of region-wide soft
power for the Qataris and was perceived as a major headache outside of their control for
other rulers in the region, especially to Saudi Arabia, which received intense critical coverage
(Bianco 2018, p. 4).
Starting with the rule of HH Emir Hamad, and followed by that of HH Emir
Tamim, Qatar has made enormous strides in humanitarian and mediation missions.
Qatar has emerged as a neutral mediator for countries in the Middle East such as
Yemen, Sudan, and Lebanon (Kamrava 2011). By the same token, Qatar has not
hesitated to use its gigantic economic capacity to win people’s hearts and minds in
diverse geographies by joining a plethora of humanitarian missions; either providing
humanitarian and developmental aid or sometimes via unofficial donations, Qatar
has been able to boost its image extensively in the Muslim world (Zureik 2018).
Taking all of these factors into consideration, one can safely argue that Qatar has
turned into an influential power in the Gulf region over the last decade.
Qatar’s foreign policy posture crystallized with the Arab Spring. At that point,
Qatar surfaced as an exceptional country in contrast to other regional powers in the
sense that it was in full support of the Arab Spring’s democratic agenda. However,
Qatar’s capabilities—based on its soft power and its rising regional prestige—were
deemed to be threatening by the rest of the Gulf States. More important is that Qatar,
as an autonomous power independent of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, has proven
to be dangerous for the Saudi-led Arab coalition (Abu Sulaib 2017, p. 41; Roberts
2012, pp. 234–235). In other words, Qatar succeeded in distinguishing itself from
the rest of the Gulf countries by promoting a pro–Muslim Brotherhood narrative,
which resulted in the withdrawal of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini ambassadors
from Qatar in 2014 (Abu Sulaib 2017, p. 32). Isaac, further details the diplomatic
crises of 2014, emphasizing the causes:
The Gulf States’ relations with Qatar reached their lowest point when Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
and Bahrain decided to withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar in March 2014 over its close
support for the fallen Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and outspoken resistance to the
newly military-backed regime. Openly, the three GCC members justified the withdrawal
of their ambassadors by accusing Qatar of interfering in the internal affairs of other states.
There is also no full agreement within the GCC on Syria, as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are
frequently reported to be supporting different opposition factions. Apart from the recent
case of Egypt, previous disagreements within the GCC have usually involved their different
degrees of openness to Iran… (Isaac 2015, pp. 161–162)
Yet another watershed moment between Qatar and its adversaries was the blockade
against Qatar. The Qatar blockade, which banned travel in addition to trade, was initi-
ated in 2017 by four states, known as the Quartet—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain. These four countries made lifting the blockade condi-
tional on Qatar meeting stringent demands, including, but not limited to, shutting
down Al Jazeera and a halt to supporting “terrorists”—pointing to the Muslim Broth-
erhood and Iran (Ulrichsen 2018; Wintour 2017). Despite diplomatic threats, Qatar
refused to comply with those demands and started a counter-diplomatic maneuver.
Accordingly, with the economic support of Iran and Turkey, Qatar strove to overcome
the negative effects of the blockade and returned to its routine (Ulrichsen 2018).
Again, Qatar embarked on a public diplomacy campaign to reverse the Quartet’s
anti-Qatar rhetoric, which, in turn, successfully neutralized the pro-Quartet media
(Hassan 2018). These developments certainly revealed the deep rift between Qatar
and the Quartet, which does not seem to have improved as of writing. The blockade
crisis, on the other hand, was a test for the Turkey–Qatar relationship, and as such
both sides proved their resilience in the face of external threats.
A Framework for Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement
In order to understand the parameters of the Turkey–Qatar alliance, one needs to look
not only into the material exchanges between countries but also to a common vision
emanating from beliefs and identities. This means that overlapping ideas concerning
an alternative regional order render such an alliance possible for both states. That
is to say, other than security concerns and power-seeking motives, there are other
ideological factors that bind these two states. Drawing from Haas’s (2014) theoret-
ical approach, Gause (2017a) argued that there is an “ideological multi-polarity”
that shapes the Gulf’s politics, including the alliance patterns among the regional
states. Turkey, although not a Gulf country, collaborated with Qatar in its regional
policy based on a common vision. During the Arab Spring, both of these countries
embraced democratic transitions in the region, mostly under the guidance of the
Muslim Brotherhood (Aras and Akpınar 2017, p. 3; Ulrichsen, 2014, pp. 3–4). Both
Turkey and Qatar viewed the Arab uprisings as a window for a new security complex.
Since both countries desire to increase their influence in their immediate areas, they
have adopted more assertive foreign policies that conform with their rising capabil-
ities (Başkan 2016, pp. 83–84; Phillips 2017, p. 37). In other words, each of these
countries firmly endorsed the idea that they should pursue a more proactive diplo-
macy. For both Turkey and Qatar, their (new) foreign policy took its lead from a
“geopolitical reasoning” based on altered regional amity–enmity dichotomies (Pala
and Aras 2015). Hence both these countries—so diverse in terms of their qualities
and capabilities—have collaborated to challenge the Saudi-led hegemony in one of
the regional blocs.
Compared with the entrenched powers of the Middle East such as Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and Iran, Qatar is generally labelled a small power (Cooper and Momani
2011), whereas Turkey is only “a late-comer” or a longtime bystander in the region
(Kardaş 2012, p. 4). However, both of these countries have aimed for a new regional
order via the incorporation of their new policy priorities into their foreign relations.
42 M. C. Özşahin
The above-mentioned change in Turkey’s foreign policy strategy, accompanied by a

deeper engagement with regional affairs, included interactions with the GCC coun-
tries. However, the positive relationship formed in earlier years with Saudi Arabia
and the Emirates soured after the split in opinion over the fate of the region. That is
to say, the Saudi-led coalition within the GCC surfaced as an obstacle that harmed
Turkey’s grand regional strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring. Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) challenged Turkey’s transformative agenda in almost
every case. For example, Turkey was confronted by Saudi Arabia after the Egyptian
coup in July 2013 due to Turkish political support for the incumbent government in
Egypt (Gause 2017a, p. 673).
Apart from the common vision based on ideas and bilateral interactions, Turkey
has at the same time been relying on power relationships and interests. This means
that Qatar, as another anti-status-quo state, has sided with Turkey in order to balance
the Saudi–UAE bloc. As the related literature emphasizes, alliances might be based
on either a common threat (Walt 1987) or a common interest (Schweller 1994). In
the face of all of these challenges, Turkey has been the main supporter of Qatar, not
only in economic and political but also in military terms. Although Qatar has long
been hosting US bases, the US military presence has not been an ultimate guarantee
of security and peace (Başkan 2011, p. 166). Moreover, the unfavorable US attitude
in the initial stages of the blockade caught Qatar unawares (Ulrichsen 2018, p. 13).
There is no doubt that such an approach forced Qatar to search for alternative security
providers (Başkan 2011, pp. 165–167). Both Qatar and Turkey are change-seeking
countries, and this coincides with their increasing capabilities. The ambitious foreign
policy agendas of these countries necessitate cooperation based on mutual interests.
Thus, one can easily argue that another decisive factor which makes the Turkey–
Qatar bloc in the Gulf sub-complex possible is the interdependence between these
countries. In terms of military power, Turkey is ranked 9th out of 136 countries
according to the Global Firepower Index (GFP 2019). Qatar, on the other hand,
has been among the top ten wealthiest countries in the global rankings for the last
three years. For this reason, it would be accurate to claim that the Turkey–Qatar
alliance is based on security provision in exchange for economic benefits. Turkey’s
military presence in Qatar, which it aims to increase to 3,000 troops in the near
future, is a security guarantee for Qatar (Aras and Akpınar 2017, p. 4), whereas
several times Qatar has channeled huge amounts of aid (resulting from its gigantic
economic surplus) in order to boost the strained Turkish economy, including during
the currency crisis in August 2018 (Al Jazeera 2018).
The Gulf Security Sub-complex: From Bi-polarity

to Multi-polarity
Regions are of paramount importance in understanding the perplexities of world poli-

tics. Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde introduced the consideration of regions into secu-
rity studies with their conceptualization of the “regional security complex” (Buzan
and Wæver 2003; Buzan et al. 1998). According to Buzan (1983, p. 106), a regional
security complex consists of countries in which “their national securities cannot real-
istically be considered apart from one another.” Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde thus
translate Waltz’s seminal concept of anarchy at the regional level (see Buzan et al.
1998, p. 13). While Buzan and Wæver (2003) identified the Balkans, the Middle
East, Africa, Asia, and Europe as separate regions, these are also considered security
sub-complexes from which security complexes are formed. The Middle East regional
security complex consists of three sub-complexes, which are the Levant, Gulf, and
Maghreb sub-complexes (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 190; Erdağ 2017, p. 13).
From a historical perspective, the Gulf security sub-complex was established
after the United Kingdom’s retreat from the Gulf in the early 1970s (Buzan and
Wæver 2003, p. 191). From its very beginning, the Gulf sub-regional complex has
encapsulated alliances and rivalries, although these have never been stagnant. The
Saudi-led Gulf states have constituted a power bloc since the end of the First World
War. The GCC emerged as a crystallized alliance of the Gulf countries with the
eruption of the Iranian evolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Fawcett
2005, p. 184). Following the revolution in Iran, the Gulf security sub-complex had a
bipolar structure consisting of Iran and the anti-Iran Arab states. In this new political
environment, the United States became a zealous defender of the Arab monarchies,
such that with the end of the Cold War, US insiders counterbalanced Iran and Syria
with the Gulf countries and Israel (Ehteshami and Hinnebusch 2002, p. 11). Besides
this, the inter-Arab tension between Iraq and the Gulf States disappeared with the
elimination of Iraq in the first Gulf War, which then further strengthened the area’s
bipolarity (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 192). There is no doubt that 9/11 was another
watershed moment in terms of its implications for the Gulf region (see Harders 2008).
The rising influence of Iran in the region, especially after the US intervention in Iraq
in 2003, has been considered a debilitating threat to the GCC countries (Gariup 2008,
p. 81). Along these lines, it can be argued that although bilateral relationships have
always had their ups and downs, Saudi–Iranian relations became especially strained
after 9/11 (Başkan 2016, p. 27). As Oktav (2011, p. 135) emphasized, especially
after the removal of Iraq, two poles, Saudi Arabia and Iran, became embroiled in a
visible power struggle in the region, which has endured up to the present.
As might be understood from the recent history of the Gulf region summarized
above, the Gulf security sub-complex is far from static, and indeed has been rather
dynamic. In order to see a change in the sub-complex, on the other hand, there
must either be a change in the sub-regional balance of power or a change in amity–
enmity relations (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 53). Erdağ (2017, p. 11) makes the
same point by arguing that an internal transition in power distribution, in addition
44 M. C. Özşahin
to external intervention into a particular state, might alter the setup of a security
sub-complex. However, one also needs to acknowledge that regional security orders
are not constructs merely relying on the power disparity between states. In addi-
tion to power distribution, regional security or sub-security orders are based on
norms and values that shape the regional order. From a constructivist point of view,
Coşkun (2016) stresses that regional inclusion and exclusion practices to a large
extent underlie the above-mentioned amity–enmity dynamics (see also Buzan and
Wæver 2003, p. 40).
As revisionist states with a new foreign policy vision and diverse capabilities,
Turkey and Qatar have emerged as new powers and the Turkey–Qatar alliance has
altered the structure of the security sub-complex. However, such an assertive vision
has been found alarming by other regional powers in the Gulf with the unfolding of
the Arab Spring. In this regard, there is no doubt that the Arab Spring opened a new
chapter in the Gulf security sub-complex for a plethora of reasons. Such a change in
these states’ visions, emboldened by the Arab uprisings, had regional implications.
First, Turkey engaged in Gulf affairs to such an unprecedented extent that it did
not hesitate to deploy its military forces to Qatar (Aras and Akpınar 2017, p. 4).
Having once been depicted as an insulator state between Europe and the Middle East
(Barrinha 2014; Buzan and Diez 1999, p. 187), with the rise of the JDP government
Turkey has now assumed an active stance in the Middle East, including on the crisis
in the Gulf.
In addition to this, as a region consisting mostly of monarchies with authoritarian
tendencies, regime security is of paramount importance for most Gulf countries. The
Arab uprisings are deemed to have been destabilizing events for most of the countries
in the region due to security-based factors (Kamrava 2012, p. 97). The turmoil in
the region has given way to the emergence of a new regional order that hinges on
conflictual identities. The Sunni–Shia conflict is no doubt one of the main axes of
struggle in the region (Byman 2014). However, the complexity of the identity conflict
in the region goes beyond Sunni versus Shia; that is to say, there are other sub-sects
within the broader category of Sunni Islam, including the division between Wahhabi
and the Muslim Brotherhood (Salloukh 2013). For many Gulf monarchies, the Arab
uprisings were deemed a threat to their internal stability because the Turkey–Qatar
alliance has promoted an Islamism that Gause describes as bottom-up Sunni Islamism
based on popular support (Gause 2017b).
Consequently, the Gulf security sub-complex recently split into further poles
following the Arab uprisings. From its very beginning, since it consisted of nations
which were aligned against Iran under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, the GCC
was one of the power poles in the Gulf that was regarded as a reflection of Sunni
identity (Kamrava 2012, pp. 98–99). Over and above the fact that there are a good
number of border disputes among the GCC countries, such division after the Arab
Spring was the most serious blow to hopes of further integration of the organization.
Once deemed a bipolar regional order consisting of Iran and the GCC led by Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf security sub-complex further fractured after the Arab Spring and
turned into a multi-polar regional structure, i.e., the uprisings caused a rift between
the GCC countries that was followed by a spat between Qatar and the rest of the
Gulf countries. The tension between Qatar and the Gulf monarchies escalated into
a full-fledged crisis which resulted in sanctions being placed against Qatar (Isaac
2015, pp. 161–162). As mentioned earlier, Qatar has diverged sharply from Saudi
Arabia and the United Allied Emirates as a revisionist country that has allied with
Turkey.
Another issue that needs to be addressed in order to explicate the current power
structure in the Gulf region is the interaction between the Qatar–Turkey coalition and
Iran. While for both Turkey and Qatar, foreign relations with Iran have been based on
a strategy embodying a certain amount of pragmatism, the Saudi-led coalition has so
far perceived Iran as anathema, threatening the Sunni identity itself. Turkish–Iranian
relations in this sense can be described as context-dependent and should be analyzed
case by case. For instance, contrary to the United States, Turkey is supportive of
Iran’s nuclear program as long as it is used for peaceful purposes (Gürzel 2012;
Gürzel and Ersoy 2012).
On the other hand, Turkey often condemned Iran for getting involved with Syria
and siding with the Assad regime. Qatar’s relations with Iran also showed a similar
pattern to those of Turkey on several fronts. As Kamrava (2017) argues, Qatar’s
foreign policy towards Iran should be understood from the perspective of pragma-
tism—Qatar strove to find a balance between Iran, the Gulf States, and the United
States. However, it must also be noted that especially after the blockade, Qatari–
Iranian relations intensified and proceeded in a friendly manner. In a similar manner,
Turkish–Iranian relations, which were far from stable after the outbreak of the Syrian
Civil War, took a more cooperative turn in tandem with Turkey’s rising concerns
related to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the separatist Kurdish
organization, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) (see Al Jazeera 2019).
In a nutshell, despite the lack of clear enmity between Iran and the Turkey–Qatar
alliance, this does not necessarily mean that relations are entirely friendly. That is to
say, Iran should be seen as an independent bloc with its own vision in the security
sub-complex. As a result, the Qatar–Turkey alliance has paved the way for restricting
the sub-complex to three poles: Saudi Arabia and the Emirate-led bloc, the Turkey–
Qatar bloc, and Iran. Despite the fact that there are countries such as Kuwait that
remain neutral and strive to play a mediator role, the Gulf complex has become
sharply polarized with respect to substantive issues after the Arab Spring.
Conclusion
This study aims to respond to several questions in an attempt to explain the under-
lying causes of the Qatar–Turkey coalition. First, it has been argued that both Qatar
and Turkey are revisionist powers aiming for regional change in the politics of the
Middle East and, more particularly, in the Gulf security sub-complex. The alliance
between Turkey and Qatar was founded upon mutual interests in addition to common-
alities stemming from shared ideas and identities. Turkey, as a country that has been
detached from the Middle East, forayed into the regional politics of the Gulf as
46 M. C. Özşahin
an ambitious political actor with the rise of the JDP. Both Qatar and Turkey have
engaged in diplomacy aimed at changing the regional order by providing uncondi-
tional support to the Muslim Brotherhood. In this regard, the Arab uprisings were
seen by both of these states as an unprecedented opportunity for altering authori-
tarian regimes in favor of democratically elected political Islamists. Moreover, the
Qatar–Turkey alliance has been based on the mutual material interests of these two
states. This point is important because such a coalition is, at the same time, an alliance
of convenience, which allows each state to take advantage of the other’s power and
compensate for its weaknesses in order to balance the Saudi-led Arab Gulf states.
Whereas Qatar is a carbon-rich country possessing a huge budget surplus, Turkey is
one of the leading military powers in the Middle East. In addition to this, this study
sheds light on the impact of the anti-status-quo states on the Gulf security structure
by embarking on an agent-centric approach. Thus it is argued that such a coalition
between Qatar and Turkey has had further ramifications for the Gulf sub-regional
complex. The Turkey–Qatar coalition arose as a new bloc against the Saudi-led Arab
Gulf states and Iran, which meant that the structure of the Gulf security sub-complex
was transformed from a bipolar to a multipolar one.
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Chapter 4
Qatar Crisis: GCC States’ Perception
of Regional Powers
Noof Rashid ALDosari
In life, generally, we as social actors tend to interpret people’s behavior not only
by how they act towards us but also towards themselves. The situation is similar
in the field of foreign policymaking. This is because social interaction, like foreign
policy, involves both strategic interaction as well as symbolic interaction. As Herbert
Blumer notes (1986: 79), human beings “interpret or ‘define’ each other’s actions
instead of merely reacting to each other’s actions. Their ‘response’ is not made
directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which
they attach to such actions” (see also Vertzberger 1990). In this vein, words like
“reality,” “consciousness,” and “perception” become increasingly important in under-
standing and analyzing foreign policymaking decisions. Perception in particular is
not a simple phenomenon, as there are numerous factors that condition it, such as
culture, language, and context. Indeed, in the words of Parmeshwar Haksar, who
served as Gandhi’s principal secretary:
Perception is a phenomenon that is deeply embedded in the historical consciousness of each
country. There is a Chinese way of looking at things, and one would not want to understand
what the Chinese are driving at unless one has some idea of the historically-determined
perceptions the Chinese have about themselves. I don’t want to vulgarize it, but it is of
interest that until 1818 the Chinese had no institution called a Foreign Office. They had an
institution called the Great Hall of the Barbarians, where all matter relating to foreigners
was dealt with; in fact, the Hall of the Barbarians was the place for the conduct of China’s
international relations. I make no comment on this fact. But, there is a way in which a nation
expresses itself, its own self-estimate, its position in the world, and its relationship with other
countries as an aspect of reality which must be taken into account. (Haksar 1986)
Reality and perception, then, are crucial tools in understanding and questioning
the outcomes of foreign policymaking. Has a particular decision been formulated
according to the reality on the ground, or according to a perception of what really
N. R. ALDosari (B)
Department of International Affairs, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: n.aldosari@qu.edu.qa

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_4
52 N. R. ALDosari
exists on the ground? While perception and reality are separate phenomena, we are
bound nevertheless to investigate and consider both of them simultaneously in our
attempts to interpret the world around us. As Jervis (2017) puts it:
logic permits us to distinguish between the “psychological milieu” (the world as the actor
sees it) and “the operational milieu” (the world in which the policy will be carried out) and
to argue that policies and decisions must be mediated by statement’s goals, calculations, and
perceptions.
However, Jervis emphasizes that this is not the only thing that matters in seeking to
understand decision-making processes. There are two subsidiary questions that relate
to perception which according to Jervis are as follows: “are important differences in
policy preferences traceable to differences in decision makers’ perceptions of their
environment? And are there important differences between reality and shared or
common perceptions?” (Jervis 2017).
Perception and Reality: How Do Leaders’ Perceptions

Create Reality?
Perception here is defined as “a concept that describes the construction of reality

in which an individual makes foreign-policy decisions” (Herrmann 1986). For this
reason, it is useful to try to understand how political leaders relate to reality and
perception in the context of deciding on their foreign policy. This is especially vital
in light of the fact that in the arena of international affairs, some foreign policy
decisions are clearly based on false perceptions, with some being so rigid as to
be impervious to any changes in the reality on the ground. Hence leaders face a
difficult situation because of their incapacity or refusal to retain a close approximation
between perception and reality. As such, instead of an approximation, what we have
is a relationship between perception and reality, whereby there is a perception of
reality while at the same time reality is being shaped by perceptions. According to
constructivists, the actions of people in the world are based on their perceptions,
while the real objective of the world continuously shapes their perceptions.
It may be prudent here to mention the importance of something akin to the word
“reality” in the context of international relations. A leader’s perception is shaped by
context and in turn that context is shaped by that leader’s perception. In the following
I will provide an account of how international relations study the state, and note the
importance of context to the leader’s perception of reality. As Jervis (2017) writes:
The context of international politics shapes the content of the perceptions of unity and
planning. An awareness of the implications of anarchy leads decision-makers to be alert
for dangerous plots. If another’s behavior seems innocuous, they will look for a hidden
and menacing significance. They see not only plans, but sinister ones. Within society this
perspective characterizes the paranoid. But since threats and plots are common in inter-
national relations, the perception that others are Machiavellian cannot be easily labeled
pathological. It may have been extreme of Metternich (Austrian politician and diplomat,
4 Qatar Crisis: GCC States’ Perception of Regional Powers 53
1773–1859). when he heard that the Russian ambassador had died, to ask “I wonder why he
did that,” but the search for the devious plan believed to lurk behind even the most seemingly
spontaneous behavior is neither uncommon nor totally unwarranted.
It is mostly a realist perceptive that supports the role of context in shaping the leader’s
perception. Although I do not wish to argue against realism here, it is important to
note that in the above passage, Jervis does not mean that leaders do not plan their
actions carefully and skillfully; rather he says that their orchestrated actions will be
prepared on the basis of a perception of evil plans being made.
In what follows, I provide some historical and contemporary examples showing
the influence of perception on political leaders’ foreign policymaking decisions.
The next section will be divided into two parts: the first concerns the influence
of the perception and misperception of reality on leaders’ foreign policymaking
decisions; the second is about the role of leaders’ perceptions in creating reality
and the consequences of this, which is rarely discussed in the international relations
literature.
[T]he perceptions and philosophy of key leaders are the most important variables in foreign-
policy decision making; they are even more important than bureaucratic interests, lobbyists
in Congress, or environmental pressures of the international system, at least with respect to
the Middle East. The basic notion that core perceptions, like images of the opponent, affect
policy choices is also the primary idea behind the operational code and other efforts to study
the cognitive bases of policy making. (Herrmann 1986)
A salutary story of misperception is represented by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of

Kuwait. Saddam miscalculated his relationship with the United States of America. He
thought that he could negotiate with the United States as an equal, while the United
States was in fact pursuing a policy of tilting more towards Iraq. After the invasion
of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein did not change his misperception; he defined the battle
known as “Desert Storm” (in which Iraq lost) as a success for the Iraqi military,
because it had been able to confront the advanced American military. Saddam did
not know that his misperception of the United States after 1991 would lead to his
downfall in 2003. The question is: what was the basis of Saddam’s misperception of
his relationship with the United States especially after 1991? The following examples
offer some insight into his misperceptions:
In late 2002 … in a rare newspaper interview, Saddam argued that he understood
the American threat and that it did not frighten him:
The US, in its daily attacks and attempts to weaken us and to kill civilians every day with
its air missiles and artillery from neighboring countries, made us feel as if we were in a
perpetual war since January 1991. So we are ready for war. But Iraq will not, in any way,
be like Afghanistan. This does not mean that we are stronger than the US since it has long-
range missiles and naval forces, but we have faith in Allah, in our homeland, and in the Iraqi
people. Most importantly we also have faith in the Arab nation. We will not turn the war
into a picnic for the American or the British soldiers. No way! The land always fights on the
side of its owners.
In March 2003, Saddam told his officers, in a publicly reported meeting, that the Iraqis
had defeated the British in 1920 despite having inferior weapons because they had
54 N. R. ALDosari
faith. Today, he said, the officers had the same faith and thus, air force pilots should
not be dismayed that their adversaries had better planes, nor should the infantry be
concerned about the superior ground forces and equipment of their enemies, for the
Iraqis “have faith that your enemy does not have.” (Woods and Stout 2010).
This shows that Saddam’s misperception was defined through his definition of
faith—not faith in the sense of his religion, Islam, but rather faith in the Ba’athist
idea and its military might. After all, Saddam perceived himself as leading the Arab
nation, especially after attacking Israel.
This example shows how a leader’s misperception of reality can influence their
foreign policymaking decisions. But it is not just the (mis)perception of reality that
is important in foreign policymaking; reality in itself can be shaped by leaders’
perceptions.
In this regard, China’s self-perception today is a prominent example of this
phenomenon. The perception of Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding China’s
central role in the international system influences the reality on the ground. One can
hardly consult any important text on political studies without seeing items about
China and the powerful role it plays. To appreciate the extent to which state leaders’
perception of China is influencing the international reality, one ought to look at the
shift in some of their foreign policy decisions towards China; it is as if they were
Helianthus, bowing to the sun. Furthermore, in its publication of 10 May 2018,
Foreign Affairs published an article by Kevin Rudd entitled “How Xi Jinping Views
the World: The Core Interests That Shape China’s Behavior.” According to the article:
Xi’s worldview places greater emphasis on the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party
over the professional apparatus of the state and of communist ideology over policy pragma-
tism. It is one of Chinese nationalism suffused with a cocktail of economic achievement,
political nostalgia, and national grievance together with a new culture of political self-
confidence that represents a clear departure from Deng Xiaoping’s orthodoxy of “hide your
strength, bide your time, never take the lead.” (Rudd 2018).
Another paper, called “How Xi Jinping Sees the World and Why?,” asked how China’s
leaders have viewed the international order since 1949 while reflecting on how such a
perception might have influenced their interaction with the international community.
The article states: “the new ideas of the Xi era reflect massive changes in China’s
place in the international system, its economic, political, and military strength, and
China’s expectation that the international system would and should accommodate
this transformed China” (Bader 2016). At the same time, Xi Jinping’s own perception
of the world enables him to have different ideas about the international order and
China’s relationship with it. As such, China is becoming a major player, not just as
part of the “game” of the international system, but also as one of the key actors that
gets to dictate the rules of the game.
On the other hand, this increasing power on the world stage prompts the existing
superpower, the United States, to be wary of China, since the latter poses a direct
challenge to the former’s regional and global role. Xi Jinping’s leadership demon-
strates that his perception of the world not only shapes China’s behavior, but also
shapes the reality on the ground. As such, different states’ or leaders’ perceptions of
how best to deal with China lead to them altering their relations with China.
Another example is Russia and the way in which Vladimir Putin’s perception is
shaping reality. Although Putin’s power as Russia’s president is unchecked inside
Russia, it can be challenged by the international community. Leaders of the interna-
tional community constantly question Putin’s intentions. An important question is
always: what will be Russia’s next move? For a long time now, Russia’s perception of
itself has shaped the reality of the international system. Winston Churchill once said:
“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” While Putin’s perceptions
of the international system and Russia in particular shape the reality on the ground,
some state leaders think that Russia, as represented in Putin’s leadership, remains
a mystery. Furthermore, Putin’s perception of Russia and the international system
can be understood through the latest Ukraine crisis, the annexation of Crimea. Putin
perceives Russian identity as exceptional, and that, as such, Russia’s exceptionalism
can serve as an alternative to Western power.
Putin once said that “the breaking up of the Soviet Union is the greatest geopolitical
tragedy of the Twentieth Century.” Robert Gates, former US Secretary of Defense,
commented that he perceived a deep sense of humiliation in Putin due to the collapse
of the Soviet Union, which Gates thought he also associated with the Russian Empire
(Andiej 2019). Therefore, Putin’s perception of the power of geopolitics always
resonates in his foreign policy decisions. In embodying the Russian perception of
itself as neither European nor Western, Putin made the country a geopolitical power
not just for Eastern and Western Europe, but also for the Middle East. Moreover,
to understand Putin, one has to understand Russia’s history. As the Russian poet
Fyodor Tyutchev puts it: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone. No
ordinary yardstick can span her greatness. She stands alone, unique—In Russia, one
can only believe” (Kissane 2017). Putin is seen to be a leader who understands the
West very well. But the question is: does the West—and especially Donald Trump—
understand him? The West explains Putin’s view about the world as anti-Western,
and most importantly nationalistic. The West perceives that Putin is not only a leader
who is against Western control over the international system, but also one who
wants to reinstate the power of the Russian Empire. During his election campaign in
2014, presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted: “I believe Putin will continue
to rebuild the Russian Empire. He has zero respect for Obama or the U.S.!” (CNN
2018). However, once in office, Trump developed a different view of Putin, which
meant taking on a different way of approaching Russia. On the one hand, we see that
the United States, as represented in Trump’s leadership, does not want to enter into
direct conflict with Russia. Indeed, there are various positions taken towards Putin,
which explains the disagreements between the different government institutions over
how best to deal with Russia. The situation in the Middle East in general, and in Syria
in particular, serves as a useful example here. On the other hand, the perception of
the rise of the Russian Empire is a persistent fear among EU foreign policymakers.
Such fear is evident in the EU’s response to the Greek crisis, which was not solely
about the economy, but was shot through with geopolitical ramifications. Europe
56 N. R. ALDosari
helped Greece largely out of the fear that had they not done so, the country would be
supported by Russia and as a result Putin would have an easy entrance into Europe.
All the examples above speak to the importance of the “perception of the other” in
foreign policymaking. Here, again, it is illuminating to survey how political leaders
perceive the world, their beliefs, and their images of others. To this end, Vertzberger
(1990) has emphasized the role of cognition in foreign policy decisions, while
highlighting the usefulness of examining decision-making and assessing whether
and to what extent there is a discrepancy between leaders’ perceptions and reality.
Vertzberger restates an argument originally put forward by Jervis, noting that even if
two decision-makers are confronted with the same situation, their decisions will be
different: “This is often the case because people differ in their perceptions of the world
in general and of other actors in particular” (Jervis 2017). He goes on to describe
how “our understanding of the actor’s images and beliefs” shapes our expectations
about how others will behave. For example, Jervis (2017) writes, “the question about
Russian behavior raised by the Cuban missile crisis probably is not ‘what Soviet
calculus and risk-taking propensity could explain this bold and dangerous step?’ but,
‘How could they have so badly misestimated the expected American response?’”
In the study of international relations and foreign policy analysis, the perception
of others has been explored through a range of theories and approaches. Some of the
different approaches to the study of perception in international affairs are shown in the
illustration below. However, for my case study, I will adopt another approach—one
that is seldom discussed in the scholarship on GCC foreign policymaking: namely
discourse theory and discourse analysis. I will explain how actors’ perceptions have
influenced GCC leaders’ foreign policy decisions. My data will be collected from
formal and informal speeches in the media. In what follows, I will set out the rationale
behind deploying this methodology after establishing the relevance of using discourse
theory in foreign policy analysis (Fig. 4.1).
Perception
Political
Political Theories of
cognition Realist
psychology Constructivist political
Schema perception
Discourse
theory and
The research method
analysis
Fig. 4.1 Illustration of different research approaches to the question of perception in international
relations and foreign policy analysis
Because the process of decision-making and its consequences matter, perception

becomes an important object of study within international relations and foreign
policy analysis. In developing this further, I will focus on two branches of literature
in the field of international relations, namely political psychology and construc-
tivism, which have interpreted world politics through the lenses of identity and
beliefs. Within the space of a few months in 1989 and 1990, two key texts were
published: Vertzberger’s (1990) The World in Their Minds and Nicholas Onuf’s
(2012) World of Our Making. These works shared a common premise in seeing
international relations as being determined by how decision-makers perceive and
construct reality. The former, a work of political psychology, and the latter, a work
of constructivism, advanced their respective fields in understanding and elaborating
on the (inter)subjective nature of world politics. Furthermore, both psychology and
constructivism challenged not only “realism,” which remains to this day the domi-
nant and mainstream way of thinking in international theory, but also rational choice
perspectives.
Post-structuralist Discourse Theory and Foreign Policy
My aim here is to build upon the literature on post-structuralist discourse theory,

while using the discursive approach in foreign policy. I will seek to demonstrate
the importance of discourse in understanding how state leaders’ perceptions can
influence their foreign policymaking decisions towards their neighboring countries.
Discourse will identify that either political language and political cognition shapes
perception, or vice versa. For example, Howarth describes “a forest standing in the
path of a proposed motorway.”
It may simply represent an inconvenient obstacle impeding the rapid implementation of a new
road system, or it might be viewed as a site of special interest for scientists and naturalists, or
a symbol of the nation’s threatened natural heritage. Whatever the case, its meaning depends
on the orders of discourse that constitute its identity and significance. (Howarth 2009)
As such, post-structuralists like Foucault and Derrida have argued that “it is impos-
sible to fix meaning within language. It is always contested, always on the move.
While for the structuralist, meaning within the language is much more stable,
although it can be changed” (Howarth 2009).
Mainstream approaches to foreign policy analysis—focusing on the objective
view of state interest, power, and the international system—consider what gives
balance or stability to the system, and what potential enemies might threaten this
state of affairs. In contrast, discourse theory is interested in the subjective view.
In relation to foreign policymaking, this includes the subjective view of political
leaders in discursive activities and how these influence foreign policy outcomes. So,
an international enemy does not simply exist, but rather is constructed over time. For
instance, a post-structuralist would not ask why the United States invaded Panama,
58 N. R. ALDosari
but rather how Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega went from being a strong, anti-
communist leader who merited US support to a drug trafficking thug whose actions
warranted an invasion. The enemy did not merely exist; it was socially constructed
through specific discourse activities. As Ripley (2017) writes, “discourse helps to
produce and prioritize the course of action states take.” In this way, then, discourse
theory
[b]egins with the assumption that all objects and actions are meaningful and that their
meaning is a product of historically specific systems of rules. It thus inquires into the way in
which social practices construct and contest the discourses that constitute social reality. These
practices are possible because systems of meaning are contingent and can never completely
exhaust a social field of meaning. Three basic categories are needed to unpack and elaborate
upon this complex set of statements. These are the categories of the discursive, discourse
and discourse analysis. (Howarth 2009)
Following Howarth’s lead, it is worth defining these categories. Discursive means

that “all objects are objects of discourse,” insofar as “their meaning depends upon
a socially constructed system of rules and significant differences” (Howarth 2009).
Discourses “refer to historically specific systems of meaning which form the iden-
tities of subjects and objects” (Foucault 1972). Discourse analysis refers to “the
process of analyzing signifying practices as discursive forms” (Howarth 2009). In
this way, discourse analysis treats “a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic
material speeches, reports, manifestos, historical events, interviews, policies, ideas,
even organizations and institutions as ‘texts’ or ‘writings’ that enable subjects to
experience the world of objects, words, and practices” (Howarth 2009).
The significance of discourse theory comes from the power of language in legit-
imizing and delegitimizing certain foreign policy options. So, the significance of
language as a political and social tool for socially constructing our reality is not
about how we speak, but about the unique role that language plays in creating discur-
sive structures. It has the capacity to produce and reproduce, to shape and reshape
specific meanings, ideas, and identities. Therefore, discursive structures do not just
create spaces for defining foreign policy options; they also facilitate discursive spaces,
which prompt us to accept certain foreign policy options and reject others.
In essence, then, and as Anna Holzscheiter observes, discourse can be defined
as “the space where intersubjective meaning is created, sustained, transformed and,
accordingly, becomes constitutive of social reality” (cited by Ripley 2017). The role
that discourse plays in the foreign policy decision-making process is a subtle yet
powerful one.
Discourse Analysis and Foreign Policy: Discursive Approach
In general, discourse analysis has become the main alternative to the mainstream
approaches in foreign policy analysis, like rational choice theory, which is the most
dominant theory in international relations. A number of scholars support a discourse
analysis approach in foreign policy analysis. For example, Daddow (2015), in his
article “Interpreting Foreign Policy through Discourse Analysis,” established an
interesting argument about the role of a leader’s cognition and beliefs in foreign
policymaking. His article explores the difficulty of definitively understanding foreign
policymaking. Daddow believes that this ambiguity cannot be solved, because of the
problem of policy analysts being inside the decision-making circles. However, such
ambiguity can be overcome by accessing political leaders’ beliefs. According to
Daddow (2015), this will lead to an increased “emphasis on foreign policy narratives
and the links that can be made between those narratives and government foreign
policy outputs.”
Discursive Approach
David Howarth, who heads up the research program in the Essex School of discourse
analysis, describes his work as investigating “the way in which social practices
articulate and contest the discourses that constitute social reality” (Howarth et al.
2000). Here I utilize the Essex School’s definition of “discursive struggle,” which
situates the relation between
social actors operating (on the level of discursive positions, collective actors articulating
their views from these positions are engaged in a struggle with other positions, sometimes
compatible, sometimes competing, and by no means necessarily in line with the positions
of ‘executive actors’ [Carta and Morin 2014a]), at the heart of the explanation as well as a
challenge of policies. (Diez 2014)
In order to understand the discursive struggle in the Middle East’s foreign policy-
making, we need to briefly set out the discursive approach to foreign policymaking.
The discursive approach denies the notion of objective analysis, and instead
focuses on the subjectivity of actors:
the form of knowledge they mobilize, the multiple interpretations they deploy to create
meaning and the particular context that individualizes the situations in which these mean-
ings evolve. Discursive approaches thus both attempt to fully comprehend the production
of meaning and to analyze the process through which this meaning shapes actions and
institutions. (Durnova and Zittoun 2013)
Lastly, the role of the discursive approach in public policy research, in general, is
that it
[r]efuses to treat discourse as merely one explanatory variable among many others, consid-
ering it instead as the key to understanding how actors construct and modify public poli-
cies. In this respect, discourse is first and foremost the means by which actors perceive
the world, and consequently functions as a way to transform it. Finally, discourse is what
actors use to interact with one another, whether in struggle or in the search for common
ground. From this perspective, the discourse and study of the multiple social practices in
which it takes place—when arguing, expressing conviction, conducting analyses, defining
terms, attempting to persuade, negotiating, contesting, and so forth—these approaches not
60 N. R. ALDosari
only provide a different way of understanding the processes of crafting and transforming
policy-making, but also offer different means of investigating the issues of power, legitimacy
and governance that are at the foreground of public action. (Durnova and Zittoun 2013)
The Political Discourse of the Qatar Crisis: GCC States,

Alliances, and Threat Perceptions
Discursive Struggle
Drawing from Carta and Morin (2014b), the perception of Arabian Gulf states can
be understood via the concept of “discursive struggle,” which stresses that “meaning
does not simply exist as given, but has to be fought over and negotiated in discur-
sive practices” (Diez 2014). Discourse, therefore, is not synonymous with structure;
rather, discourse comprises the main context for “political articulations (leading to
the question of how this context works in constituting meaningful practices),” which
in turn is made up of “articulatory practices that not only reproduce but also re-
shape this context (leading to the question of how the struggles in the process of this
reproduction have an impact on the overall discourse)” (Diez 2014).
In a broad perspective, the Arabian Gulf states’ leaders now see themselves as
representatives of the Arab world. This change happened in the wake of the fall of
Saddam Hussein and Egypt’s gradual withdrawal of power from the region. This
left an ideological and power vacuum in the region, which prompted Gulf states’
leaders to recalculate their role. Leaders in Arabian Gulf states started to create new
perceptions in respect of how they see their new role in the region vis-à-vis Iranian and
Turkish regional powers. However, the Gulf states did not totally abandon Arabism; in
fact, they legitimized themselves against regional powers and embraced the concept
of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi (Arab center of gravity in the region), not only as an
instrument for foreign policymaking in the region and international relations, but also
as their states’ identity. Although the latter is defined as the Arabian Gulf (Khaliji),
this will not suffice to bring the Gulf states to move against or in line with regional
and international powers. For this, a broader identity is needed, which shapes how the
Gulf states’ leaders see themselves in the world of politics. I next give some examples
of different blocs among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and
their use of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi after the Arab Spring, including Saudi Arabia
and Qatar. Then, I explain how GCC states perceive regional powers from their
subjective position, insofar as they see themselves as “leaders of the Arab world”
and how their perceptions have influenced their foreign policymaking, especially
after the Qatar Crisis.
GCC and Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi
As well as creating the Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi ideology and attributing different
meanings and uses to it, the GCC states joined different regional and international
alliances. The Arab Spring revealed that GCC states (and especially each member
of the GCC) perceived what the Arab world should look like in their own way. More
specifically, they took a view on how to govern the Arab world as its representative
and leader, in order to win the so-called Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi. It is important to
note that the fight over Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi between GCC members was not
simply a matter of titles; it was also an issue of power and leadership: politically,
economically, and geopolitically.
Some people believe that the Arab national ideology is losing ground, but this may
not be applicable if we take a closer look at the different meanings contained within
the ideology of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi as a discursive struggle between GCC states.
Unfortunately, Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi as a discursive struggle could lead to GCC
disintegration, which might bring an end to the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council.
It is worth noting that the Gulf states today want to fill the vacuum of Arabism in
the region. In fact, the Gulf states aspire to take on this role by way of ensuring
political and economic stability. The economic, as compared to political, influence
in the international and regional spheres has allowed them to compete for this leading
role. This shift in perception of their power has not just fueled the economy; it has
also supported the ideology through which they can seek a greater presence among
international relations and form new geostrategic alliances.
During and after the Arab Spring, Gulf leaders emphasized their different roles in
the international and regional power struggles, especially in light of the uprisings in
Egypt and Syria. What the GCC states called Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi was sometimes
supportive of the Arab Spring and at other times against it. This can be seen through
the clashes between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman.
Saudi Arabia is seen as a regional power in the Gulf states, with regard to its
position among other GCC states. Ulrichsen cites Samuel Huntington’s definition of
regional powers as countries that are “preeminent in areas of the world without being
able to extend their interests and capabilities globally, as the United States.”
In other words, a regional power’s influence has inherent limits and is invariably subordinate
to that of great power or superpower. Furthermore, as Maxi Schoeman has noted, a regional
power must be able to play a leadership role in maintaining regional security, and it should
receive both regional and intra-regional acceptance of its security role. In order to exercise
its leadership role effectively, Schoeman argues, a regional power must be capable of playing
an active role as a peacemaker or stabilizer, irrespective of the degree of amity or enmity
between it and between other states in the region. Similarly, Graham Fuller and John Arquilla
define a regional power as a state whose policies significantly impact on the security and
well-being of other states in the region. (Ulrichsen 2018: 128)
62 N. R. ALDosari
This definition of regional power clashed with the idea of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi.
Some GCC states do not support the idea of Saudi Arabia acquiring Arab lead-
ership, because for them it threatens to diminish their power both regionally and
internationally.
The power struggle between GCC states during the Arab Spring is evidence that
GCC states do not approve of Saudi Arabia becoming a regional power. There is a
contested idea between GCC states of who should be entitled to Arab leadership. This
can be illustrated with different examples: the ideological struggle during the Arab
Spring resulted from divergent perceptions among GCC states of Markiz AlThuqil
AlArabi, with some GCC states forming their own ideology of Markiz AlThuqil
AlArabi.
For the first time in the history of the GCC states, the Arab Spring revealed the
security threats of GCC states. These security threats are not conventional military
threats, but instead are considered as ideological, represented notably in the Muslim
Brotherhood. Throughout the Arab Spring, Qatar supported not only the Arab nations
rising against Arab dictators, but also the Muslim Brotherhood. This, however,
disturbed some Arabian Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, and
as such they sought to fight against Qatar through different supportive roles for the
Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is
a powerful 80-year-old Islamist group with a strong history of popular support throughout
the region. However, the most critical element that arouses the suspicion among the majority
of the GCC states is that the increased power of the Muslim Brotherhood can lead to the
politicization of Islam, with unpredictable consequences for the entire Gulf region that may
lead to the overthrowing of the Gulf Monarchies. This concern is of great importance to the
GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE. (Khlebnikov 2015)
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain tried to thwart Qatar’s attempt to create for itself
a Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi in the region. They tried to curtail a number of Qatari
instruments of power in supporting not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also Arab
revolutions in general (for example, Qatar’s financial aid to Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,
and Syria). In 2014, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors
from Qatar, due to its interference in their internal affairs and the criticism of them
that was aired on Al Jazeera. However, one of the things that helped to end this
diplomatic crisis was the Islamic State’s advances in Iraq and Syria, which was a
regional security and economic threat. This drove the GCC members to come together
again to face this challenge.
The Qatar Crisis: Revealing Different GCC Perceptions

on Regional Powers
While the Arab Spring revealed GCC states’ ideological struggle over Markiz
AlThuqil AlArabi, in terms of wanting to control the Arab world the Qatar crisis
revealed that alongside such a tectonic shift in the Middle East, there is also a shift
in the GCC states’ perceptions. This shift showed that each state in the GCC holds
a different ideology of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi which entails that each GCC state
perceives regional powers (Iran and Turkey) differently. So, how do their different
ideologies produce different perceptions of Iran and Turkey, and, therefore, shape
their foreign policymaking towards them?
Before observing the political discourse of Arabian Gulf states and their shift of
regional perceptions, let us briefly explore the role of Turkey and Iran in the region
in order to see how this might have shaped GCC states’ perceptions of Turkey and
Iran. This will serve as the background or context for the Qatar Crisis.
Iran and Turkey have good bilateral cooperation with each other, especially on
the energy sector. However, as Larrabee and Nader (2013) note,
the degree of cooperation between the two countries should not be exaggerated. Turkey and
Iran have historically been, and continue to be, rivals rather than close partners. While they
may share interests in certain economic and security concerns, their interests are at odds in
many areas across the Middle East. The two states have fundamentally different political
identities and ideologies.
What intensified this rivalry was the Arab Spring. The fall of old authoritarian regimes
in the region made Iran and Turkey exploit the new order for their own interests in the
region. However, because of their divergent political interests, the rivalry between
Iran and Turkey is impacting their relationship on a number of issues, like the Syrian
revolution and Turkey’s support of the opposition party with regard to Iranian support
for the stability of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. Since 1979, as Larrabee and Nader
(2013) observe,
the secular, Alawite-dominated, Baathist Syrian regime and Iran’s Shi’a theocracy have
strongly supported each other. Assad’s downfall would be a serious strategic blow to Iran
and could result in the growth of Turkey’s influence. It could also have a demonstration effect
on Iran, strengthening internal opposition to the Iranian regime and deepening the current
divisions within the Iranian leadership.
Moreover, Iraq has represented a field of international struggle between Iran and
Turkey especially after the withdrawal of US troops. Such withdrawal created a
power vacuum that Iran sought to fill. The sectarian conflict between the Shi’a and
Sunni in Iraq was intensified, which drew Iran and Turkey into opposing sides on
the conflict. In addition, the most sensitive issue for Iran and especially Turkey is
that of the status of the Kurds. Another key issue is the Palestinian cause, which
provides another outlet for the rivalry between Ankara and Tehran. Iran, due to its
Islamic regime, saw itself as defending Palestinians against Israel, while aspiring for
a position in the Arab and Muslim world; however, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s
support for Palestine was more concrete than Iran’s largely rhetorical support, to the
degree that the relationship between Israel and Ankara began to deteriorate.
In Iran, Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) together with Khomeinism,
serve as the regime’s ideology and the medium for the regime’s foreign policy. By
contrast, it could be argued that the role of ideology in Turkey’s foreign policy is
more contentious, and that Turkey today is not guided by Kemalism and its foreign
64 N. R. ALDosari
policy is not driven by ideology, but mainly by self-interest. However, ideas can
overlap with interests. As such, it is true to say that:
An understanding of a nation’s ideology provides no certain insights into its behavior. By
applying the Weberian position to the context of foreign policy, Carlsnaes also arrives at the
conclusion that the ideological nature of foreign policy is often contrasted with the notion of
interest … but … these are not mutually exclusive but have, on the contrary, coexisted over
the years, albeit with a tendency for agencies of interests to contain the agencies of ideology.
(ALDosari 2015)
In spite of that, one cannot overlook the fact that in political discourse, there are
contested meanings of what counts as an interest. So, how does Turkey define its
interest? The position of Dr Ibrahim Kalin, Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister of
Turkey, is described as follows:
Although AKP policy is often seen as being driven by ideological factors, such as Islamism
and New Ottomanism, the primary determinants of Turkish foreign policy actually stem
from more practical factors, such as Turkey’s economic demands, its historical ties to its
neighbors and its sensitive geopolitical position. Dr. Kalin placed particular emphasis on
this last factor, asserting that Turkey’s geographic location at a global crossroads renders the
nation susceptible to a whole host of energy and security issues that pertain to the Middle
East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Central Asian regions. As such, Turkey has no choice
but to play an active role in its region. The necessity of this role has significantly shaped
Turkey’s foreign policy and its interactions with neighbors. (Middle East Institut 2018)
After briefly viewing the regional power role of Turkey and Iran together, it can be
said that they have struggled ideologically in the region. It is worth noting, too, that
both countries strive to rule the Muslim world: Sunni power or Shi’i power? They
are both heirs to significant and powerful empires in Muslim history—Iran of the
Safavid Empire, and Turkey of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, we need to look at
the rising power of the small Gulf states and their role in this equation of regional
power struggle.
A typical observer of the role of Khaliji leaders in the region will conclude that
the financial power of Khaliji leaders is the best way to understand how their foreign
policy is formulated. Most of the time, commentators overlook how Khailiji leaders
perceive Iran and Turkey. If one observes how Khaliji leaders’ foreign policies influ-
ence the region, one can conclude that it is not just a matter of financial power that
made these leaders the new powers, participating in different regional alliances and
thereby shaping a new regional order. The perceptions and, most importantly, the
political discourse of Khaliji leaders, are the crucial pillars that shape Khaliji foreign
policymaking, with the ideology of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi being the central factor
in this regard.
The manifestation of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi as an ideological struggle became
evident in the Qatar crisis. It is no surprise to see Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and
Bahrain in conflict with Qatar, as there have been historical conflicts in the past
between Sheikdoms. However, their struggle at the present time is unique. The Qatar
crisis revealed the root cause of conflict between GCC states by showing that each
GCC member has different perceptions of the regional powers (Iran and Turkey).
Thus, the definition of the GCC conflict is no longer related to the material aspect in
politics (i.e., financial power); rather, this political struggle can be defined as more
ideological and geopolitical in nature.
In their ideological struggle over Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi, each GCC state sees
that they do not have to share similar views in respect of who is a friend and who is
an enemy. This means that while they are all cooperating, there remains a different
formula for each state regarding their prescribed ideology when dealing with regional
powers like Iran and Turkey. To be more precise, they have different perceptions of
regional powers, which serve to complicate the attainment of GCC security alliance.
These different perceptions are revealed through their foreign policy discourses,
which show that each GCC state has a different relationship with Iran and Turkey.
This has complicated the relationships between GCC states and it could be one of
the reasons behind the Qatar crisis.
On 5 June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt led a blockade on
Qatar, accusing the country of financing terrorist groups and having close ties with
Iran. The blockade raised many questions as to the reliability of Saudi Arabia and
UAE security cooperation. Most importantly, the question of whether or not the Qatar
crisis will serve to dismantle the Gulf Cooperation Council was raised. The crisis
carries some alarming implications for the social stability and regional security of
the Arabian Gulf states. It is no wonder that since the advent of the crisis, Kuwait
and Oman have had different perspectives on the region, leading them to collaborate
and support Qatar in this challenging time. But why?
Arabian Gulf states as members of the GCC were never united in their foreign
policymaking. This remains the case today. Each state has a different perspective
in formulating and implementing their foreign policies, whether at the regional or
international level. The Arab Spring stressed this point very clearly. During the Arab
Spring, each Gulf state was dealing with the Arab revolution and the toppling of
old Arab dictatorships via a distinct foreign policy, instead of acting as a unified
GCC bloc. Thus, policy analysts started to categorize each Gulf state according to
which ideological or political perspective in the region they were supporting and
from which perspective their foreign policies were derived. However, although they
have different ideologies, this does not mean that none of them can take the position
of the main player; therefore, they need to bargain with regional players like Iran and
Turkey.
No member of the Gulf state today can speak about an Arab country without
mentioning Iran or Turkey. This is especially true of the countries of the Arab revo-
lution—such as Syria and Yemen. Because the Gulf states are increasing their power
to shape the new regional order, the significance of collaborating or competing with
Iran and Turkey is becoming more vivid. Although political tensions between the
Arab Gulf states existed long before the Arab Spring, new political tensions between
them have emerged since. The first political tension was the diplomatic crisis between
Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain in 2014. The main reason behind this
diplomatic crisis was Qatar’s independent foreign policy. Besides this, Qatar was
acting as a sovereign country, with an independent foreign policy that diverged from
that of the Quartet states. In return the latter escalated their hostile relationship with
66 N. R. ALDosari
Qatar in 2017, resulting in the Saudi-led blockade. They made high-level demands
of Qatar, suggesting that if these demands were met, the blockade could be lifted.
These demands are: to cease supporting the Muslim Brotherhood; to close down the
Al Jazeera network; to shut the Turkish military base in Qatar; and to downsize their
relationship with Iran and maintain only diplomatic contact.
Qatar’s foreign policy can be described as a mediator in national and international
issues. However:
Qatar has placed its weight behind different regional actors and alliances than Saudi Arabia
and UAE, in particular, the rising Muslim Brotherhood and groups close to it (also through
Doha based broadcaster, Al Jazeera). Riyadh and Abu Dhabi regard these actors as security
risks. Qatar also expanded relations with neighboring Iran. This was unacceptable to Saudi
Arabia in particular, which feels threatened by Iran’s regional policies. (Sailer and Roll 2017)
Qatar’s perception of regional powers such as Iran and Turkey differs from how Saudi
Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain perceive them. On this basis, the conflict between the
Gulf states is not to be solved over the negotiation table, nor discussed implicitly or
through a proxy agent. Instead, it is becoming more intense, threatening the cohesion
of the GCC. According to the Emir of Kuwait Shaikh Sabah, “the current blockade
on Qatar by the Saudi-led alliance risks escalation and could result in the end of
the GCC’s 36-year-old alliance” (The New Arab 2017). Moreover, the Qatar crisis
revealed that not only does Qatar have a different perception of Iran and Turkey, but
so too do Kuwait and Oman. Today, the three Arabian Gulf states—Qatar, Kuwait,
and Oman—have found that they share some similarities in their perception of Iran
and Turkey, while they are implicitly forming their own bloc within the GCC.
The Political Discourse of the Qatar Crisis: Alliance

Perception
The political discourse of the Qatar crisis reveals the importance of political percep-
tions in foreign policymaking. This political perception can be sought through the
political discourse of Khaliji leaders. I stressed earlier that political discourse is
important to analyze, since it is through political language that actors create and
recreate their social reality, and shape and reshape new and different meanings of
perceptions, ideas, etc., which influence their foreign policy decisions. So let us
explore how each state with their different ideologies of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi
perceives regional powers.
Qatar perceives Turkey as a significant geopolitical ally that can connect Qatar to
Europe. Qatar’s cordial relationship with Turkey is an outgrowth of Qatar’s percep-
tion that there are key similarities between them. For example, both have the same
stand on significant issues such as the Palestinian cause. Moreover, neither country
believes in blindly following a certain ideology or dogma in their foreign policy-
making, and they both share common values in pursuing their foreign policies in the
region. In a Qatari newspaper interview, Erdoğan stated:
We share a common vision on international and regional issues. During my most recent visit
to Qatar, my dear brother His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and I had the
opportunity to exchange views on bilateral and regional issues. Relations between Turkey
and Qatar will grow deeper in the near future in a way that benefits both countries and the
region. In fact, our mutual determination in this regard has raised relations between Turkey
and Qatar to an exemplary level. (Qatar Tribune 2018)
Qatar also has the same perception of Turkey. This is projected through the way
in which Qatar speaks about Turkey and perceives the Turkish role in the region.
Furthermore, “17 summits were held between HH Sheikh Tamim and President
Erdoğan in the past 41 months, a record in the history of relations between the two
countries and perhaps in the history of international relations”; during these summits
“more than 40 agreements, memorandums of understanding and cooperation were
signed to enhance cooperation between the two sides in various fields, which is also a
record in that single period” (Al-Sharq 2018). Indicative of the cooperation between
the two states is Turkey’s support for Qatar’s preparation for the 2022 FIFA World
Cup. Furthermore, the crisis compelled Qatar to implement new foreign policies
towards Turkey, marking a shift in Qatar’s foreign policy (for example, the opening
of a Turkish military base in Qatar). In November 2017, during a visit to Qatar,
Erdoğan stressed that he would be supporting Qatar militarily in the Gulf crisis.
However, when Erdoğan heard of the Saudi-led demand to close the Turkish base, he
responded: “the demands on its embattled regional ally Qatar had gone ‘too far.’ What
we are talking about here is an attack on the sovereign rights of a state. There cannot
be such an attack on countries’ sovereignty rights in international law” (reported in
Ozerkan 2018). Erdoğan viewed the demand for the withdrawal of Turkish troops as
an act of “disrespect to Turkey” (Ozerkan 2018). The building of a Turkish military
base in Qatar put the blockading states in a difficult position, with their relationship
with Turkey becoming more rigid. When Erdoğan offered to establish a military base
in Riyadh, the response from Riyadh was simply: “a military base is not needed”
(Ozerkan 2018).
Iran found in the Qatar crisis a great opportunity to establish a good relationship
with an Arab Muslim country. Qatar’s perception of Iran is considerably different
from that of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain. Qatar never perceives Iran in
the way that it perceives Turkey. But it can be said that Qatar’s perception of Iran is
similar to its relationship with Iraq, which could be described as “unique.” Before the
crisis, Qatar perceived Iran as a friend, but since the onset of the crisis Iran became
a new ally to Qatar. Why? Because the crisis forced Qatar to find a new regional
friend. And Iran is always on the lookout for such moments. Other than sharing a
gas field, the only similarity between the two states in foreign policymaking terms is
their wisdom in diplomatic relationships. Qatar perceives Iran as a power balance for
regional security of the Arabian Gulf states. As Dudley (2017) writes, it is possible
that
the trade embargo may have been an attempt to convince Doha to downgrade its ties with
Tehran, but it has, in fact, had the opposite effect. In August, Doha restored full diplomatic
links with Tehran some 20 months after it had recalled its ambassador from the embassy
68 N. R. ALDosari
in Tehran. At that time Qatar’s alliance with Saudi Arabia was among the most vital in the
region; now the case is opposite.
Both Qatar and Iran knew how to take advantage of the blockade and incorporate it
into their relationships. Dudley (2017) describes “the latest sign of the blossoming
friendship between Doha and Tehran,” which came on 26 November 2017
when Qatar’s Economy Minister Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Thani travelled to the Iranian
capital for talks with government ministers on business links between the two countries,
including Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade, Mohammad Shariatmadari and Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Iran reacted to the blockade on Qatar by criticizing the Gulf states’ inability to estab-
lish dialogue, as the Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif labeled the situation
as a “dialogue deficit” in the region. Iran’s position in the crisis and its explicit
support for Qatar intensified its tricky relationship with the blockading states, espe-
cially Saudi Arabia, because of Qatar’s perception of Iran as an ally. Qatar’s foreign
policies towards Iran are bolstered by the strong economic activities between the two
countries, which have grown sharply and are predicted to grow further. Moreover, the
data from the Iran Customs Administration shows that “Iran exported $139 m worth
of non-oil goods to Qatar in the seven months to October 22, 2017—a timeframe
which covers both pre- and post-boycott periods. That was a 117.5% increase on the
same, a year earlier” (Dudley 2017).
In addition, this success in economic cooperation “has led to Qatar and Iran
opening embassies and meetings of high-level officials. It seems that the relation-
ship will keep improving since Iranian President Hassan Rouhani publicly endorsed
strengthening relations with Qatar”; on the other hand, Qatar said that “the restora-
tion of ties expressed its aspiration to strengthen bilateral relations with the Islamic
Republic of Iran in all fields” (Abu-Sirriya 2017). The perception of Iran as a new ally
has been proved not just through successful economic cooperation; the new alliance
is developing and being strengthened through the political language of the leaders
of both countries. HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim also took this opportunity to extend a
hand of close cooperation to Germany at the Security Conference in Munich, when
he stated:
Germany is an especially appropriate venue for a meeting to discuss the present-day global
order and the threats to it. A nation that stands for the values of freedom and the rule of
law, Germany is also a major pillar for the European Union, seen by many as a bastion of
coexistence and trans-national cooperation. (The Peninsula 2018)
The perception of the alliance is undoubtedly influencing Qatar’s foreign policies.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim, in his Munich speech, said that establishing a new
alliance and withdrawing from an old alliance should always be undertaken peace-
fully, in a way that will not endanger the sovereignty of any state. He also praised
Brexit, saying:
as a body, the EU demonstrates that a union can establish shared security based on mutual
interests, even amongst people who tore themselves apart in war. Like it or not, Brexit is an
example of a peaceful resolution of differences. No diplomatic ties were cut, and no blood
was shed. There is a lesson here for us in the Arab region. (The Peninsula 2018)
Through these statements on Brexit, HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim sent a clear message
to the blockading Quartet.
The Saudi-Led Blockade States’ Political Discourse: Threat

Perceptions of Iran and Turkey
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain perceive Iran and Turkey mostly as threats to
the region and their regimes. The notion of threat perception is commonplace in
international relations. Indeed, there is a dedicated approach to the topic called the
Threat Perception Theory (TPT), which is a representative of the Rationalist School
that strongly favors the objective basis of threats. Furthermore, as Scheerder (2012)
describes it, Threat Perception Theory holds that “four factors determine the threat
perception of states”:
aggregate power, comprising a states’ resources such as population, industrial and military
capability; geographic proximity, states that are nearby pose a greater threat than those far
away; offensive power, states with large offensive capabilities are more likely to be perceived
as threats than those that are militarily weak; lastly offensive intentions, states that appear
aggressive are more likely to be perceived as threats. (Scheerder 2012)
However, the theory is inadequate when it comes to explaining the dynamics of

threats in the twenty-first century as it confines threats solely to the military level.
In contrast, the Copenhagen School’s Securitization Theory (ST), which is a
constructivist theory, has some similarities with discourse theory. The theory focuses
on a broader conceptualization of threats, seeing the latter as intersubjective and
expressed in speech acts. Moreover, the theory maintains that “security is the outcome
of a discursive process; threats are not found objectively but are social facts, based on
a collective understanding … This collective understanding is constructed through
securitizing speech-acts” (Scheerder 2012).
Through the political discourse of these states, Iran and Turkey are perceived as
a threat. Saudi Arabia as a regional actor and Iran as a regional power exemplify
the security dilemma in the region. Bahrain and the UAE perceive that any kind
of threat the Saudis would face from Iran, they in turn will face too, as they have a
perceived “shared destiny.” The reason behind the Saudi perception is that it sees Iran
as its arch enemy in the region. A study shows that Saudi threat perception is influ-
encing its foreign policymaking decisions negatively, as it faces increasingly complex
policy dilemmas. To put this in context, it is worth reviewing Saudi Arabia’s past
and ongoing threat perception, and here Hartmann (2016) provides useful historical
background.
70 N. R. ALDosari
For Saudi, both Iran and Turkey are regarded as a significant competitor for
regional dominance. The United States, by supporting the invasion of Iraq, gave
birth to the Arab leaders’ political power vacuum. The Arab Spring resulted in the
so-called post-American vacuum, which prompted Saudi, Iran, and Turkey to struggle
for regional dominance. Now, a shift in the alliance can be seen between the GCC
states and regional powers. This has resulted in powerhouses forming three different
blocs: the first bloc consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen,
and factions of the Iraqi government; the second bloc, backed by the United States
and Israel for being anti-Iran, consists of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain;
the third bloc comprises the alliance between Turkey and Qatar. Each bloc has its
own ideological convictions and its own perception of the kind of role they need to
play in order to secure or have a part in regional dominance.
The Saudi bloc is trying to struggle against both Iran and Turkey, which shows
that the regional stage after the fall of Saddam, or even after the demise of Syria
which is now under the wing of Iran and Russia, is not left entirely devoid of Arab
regional power. Saudi Arabia, before the Qatar crisis, sent a message to Iran through
its state media. In May 2017, the Kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
said that, “we won’t wait for the battle to come to Saudi Arabia. Instead, we’ll work
so that the battle is for them in Iran” (Shaker 2018). Such words still resonate in
Iran. The Crown Prince’s explicit military threat against Iran shows the direction
that Saudi foreign policy is taking.
Looking at the Saudi political discourse during and after the Qatar crisis, it is
worth noting that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain welcomed Trump’s decision
to exit from the Iran nuclear deal. In a tweet, the Saudi ambassador Prince Khalid
bin Salman in Washington reiterated the support, saying:
As I said before with regards to the deal, we are on autopilot heading towards a mountain.
[The] deal has fueled Iran’s malicious expansion driven by its extremist ideology. It provided
Iran with a financial windfall that it used to further sectarian strife/chaos in the region. (Karam
2018)
This was not the only political step taken by Saudi, for it also supports regime change
in Iran, which in their view only President Trump is capable of undertaking.
During the Qatar crisis, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain were upset because
Iran, along with Turkey, signed a deal with Qatar to ease the blockade. From this
point on, a shift in GCC political discourse on the GCC–Iranian relationship took
place. In September 2017, during the Arab League meeting, there was a heated
argument between Qatari and Saudi representatives. Qatar’s Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi stated in Arabic that: “Iran Dawlah
Sharifah,” meaning that Iran is an “honorable country.” Ahmed al-Qattan, Saudi
Arabia’s envoy to the Arab League, replied by saying:
[T]o say such a thing is funny! Are you saying that Iran, the one that is planning against
the stability of GCC states and planted their spies in different GCC countries like Kuwait
and Bahrain, has dignity? Then I congratulate you for this! And soon, God willing, you will
regret it. (Al-Arabiya 2017)
After this tense argument between Saudi and Qatari representatives in the Arab
League, GCC political discourse took a turn for the worse. The political discourse
of the quadrant states started to stress Iran’s role in Qatari politics by accusing Qatar
of being in alliance with Iran, suggesting that since Iran is a Shi’i nationalist state
(against Arabism), Qatar, in siding with Iran, is also working against the best interests
of the Arab world. The result of the Saudi-led blockade’s perceptions of the threat
of Iran and Turkey made it clear that they also perceive Qatar as a threat to the
stability of the region and most importantly the GCC, and therefore to the Arabian
Gulf states. Since the crisis, Qatar has been defined in the political discourse as a
threat. Nonetheless, in their political discourse, the answer to what it might mean for
a state to be a threat is not clear. This is because most of the GCC states have political
and economic relationships with Iran. There is no contradiction in the claim that the
meaning of the Qatari alliance with Iran is a threat and yet has different meanings in
the GCC political discourse, and most importantly that there are different political
meanings of “threat.” One of these political meanings is that Qatar cannot have its
own distinct foreign policy aside from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
It could be that the different perceptions and meanings of threat have to do with
past political experiences, or it could be that these different meanings and perceptions
of what constitutes a threat are invented by the actor’s psyche.
So, when it comes to perceiving Iran as a threat, Bahrain and the UAE relay
different stories from the same author. Bahrain in the Arab Spring was rescued from
the prospect of Iran almost capturing the city of Manamah, while the UAE, whose
three islands remain colonized by Iran, can only act aggressively through rhetoric
in order to retain economic relationships. In the Qatar crisis, the threat perceptions
that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have of Iran and Turkey are the same. This
much is clear from the fact that the 13 demands they put down in order for them to
lift the blockade included calling for Qatar to downgrade its ties with Iran to a mere
diplomatic level, and also shut down the Turkish military base.
While Iran is perceived as a Shi’i threat, Turkey is perceived as a geopolitical threat
and as a threat to regime stability in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood. An example
of the geopolitical threat is “countering the Iranian/Turkish threat by other bases that
are quickly sprouting along the Red Sea. What makes the Turkish-Iranian presence
all the more worrying for Saudi Arabia is the lack of US presence in the Red Sea”
(Moubayed 2017). Saudi Arabia perceived Turkey’s establishment of a military base
in Somalia, a couple of months after having deployed nearly 5,000 troops in Qatar,
as a way of assisting Iran in putting pressure on the Saudis. Meanwhile, the threat to
regime stability can be overstated through the language of the Saudi Crown Prince.
In March 2018, Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman described Turkey as “part of a
‘triangle of evil’ along with Iran and hardline Islamist groups … [T]he Saudi prince
also accused Turkey of trying to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate, abolished nearly a
century ago when the Ottoman Empire collapsed” (Haaretz News 2018).
Ankara, on the other hand, has had to endure a varying degree of friction in its
relationship with the countries blockading Qatar. As Karasik and Cafiero (2018)
note:
72 N. R. ALDosari
The GCC member on most tense terms with Turkey is the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Since Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) ascended to power in 2002, Abu
Dhabi’s relationship with Ankara has fluctuated. The bilateral relationship is complicated,
as both countries place value on their economic and investment links while viewing each
other’s actions in the Middle East as destabilizing. Although the UAE and Saudi Arabia
were Turkey’s top two export partners in the GCC in 2014, Abu Dhabi interprets Ankara’s
foreign policy as threatening to the UAE and its regional allies’ security. In fact, Abu Dhabi’s
suspicion that Ankara sponsors local Muslim Brotherhood offshoots throughout the GCC,
and a narrative in Turkey that Abu Dhabi had a hand in last year’s failed coup plot, as
well as previous alleged efforts to oust Turkey’s AKP leadership, have fueled friction in
Emirati-Turkish relations.
Before and after the Qatar crisis, the rift between Turkey and the UAE became more
intense than ever. The UAE was the state that strongly supported the shutting of the
Turkish military base in Qatar, whereas other states maintained warm relationships
with Turkey after 5 June 2017. Moreover, “Sudan is unquestionably set to become
another flashpoint in the crisis between Turkey and the UAE, with Ankara and Khar-
toum now planning to establish a Turkish port, and a military base on Sudan’s Suakin
Island, a former Red Sea port city under Ottoman rule” (Karasik and Cafiero 2018).
The UAE’s perception of threat towards Turkey is intensified not only because of
the latter’s support for Qatar, but also because Turkey and Iran are cooperating in
the military field. The person who represents the political discourse inside the UAE
government is Dhahi Khalfan Al-Tamim, former deputy head of Dubai Police and
General Security. On his Twitter account, he slammed Turkey for supporting Tehran:
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan incites against Egypt and defends Iran.
They don’t go together well” (Shaker 2018). He said in another tweet: “Erdogan is
despised among Arabs since he is the enemy of the nation” (Shaker 2018).
Yet in addition to this, the UAE’s perception of threat towards Turkey does not
encompass completely cutting economic ties. For example, it is notable that “the
UAE and Turkey’s state-run Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation signed
a deal at the Dubai International Airshow. The agreement mentioned that the $20.2 m
agreement will sell Turkish-made MK-82 and MK-84 bombs to the UAE” (Karasik
and Cafiero 2018). However, their economic ties are vulnerable because of their
perceptions of each other. The UAE tried to convince the United States of the accuracy
of its perception of Ankara, and especially of President Erdoğan. In May 2017,
Abu Dhabi’s Ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, said: “the majority of
American citizens failed to understand Turkey and the long-term threat it poses to
most of us” (Karasik and Cafiero 2018). Hence, Ankara perceives the UAE as the
sole promoter of anti-Erdoğan discourse in Washington.
Now, the UAE’s perception of the Iranian threat in the region can be understood
through the political language of the state’s formal representatives such as the UAE
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Anwar Gargash, who tweeted the following:
“Iranian leaders should put the internal interest before Tehran’s adventures in the
Arab region.” He added: “The interests of the region and Iran lie only in internal
construction and development, not in antagonizing the Arab world” (Shaker 2018).
Furthermore, the tone of the political language towards Iran among formal repre-
sentatives in the UAE is changing, especially after Iran’s support for Qatar against
Gulf states’ blockade. In the war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading
the war against what they see as an Iranian proxy war led by Houthi militants. Dr.
Gargash, after his call for global action against Iran, stated: “Riyadh is leading the
way in confronting Iranian aggression and greed” (cited in Al Zarooni 2017).
In conclusion, the way in which leaders and states perceive international relations
plays a crucial role in influencing foreign policymaking decisions. In this paper,
I have tried to demonstrate that within GCC foreign policy discourse, there is an
ideological struggle around the notion of Markiz AlThuqil AlArabi. This has shown,
first, that GCC states have different perceptions of regional powers. As a result, such
perceptions have influenced and continue to shape GCC states’ foreign policy and
geostrategic alliances with Iran and Turkey. Second, I have argued that each member
of the GCC started to take its own line in foreign policymaking, especially towards
Iran and Turkey, and that this damaged the cohesion of the GCC and precipitated the
crisis in Qatar.
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Chapter 5
Transformations of the Gulf Security
Landscape After the Gulf Crisis:
A Geopolitical Approach
Nayef bin Nahar Al-Shamari and Hamad Al-Mohannadi
The security of the Gulf is not limited to the region surrounding by this all-important
body of water itself, but is in fact an integral component of international security,
due to many factors and characteristics that compel the international community to
pay special attention to this area. The most important of these characteristics are its
natural energy resources, and its strategic and central location, being surrounded by
marine corridors that are essential to the entire world. As such, the Gulf Crisis is
resonating throughout the international community, having become a global concern
during its very first phase, soon after the imposition of the blockade, when there was
a real possibility of military escalation. Paying particular attention to Gulf security,
this paper examines the shifts in the Gulf security scene following the 2017 crisis,
looking primarily at three waves of transformation: Transformation in the range
of security: from regional security to national security. Transformation in security
standards: from the customary standard to legal standards. Transformation in the
balance of security: from the state of dominance to competition.
Paying particular attention to Gulf security, this paper examines the shifts in the
Gulf security scene following the 2017 crisis, looking primarily at three waves of
transformation:
Transformation in the range of security: from regional security to national security.
Transformation in security standards: from the customary standard to legal
standards.
Transformation in the balance of security: from the state of dominance to
competition.
N. N. Al-Shamari (B)
Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: n.alshamari@qu.edu.qa
H. Al-Mohannadi
(Independent) Researcher in Security and International Affairs, Doha, Qatar

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_5
78 N. N. Al-Shamari and H. Al-Mohannadi
This study evaluates and addresses existing problems in the Gulf in a scien-
tific manner, concentrating on three further transformations that are needed in the
Gulf security scene: the transformation from tactical security to strategic secu-
rity; the transformation from traditional security to geostrategic security; and the
transformation from securitization to rational security.
The scope of this paper is limited to the observation of the security scene, and does
not seek to cover the various factors of the Gulf Crisis overall. Covering every aspect
of the Gulf scene would require a study much larger than we can offer here, since
the main characteristic of the Gulf Crisis is that it extends to all areas. And this also
reveals a significant strategic flaw, because the instigators of this open-ended crisis,
for whatever reason, did not consider that the costs associated with their actions
would be much higher than those connected to the existing intra-GCC differences.
Due to its inherent complexity, the concept of crisis is hard to explain fully in
a single definition. However, a crisis can be defined as an act or activity of human
creation that embodies a critical phase in a conflict, or forms a dangerous turning
point in the relations between different parties, or between different parties and their
surrounding environment (Al Khazandar 2014). This critical moment also determines
the future development of these relations—whether towards war or peace.
Several researchers have discussed the concept of crisis in the International Rela-
tions literature, and some have identified a number of special characteristics of
crises that clearly appear in the Gulf Crisis. Among these characteristics are those
mentioned by Charles Herman, who argues that a crisis is a situation in which the
policy priorities of governments are threatened, in addition to there being limited time
for decision-making in the face of unexpected events and developments (Rosenthal
et al. 1989). Other researchers, such as Rosenthal et al. (1989), describe a crisis as a
dangerous threat to the infrastructure or to the core values and foundational systems
of the state-parties involved. This threat is imposed under the additional pressures of
limited time and highly ambiguous information, greatly degrading two of the main
components required for rational decision-making (Uriel and Charles 1989).
An international crisis is conceptualized as the most intense and widespread form
of conflict in the international order short of war. An international crisis invariably
raises the possibility of the outbreak of war, and the option of military involvement is
present in the minds of all parties involved (Al Khazandar 2014). International crises
are thus accompanied by increased hostility and heightened chances of military
action. This escalation is usually caused by an act or an event such as a verbal or
written threat, a political act such as cutting diplomatic ties, an economic embargo
such as the prohibition of trade, non-violent military activity such as relocating and
preparing military troops, or a hostile act against an allied country (Brecher 1996).
The direct connection between the military and security dimensions in interna-
tional crises is clear. Due to international crises peaking at a point where any further
escalation results in war, during such events the security and military sectors are
activated to provide early alerts of military actions and possible hostile acts while
evaluating points of weakness and strength, in addition to the study of worst-case
scenarios and instituting plans to overcome them. There are key differences between
traditional military operations and military activity during crises, however (Lai 2004).
5 Transformations of the Gulf Security Landscape … 79
The most important of these characteristics are as follows. Threats and dangers: the
fear of war exacerbates the feeling of insecurity created by the crisis, requiring it
to be managed in a rational manner. Surprise: a crisis usually occurs as the result
of an action that was taken by another party in an unexpected way, similar to what
happened in the Gulf Crisis, and this element of surprise creates a state of confusion
among citizens and leaders. Limited information and uncertainty: one of the features
of a crisis is that information regarding another party’s thought processes and their
expected behavior or reactions to various events and developments is limited, unclear,
or absent; furthermore, there is limited information regarding the interaction of the
different positions of the parties involved, the dimensions of the risks associated with
the crisis, the behavior and mentality of the various actors, and the level of influ-
ence that they possess. Lack of time: the time allocated for decision-making during
a crisis is very limited, and rapid responses are required as regards many different
variables. Therefore, there might not be enough time for decision makers to gather
all the required information and study all the existing options and alternatives that
could help in the decision-making process. This characteristic leads to a reactive
posture in which mistakes could occur through decision-making being hampered
by misjudgment, a dearth of information, and a lack of time. Complexity and inter-
twining: a group of internal and external elements regularly interact, leading to great
complexity in crisis management; crises are extremely sensitive to such elements,
which often leads to a fast escalation—although sometimes to a de-escalation—of
the conflict.
These distinctive characteristics of crises cause states to diverge from their tradi-
tional military operational strategies: although countries usually maintain a certain
level of military alertness in case a sudden military intervention is needed, they will
usually aim to maneuver using soft power in order to ensure the defeat of the other
party (Haneş and Andrei 2015). This is evident in the Gulf Crisis, in which a military
invasion was always a possibility. Manifestations of such soft power strategies can be
seen in the official statements of HH the Emir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al-Ahmad,
in Washington (Al Jazeera 2017); in what was reported of the efforts by former US
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop a military operation against Qatar (Emmons
2018); and in materials circulating on social media confirming or denying these kinds
of escalations.
Transformations in Gulf Security Following the Gulf Crisis
The shifts and changes in security measures following the Gulf Crisis can be summa-
rized as three main transformations: 1. transformations in security range; 2. trans-
formations in security standard; 3. transformations in security balance. This section
delves into these three transformations in detail.
Transformations in Security Range: From Regional Security

to National Security
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was established in 1981 as a regional security
organization in the wake of the Iran–Iraq War to face urgent challenges collectively,
especially the threat emanating from Iran. After the end of the Iran–Iraq War, however,
a new threat to GCC security emerged, this time from Iraq, following its invasion of
Kuwait. As a result, Iraq was moved from the circle of allies to the circle of enemies
and was viewed as a direct threat by the GCC member states. Additionally, and
especially since the start of the twenty-first century, armed groups in Iraq and the
Levant, such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, have also challenged the security of
the Gulf.
These security threats previously came from a source outside the GCC, but during
the Gulf Crisis the source of the threat shifted from outside to within. This shift in
threat from external to internal has directly caused a radical transformation in the
range of security, wherein regional security has been replaced by national security.
The security determinants for the Gulf states are no longer regional, but strictly
national, and what is categorized as a threat to one Gulf state may not necessarily be
categorized as a threat to the others. As a result, every Gulf state has shaped its own
security vision in isolation from the security threats of its neighbors. For example,
Qatar no longer shapes its security as part of a collective regional security vision;
rather, it has forged its own independent vision.
As a result of the collapse of the Gulf regional security vision and the shift in the
security range from regional to national, it is clear that each country in the Gulf is
advancing its national security and stability independently. As another example—
illustrating that the Qatari case is not unique—Kuwait also signed military, political,
and economic agreements with the Republic of Turkey three months after the start
of the Gulf Crisis.
This collapse in the concept of regional security in the Gulf and the shift towards
giving more importance to national security has forced every Gulf state to redefine
its national security components individually, and this can be summarized in three
main components—threats: expected military conflicts; dangers: factors that could
harm the state at large; and challenges: every activity, whether proposed or resisted
by a state, is pursued with the objective of serving that state’s interests.
These three components shaping the concept of national security have been radi-
cally transformed since the Gulf Crisis—both quantitatively and qualitatively. Qatar,
for example, has faced unprecedented challenges in food security, medicine reposi-
tory, and construction materials, amongst others. These challenges are a direct conse-
quence of the crisis; the state of Qatar had rarely witnessed such issues prior to the
intra-GCC row. The same is true with regard to the dangers to national security, where
the fear of decreasing foreign investments or the possibility of currency devaluation
increased qualitatively as a result of the crisis.
These threats were the main justifications for the transformation in Gulf secu-
rity after the crisis, in addition to the source of the threat no longer coming from
external sources, but from the core itself, as previously mentioned. This threat is
qualitatively more real than the traditional Iranian threat that guided the Gulf states’
military combat doctrine for more than three decades. This became clear after the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates started publicly promoting
a new Qatari regime and advertising the ways that this alternative regime might
be achieved through military power. As a result, the security scene in the Gulf more
closely resembled a state of war than a mere exchange of threats between neighboring
countries.
The Root Causes of the Collapse of the Gulf Security System
To identify the point at which the collapse of the Gulf states’ collective security was
initiated, we have to look at developments in the recent history of the region. As such,
it is clear that the initial phase of the collapse began with the Arab Spring in 2011.
When the Arab uprisings started to spread to all parts of the Arab world, the Gulf states
were divided into four groups depending on their stance towards this radical change.
Firstly, there was strong rejection: this was embodied by the stance of the United
Arab Emirates, which rejected the principle of revolutionary change in Arab political
systems. Secondly, neutrality: this was the stance of both the Sultanate of Oman and
the State of Kuwait, neither of which issued official statements supporting or opposing
the revolutionary movements in the Arab World. Thirdly, unannounced rejection: this
was embodied in the stance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which rejected the idea
of a revolutionary movement, yet in a manner and with a timing that distinguishes its
rejection from that of the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates’ rejection
came as a clear announced rejection, while the rejection of the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia was subtle and not disseminated through official declarations. During the
Presidency of Mohamed Morsi, the Saudi government received Morsi and announced
their support for him; meanwhile, the hostility between the Egyptian and Emirati
authorities was apparent. Furthermore, the government of the United Arab Emirates
intervened militarily to support the counter-revolution in Libya, while the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia did not—until recently—take sides or publicize their preference. This
rejection by Saudi Arabia has its roots in the military coups that started in Egypt in
1952, when Saudi Arabia sided with the Egyptian government, and which reached
their peak during the reign of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and president
Gamal Abdul Naser. Fourthly and finally, strong support: this was the stance of the
State of Qatar, which announced its support for the Arab uprisings from the moment
that they surfaced. Qatar was the only Gulf nation to release an official statement in
support of the Egyptian revolution and the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.
These contrasting stances taken by different GCC states regarding the Arab upris-
ings formed the real starting point for the collapse of the concept of Gulf security,
as a collective security vision cannot be established before there is an agreement on
what is considered a shared threat and who is identified as an enemy. If an agreement
regarding the sources of danger is not reached, then there cannot be a unified security
vision. What differentiates the Gulf Crisis from the Arab Spring is that the crisis is
not a marginal procedural dispute, but in fact a substantive disagreement between
members of the same organization and neighboring countries.
1
This substantive dispute is a disagreement over what is considered dangerous,
rather than over the manner in which to confront an agreed threat. The member states
of the GCC do not agree on the threat emanating from the Arab uprisings and disagree
on the ways in which to act—indeed, the GCC states differ in whether they consider
the uprisings a threat at all. The same is true with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood,
as the dispute between the Gulf states is not about how to overcome the threat of the
Brotherhood but about whether it is actually considered a threat.
These objective differences eliminate any possibility of establishing a common
security vision among the Gulf states. This led to the collapse of the formal Gulf
security structure in 2014, when some of the GCC states withdrew their ambassadors
from Qatar. The same course of action was repeated in a more radical manner in 2017,
leading to an official shift in focus from regional security to national security.
A collective regional security vision does not entail an absolute and totally
symmetrical security perception, but rather the existence of a unified framework
within which the conceptual differences between the Gulf states are amalgamated.
As Al-Marhoon (2007) argues, a regional security system is based on “the agreement
among units that commit to a set of agreed criteria, to govern their interrelationships
and cooperation.” He also points out that the agreement does not require symmetry,
but the establishment of a unified regional security concept: “this does not mean the
removal of all differences between political units, but rather to develop an environ-
ment that prevents such differences from getting out of control, so that the competi-
tive nature of relations create a formulation with a positive result and not without an
outcome.”
Transformations in Security Standards
In one of his lectures at the Ibn Khaldon Center at Qatar University, Qatar’s Deputy
Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defense Dr. Khalid Al Attiyah (2018) stated
that any resumption of Gulf relations must be according to new standards and rules,
and that the rules upon which these relations were based previously were no longer
valid for the establishment of a new Gulf Cooperation Council.
This statement is a reaffirmation of the practical realities which are officially recog-
nized by Qatari officials. The pre–Gulf Crisis rules were based on the overwhelming
influence of Saudi Arabia over other Gulf Countries, where Saudi hegemony largely
represented common perceptions of regional security concepts. Some Gulf states
accepted this due to their respect for the status of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and
out of consideration for the nature of the relationships between the Gulf states. This
was reflected in the State of Qatar’s delivery of the Syrian dossier to the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia to guide and lead the efforts in dealing with the Syrian opposition. In
addition, almost all of the Gulf states agreed with the Saudi estimation of the Yemeni
threat, as well as with the use of military intervention to deal with it.
However, after the Gulf Crisis everything changed; the mutual respect that the
State of Qatar had built in its security cooperation with Saudi Arabia has faded. This
became especially evident after Saudi Arabia illustrated its bias while dealing with the
Gulf Crisis, starting with the constant threat of military invasion2 and the promotion
of people from opposition parties as alternatives to the current Qatari government,
and ending with the massive economic war led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates in an attempt to bring the Qatari economy to breaking
point.
The comprehensiveness and moral decline that characterized the Saudi attitude
to handling its differences with Qatar made it very unlikely that a new security
cooperation between the two countries could be established on previous principles.
Security cooperation between states must be based on mutual trust, and if there is no
trust there can be no security cooperation. Moreover, security cooperation requires
a mutual disclosure of various aspects of the state’s orientations, which requires a
significant level of mutual trust. While there might be economic, scientific, or other
types of cooperation, there can never be security cooperation if there is no mutual
trust.
The collapse of mutual trust made it necessary for the Gulf states to seek an alter-
native basis for the establishment of cooperation. As stated by Minister Al Attiyah
(2018), this basis had two essential factors: first, no obligations beyond what is legally
required, and second, the parallel adoption of bilateral alliances.
These two rules represent the two pillars upon which Qatar has based its engage-
ments with Saudi Arabia since the Gulf Crisis. The first rule is reflected in the way
Qatar has abandoned its previous method of classifying threats, security risks, and
challenges according to the Saudi classification, as well as its abandonment of the
security consensus that had originated in the moral appreciation for the former status
of Saudi Arabia. The State of Qatar has limited its relations with Saudi Arabia to the
minimal level needed in order to continue as part of the regional security system.
The second rule represents the state of mistrust between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
This reached its peak during the Gulf Crisis; two months before the crisis, King
Salman visited Qatar and stressed the extent of the ties between the two countries.
The Qatari foreign minister also visited Saudi Arabia and met with Prince Mohammed
bin Salman following the hacking of the news agency and just before the closure of
the land border between the two countries. Additionally, Saudi Foreign Minister
Adel Al-Jubeir gave a lecture at the Qatari Foreign Ministry just two weeks before
the crisis started, in which he praised Qatari diplomacy. Based on what was reported,
the meetings were very friendly and prospects for the expansion of cooperation
between the two countries were discussed. All these visits fully assured the Qatari
authorities and gave them confidence that Saudi–Qatari relations were heading in
an agreeable direction. The crisis thus arose unexpectedly, and diverged from the
way that the relationship between the two countries had been tending. This sudden
transformation, along with the same level of radicalism continuing for almost two
years, contributed to the loss of confidence between the two countries.
The question that arises is: How can the Qatari leadership trust people who had
praised them just days before the crisis, and then suddenly turned and accused them
of terrorism, led a campaign to unify the international community against them, and
openly declared their desire to overthrow the Qatari regime?
The events of the crisis did not leave any common ground for real security coop-
eration between the two countries. As such, it is expected that the State of Qatar
will maintain the bilateral alliances that it has strengthened and expanded with other
regional and international partners since the Gulf Crisis began. Therefore, the State of
Qatar is proceeding on two parallel tracks, the first being through the Gulf Coopera-
tion Council and the Gulf regional framework, and the second the pursuit of bilateral
alliances as well as regional and international cooperation. Consequently, the Gulf
Cooperation Council will not be the only framework that establishes the determi-
nants of Qatari security, but rather it is balanced by another framework of bilateral
relations between Qatar and its international allies and partners.
Post-crisis Security Pattern Scenarios
The resumption of Gulf relations within the framework of the Gulf Cooperation
Council is not impossible; however, what does seem impossible as long as the political
leaders remain unchanged is that the post-crisis security arrangement will be similar
to the situation before the crisis.
There are four scenarios for the security patterns of the era following the Gulf
Crisis; these are a continuation of the traditional security patterns discussed by secu-
rity researchers such as Jones (2011). The first scenario is comprehensive security.
This scenario is based on two elements: strategic understanding of the Gulf secu-
rity threats, and mutual trust that results in an inclusive security cooperation in all
respects. Based on what has been mentioned earlier, this scenario is very unlikely. The
second scenario is cooperative security. This scenario is based on security coopera-
tion within specific fields, with the goal of strengthening a set of rules for cooperative
action against common security threats. The third scenario is coordinated security.
This security pattern is less complex than the previous two, because it does not
require cooperation in specific areas. Rather, it relies on cooperation to overcome
certain passing issues so that each risk or challenge is coordinated independently.
The fourth scenario is collective security. This scenario is more closely related to
military defense. It is based on cooperative defense between the units of a single
system, where an attack on one member equates to an attack on all.
There are no strategic impediments to Gulf security that stand in the way of insti-
tuting any of the last three scenarios. However, coordinated security is the framework
that would most closely preserve the sovereignty of each state over the Gulf security
landscape until a change in the political leadership takes place.
Transformations in Security Balance: From the Logic

of Dominance to Competition
Among the characteristics of the GCC is the lack of balance between its member
states, since it is not based on cooperation between states that are equal or even
convergent in their capabilities and geopolitical weight.3 The reason for the lack of
even minimal balance among the Gulf states is due to the existence of Saudi Arabia
within this system. Saudi Arabia has more geopolitical weight than any other Gulf
state, and any interaction between the Gulf states is based on a logic of hegemony
rather than cooperation with a rival.
Geographically (Table 5.1), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is 186 times the size of
the State of Qatar, about 2,810 times the size of the Kingdom of Bahrain, 121 times
the size of the State of Kuwait, 26 times the size of the United Arab Emirates, 7
times the size of the Sultanate of Oman, and 5 times the size of the other Gulf states
combined.
In terms of population (Table 5.2), the Saudi people exceed the number of people
in Qatar by 12 times, the people of Bahrain 22 times, the people of the United Arab
Table 5.1 Area of the

Land area, Saudi Land area (km2 )
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Arabia ratio to
compared to the GCC
Countries Saudi Arabia 1 2.15 million
Bahrain 2,810 times 765
Qatar 186 times 11,571
Kuwait 121 times 17,818
UAE 26 times 83,600
Oman 7 times 309,501
Rest of the GCC 5 times 423,255
combined
Table 5.2 Population of the

Population, Saudi Population (m)
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Arabia ratio to
compared to other GCC
Countries (2017) Saudi Arabia 1 32.94
Bahrain 22 times 1.493
Qatar 12 times 2.639
Kuwait 8 times 4.137
UAE 3.5 times 9.4
Oman 7 times 4.636
Rest of the GCC 1.5 times 22.305
combined
Emirates 3.5 times, the people of Oman 7 times, the people of Kuwait 8 times, and
are equal to 1.5 times the population of the other Gulf states combined.
Elements of geography and population are generally no longer as important as they
once were, primarily due to tremendous technological developments in the military
field that have greatly reduced the significance of these traditional elements. However,
they remain important in this case, due to the direct geographical boundaries between
the conflicting parties within the Gulf.4
Based on what has already been discussed, then, there was never any balance in
the formation of the Gulf security equation, but rather a clear dominance of Saudi
Arabia over the Gulf scene. However, after the Gulf Crisis and the shift of Saudi–
Qatari relations towards a state of open hostility, there was an essential change in
this equation. The Gulf Crisis contributed to the creation of a Turkish military base
on GCC territory, which directly impacted Saudi Arabia, forcing it to shift from the
position of regional hegemon to that of a competitor. Furthermore, due to its various
advantages, this competition naturally tends to favor Turkey.
The transformation in the Gulf security balance resulted in Saudi Arabia losing its
place as the dominant state in the Gulf. In fact Turkey has now become a contender
for this position, or may even have attained it. This shift is considered Saudi Arabia’s
biggest strategic loss, turning it from the “leader” of the Gulf region into a “rival”
amongst other contenders.
The transformation of Saudi Arabia’s regional role is similar to what happened to
the United States within the international system during the Cold War. The United
States was not the dominant state during the Cold War because the international order
was based on a bipolarity which prevented hegemony. In political terms, hegemony
means that a single state is capable of threatening the countries within its regional
or international scope, without those countries being able to threaten it in return.
Accordingly, the existence of the Soviet Union stood in the way of the United States
becoming the global hegemon during the Cold War. Following the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the United States became the only superpower, and was trans-
formed from a rival state to the global hegemon. However, this monolithic polarity
collapsed with the rise of several additional poles in the following decade, which has
hindered the United States’s efforts at imposing its hegemony worldwide.
The same is true of the Saudi position in the Gulf scene, where for a long time it
has largely enjoyed hegemony. Before the Gulf Crisis, Saudi Arabia could threaten
the other GCC countries, which had no capacity to threaten it in return. After the Gulf
Crisis, and with the Turkish presence in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia is no longer
able to threaten its neighbors in the way it previously did, and has consequently lost
its status as the regional hegemon.
The Implications of the Change in Security Balance

for Geopolitics
There is no doubt that prior to the Gulf Crisis, the Gulf system was characterized by
a unified security logic and as a region had considerable geopolitical weight. This is
because the geopolitical weight was not measured in terms of each individual state’s
geopolitical power; rather, the geopolitical characteristics of each country extended
to the rest of the Gulf states, resulting in the geopolitical weight being determined
by a regional standard rather than by the standards of individual countries.
However, after the Gulf Crisis and the collapse of the unified Gulf security system,
the region’s geopolitical weight has been reduced to operating on a country-by-
country basis, especially in the case of Qatar. This fragmentation and the shift from
regional geopolitics to Qatari geopolitics seems, on the face of it, to indicate that the
biggest loser is indeed the State of Qatar; due to Saudi geopolitical characteristics
continuing to be extended to them, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have not
lost much in this transformation.
Yet looking at the scene more closely, we find that what seems apparent on the
surface is not accurate. In fact, Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical loss is no less than that of
Qatar. While this fact may seem surprising, Qatar’s weaknesses in terms of geopolit-
ical weight are exclusively associated with fixed geopolitical characteristics—such
as land area, population, military power, and economy. The country has compensated
for weaknesses in these areas, however, by increasing its ties with the Republic of
Turkey. Turkey’s strong and diverse presence in Qatar has resulted in the replacement
of Saudi geopolitical weight with Turkish geopolitical weight. As for the economic
aspect, the State of Qatar has shifted from its reliance on Saudi Arabia and the UAE
to alternative channels, despite the extra costs incurred.
In contrast, Saudi Arabia has lost access to the most important element of geopo-
litical weight that the State of Qatar possesses: its soft power resources, which are
primarily based in media such as Al Jazeera. Saudi Arabia used to rely on Al Jazeera
as the primary means of promoting its war in Yemen and overcoming the difficulties
that it faced regionally and internationally. However, following the crisis, the network
shifted its reporting and provided insight into every detail of the Saudi political scene,
particularly after Saudi Arabia and the Quartet included the closure of Al Jazeera in
their list of thirteen demands. Furthermore, Al Jazeera shed light on many different
issues in Yemen, which created difficulty for Saudi foreign policy and damaged the
country’s reputation.
In sum, Qatar was able to overcome its losses by looking for alternative chan-
nels for those of its needs—such as food, medicine, and travel corridors—that were
previously met by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, on
the other hand, is still unable to compensate for the loss of the support that it once
derived from Qatar’s soft power.
Implications of the Change in Security Balance

for the Balance of Power
Many political philosophers see the origin of international relations as lying in

conflict, not peace. As a historical political rule, it may be said that war begins
at the point at which the balance of power fails. While there is a balance of power in
the international system, peace prevails; however, when a state seeks to “dominate”
the international system, war comes to the fore (Mingst 2004). In short, these facts
confirm two points: firstly, the desire for conflict is a constant feature in international
relations, and secondly, the moment of transgression is the very moment that the
balance of power collapses.
Looking at the number and type of forces in the Gulf scene, especially in Qatari–
Saudi relations, we do not find them to be based on a real balance of power between
Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC countries: the preponderance of power always
tends to favor Saudi Arabia. In the past, however, two factors have prevented serious
problems caused by this power imbalance. Firstly, there was the American assurance
of the security of the Gulf states, especially through the presence of American bases
in some Gulf states. Secondly, the nature of the Gulf states’ relations and social fabric
was based on a set of values that made military adventures between them difficult.
The events of the Gulf Crisis proved that these two factors are no longer operative.
The White House, for example, sided with the blockading Quartet at the outset of
the crisis, which served as a green light for a possible military attack. The media
campaigns occurring in parallel to the military threats aimed at Qatar dispelled any
illusions of common social values prevailing among the Gulf states.
Given these conditions, the State of Qatar has resorted to other ways to achieve a
balance of power: self-construction, and joint construction.
First Model: Self-construction
The method of self-construction requires the state to build a military infrastructure

parallel to those of its opponents, and to ensure it does not rely on coalitions as the
sole mechanism for maintaining its security and stability.
The State of Qatar did not consider such a self-construction model before the crisis
caused by the withdrawal of ambassadors in 2014; however, it recognized the need
for self-security due to indications that it might no longer enjoy a state of integration
in the Gulf’s collective security frame. The most prominent factors attesting to its
adoption of this model can be seen from a security and military perspective—for
example, in the substantial military deals the state has made since the beginning of
the diplomatic crisis in 2014. Qatar’s military purchases, along with those of the
GCC states, increased over the four years following 2014, and Qatar has acquired
a number of C-17 and C-130 strategic air transport aircraft. In addition, ground
forces have also been enhanced with modern German weapons (Kettner 2017), a
Brazilian multiple rocket launcher system (Al Sharq 2016), and American Patriot
missile defense systems (Reuters 2014). The navy was also provided with a full
naval fleet from Italy (Reuters 2017), along with missiles, ammunition, and light and
medium types of weapons.
According to reports, Qatar intends to increase the number of aircraft within its air
force to ninety-six. These additional aircraft to be added to its current fleet of twelve
Mirage-2000s will include American F-15 s (Knecht 2018) and French Rafale (Gulf
Times 2019), as well as British Typhoon aircraft (Al Jazeera, December 2017).
This is in addition to multiple contracts for the purchase of various helicopters,
including offensive and transport helicopters (Al Jazeera 2018). It was also reported
that Doha is in the process of establishing a new air base (Tamim Air Base), along
with expanding the Al Udeid Air Base, and upgrading the Doha Air Base to a level
that will accommodate new aircraft and systems. Qatar will also develop command
and control systems with the latest radar, command, and communication systems
(Gulf Times 2018).
The “National Day March Event,” a military parade which took place six months
after the Gulf Crisis broke and is held annually to celebrate Qatar’s national day
on December 18, indicates that Qatar’s armed forces have become the first line of
defense in Qatar’s national security. Several indirect messages were sent as part of the
country’s diplomatic strategy for managing the crisis, as expressed in the following
acts: exhibiting Doha’s short-range strategic missiles for the first time (Senear 2018);
providing military infantry lines with mixed weapons (American and Russian)5 ; the
use of Western (British) step in the marching display, with a switch to Eastern step
(Russian and Chinese) during the parade6 ; the participation of internal security forces
(police) in special operations teams, to illustrate the efficiency and ability of the State
security forces to act as a supporting force in line with their military training; and
the participation of the National Service in civil attire, as a reference to civilians who
will serve alongside the armed forces to defend Qatar.
The main purpose of a military march is customarily to show strength, efficiency,
and combat readiness. In the case of Qatar prior to the Gulf Crisis, however, the
aim of these presentations was primarily to participate in the National Day celebra-
tions alongside civilians; but after the crisis it was redirected towards showing the
state’s readiness to handle any hostile action with flexibility and professionalism.
Following this military parade, an Emirati fighter jet crossed into Qatar’s airspace
on 21 December 2017 (Financial Tribune 2018). The United Arab Emirates may
have done this in order to send a message to Qatar, or perhaps to confirm that it had
received the messages sent by Qatar.
Second Model: Joint Construction
If a state is unable on its own to achieve a balance of power with its rival, it must form
an alliance to achieve that desired balance. The model of joint construction had been
the only model that Qatar had explicitly adopted since 1996, due to the geopolitical
imbalance between Qatar and its neighbors, and because joint construction is less
costly, more flexible, and more responsive to change than acting alone. However, after
the Gulf Crisis, the situation changed. While the State of Qatar continues to follow
the joint construction model, it no longer views this as the sole option and is using the
self-construction model in parallel. This political orientation in the country’s defense
policy after the crisis is confirmed by Minister of State Dr. Khaled Al Attiyah, who
stated that:
There are two things we have to do. First, we want to stop calling for an emergency every
time the region goes through any crisis, by relying only on the allies, but what we want is
to solve anything that happens in the region with them. That is why we are strengthening
ourselves. Second, we believe that stability and prosperity need to be sustained. Qatar is
a country that seeks peace, development and prosperity, and not war. However, we want a
force to protect this stability. (Al Sharq 2018).
Qatar has been active in forming alliances and strengthening its relations since the
Gulf Crisis. Perhaps one of the most prominent new orientations is Qatar’s interest
in working with Russia. Al Attiyah visited Moscow in August 2017 and expressed
Qatar’s interest in purchasing the Russian S-400 missile defense system. During his
meeting with the Russian Defense Minister, Al Attiyah revealed that the Emir of
Qatar, HH Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, had assigned him to strengthen relations
with Russia in the field of military cooperation. The Russian Defense Minister also
visited Doha, the first visit of its kind, in October 2017. During this visit, a number
of cooperative defense agreements were signed by Russia and Qatar. Some view the
Russian–Qatari approach as more political than military in nature, and as a reminder
to the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council that Qatar has other options
for its alliances should it be pressured any further.
Are These Security Shifts Strategic?
Are these transformations strategic, or will they fade as the crisis fades? If we look
at the nature of the dispute between the Gulf states—and especially between Saudi
Arabia and Qatar—it seems difficult to apply the term “strategy” to such a pattern of
disputes; this is due to several factors, including the type of dispute and the common
risks.
Type of Dispute
The type of dispute between states is determined by the origin of the dispute. If the
origin lies in some permanent or long-enduring condition, the dispute can indeed
take on strategic dimensions; yet the converse is also true. If we look at the Qatari–
Saudi dispute, we do not find it to possess any characteristics of a strategic conflict,
as it is not a result of ideological variation, existential considerations, or geopolit-

ical controversy. Unlike the Saudi–Iranian conflict, which has its basis in the Iranian
regime’s adoption of a revolutionary ideology antithetical to the ruling regimes in
the Gulf, the Saudi–Qatari conflict is not ideological. Neither is the Saudi–Qatari
dispute an existential matter: Saudi Arabia does not take issue with the existence of
Qatar as an entity, unlike the case of Israel, which is different in terms of legitimacy.
Nor is the Saudi–Qatari dispute a geopolitical conflict: it is not based on conflicting
economic interests or based on territorial disputes. And on the contrary, such geopo-
litical differences do exist between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
notably regarding the Shaybah oil field and its strategic importance.
Common Risks
The nature of the relationship between the Gulf societies and the relative similarities
between their political systems generate common threats and dangers to these coun-
tries. The Iranian regime, with its revolutionary ideology and expansionist practices,
for example, continues to pose a threat to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries,
despite this threat now being at a reduced level.
In terms of these factors, it is thus difficult to say that the Gulf Crisis is a strategic
conflict that entails strategic transformations. And to reinforce this conclusion, we
might ask: What substantial concessions would Qatar or Saudi Arabia have to make
for their relations to return to the way they were before the Gulf Crisis? There are no
clear issues, no ideological concessions to be made, and no compromises on wealth
resources or border disputes to be sought. There is, nevertheless, a state of mistrust
between the parties involved in the Gulf Crisis.
Security Transformations: Ensuring the Continuation

of Gulf Collective Security
The previous section discussed transformations that reflected directly on the Gulf
Crisis. The aim of this chapter, however, is to discuss the transformations that the
Gulf states must undergo in order to achieve security in the Gulf and to ensure its
stability overall, which is the central goal for all these states—and indeed a strategic
necessity, not a superfluous luxury. It is necessary for every state that wants to ensure
stability and security to make its regional security its first line of defense. There are
thus three predominant transformations under consideration in this chapter. The first
is a transformation from tactical to strategic security; the second is from traditional
to geostrategic security; and the third is from securitization to rational security.
These three transformations will help to ensure the continuation of the Gulf region’s
collective security.
The Transformation from Tactical Security to Strategic

Security
In this context, tactical security means the type of security that is achieved based on
the contingencies of the present situation, without taking into account questions of
overall legitimacy. Strategic security, on the other hand, is that which is established
based on the legitimacy of security and the security of legitimacy. In other words, this
means that a state authority has the right to security but does not enjoy it, but takes
actions based on the legitimacy of its claims to it. In many Gulf states, security is
based on two axes. The first axis is the possession of tools for control and dominance;
the second axis is relations with the West. Through these two axes, the Gulf states
control their internal security balance in a tactical manner, based on the logic of force
rather than on the force of logic. This logic has not achieved security and stability
even for the countries that have been most dependent on it.
It is well known that Iran under the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was more
attached to the West, nominally the United States, than any other country in the
Muslim world. It is also known that it was more repressive than any other country,
noting in particular the secret police known as SAVAK that was utilized for violent
security measures against every populist political movement in Iran. However, when
the Iranians rebelled against the Shah in November 1978, the entire Iranian regime
collapsed soon after, and Mohammad Reza fled abroad with no one to turn to; neither
his relations with the West nor his own security forces could secure the survival of
his regime. Thus, the Iranian security apparatus during those times can be defined as
more tactical than strategic.
The same is true of the Egyptian model. At the start of the Egyptian revolution in
January 2011, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down,
even though he enjoyed an outstanding relationship with the West and had established
a violent and repressive security force. Therefore, any state or regional system that
only achieves the two axes—a relationship with the West and the possession of tools
for control and dominance—can be said to have security that is merely tactical and
not strategic.
For tactical security to become strategic security, several factors must be achieved,
notably the strengthening of civil society institutions, and the strengthening of demo-
graphic security, in which context the fact that large segments of the population
comprise expatriate workers poses a threat. However, the primary requirement of
strategic security is that the source of security is legitimate in the eyes of society,
and this legitimacy stems from the will of the population. Therefore, it is society
that confers legitimacy on the source of authority. In the Gulf the issue of legitimacy
now varies from state to state, except in countries that have adopted their political
system through a direct referendum, and many regimes cannot claim real legitimacy
in the eyes of their populations. For this reason, the type of legitimacy that exists in
some Gulf states is linked to the conduct of the authority, not to its very existence.
Once the authority exercises a behavior that does not have society’s approval, the
legitimacy of the authority itself is called into question.
Therefore, the two aforementioned axes are important in achieving security, but
in order for this security to be strategic there must be legitimacy in the source of
the authority itself. This requires that there be genuine political representation of the
people of the Gulf region such that they may express their aspirations and interests.
If this representation takes place internally, then it must be reflected at the regional
institutional level, so that there is an entity that embodies the will of society. If the
GCC were a real reflection of the will of the Gulf societies, it would be difficult to
imagine that a scenario such as the 2017 Gulf Crisis could take place.
Geopolitical scientists divide the elements of state power into moral and material
elements. The most important of the moral elements leading to the geopolitical
weight of a state is the legitimacy of its political system. The Gulf states have used
all means at their disposal to promote and market themselves in Western forums,
except for the method of relying on the legitimacy of the regime and the existence
of popular political representation. For example, in a study conducted by the Social
and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at the University of Qatar, it was
found that “62% of Qatari citizens believe that people’s participation through elected
parliaments do not lead to rapid deterioration of political conflicts between countries,”
compared to “17% who stated otherwise” (SESRI 2018).
Some Gulf states have sought to purchase Western support through huge military
and trade deals, and by injecting large sums of money into public relations companies.
However, this is a tactical measure which is of no value at the strategic level, as
neither the public nor Western governments and parliaments are sufficiently naive
or superficial for this to have a significant effect. They understand the nature of
the problems and challenges that the region is facing. If we take Israel as a model,
we see that the most important factor considered in the West today is that it is the
only democratic state in the vicinity of dictatorships. This argument, based on value-
sharing, is the one used by American presidents to justify their stance on Israel,
regardless of whether they truly believe it.
This is not to say that democracy alone is sufficient to gain a state Western protec-
tion; but it is one of the strongest forms of soft power internationally, and one of the
strongest internal guarantors of security. The events of the coup in Turkey on 15 July
2016 are proof of that.
In conclusion, a shift away from tactical security that is based internally on bilat-
eral security controls and externally on a relationship with the United States is not
sufficient by itself. Strategic security, as we said, is based on both the legitimacy
of security and the security of legitimacy. Legitimacy of security means that the
authority responsible for the perception and practice of security possesses political
legitimacy in the eyes of society; security of legitimacy means that the legitimacy
arising from societal approval—from which political control emanates—must have
the power to maintain security and stability.
The Transformation from Traditional Security to Geostrategic

Security
The term “geostrategy” is defined in many ways, varying in different contexts, and
as Ashrafpour (2010) notes there is no agreement on a definition among academics,
theoreticians, and politicians.7 For lack of a better option, the entry in the Oxford
political dictionary may as well be utilized: this defines geostrategy as “relating to
the strategy required in dealing with geopolitical problems.”8 This definition, albeit
circular, offers a starting point for thinking about what we want to deliver regarding
this transformation; for greater definitional depth, we may turn to what Saalbach
(2017) called Integrated Geostrategy.9
A geostrategic vision is one that includes both fixed elements and morphological
variables. It is inclusive of all sustainability requirements: geo-economic, geopolit-
ical, geo-sociological, geomatic, and geo-military10 (Ezati 2003). Such frameworks
address elements that are usually overlooked by traditional security, such as food
security, medical (health) security, cybersecurity, and the demographic composition
and its specific security problems.
There is no doubt that such a holistic approach can only be achieved with the
availability of two factors. The first is the existence of political institutions that
can ensure both quality and continuity of political vision; and the second is the
potential for geostrategic planning. The first factor’s necessity lies in the individu-
alistic vision prevailing in the Gulf states, which stands in the way of the establish-
ment of a geostrategic vision—since geostrategic requirements must first be directed
towards achieving common interests rather than individual interests. Additionally,
there should be continuity in the processes of planning, implementation, and super-
vision. This can only be achieved within institutions based on these three levels. If
these processes are separated in order to achieve the requirement of quality, it is
difficult to achieve the requirement of continuity.
Regarding the second factor, again, we need to view the Gulf as a unit of
geostrategic analysis. The Gulf states—with the relative exception of Saudi Arabia—
have no real geostrategic dimension, due to the weakness of the fixed geopolitical
factors in their geographic location, area, and population, as well as the morpholog-
ical aspects of each Gulf state. This weakness leads to recognition of the fact that no
Gulf country can have a geostrategic dimension unless it is part of a unified regional
system with a common vision. Such a system would see each country participating
in its construction, with each complementing the others through their collective
possession of all the necessary geostrategic elements, along with their combined
high aspirations for the framework’s geopolitical, geo-sociological, geo-economic,
geo-military, and geo-informational requirements.
Only as a unitary bloc can the Gulf states achieve greater geostrategic security
than the countries of surrounding regions. Meanwhile, operating with a national
rather than a regional mindset will reduce the geostrategic dimension to a point that
will make any Gulf state unable to meet regional challenges, while depriving it of
the ability to invest in the geostrategy of the Gulf overall. We are also unable to
overlook the dilemma of human environmental factors regarding the political units
of the Gulf, especially the demographic problem, which is of the greatest concern
not only in terms of security, but also in terms of culture and society.
Given the current state of fragmentation in the Gulf, and the loss of a unified
regional dimension in Qatar’s strategic thinking, we find that most of the Gulf states
are confined to “Air Force Theory” as a geopolitical vision. Geopolitical researchers
have distinguished three theories that may constitute a framework for the geopolitical
vision of any country: Air Force Theory, Maritime Force Theory, and Ground Force
Theory.
Geopolitical theoreticians differ in the strategic theories they prefer for different
states, but Air Force Theory is generally considered to be ideal for all Gulf coun-
tries except Saudi Arabia and Oman. However, today no Gulf state can achieve a
convergence between the three types of power in a way which constitutes a balance
of these forces with respect to the specific regional challenges, unless it is under a
unified Gulf system.
The Transformation from Securitization to Rational Security
When dealing with the issue of security, the discussion is often directed towards the
physical and perceptual definitions of security, rather than towards a rational security
structure on which the security of the state is in reality based. Therefore, it can be
said with confidence that the basic weakness in the Gulf’s security system is the lack
of rational security. The Gulf authorities have no clear ability to deal with security
through principled considerations approached with a unified mindset; indeed, they
are often fixated on the securitized treatments of what really ought to be considered
intellectual affairs. This tends to transform the authority’s remediation efforts from
being part of the solution to being part of the problem. Here we can cite an important
phrase from a speech by HH the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim: “Narrowing the
concept of security is a danger to security itself” (Amiri Diwan 2018).
The problem of terrorism is considered central to Gulf security, as the region
itself has suffered in its recent history from the actions of terrorist movements, from
al-Qaeda in 2005 to the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in
2015, amongst others. In the past three years, a number of young people in the Gulf
have joined terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq, regardless of their ideological
orientation. On the other hand, the Gulf states are an integral part of the US-led
coalition against terrorism, which is manifested in various forms, notably the coalition
against ISIL.
With terrorism a central issue in Gulf security, we still find no crystallization of
rational remedies for the cause of terrorism, as if the issue of terrorism is merely
random behavior that has no basis in rationality. The GCC countries have not devel-
oped any systematic treatments to address the issue of terrorism. Some of the Gulf
states have, for example, removed all the Quranic verses that include reference to
fighting and jihad from school curriculums in the apparent belief that this will end
terrorism in the Gulf. Yet a person who does not read the verses on jihad in the school
curriculum will read them in the Quran, and those who do not read them in the Quran
will hear them from the preacher at the local mosque: a young person from the Gulf
will always find a way to come across these verses. What is striking is the fact that the
countries that delete the verses of jihad from their curriculum are the same countries
that claim that they are proud to embrace Islam. This raises the question: How can
one claim to be proud of Islam and at the same time remove its verses because it
seemingly supports terrorism?
The duplicity of this proposition, along with the randomness and superficiality in
the way it is practiced, further provokes the terrorist industry rather than providing
remedies to it. The rationale behind terrorism will not be addressed through deleting
verses, but by seeking to understand these texts in light of their scriptural and histor-
ical context. This way, their correct meanings can be revealed and turned into general
knowledge, to prevent the spread of ideological recruitment through Islamic texts.
The Sharia laws that are used by terrorist movements are always fragmented and
abstracted from their contexts, so as to serve the purpose of those who aim to distort
them. Scientific research alone will prove this—not the use of tools of violence
through the rampant securitization of society.
Therefore, the use of force alone will not work in combating terrorism. The minds
that produce these behaviors cannot be controlled through physical violence, but
only through a rational method which addresses and convinces minds—because
only minds can control minds.
At the same time, the security measures adopted by some Gulf countries have not
been directed at the issue of terrorism alone, but have also been used against intel-
lectuals, thinkers, university professors, and opinion makers. Some GCC countries
have recently witnessed a wide-ranging security campaign aimed at those who simply
disagree with the governing authority. This indicates, first, the weakness and fragility
of that authority. A rational authority with a correct strategy and mindset does not
need to arrest those who disagree with it, because a rational position only requires a
valid counter-argument to prove its invalidity. Suppressing and arresting dissenters
will not prove the validity or rationality of a position; the resort to securitization
only proves that the authorities are incapable of rational engagement. Secondly, this
makes it obvious that the range of the security problem is expanding; these detainees
have families, relatives, and friends, and consequently the circles of people who fear
those authorities become expanded, which makes the relationship between society
and authority increasingly based on tension and mistrust.
If the Gulf wants to achieve security in the region, therefore, it must move from the
logic of “securitization” to the logic of “rational security,” which can be achieved by
providing a safe environment for citizens to express their views and oppose opinions
with well-thought-out counter arguments.
Conclusion
The current era is a rare moment in the history of the Arab World. The Gulf states,
especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, were not, in most stages of history,
prominent in the Islamic and Arab worlds, but today they are among the leading
players. That is why we cannot examine any aspect of the Arab World without
incorporating reflections on the differences that exist in the Gulf. There is no doubt
that the Gulf Crisis has revealed the great capabilities of the Gulf states to mobilize
international opinion through lobbying efforts directed at Western decision-makers.
It has also revealed the enormous potential for shaping public opinion by diplomatic
means or through public relations companies. However, the question remains: How
will the Arab world benefit from these great capabilities? A quick look at the situations
in the countries involved in the Arab Spring reveals the extent of the negative impact
of the intra-GCC differences on Arab security, as these countries have become arenas
of conflict and of proxy wars between Gulf states. This is most evident in Syria and
Libya, where the Gulf differences are directly reflected.
One hopes that the Gulf states will take advantage of this rare historical opportu-
nity, which has given them the potential and the capability to make them eligible to
lead the Islamic world. This is an opportunity to create an attractive Gulf model, not
through financial abundance and the possession of media arsenals, but based on solid
political and national rights, and a security vision based on a conscious awareness
of the importance of Gulf geopolitics.
Notes
1. The variation in the type of difference—substantive or procedural—is a central
aspect in organizing international and regional cooperation. Therefore, the
statutes of the international and regional organizations clearly distinguish
between them, and require unanimity on substantive issues, while the majority’s
approval is required in procedural matters. See, for example: Charter of the
United Nations, Article XXVII, or GCC Charter, Article IX.
2. The statement by Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad, the Emir of the State of Kuwait,
announced the existence of intentions to attack the State of Qatar at a joint press
conference between the Emir of Kuwait and US President Donald Trump. “War
‘stopped’ between Qatar, blockading Arab nations.” Al Jazeera. September 8,
2017.
3. In international relations, states do not define their interests and act towards
them on the basis of the principle of sovereign equality, but on the basis of the
difference in power. When dealing with another state, a state does not act, in
practice, on the basis of equality between states, as provided for in the Charter
of the United Nations, but on the basis of their differences in capabilities and
levels of power.
4. Regarding the area and population, see Statistical Center of the GCC States
(GCC STAT), https://www.gccstat.org/en.
5. The soldiers who took part in the military march carried Russian AK-47 rifles
and American M-16 rifles. A state usually adopts a single source of armaments,
either Western (American and European) or Eastern (Chinese and Russian),
because there are differences between these two sources on many levels, from
the quality of the weapon to the unit of measurement used, to the firing path
itself.
6. There are two main schools of military marches: the Western School (British),
to which Qatar and the other Gulf states belong, and the Eastern School (Russian
and Chinese), to which the majority of the communist countries belong. In the
Eastern march the soldier’s leg movement is more show-like and powerful.
Qatar has always followed the Western march of the British school, in common
with most Arab and Western countries. Traditionally, marches are supposed to
follow the same pattern throughout. However, in the case of the Qatari military
parade, the marchers performed a transition from Western to Eastern style as
the soldiers passed in front of HH the Qatari Emir’s platform, as a signal that
the Qatari army is characterized by a flexibility to switch between Eastern and
Western alternatives, and an ability to alternate between Western and Eastern
allies.
7. Academics, theorists, and practitioners of geopolitics have agreed no standard
definition for geostrategy. See Ashrafpour, Ashraf, “Geostrategic importance
of Persian Gulf.” University of Pune, April 2010, p. 101.
8. Definition of “Geostrategic” by Oxford Lexico Dictionary, https://www.lexico.
com/en/definition/geostrategic.
9. Saalbach states that the best definition is the Munich Geopolitical School’s
view that geostrategy is a set of knowledge resulting from social and biological
dimensions. See Saalbach, Klaus-Peter, “Modern Geostrategy, Methods and
Practice,” Universitat Osnabrück Applied Public Policy Analysis Department
(Working Paper), December 2, 2017.
10. Ezati argues that the “new concept of geopolitics deals with the relationship
between man and the surrounding environment, as the main factor that plays an
important role in the political destiny of the state. Environmental factors are a
framework for the strategic geopolitical goals of the state.”
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Chapter 6
The Cyber Operation Against Qatar
News Agency
James Shires
Introduction
The Qatar crisis was catalyzed by what appeared to be a novel use of cyber tools: the
planting of a fake story about the Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim Al-Thani on the website
of Qatar News Agency (QNA) in May 2017, portraying him as expressing support
for Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. While this operation was a new development
in foreign policy tactics in the region, it was not entirely without precedent in inter-
national cybersecurity. More specifically, this operation can be seen as an extreme
case of what I have called elsewhere “hack-and-leak operations” (Shires 2019a), and
the following paragraph is a summary of the more sustained treatment in that article.
Hack-and-leak operations (HLO) involve both an intrusion into specific digital
systems and networks (hack) and an attempt to influence certain audiences through
the public release of information obtained through that intrusion (leak). HLO are
mechanisms for delegitimization: ways in which adversaries seek to diminish the
legitimacy of their target. Their impact can be analyzed in a tripartite framework.
The first dimension is their context, meaning that the political and social context of
the operation affects its outcome: for example, in contrast to the liberal, partisan, and
antagonistic quality of the US public sphere, in the Gulf repressive cybercrime laws,
overt media control, and extensive self-censorship mean that states have different
tools to amplify and restrict the leaked information. The second dimension is the
technical detail of the operation or its characteristics. These include the infrastructure
used to conduct the intrusion, the entry points, the tools and patterns of access, and
methods of leaking, as well as the size and format of the data leaked. The third and
last dimension of impact for HLO is their audience, as such operations are usually
targeted at a particular audience, both locally and internationally.
J. Shires (B)
Cybersecurity Governance, Institute of Security and Global Affairs, University of Leiden,
Turfmarkt 99, 2511 DP The Hague, The Netherlands
e-mail: j.shires@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_6
102 J. Shires
In this chapter, I use this framework to analyze the cyber operation against the
Qatar News Agency. The chapter is divided into three sections, focusing in turn on
the context, characteristics, and audiences of the QNA operation.
Context
The political and social context of the Qatar crisis is covered extensively in this
volume. In this section, I first briefly sketch the contours of the crisis, and then
provide a more detailed overview of the context of the QNA operation in terms of
cyber capabilities in the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The QNA operation took place in the context of wider tensions between Qatar and
its neighbors. From a historical perspective, interlaced familial and tribal relations
across what is now Qatar and its neighbors have been the source of shared ties and
disagreements for hundreds of years (Potter 2014). In the process of British imperial
retreat and modern state formation in the early 1970s, these differences crystalized
into state borders, as Qatar and Bahrain remained separate from the consolidation
of the former Trucial states into the UAE (Zahlan 1998). Tensions between Saudi
Arabia and Qatar were especially prominent in the late twentieth century, as alleged
coup attempts in the 1990s and 2000s led to the removal of citizenship rights from
thousands of Qataris under former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani (Kamrava
2013). Qatar’s independent media policy was a particular source of contention, with
state-owned channel Al Jazeera setting a new tone for political coverage of the region
and, in the eyes of some scholars, creating a new Arab public sphere (Lynch 2007).
Al Jazeera’s coverage appeared to precipitate revolutionary change in the 2011 “Arab
Spring” protests in Tunisia and Egypt, leading to its characterization as a threat to the
stability of the other Gulf monarchies, some of whom responded violently against
domestic protests in 2011 (Ulrichsen 2014; Matthiesen 2013).
The central point of the Qatar crisis was the blockade or siege (ḣiṡār) by Bahrain,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE (the Quartet states) imposed on 5 June 2017,
during Ramadan. This blockade (referred to as “sanctions” or “boycott” (qaṫı̄ ah,
maqāṫa a) by the Quartet states) was ostensibly in response to Qatar’s support for
terrorism, Iran, and general instability in the region, and a later list of 13 demands
issued by the Quartet states made the justification of links to terrorism their central
focus. Some media reports suggest that this blockade was intended as a prelude to
planned military action against Qatar (Emmons 2018). The speedy approval of a
Turkish military base in Qatar two days after the blockade (Solaker and Finn 2017),
and reports that Turkish special forces arrived in Qatar even earlier (Turkiyya Bil-
arābı̄ 2017), lend some support to this theory—at least from the perspective of the
Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. The effect on the domestic politics and
economy of Qatar, and on the lives of individuals on both sides of the blockade, was
significant, and it also ruptured the GCC as an organization itself (AP News 2017).
6 The Cyber Operation Against Qatar News Agency 103
As well as the context of the Qatar crisis, the QNA operation can be put in the
context of the use of offensive cyber capabilities in the GCC. Offensive cyber capa-
bilities are technological means for intrusion into external digital networks, and
can be used for data deletion, exfiltration, or manipulation. The GCC states have
many of the requisite characteristics for the development of sophisticated offensive
cyber capabilities. They are rich, with extremely high levels of per capita wealth and
government spending due to extractives revenue. Although fluctuations in oil prices
and limited economic diversification have led to significant budgetary constraints,
defense and security spending remain high and are unlikely to decrease in the near
future. The GCC states also have a young, Internet-connected population, with plen-
tiful technological expertise supplied by immigration and highly educated citizens,
often trained in top US and UK universities. This provides them with the necessary
human capital to develop offensive cyber capabilities. Although there is not a large
“hacker” scene from which to draw cyber talent, as is the case in Eastern Europe,
there are small communities interested in this area.
The GCC states are some of the strongest allies of the United States and Europe
in the Middle East, and all have the infrastructure, expertise, and resources to build
offensive cyber capabilities, despite extensive variation between them. For example,
in 2012 the Washington Post reported that Qatar approached US management and
technology consultants Booz Allen Hamilton to build a cyber-operations center to
respond offensively to cyber operations by its regional adversaries (Nakashima 2012).
According to the Post’s unnamed US national security sources, the request was denied
because the US military was reluctant to allow US personnel to staff the center due
to the potential negative diplomatic repercussions from their involvement.
The GCC states’ use of offensive cyber capabilities follows a broader tendency
to restrict dissent and political opposition (for further details, see Shires 2019b).
Due to the role of social media in the 2011 Arab Spring, including protests across
the GCC, these states introduced or strengthened legislative measures (including
so-called “cybercrime” laws) and operational tools (including large-scale moni-
toring and censorship) to prevent organized opposition. GCC states use offensive
cyber tools for targeted surveillance of dissidents, journalists, and activists within
and outside state boundaries. These tools have been procured from private compa-
nies including Italian company Hacking Team (now renamed), in which a Saudi-
controlled company has a significant stake (Franceschi-Bicchierai 2018), German
company FinFisher, and Israeli company NSO Group. Furthermore, the UAE has
created companies that blur the lines between offensive and defensive cybersecurity
protection: UAE company Dark Matter provides cybersecurity solutions to industry
and government, and is reportedly involved in large-scale telecoms interception and
targeting of individuals, especially opposition activists (Bing and Schectman 2019).
Finally, other hack-and-leak operations have occurred in the Gulf before the QNA
operation. These include the 2015 release of documents from the Saudi Ministry of
Foreign Affairs on Wikileaks in 2015 (Shires 2019a), and the release of customer
details from UAE Invest bank and the Qatar National Bank in 2015 and 2016
respectively (Middle East Eye 2016). Further cyber-attacks related to the Gulf crisis
continued following the blockade; for example, the Al Jazeera website was targeted
104 J. Shires
by distributed denial-of-service attacks on 9 June 2017, shortly after the blockade

began (Mascarenhas 2017). Overall, the context of the QNA operation is multi-
faceted, including broader political tensions, specific developments in the crisis itself,
and the development and use of cyber capabilities by all GCC states.
Characteristics
The second dimension of hack-and-leak operations are their technical characteristics.

Public reporting on such operations provides some of these technical details, although
sources are often vague and contradictory on the exact means used in the operation.
In this respect, the QNA operation is no exception. This section therefore draws on
journalistic accounts of the QNA operation in English and Arabic, which are in turn
based on anonymous conversations with individuals involved in the investigation of
the incident, as well as press releases and public announcements by senior Qatari
officials. Most of these sources were produced in the period immediately after the
operation on 23 May 2017. Al Jazeera announced the preliminary results of the
investigation on 7 June (Al Jazeera 2017a), while the Qatari Attorney General held
a conference on 21 June with further details from a joint investigation with the UK
National Crime Agency and US Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Qatari
Ministry of Interior provided further details at a press conference on 20 July (abū
ḣajar 2017; Adly 2017; Salisbury 2017). Initial media responses are drawn from
the Middle East Media Research Initiative (MEMRI, 2017). The “hack” and “leak”
elements have been treated separately in the following discussion, although they
overlap.
The Hack
The first stage of the cyber operation was reconnaissance: enumerating the public
areas of the QNA servers and seeking vulnerabilities in the webpages hosted on those
servers. A Gulf Times report suggests that this reconnaissance activity began on 19
April and was conducted through virtual private networks (VPNs) (Adly 2017). VPNs
hide the original IP address of the communication, and so the Qatari investigators
acting after the event were likely able only to see the VPN server itself connecting to
the QNA website in the server logs, rather than the attacker’s real IP address. Some
reports suggest that the IP address used to scan the QNA website on 19 April was
located in Russia (Wintour 2017).
The next stage of the operation was to gain persistent access to the target networks.
This stage reportedly occurred on 22 April, as the attackers “gained access” to part
of the QNA website (Salisbury 2017). This suggests that the attacker identified a
website vulnerability through their reconnaissance—such as cross-site scripting or
SQL injection—which allowed them to manipulate the server itself and to install
malicious software. This probably provided them with persistent access. At 5:45 on
22 April, according to the investigation, the vulnerability was “shared with another
person through Skype from an iPhone with an IP address of one of the siege coun-
tries” (Adly 2017). This is interesting, as it suggests that there may have been some
form of signals intelligence collection on that iPhone from either the Qatari govern-
ment or their international partners, because it is unlikely that an internal investiga-
tion would have identified specific communications (including time and platform)
between attackers unless the hacker downloaded and opened Skype from their posi-
tion on the QNA network. Alternatively, the vague phrasing may mean the vulnerable
page was simply accessed through the Skype app from that iPhone, in which case no
information about external communications would have been necessary.
The next stage was to escalate privileges and collect information. Although some
reports indicate that the attackers had access to the “internal network”—i.e., not
just the web server hosting a vulnerable web page—on 22 April (Salisbury 2017),
others suggest (and it is more likely that) the attackers were located only on the web
server in that initial phase, and then had to move laterally across the network to other
servers with more valuable information. There is no indication of how or when they
conducted this lateral movement and privilege escalation, other than the end result:
the collection of emails and passwords of “all QNA employees” on 28 April. If these
credentials were in plaintext (unencrypted) or in an easily decrypted format, then this
is a key moment in the hack. It is likely that these credentials included access to QNA
systems for those with high-level permissions, such as system administrators; if so,
the attacker could then manipulate the network in nearly any way with very little risk
of detection, using legitimate credentials. They could also have access to social media
credentials (to which I return below). Again, reports suggest that these credentials
were shared over Skype with the same device that received the vulnerability details.
The attackers reportedly logged in again on 20 May, three days before the leak, to
check that their access was still live before the operation. Finally, the Qatari Ministry
of Interior press conference suggested that they located the iPhone in the UAE due to
not only the IP address, which can be misleading, but also the details of the network
(i.e., a UAE mobile carrier) and the type of iPhone itself (Adly 2017). A European
phone number was also reportedly identified, but with no indication of where or
how it was relevant. It is also worth noting that the attackers are described by these
reports as “sophisticated,” “professional,” and as using advanced techniques (tiqniyya
aliyya) (abū ḣajar 2017). Such language is usually used in the cybersecurity industry
to denote state-sponsored attacks, as states are widely perceived to be the most
capable attackers. This language also helps to minimize victim responsibility, as if
the attackers were sophisticated then the victim could not be at fault for not preventing
access.
106 J. Shires
The Leak
In July 2017, the Washington Post reported that “newly analyzed information gath-
ered by US intelligence agencies” indicated that “senior members of the UAE govern-
ment” met on 23 May to discuss a planned leak operation against QNA (DeYoung
and Nakashima 2017a). The article claimed that the operation was “orchestrated” by
the UAE. Further anonymous comments from two “Western officials” to a separate
journalist indicated that these meetings were conducted by Mohammed bin Zayed,
Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi (Salisbury 2017). These meetings reportedly included
both the operation itself and a broader media campaign.
On 23 May, the usually low number of visits to the QNA website (in the single
digits) increased significantly, with 45 visits in the quarter of an hour from 23:45 to
midnight on 24 May. At one minute past midnight, a story was published on the QNA
website. Following this publication, there were another 41 visits to the website in
the next quarter of an hour from IP addresses located in the UAE. The investigation
suggested that Qatari officials were able to identify the individuals who browsed the
website in this period as residing in the UAE, although no further details were given
(Adly 2017). A different report, based on server logs, suggested that around 80%
of visits originated in the UAE (Salisbury 2017). One iPhone user—potentially the
same one in the hack—was according to this report the first to access the story and
returned to it repeatedly.
The story itself centered on comments purportedly made by Emir Sheikh Tamim at
a ceremony on 23 May for the graduation of National Guard recruits. These comments
included several controversial remarks, including a recognition of the “regional and
Islamic prominence of Iran,” and “close ties with both the US and Iran.” It also said
that relations between the Trump administration and Qatar were “strained,” and that
Qatar had ongoing contacts with both Hamas and Israel (ukaż 2017). As well as the
text, there was also a reported video of the Emir at the ceremony, with text making
the same comments on a ticker below the video. According to CNN, a still purporting
to be from that video was aired on Saudi-backed Al-Arabiyya (Alkhalisi 2017), as
well as on Saudi newspaper Al-Jazira (not the Qatari outlet Al Jazeera) (MEMRI
2017). However, there is no record of the video itself, and Qatari media figures
used this absence to support counter-claims of faked content. The fake story was
also disseminated by QNA-linked social media accounts, including alleged quotes
from the Qatari Foreign Minister accusing Arab nations of a plot and withdrawing
ambassadors from Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, in an ironic
reversal of the isolation a week later (Gambrell 2017).
QNA and the Qatari government quickly stated that the news story was not true,
and around an hour after its first appearance it was removed from both the website
and social media pages. They said it had been prepared in advance and placed on the
website immediately, suggesting prior planning. The Ministry of Interior claimed that
responders had “contained” the intrusion by around 3 a.m. on 24 May, and that they
had shared information about the leak with counterparts in the countries that the IP
addresses were found in (i.e., the UAE, and potentially Russia), but had not received
any response. This is not unusual for Russia, as many requests for cooperation from
the United States have been turned down, with some instances the relevant Russian
official being involved in those operations themselves. However, for the UAE this
is less common, especially as it claims to have excellent cybersecurity governance
and regulatory bodies (Shires 2019b). There were also reports that individuals in
Turkey were linked to the operation. In August 2017, Al Jazeera reported the public
prosecutor’s comments that he was following the arrest of five individuals in Turkey
in connection with the operation (Al Jazeera 2017b).
Overall, the technical characteristics of the operation demonstrate how it can be
seen as an extreme case of hack-and-leak operations. Such operations begin with
unauthorized access to networks, including other typical hostile activity such as
credential gathering, and then exploit that access to extract data and leak it to inter-
mediaries (in this case, the iPhones in the UAE that probably directed the operation,
and then local media outlets). It is an extreme case because, although the overall
structure of a hack-and-leak operation was there, the “leak” itself was entirely fabri-
cated, and attached to images of the Emir that were already publicly available. As
I argue elsewhere, the proportion of authentic to fabricated information in HLOs
varies significantly, and so the QNA operation is at the far end of this spectrum
(Shires 2019a).
Audiences
In this section, I examine the impact of the QNA operation on local and international
audiences. I use “local” for two reasons: on one hand, it is difficult to disentangle
specific domestic media outlets and audiences due to shared media consumption and
language. On the other, the distinct discourses in different GCC states and sub-state
regions (emirates or provinces) means that media and audiences are not regional in
the sense of spanning the GCC as a whole. The term “local” is intended to capture
this cross-border phenomenon (e.g., between Saudi Arabia and the UAE), without
undue homogenization.
Local Reception
The timing of the news coverage in the Quartet states, its continuation after Qatari
efforts to communicate that a cyber-operation had occurred, and its portrayal and
association with the isolation and demands for lifting the blockade, suggest that
local media were a key aspect of the QNA operation. Although they act as interme-
diaries between those responsible for the operation and its eventual audience (their
readership), their actions were not as independent as intermediaries in other HLO
cases, such as WikiLeaks. For example, in a quotation to the UK’s Financial Times,
one Saudi editor described how officials used a mobile phone messaging group to
108 J. Shires
instruct journalists on how to shape coverage and what stories to focus on in the Gulf
crisis, including the stories stemming from the QNA operation. In this editor’s words,
such instructions “are orders, not suggestions” (Omran 2017). Some media channels
even used the technical details of the dissemination of the fabricated story on all
the social media accounts of QNA to argue for its authenticity. They claimed that
such dissemination was unlikely to be the result of a hack, as the hacker would need
administrative access to all these accounts (MEMRI 2017). However, as indicated
above, this appears to be in fact what happened, demonstrating how the plausibility of
such a claim depends on a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of such operations
in the Saudi population.
The strategic coordination of local media indicates that the domestic popula-
tions of the Gulf States were a key audience for the QNA operation. This is because
public opinion—although not directly influential in the selection of government in the
manner of democratic states—is nonetheless important for preventing popular oppo-
sition to specific actions and inculcating wider governmental legitimacy (Hudson
1979; Murphy 2009). Given the strong social and political cohesion between Qatar
and the blockading states—rivalry and earlier confrontations notwithstanding—the
imposition of such measures required public justification, especially as it infringed
on human rights of those on both sides of the divide. It is important to stress that
shaping public opinion through favorable news coverage and censorship of other
perspectives is not new in the Gulf or in the Middle East more widely; the novelty
here is that the news coverage was an artificial amplification of a separate—and
new—foreign policy tool; the hack-and-leak operation.
There are three further aspects of the QNA operation that amplified the impact of
the fake story for a local audience. First, the operation was followed by the creation
of websites designed to disseminate anti-Qatar content, notably “The Qatar Insider”
and “Qatarileaks.” The Internet registration records for these sites illustrate how they
were linked closely to the immediate aftermath of the QNA operation. Qatarileaks
was created on 29 May 2017, and is still active, while The Qatar Insider was created on
14 June 2017 and was not available as of 3 May 2019, with its last publicly accessible
archive on 9 March 2019. Both sides used privacy protection services to hide their
registration details. The content of these sites clearly supported the position of the
Quartet states, highlighting “links between Qatar and extremism and the Muslim
Brotherhood,” as well as the detrimental effects of the blockade on Qatar’s economy.
Both sites were in English and Arabic, although with significant differences
between the two versions. The Arabic version of The Qatar Insider focused more on
supposed links with Iran, while the English site promoted links to relevant stories
from reputable news organizations like The Guardian and The Atlantic.
On Qatarileaks, suggested search terms demonstrate the difference between the
English and Arabic versions (as of 3 May 2019), detailed in Table 6.1.
Overall, these two sites aimed to promote negative content about Qatar to both
local and international audiences through differing content in the English and Arabic
versions. Before I examine international audiences in the following sub-section,
the role of local social media must also be highlighted. Conventional media and
purpose-built propaganda sites were accompanied by extensive social media activity.
Table 6.1 Suggested search

English Arabic
terms on “Qatarileaks”
website in English and Arabic Boycotting Qatar At any price (mahmā kāna
al-thaman)
Tamim bin Hamad World cup revealed (mūndiyyāl
al- ār)
Qatar supports terrorism Abbottabad documents (withā iq
abūt abād)
Qatari ruling family Qatar leaks (tasrı̄bāt qaṫar)
Some of this was artificial, like the forged tweets around the operation itself and
those from the Twitter accounts associated with the two propaganda sites above.
The Qatar Insider account was created in June 2017 and tweeted until December
2017, while the Qatarileaks account was created in May 2017 and is still active.
Other artificial interventions on social media include the mobilization of automated
accounts or “bots” to promote supportive or divisive content. Although an analysis of
Twitter immediately after the operation does not exist, and is difficult to reconstruct
due to data limitations, Jones has conducted an analysis of bots on 28 May 2017
around an anti-Qatar and Al Jazeera hashtag (Jones 2017a). This analysis showed
that many accounts apparently in both Qatar and Saudi Arabia were likely not real
users, due to their tweeting pattern and profile details, including creation date, and
so their retweets artificially inflated the popularity of the hashtag. Similar inflation
may have occurred around earlier hashtags for the QNA operation itself. Overall,
social media—and especially Twitter—was a key medium for the QNA operation to
reach domestic audiences, and an arena increasingly open to boundary-pushing and
manipulation (Jones 2017b).
International Reception
The main international audience for the QNA operation was the United States, specif-
ically US President Donald Trump. Trump visited Saudi Arabia from 20 to 22 May
2017, leaving the day before the QNA operation began. His visit, which was his
first foreign trip as president, included meetings with all the GCC states, as well as
corporate leaders in the region. It notably centered around the opening of the Global
Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (i tidāl or moderation) (Shalhoub 2017),
and Trump’s first foreign speech focused on the dangers of terrorism to both the
region and the United States. Evidence that Trump was the intended audience of
the QNA operation comes mainly from his social media posts immediately after the
blockade. On 6 June, the day after the blockade, Trump tweeted that “During my
recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical
Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar—look!” (Trump 2017). Just under two hours
later, he continued:
110 J. Shires
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off.
They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing
to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! (Marcin
2017).
This tweet clearly demonstrates that Trump saw himself as a catalyst for change.
It also indicates that the leaders he spoke to—including senior Saudi, Egyptian, and
Emirati figures—raised Qatar’s activity with him and potentially a planned response.
A later speech by Trump went even further:
Nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. We had
a decision to make: do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary
action? … I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and
military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding [for terrorism] … and
its extremist ideology. (DeYoung and Raghavan 2017b).
As discussed above, reports suggest that the UAE approved the QNA operation
immediately after Trump’s visit, so it is possible that Trump’s private remarks at
the summit were taken as approval (indirect or implicit) of their action. In any case,
his endorsement after the blockade highlights how the QNA operation was designed
to emphasize exactly those links to terrorism through Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah
that Trump focused on in his speech. Of course, Trump’s remarks are not always
truthful, and therefore cannot be taken at face value regarding any meetings he had
with regional leaders.
More importantly, the United States is not a single individual, and Trump espe-
cially has diverged from the foreign policy positions of both the legislative bodies
of the US government and his own appointed staff. In the Qatar crisis, then Secre-
tary of State Rex Tillerson contradicted Trump, stating that “we call on [the Quartet
nations] to ease the blockade against Qatar. There are humanitarian consequences to
this blockade” (BBC News 2017). This opposition to the blockade reportedly led to
strong negative pressure against Tillerson by several US lobbyists close to Trump’s
circle, with some reports suggesting it was even the main reason for his dismissal
(Emmons 2018), and that the UAE ambassador to the United States knew of his
dismissal before it happened (Cohen 2018). Overall, Tillerson’s disagreement shows
that the audience of the QNA operation was international, but was not just Trump
himself; it was a wider set of partisan foreign policy advisors that were connected
to the Quartet states and had influence in the US administration beyond their Gulf
policy stance.
It should not be forgotten that the QNA operation also had an international audi-
ence outside the United States, including politicians in Western Europe and especially
the UK. For example, the London-based “Qatar, Global Security and Stability Confer-
ence” was held in September 2017 featuring senior UK politicians and Qatari dissi-
dents (McElroy 2017), and focused on the themes of the QNA operation, including
links to terrorism and Iran. More widely, both sides of the Gulf split have engaged
in extensive lobbying on these and other political issues worldwide (Leathley 2017).
The QNA operation therefore had several local and international audiences, and in
both cases it effectively communicated a specific message in line with the strategic
goals of the Quartet states.
Conclusion
This chapter has examined the QNA operation through three dimensions. The first
section placed the QNA operation in the political and social context of the GCC and
highlighted a contributing trend of state adoption of offensive cyber capabilities in
the region. The second section examined the technical characteristics of the QNA
operation, including the intrusion into the QNA networks and the dissemination of
the supposedly leaked information due to that intrusion. The third and final section
provided a brief overview of the audiences of the QNA operation, with interme-
diaries in local media organizations and social media influencers communicating
the “leaked” material to key decision-makers, including the US President and other
sympathetic US political figures. As the immediate pretext for the Qatar crisis, this
chapter has argued that the QNA cyber operation deserves close attention. It repre-
sents a successful execution of a new foreign policy tactic using offensive cyber
tools—that of the “hack-and-leak operation.” More importantly, it set in motion the
increasingly divided, antagonistic, and distrustful media environment in the Gulf
after the crisis, which shows no sign of abating.
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Chapter 7
Trans-Gulf Resonances: The Central
Role of Egypt in the Saudi Dispute Over
Qatar
Moisés Garduño García
This chapter studies current relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in order to
show the importance of Cairo for Riyadh’s economic and strategic plans in the Red
Sea. These plans are presented as an extension of the conflict dynamics in the Gulf
region, and as a strategy to curb Iranian influence therein. The paper has four sections:
in the first, the role of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the overthrow of Mohammed
Morsi are studied through the connections between the Saudi security apparatus
and the so-called deep state in Egypt; in the second, relations between Cairo and
Riyadh are addressed in the context of the Syrian conflict and within the framework
of pragmatism adopted by the Saudis with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood. In the
third section, the role of Egypt in the Saudi–Qatar crisis of 2017 is analyzed from a
critical perspective, showing how the Gulf crisis was the concrete scenario in which
Egypt and Saudi Arabia strengthened their diplomatic, political, and strategic ties.
Finally, the last section discusses the current situation in the Red Sea and the growing
strategic importance of Egypt, considering the emergence of a new balance of power
in the Red Sea between the SA–UAE–Egypt strategic policies, which are closer to
Israel, on the one hand, and Qatar, Iran, and Turkey on the other.
Overthrowing Morsi
It is well known that between 2011 and 2015 Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates (SA–UAE) concentrated on containing the revolutionary wave of the so-
called Arab Spring (Roberts 2011). Saudi Arabia led the military branch of Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), the Peninsula Shield Force, and entered Bahrain to
M. Garduño García (B)

Faculty of Political and Social Science, National Autonomous University
of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: mgarduno@politicas.unam.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_7
116 M. Garduño García
crush the popular revolt in March 2011, sharpening their rhetoric against Iran not only
in Manama but also in other locations of the Arab world. In 2012, the electoral victory
of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt posed another threat to the interests of SA–UAE in
the Red Sea area, especially when representatives of Cairo and Tehran engaged
in a process of rapprochement, including the visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to
Cairo, the relaunching of commercial flights between both capitals, and the visit
of Mohammed Morsi to Tehran under the framework of the XVI Summit of Non-
Aligned Countries (Morsy 2012). It is important to mention that both Saudi Arabia
and the UAE had prohibited political activity by the Muslim Brotherhood in their
respective countries since the 1990s, and that the ascent of Mohammed Morsi to
power caused major concerns about a reactivation of this group inside Riyadh; this
was in contrast to Doha, where the government of Qatar had provided a lucrative,
stable, and welcoming platform for the group since the late 1950s.1
In this context, one of the arguments that needs to be deconstructed is the claim that
the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi took place exclusively because of his domestic
mistakes. Indeed, while it is true that Morsi made crucial mistakes that generated
new enemies within domestic politics (such as the retirement of generals Mohammed
Hussein Tantawi and Sami Anan, or the arrogation of full powers to himself), the
external dimension must be considered in any discussion of the future of Egypt under
the command of Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, since the connection between SA–UAE and
the so-called deep state in Egypt had been very close from the beginning of the
post-Tahrir Revolution period.
Firstly, the alternative project prepared by the Egyptian military and security forces
had sought to gain as much legitimacy as possible by playing on the frustrations and
criticisms concerning Morsi. It was thus that the armed forces presented themselves
as “defenders of the popular will,” and delivered an ultimatum to Morsi signed by
General Al-Sisi who was the Minister of Defense at the time. From this perspec-
tive, the coup d’état was not a sudden irruption from below, but had been prepared
for months in conspiracy between local and foreign factors, and legitimized by the
growing anti-Morsi popular protests in Cairo. Some evidence for this claim can be
seen, first, in the fact that regular contact between Saudi intelligence and Defense
Minister Al-Sisi had been facilitated by his post as military attaché to the Egyptian
embassy in Riyadh in 2006–2008, just prior to his being nominated for the leadership
of Egyptian military intelligence during Mubarak’s presidency (Pervez 2014).
Secondly, several observations may be made on the role played by the former chief
of Saudi intelligence services, Bandar Bin Sultan, in the financing of the military coup
in Egypt. According to Levinson and Bradley (2013), during the months leading up to
the coup against Morsi various meetings were held between senior military officials
and government opponents, including Mohamed Al-Baradai, Amr Musa, Hamdeen
Sabahy, and Ahmed Ezz, in which the military clearly stated that “they would only
1 How the rulers of the UAE felt about this scenario is shown by the fact that legal proceedings
were instituted against more than 100 people between April 2011 and November 2014. Most of the
accused were charged with founding a secret organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood
with the aim of toppling the UAE regime (Sailer 2016).
7 Trans-Gulf Resonances: The Central Role of Egypt … 117
intervene to overthrow Morsi, if they could mobilize millions of citizens to protest

in the streets against the government.” So the emergence of the Tamarrod movement
in April 2013, with the stated purpose of obtaining 15 million signatures to demand
the presidential elections be brought forward, was in line with the plan devised by
the military and its allies in that context. In this sense, it is useful to analyze the
Tamarrod protests as a particular combination of coup conspirators on the one hand,
and legitimate popular demands on the other.
Thirdly, and according to Mesa (2019), the most concrete evidence about the
influence of Saudi Arabia in Egypt, and especially the SA–UAE alliance, was not
limited to the recognition of and political support for Tamarrod, but also to a decisive
financing effort for the new Egyptian interim government that emerged from the
military coup. SA–UAE coordinated an initial package of 12 billion dollars, with an
addition 5.8 billion in 2014 (Ahram Online 2014). Moreover, in March of the same
year, UAE Arabtec company signed an agreement for the construction of one million
“affordable houses” in Egypt worth 40 billion dollars (Kerr and Saleh 2014). This
project produced almost one million jobs, and assigned a central role to the Egyptian
army due to its complex business interests in the country, at a time when Egypt was
also receiving funding from the Emirates for the construction of hospitals, schools,
and the manufacture of wheat silos, a strategic sector for the Egyptian economy (Fick
2014).
The SA–UAE relation with Egypt is a win–win deal. While petrodollars are central
for Egypt’s domestic politics, SA–UAE receive political capital and prestige from the
Egyptian leadership in the Arab World. To both countries it is essential to preserve
channels for exchange and coordination, and to avoid contradictions or disputes that
can explode into the open. The priority for these countries in the Middle East is to
look for a common space to negotiate their differences (Mesa 2019). An excellent
example of the steps taken in favor of increasing bilateral cooperation between Cairo
and Riyadh was the “Cairo Declaration” released by President Al-Sisi and then Saudi
Defense Minister Mohamed Bin Salman, in July 2015, which set out the following
principles:
1. Development of the military cooperation and working towards establishing the
Joint Arab Force.
2. Enhancing the cooperation and investment between the two countries in the fields
of energy, electricity, and transportation.
3. Achieving economic integration between the two countries and working on
making them a key focus of the World Trade movement.
4. Intensifying mutual investments between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, aiming to
increase joint projects in both countries.
5. Strengthening cooperation in the fields of politics, culture, and media to jointly
counter the dangers of the current regional destabilization.
6. Defining the maritime borders between the two countries. (Ahram Online 2015b)
Driving Al-Sisi
The Cairo Declaration was a response to the signing of the Nuclear Deal between
Iran and the P5 + 1 in April 2015.2 The so-called “Iranian threat” was immediately
placed on the Egyptian security agenda, knowing that in the Egyptian public sphere
a certain degree of “Iranophobia” has been promoted by Arab Gulf countries and
Israel since the 1979 Iranian Revolution (Beker 2010).
But from the point of view of Iran, despite the current instability in Egypt, there
were reasons to believe that the fall of Mohammed Morsi was not due to his failures
at all. Firstly, because Al-Sisi would now rule Egypt, which had implications for the
Syrian conflict where Bashar Al-Assad was being defended by Russia. Secondly,
because Egypt now had an economic dependence on Washington and SA–UAE
money, as well as a new alliance with Salafist groups like Salafist Call Group who,
far from being enemies of the Egyptian regime, are considered as a cultural and
social extension of Saudi Arabia in Cairo. And thirdly, because regional politics in
2015 had reconnected Iran with Hamas in Gaza, an actor which, despite the cruel
offensive of July 2014 and the attempt at national unity with Fatah, is seen in Tehran
as a key connection in the heart of the Middle East, similar to the role played by
Hezbollah in Lebanon. In other words, when Hamas witnessed the overthrow of
Morsi, it turned to Iran because of its clear political and economic vulnerability to a
potential Saudi–Israel rapprochement.
With these geopolitical changes, especially after the signing of the nuclear deal,
the dynamics of Iran, Hamas, and Al-Assad, on one side, were set against Egypt’s
approaches to Saudi Arabia and Israel on the other. However, during the first year of
Al-Sisi’s government, SA–UAE improved relations with the Muslim Brotherhood
despite the fact that it had been declared a terrorist group by Egypt in December 2013
(The Guardian 2013), and by Riyadh in March 2014. Although this may seem like
a contradiction, the decision might in fact be rather easily understood. According to
Sailer (2016: 4), since the new King Salman’s accession, there had been many reports
about high-level meetings between the Saudi leadership and top-ranking officials of
regional Brotherhood affiliates, such as Rashid al-Ghannouchi (Tunisia), Hammam
Saeed (Jordan), and Khaled Meshaal (Hamas). King Salman bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud
changed Saudi regional policy by speedily implementing a rapprochement with the
Muslim Brotherhood in order to define a common strategy in Syria. This went hand
in hand with a rapprochement with Qatar and Turkey, as well as a slight cooling of
relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi (Kerr and Khalaf 2015)3 :
So far, the highpoint has been Riyadh’s ambassador to Doha inviting the influential Egyptian
legal scholar and TV preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi for the occasion of the Saudi national day
in October, 2015. In addition, there has been close cooperation with Qatar and Turkey in
2 “P5 + 1” refers to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France,
Russia, UK, and the United States—plus Germany.
3 The new king replaced Crown Prince Muqrin with his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, the interior
minister, who thus became set to be the first grandson of the kingdom’s founder to take power.
Defense minister Mohammed bin Salman was named second in line to the throne.
Syria since spring, 2015. The military successes of the rebel alliance Jaish al-Fatah, forged
by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, brought Bashar al-Assad’s regime close to military defeat in the
summer of that year. This rebel alliance includes militias that can be categorized as belonging
to the Muslim Brotherhood. The defeat of the government troops was ultimately prevented
by Russia’s military intervention in autumn, 2015. (Sailer 2016: 5)
Despite this, and after the signing of the so-called Alliance Against Terrorism
in December 2015, Al-Sisi gave new signals to continue developing a close bilat-
eral relationship with Saudi Arabia for the defense of “Arab national security” (De
Young 2015). The President also announced that Egyptian forces would prolong their
engagement in Yemen in support of the military operation led by Saudi Arabia from
January 2015, although these exercises were extended into 2016 when, in an attempt
to rationalize Egypt’s military intervention in Yemen, the narrative emerged of the
threat from the Houthis when the Yemeni port city of Mocha was captured, just a few
kilometers from the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which straddles the strategic international
maritime routes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal (Mohie 2015).
The day after the 2015 agreement, King Salman ordered that Saudi investments
in Egypt be increased to more than 8 billion dollars, and that Egyptian oil needs
be provided for the next five years. At the same time, representatives of Al Azhar
writing on the relation between Cairo and Riyadh were describing this approach as
“historic,” according to reports (Ahram Online 2015a).
The Qatar–GCC Crisis
Regional alliances against terrorism, however, were still directed against Iran: but two
moments would alter this dynamic, changing some elements while giving continuity
to others. The first was the inauguration of Donald Trump’s presidency in January
2017 and his insistence on Saudi Arabian and Israeli cooperation against Iran. Strong
evidence for the importance of this element was his first trip abroad as President of the
United States in May 2017, which was to Tel Aviv and Riyadh. The second element
was the appointment of Mohammed Bin Salman as Crown Prince of the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia in June 2017 (Al Jazeera English 2017).4
Very solid contacts were made between Mohammed Bin Salman, Trump, and
the powerful Washington lobbies of Israel and United Arab Emirates, as Andreas
4 By royal decree Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was removed as next in line to the throne
and replaced by Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi Press Agency reported that the new crown
prince was also named deputy prime minister and maintained his post as defense minister, while
the former crown prince was removed from his post as interior minister.
Krieg has recently documented (Krieg 2018).5 In addition to the anti-Iran narra-
tive, Mohammed Bin Salman developed a reformist program manifest in his Vision
2030, considering regulations in restricting the powers of the religious police and the
removal of the ban on female drivers, as well as an increased presence of women in
the workforce.
But the most important element in Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 was the
aim to diversify the Saudi economy through investment in non-oil sectors including
technology and tourism. In 2016 he announced plans to list the shares of the state oil
company Saudi Aramco, as well as the $500 billion NEOM project, a state industrial,
commercial, and tourist metropolis in northwestern Saudi Arabia through which
almost 1000 km2 of south Sinai will be developed (Vision 2030 2016). However,
according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mohammed Bin Salman faced two important obstacles
to achieving this project. Initially, he faced a challenge to his own ascendancy: having
deposed his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef as Crown Prince, he then placed him under
house arrest, freezing his personal bank accounts—daring moves that could have
produced a very dangerous enemy to domestic reform. The second obstacle for Bin
Salman’s grand strategic reform plan was the direct threat it posed to the prestige and
power of the established (and reactionary) Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia (Hirsi
Ali 2017).
To overcome these obstacles, Bin Salman would not only need support from
Trump, Israel, and Egypt, but also called for the support of all the GCC countries,
Qatar included, in a united front against Iran. The point of all of this is that Qatar,
an important state in the GCC, could not break diplomatic relations with Iran as
requested by Saudi Arabia, particularly because Doha and Tehran share the world’s
largest natural gas reserve in the Gulf (called North Field in Qatar and South Pars
in Iran), which serves as a major area of mutual interest for the two states (Kamrava
2016: 179).6 Moreover, Qatar is an important part of the regional security system
not only the Gulf, but also in the whole Middle East, being equally important for the
United States and Russia, as Washington depends heavily on Qatar for operational
purposes in the region, while Russia shares important interests in the gas sector.
These facts gave Qatar a wider margin of independence from Saudi Arabia than any
other Arab country in the GCC (Asisian 2018).7
5 Krieg writes: “Tens of millions of dollars were invested by the UAE to not only buy influence
in existing conservative think tanks, such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the
Atlantic Council or the Middle East Institute, but also to create its own Arab Gulf States Institute.
The proximity of think-tankers to Capitol Hill policymakers completed the circle of Emirati outreach
infrastructure into the American heart of power.”
6 In 2011, Iran’s revenues from gas were estimated at 30 million dollars while Qatar’s revenues were
estimated at 120 million dollars.

7 The United States has two strategically important bases in Qatar, the Al-Udeid Airbase and Camp
AS-Sayliyah: “Al-Udeid is the largest overseas airbase used by the United States and has two
active runways capable of handling every aircraft in the U.S. inventory, together with robust fueling
and ammunition storage facilities. In addition, the base also houses the forward headquarters of
U.S. Special Operations Central Command (SOCCENT) and U.S. Air Forces Central Command
(AFCENT) with their advanced command and control infrastructures. This complex has been built
up considerably over 14 years, with much of the funding provided by Qatar” (Des Roches 2017).
The crisis between Qatar and the GCC broke out in May 2017 (Doumar et al.
2017: 7). Saudi Arabia accused Doha of “supporting terrorism,” fragmenting the
unity of the Arab countries of the Gulf, and putting at risk the stability of the area as
a trade and investment zone. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt (the so-called
Arab Quartet) suspended ties with Qatar, announcing a full blockade against Qatar
by closing its single land border, and its airspace and seaports. Qatari diplomats
were given 48 h to leave the blockading countries while Qatari nationals were
asked to return to Doha (Doumar et al. 2017: 7). The criminalization of the Muslim
Brotherhood in the Saudi and Egyptian public spheres was reinstated, and after two
weeks of mediation efforts by Kuwait and the United States, the Saudi-led coalition
presented Qatar a list of 13 demands that included the scaling-down of diplomatic
ties with Iran, the severing of ties and funding to “terrorist” organizations and
individuals, shutting down the Al Jazeera news network, among others.
According to The Arab Center in Washington, these demands had three main
components: (1) closing the Iranian diplomatic mission in Doha; (2) expelling
members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and cutting off military and intelligence
cooperation with Tehran; and (3) ensuring that trade and commerce with Iran
complied with US and international sanctions (Doumar et al. 2017: 8). In short,
having played such an outstanding and independent role in the Gulf, and building a
national brand through multiple mediation and conflict-resolution efforts such as in
Sudan and Lebanon, Doha now had to choose between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The crisis between Qatar and the GCC fostered even closer links between Saudi
Arabia and Egypt. Their past mutual influence on the one hand, and the pressure on
Qatar exerted by the Arab Quartet on the other, strengthened this Arab alliance into a
trans-regional alignment, with the consequence that conflict dynamics in the Persian
Gulf were extended to the Red Sea.
Unlike previous stages, the rapprochement between Riyadh and Cairo now
entailed the criminalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and a reconfiguration of
authoritarianism in the Middle East after the so-called Arab Spring; thus, in the
case of Egypt, Al Sisi’s government has been criticized for its human rights viola-
tions, while in the case of Mohammad Bin Salman, the issue of Jamal Khashoggi
captured the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Council where 36 coun-
tries, including all 28 member states of the continental bloc, called on the Saudis to
“release 10 imprisoned activists and cooperate with a United Nations inquiry into
the 2018 killing of the journalist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul” (Tharoor 2019).
Additionally, it seems that the conflict with Qatar has led Saudi Arabia to rely more
on Egypt to complete the NEOM project, creating a new geopolitical dynamic in the
Red Sea area which thus becomes a new vital area for world trade and the security
of both nations. In such a scenario, the policy of confrontation in the Gulf becomes
replicated in the Red Sea, not only because of the role played by Iran in its connection
with the Houthis in Yemen, but also because of the interaction of other countries in
that area with the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Turkey.
Egypt, the Red Sea, and Trans-Gulf Politics
In April 2016, King Salman and Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi announced an agreement to
build a bridge (or causeway) between the two countries. The announcement followed
the Egypt–Saudi Arabia agreement on maritime border demarcation, and in 2018
formally marked the islands of Tiran and Sanafir as falling within Saudi regional
waters (Haaretz 2018). Israel announced that “it would not object to the islands’
transfer,” as Eglash reported:
The two countries (Israel and Saudi Arabia) have no formal ties, but there have been hints
of quiet cooperation—or at least a strategic dialogue—over certain issues such as Iranian
influence in the region. As analysts pondered the implications for Israel of Saudi control
of the two islands—at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, an important shipping route for
Israelis and Jordanians—Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told Israeli reporters that he had
received official documentation that Saudi Arabia would continue to allow Israelis freedom
of passage in the area. (Eglash 2016)
This information confirmed that Israel had been consulted before the transfer,
which was apparently done by Egypt to reward Riyadh for its financial help.
According to Azikiwe (2016), it is important to say that the Egyptian decision indi-
cated the existence of a particular foreign policy where the imperatives of Washington
and Riyadh took precedence over the liberation of Palestine and the genuine inde-
pendence of states in North Africa and the Middle East. The fact is that these islands
are part of the very same infrastructure project that includes the construction of the
King Salman Abdel Aziz Bridge with a value of 4 billion dollars. The main idea of
this corridor is the connection of Tabuk to the tourist complex of Sharm Al-Sheikh in
the Sinai Peninsula, building a direct route to the Gulf of Aqaba and creating plenty
of jobs on both sides. This is part of a greater plan by the Egyptian government
that intends to repopulate the Sinai Peninsula, and according to the Saudi Bin Ladin
Group “to provide an alternative Hajj route, expecting to serve a million passengers
and pilgrims annually.”8 In short, this is the model for economic diversification in
the post-oil economy followed by many GCC countries. It includes a combination
of oil rents and visionary leadership based on Malaysian or Singaporean models, in
which attracting international partners, especially from Asia, is a central element to
connect businesses to the Asia–Europe maritime trade lane (Calabrese 2018).
The reality is that the Red Sea is now a key zone in which the Gulf monar-
chies’ strategies for economic diversification—for example the idea of “New Gulf
Urbanism” (like the NEOM project)—are promoting the construction of post-oil
economies based on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and seeking partners for other
similar infrastructural projects (Ardemagni 2018). The trade environment, the exis-
tence of ports such as Al Lehiah, Do’ab, Massawa, Berbera, Djibuti, Bosasso, Al
Salief, Al Hodeida, Al Khokha, and Al Makha, the potential for tourism, multi-
modal transport, and the existence of around 156 islands, make this place a new and
8 Funding for the causeway was announced from the Saudi Bin Laden Group, which was reported
as “ready” to work for the Egyptian government after the Mursi government took office (Saudi Bin
Laden Group 2019).
valuable—albeit disputed—space. According to Eleonora Ardemagni (2018), these

plans are set to enhance Saudi–Egyptian–Jordanian ties, because NEOM and similar
projects in the Red Sea are not only business affairs, but are also about geopolitics
in a highly unstable area, threatened by the instability in the Sinai and the activities
of the Houthi.
In the Red Sea, SA–UAE are a new driving force behind a new interventionist
foreign policy, as demonstrated by the military operation in Yemen, while, on the
other shore of the Gulf, they see Iran seeking economic modernization and recovery
after years of international sanctions (Ardemagni 2018; Bernhofen et al. 2013: 25).9
To this boom in the Red Sea, must be added the political and geopolitical inter-
actions among some African states and the dynamics of power among formal and
informal groups, elites, and non-state formations, particularly in the islands of the
area. If the regional powers of the Middle East, and indeed the international powers,
want to invest in trade and strategic security in this region, it will be necessary to
invest in military infrastructure and intelligence to care for these investments, which
will transform the coastal states into actors with an amount of economic and geopo-
litical influence not seen in the area since the Suez Crisis, during the Cold War. This
could explain, in part, the military intervention in Yemen pursued by Saudi Arabia
since 2015.
This, then, is why Egypt is central to Saudi plans in this region. Saudi Arabia
aspires to control the Red Sea from Suez to Aden, and to compensate for what
Mohammed Bin Salman is losing to Iran in the Gulf area. In the face of Qatari
dissent, the Al-Sisi administration is a kind of prop to Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian
administration upholds every step taken by Mohammed Bin Salman, as the case of
the nuclearization program in Riyadh shows—thus Egypt’s president approved an
agreement on cooperation “in peaceful uses of nuclear energy” with Saudi Arabia,
knowing that Egypt would be part of a nuclear weapons zone in Africa, creating a
sense of suspicion equal in magnitude to that produced by Iran in the year 2002 (Egypt
Today 2017). The agreement, which was initially signed in April 2016 during a visit
to Cairo by King Salman, involves cooperation on nuclear security and exchange of
information on nuclear safety (Shay 2018).
Other evidence of this support is the signing of another security alliance, known
as ETIDAL, on May 2017, supported directly by Trump and King Salman, to “To
actively and pro-actively combat, expose, and refute extremist ideology, in coop-
eration with governments and organizations concerned.”10 On 5 June 2017, Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Yemen, Egypt, and Bahrain announced they were cutting diplomatic
ties with Qatar. In the case of Khashoggi, Egypt reserved its criticism for the role
of the media and called for “a thorough investigation of the incident” (Alsaafin and
Ilahoum 2018).
9 In the case of UAE, it is well known that DP World (an Emirati company that is one of the
world’s largest maritime firms and directs operations in more than 40 countries) had been making
investments in the Horn of Africa since the 90s. It built a large port in Djibouti, and is now working
on another in Somaliland, trying to gain a strategic foothold in east Africa to secure commercial
and military advantage through ports, despite the risks of exacerbating tensions in the region.
10 See the ETIDAL website, etidal.org/en/about-etidal/, accessed on 20 March 2020.
On the other hand, it is well known that other countries, such as Turkey, have
strengthened alliances with actors in the Red Sea to counterbalance Saudi–Egyp-
tian power. For instance, Turkey signed a series of economic, military, and strategic
cooperation mechanisms with Sudan, including the construction of a new airport
in Khartoum, 12 cooperation agreements in tourism and security, and the construc-
tion of a port on Suakin Island along with a dock for military and civil use (Amin
2018). In August 2018, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded his country’s
relationship with Eritrea, and informed the world about Moscow’s plans to build a
logistics center there (Solomon 2018).11 In addition, and responding to a growing
number of dangerous incidents in the waters around Yemen, Washington expanded
its presence in the Red Sea around the Bab el-Mandeb zone, through the destroyer
Cole which was operating in the Mediterranean Sea under CENTCOM (Cavas 2017).
For its part, Israel and China finalized a plan, initiated in 2012, whereby China built a
cargo railway line connecting the port of Eilat in the Red Sea to the ports of Ashdod
and Haifa on the Mediterranean coast in Israel. This project aspires to be a shipping
alternative to the Suez Canal as far as costs are concerned (Lakhal and Souad 2017:
898).
Of course, this dynamic is by no means new: there has always been a strategic
component to the various powers’ engagement in the region—even from the Ottoman
period, when the British and the French vied for supremacy. However, what is distinc-
tive about the current era is the military technology possessed by the relevant actors,
which increases the political and geopolitical tensions among them, with concomi-
tant risk of a military escalation; and similar dangers are faced in other regions such
as the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean (Dewaal 2018).12 According to NATO, over
2600 pirate attacks were reported in the area between 2004 and 2011, with ransoms
of up to $5.5 million being collected per incident. In total, the overall economic
cost of Somali piracy was approximately $6 billion in 2012, down from $7 billion
the year before. In response, the international community (including governments,
NGOs, and the shipping industry) employed a variety of measures to reduce piracy
incidents and bring perpetrators to justice (Hallwood and Miceli 2014). In 2012, one
of these measures involved the deployment of between 21 and 30 military vessels in
East African counter-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali basin (NATO
Association of Canada 2014).
11 Lavrov also said that the UNSC sanctions against Eritrea, imposed in 2009 after reports that
the country was aiding Somalia’s Al-Shaabab, should be lifted, and praised Eritrea for all that it
had done in the name of regional peace over the past few months, in view of its rapidly moving
rapprochement with Ethiopia, completely transforming the geopolitical situation.
12 One of the first movers into Red Sea just before the end of the Cold War was Qatar, which sought
to position itself as a mediator of choice—hosting peace talks for Darfur, and between Eritrea and
Djibouti—and as a key sponsor of civil Islamism. It also used the media outlet Al Jazeera to generate
an impact far beyond the country’s small size. Next to move was Turkey. Before the Syrian war
began in 2011, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had a vision of reviving Turkish leadership
throughout the lands of the former Ottoman Empire using the soft power of trade, aid, and education.
Turkey became the first country to open an embassy in fragile Somalia after its Transitional Federal
Government returned and has remained a major supporter of the new government. It is also an active
investor in Sudan with plans to open a base at Suakin on the country’s Red Sea coast.
Conclusion
The popular revolts and political changes in Egypt during 2011–14 led to different
positions being adopted within the GCC countries, which can explain the non-
existence of a common or unanimous front on this issue. While Qatar, for its part,
supported the political tendencies represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi
Arabia and UAE chose to support the so-called deep State in Egypt, in which the
military plays a central and strategic role. This support was materialized not only
through the granting of voluminous financial aid to the current government of Al-
Sisi, but also through a series of conspiracies coordinated by the intelligence services
of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. These factors explain the position of Egypt in the current
crisis of GCC, in which Saudi Arabia and UAE are pursuing plans to achieve higher
levels of military aid and security from Cairo, so as to contain the rise of Iranian
influence in the region. Egypt was part of a Saudi-led military coalition that inter-
vened in Yemen in March 2015, is a central actor in Riyadh’s counter-terrorism
strategy through the Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology (ETIDAL),
and is included in the bloc of Arab states that have boycotted Qatar since June 2017.
Moreover, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE are undertaking the $500 billion NEOM
project. In any case, Egypt shares the Saudi and Emirati goals with respect to curbing
the expansionist regional ambitions of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.
While Saudi Arabia and UAE often portray their regional strategy as a reaction to
Iran’s expanding regional influence, they have failed to leverage this threat perception
into effective regional balancing against Iran in the Gulf, and are now replicating
this strategy in the Red Sea area, creating a new complex system of interactions
between formal and informal actors. SA–UAE have consistently opposed any kind of
accommodation with Iran that might stabilize the regional order, in view of the nuclear
deal. The fact is that the Trump administration and Netanyahu’s influence made it
almost impossible to implement this strategy, and they will side with Saudi Arabia
as long as the flow of investment to Washington persists. Khashoggi’s case is clear
evidence for this argument: neither Trump nor Netanyahu (nor Egypt) condemned
the murder, and instead used an anti-Brotherhood and anti-Iran narrative to justify
Saudi Arabia’s alliances and hegemonic projects not only in the Gulf but also now
in the Red Sea.
The process of militarization of the Red Sea is a reality, but there is also a softer
Saudi strategy expressed through its massive investments and “brand cities” like
NEOM, intended to build more spaces for capital reproduction. This is having geopo-
litical consequences in the Red Sea zone, which is important for the commercial route
from the Suez Canal to the Bab al Mandeb Strait. This, then, helps us to understand
conflicts such as the Iranian–Saudi conflict in Yemen, the alliance between Riyadh
and Cairo and Tel Aviv, and the reaction to this alliance from Qatar, Iran, and Turkey.
Finally, the blockade against Qatar, resulting as we have seen from Saudi ambi-
tions within and outside the GCC, has brought Doha closer to Turkey and Iran. This
relationship proved beneficial for Ankara and Tehran, which are in direct competition
with Riyadh and Tel Aviv for power in the Middle East following the military inter-
ventions in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon. For now, it is of capital importance
to continue to monitor the ways in which new geopolitical realignments develop
in the face of a potential terminal crisis in the GCC, the return to power of the
Syrian regime, the withdrawal of the United States from Syria, and the development
of alliances between Qatar with Turkey and Iran, situated all of these within the
framework of Mohammed Bin Salman’s reform program.
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Part II
Threat Perception
Chapter 8
Evolving Threat Perceptions
and Changing Regional Dynamics
in a “Post-GCC” Era
Kristian Ulrichsen
Rather than isolating Qatar regionally and internationally, the crisis that began with
the blockade of Qatar by four regional states in June 2017 has widened existing
cracks in the Gulf into a chasm and has generated unintended consequences that
risk inflicting generational damage on its political and social fabric. Like the Iraqi
invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990, the blockade of Qatar is an era-rupturing
event that will reverberate through the regional politics and international relations
of the Gulf for years to come. The attempt to shoehorn all six Gulf States into a
regional straitjacket molded in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi has inflicted lasting damage
on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and on the flexible inter-relationships that
historically existed among its six member-states. Already, in only its second year,
the blockade has started to reshape the regional politics and international relations
of the Gulf in new and distinct ways.
This chapter examines the second-order consequences of the blockade of Qatar.
It argues that there is no simple binary division within the Gulf States on any of
the regional flashpoints—such as the role of Islamists in domestic political land-
scapes, political and economic ties with Iran, or complicated relationships between
the smaller Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. Each separate issue brings different sets of
interests to the table and makes it near-impossible in practice to draw a neat dividing
line between and among states. The paper maps the web of overlapping flashpoints,
actors, and interests at stake, and argues that any attempt to impose uniformity risks
generating further backlash both between states and, in the case of the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), among the seven constituent emirates.
On the morning of 5 June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt
suddenly announced they were cutting all political, economic, and diplomatic ties
with Qatar. Although no warning was given, their action took place after thirteen days
of a vitriolic campaign of unusual intensity in Saudi and Emirati media and social
K. Ulrichsen (B)
Baker Institute Fellow for the Middle East, Rice University MS-40, Houston, TX, USA
e-mail: kc31@rice.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_8
132 K. Ulrichsen
media that portrayed Qatar as a threat to regional stability in multiple, often fanciful
ways. The ostensible trigger for the anti-Qatar campaign was the hacking of the Qatar
News Agency on the night of 23–24 May 2017, in an act that later was found to have
involved Russian hackers working in collaboration with individuals and entities in
the UAE (DeYoung and Nakashima 2017). The fact that the hack was followed by a
media onslaught that labelled Qatar a supporter of Iran and radical Islamist groups
suggested strongly that it was aimed at the Beltway echo chamber in Washington, DC,
creating an atmosphere of association of Qatar with radicalism that would resonate
with members of the Trump administration, including the president himself, who
were pushing heavily on the nebulous issue of “radical Islamist terrorism” (Salisbury
2017). Subsequent leaked communications between two apparent surrogates of the
UAE, George Nader and Elliott Broidy, appeared to confirm the existence of an
extensive yet under-the-radar public relations and media attempt to damage Qatar’s
image in Washington in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the hack (Butler
and LoBianco 2018).
From the beginning of the blockade it appeared that the Saudi and Emirati move
against Qatar was a power-play designed to take advantage of the unique opportunity
presented by the presence in office of a US presidential administration that had little
prior experience in or position towards the Middle East. Emirati officials were quick
to reach out to members of the incoming administration during the transition, and
drew close to the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had been tasked by
Trump to assume a portfolio of Middle East issues. As the administration took office
in January 2017, Politico reported that Kushner was “in almost constant phone and
email contact” with the UAE’s savvy and well-connected ambassador in Washington,
DC, Yousef al-Otaiba, and quoted al-Otaiba as recounting that “He [Kushner] did all
the asking, and I did all the talking” (Karni 2017). It emerged also that Kushner was
in regular WhatsApp communication with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Zayed Al-Nahyan and Saudi Arabia’s then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman Al-Saud in the administration’s early months in office (Worth 2018). Key
elements of the Arab-Islamic-American “Riyadh Summit” that Trump attended two
days before the hack in May 2017 may also have been coordinated by Kushner on
WhatsApp directly with Mohammed bin Salman, cutting out the State Department
and institutional channels of decision-making in the process (Henderson 2017).
Although President Trump shocked observers by siding initially and very publicly
with the Saudis and Emiratis and calling out Qatar by name as a sponsor of radical
ideology, the Departments of State and Defense did not share his enthusiasm to pick
sides in a dispute that involved three of the United States’s closest regional security
partners. The skepticism across government, if not at first within the White House,
at the move against Qatar manifested itself within days as Rex Tillerson and James
Mattis scrambled to reassure partners and allies alike that the United States was not
about to throw Qatar under the bus (Perry 2017). As the weeks passed, US frustration
at the decision to launch the blockade became palpable, with the State Department
spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, stating publicly on 20 June 2017 that:
8 Evolving Threat Perceptions and Changing Regional Dynamics … 133
We are mystified that the Gulf States have not released to the public, nor to the Qataris, the
details about the claims they are making towards Qatar. The more that time goes by, the
more doubt is raised by the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. At this point, we are
left with one simple question: were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s
alleged support for terrorism? Or were they about the long-simmering grievances between
and among the GCC countries? (Anon 2017)
Nauert’s remarks seemed to sting the so-called “Anti-Terror Quartet” into action,
as within three days they produced a list of twelve conditions (accompanied by a
thirteenth stipulating a ten-day deadline for meeting them) for Qatar to meet.1 The
maximalist nature of these demands and the fact they included no room for negotiation
or dialogue led many observers to recall the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia
in July 1914 that triggered the chain of events that led to the start of World War One.
They also dismayed US officials and even those in Washington, DC seen as closer
to the Saudis and Emiratis, such as Mary Beth Long, a former Assistant Secretary
of Defense in the George W. Bush administration, who commented in 2018 that the
Quartet “want total capitulation” from Qatar and that “the list of demands is deemed
by us to be an infringement on Qatar’s sovereignty and ridiculous—some of them”
(Kausch 2018). Moreover, Long articulated the frustrations felt by members of the
Trump administration both at the timing of the move against Qatar and the fact that
it overshadowed the president’s high-profile summit with regional leaders and went
against his call to rally Sunni Arab states to work together with the United States
against common challenges from the so-called Islamic State and Iran.
The president really wanted to say we had the GCC working against ISIS. Not even 48 h
later, the GCC falls apart. And I think there is a real resentment in the administration that
“why would you do that on the trip”? Unless there was some critical, time-sensitive issue.
Blowing up my announcement of a successful trip. And there has been really no response,
no information from the Saudis or the Emiratis on why they did it on the trip. Particularly,
because Mohammed bin Zayed was in the White House the week before and didn’t give the
administration a heads-up. So there is real anger and frustration there, and legitimately so.
(Mary Beth Long quoted in Kausch 2018)
In addition to foreclosing any realistic possibility of dialogue or hope of resolving

the grievances articulated by the blockading states, the ferocity of the media and social
media campaign as well as the impact of the blockade on families and individuals
meant that 5 June 2017 became a major turning-point in the modern history of the
Arab Gulf, a “before” and “after” moment akin to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in
August 1990. The campaigns against Qatar and its people meant that from the begin-
ning the blockade differed significantly from previous rifts among countries in the
GCC, which traditionally had been played out at the political rather than personal
level. In 2017, however, the blockading states decreed that Qataris resident in their
states must leave within fourteen days, imposed severe travel restrictions and, in
1 Among the list of conditions were demands that Qatar close down Al Jazeera and other media
platforms, close the Turkish military base in the country, scale down ties with Iran, handover “wanted
individuals” to the Quartet of states blockading Qatar and pay them reparations and compensation,
align political, economic, and security policies with the Saudi-led bloc in the GCC, and agree to
compliance audits initially monthly and then annually for a period of twelve years.
134 K. Ulrichsen
the case of Bahrain and the UAE, criminalized expressions of support or sympathy
for Qatar. These measures cast Qatar, Qataris, and anyone associated with Qatar
as “others” in a region where tribal and familial ties, to say nothing of commer-
cial connections, have always been linked inextricably across national and political
boundaries (Ulrichsen 2018a).
Embittered feelings on all sides will complicate attempts to resolve the rift within
the Gulf at a people-to-people level, irrespective of whether any official agreement is
reached at a state-to-state level, however unlikely that prospect remains at the time of
writing in December 2018. The wildly differing interpretations of the two iterations
of the Riyadh Agreement signed by Qatar and other GCC states in 2013 and 2014—at
which all states made commitments, not only Qatar—offers a sobering illustration of
the gulf in positions that continues to divide the antagonists (Kabalan 2018).2 Even
were these to be surmounted, however, and a reconciliation at a political level to
occur, the memories of the blockade and the vilification of Qatar at the hands of the
Quartet media and online social media will be difficult to wash away at the stroke
of a pen. For this reason alone, the fallout from the blockade on the social fabric of
Gulf societies is as profound as it is likely to be long-lasting, even generational.
The blockade therefore has contributed to the reshaping of threat perceptions in the
Gulf and between and among Arab Gulf States and their people in ways that will have
lasting and likely unanticipated results. The rhetoric and discourse in Saudi Arabia
and in Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, is so extreme that Qataris are routinely described in
terms hitherto reserved for Iranians, even though commercial relations between the
UAE and Iran are deeper and more multifaceted than those between Qatar and Iran
(Habibi 2010).3 The GCC itself took shape in three months between February and
May 1981 out of defensive concern at the potential spread of regional instability after
the Iranian Revolution in 1978–79 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War in September
1980. The speedy acceleration of the formation of the regional entity, following years
of stalled proposals and disagreements over the shape of any Gulf-wide organization,
was testament to the fact that the six Gulf monarchies felt they had a shared threat
perception that provided a powerful baseline incentive to come together as a bloc.
From its inception, however, the six member-states of the GCC found it rather harder
in practice to agree on “big-ticket” items concerning matters of foreign, defense, or
security policy involving any pooling of sovereignty, notwithstanding the Emir of
Bahrain’s optimistic hailing of the GCC, upon its formation, as a river that would
“irrigate the path of the future where it meets with the streams of good and aspires
to the coasts of glory” (Miller 2016).
Several aspects of the blockade of Qatar have in fact magnified the basic imbal-
ances that have run through the GCC since its inception and were, at best, brushed
2 The Riyadh Agreement covered commitments by all signatories on issues such as ending media
campaigns and interference in domestic affairs as well as safeguarding common interests and stop-
ping support for opposition movements—arguably conditions that Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the
UAE, rather than Qatar, violated in 2017 (see Kabalan 2018: 24).
3 In 2008, for example, the value of UAE exports to Iran amounted to US$13.2 billion while the
value of the aggregate exports from the other five GCC states put together came to US$1.58 billion
(Habibi 2010: 5).
to the side in the hope they would never become a reality. The first, most obvious,
imbalance is the disparity in size and conventional power between Saudi Arabia, on
the one hand, and the five smaller Gulf States, on the other; indeed, as Rory Miller
has observed, Saudi Arabia is seven times larger than Oman which itself is bigger
than Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE put together (Miller 2016). Moreover, at
various points in the twentieth century, the Saudi leadership has directly or indirectly
threatened or exhibited expansionist designs upon its neighbors, beginning with a
long blockade of Kuwaiti territory between 1921 and 1935, continuing with periodic
claims of Saudi loyalty over tribes in Qatar from the 1930s through the 2000s, and
including the protracted territorial encroachment on Omani and Abu Dhabi territory
during the Buraimi dispute in the 1950s (Toth 2005; Rossiter 2014). In 1963, for
example, Sheikh Shakbhut bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, the (soon-to-be-deposed) Ruler
of Abu Dhabi, cited specifically the threat from Saudi Arabia as the need to create
local military units that later became the Abu Dhabi Defense Force (Rossiter 2014).
Meanwhile, as late as 1992, Saudi forces were involved in a skirmish on the border
with Qatar that left several people dead or injured (Gulf States Newsletter 1992).
Concern among the five smaller Gulf States that Saudi Arabia might throw its
weight around in the GCC therefore was grounded in empirical reality, especially in
Bahrain, which was connected physically to Saudi Arabia in 1986 when the King
Fahd Causeway opened. Long before 1000 members of the Saudi Arabian National
Guard (SANG) and 500 military policemen from the UAE crossed the causeway to
enter Bahrain in March 2011 to assist the Bahraini government in restoring order after
the Pearl Roundabout uprising, observers speculated that the causeway had as much
a strategic as a commercial dimension to enable Saudi forces to intervene rapidly
in Bahrain should the need develop. During an earlier phase of Bahraini political
unrest in the 1990s, for example, the SANG deployed briefly to Bahrain as a show of
strength to make it very clear that Shia-led demonstrations would not be allowed to
escalate, just as the Saudi Minister of Interior, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud,
visited Manama and declared that the security of Bahrain was indivisible from the
security of Saudi Arabia (Fakhro 1997).
Numerous tensions and points of friction underlay Gulf politics in the opening
decades of the GCC and complicated all efforts to build closer political, and security,
as well as economic structures. As early as 1982, just one year after the GCC was
formed and while the Iran–Iraq War was raging, Kuwait refused to sign an internal
security agreement that would require GCC states to “provide for the exchange of
equipment, expertise and training, and for the extradition of criminals and border
cooperation” (Kechichian 2014). This foreshadowed the similar reluctance of the
Kuwaiti government three decades later, under strong parliamentary pressure, to
formally ratify (if not to informally implement) a new iteration of an internal security
agreement reached by GCC Interior Ministers in 2012 that contained similar provi-
sion for the sharing of intelligence and arrest warrants across Gulf states’ borders
(Al-Rasheed 2015).
Although a GCC-wide Peninsula Shield Force was eventually set up in 1983 to
deal with external threats to security, and two joint military exercises were held in the
UAE and then in Saudi Arabia, closer integration remained elusive and impractical
136 K. Ulrichsen
(Guzansky 2014). In 1986, however, when Kuwaiti territory and shipping came under
attack following the Iranian occupation of the Faw Peninsula adjacent to the Iraq–
Kuwait border, the GCC denied a Kuwaiti request to station a contingent of GCC
forces on Bubiyan Island, just across from the Faw Peninsula, as a collective security
deterrent to further attack (Assiri 1990). One reason for the denial, which caused
great surprise and consternation in Kuwait, was the lack of consensus among GCC
states over which side to back in the Iran–Iraq War, with the UAE especially split
between different constituent emirates that supported both of the warring parties,
and, like Oman, reluctant to confront Iran directly (Assiri 1990). This refusal led
to Kuwait looking to international partners, initially the Soviet Union and later the
United States, for maritime security in the “Tanker War” phase of the Iran–Iraq
War, which brought international forces into regional security structures for the first
time (Nonneman 1997). Doubtless with this memory at least partly in mind, Kuwaiti
leaders immediately requested military assistance from the United States, rather than
from the GCC, in the opening hours of the Iraqi invasion on 2 August 1990 (Miller
2016).
The opening decade of the twenty-first century saw the focal point of tension
within the GCC shift toward Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which engaged in a series
of disputes that belied the subsequent post-2011 realignment in Gulf politics around
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. In the decade after 2000, by contrast, the Saudi and Emirati
leadership clashed on multiple issues that revolved around the leaders of the UAE
wishing to carve greater autonomy for themselves vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia—ironi-
cally, one of the charges both countries were later to use against Qatar. Here, the
memory of the 1974 boundary agreement between Saudi Arabia and the newly
formed UAE caused lingering resentment and friction in Abu Dhabi for decades
thereafter (Schofield 2011). In 2005, Saudi Arabia blocked plans to create the world’s
longest bridge that would have connected the Qatari peninsula with the UAE and
allowed both countries to bypass Saudi territory (Al Jazeera Online 2005), while
in 2006 the Saudis attempted to halt the construction of an undersea gas pipeline
from Ras Laffan in Qatar to Taweelah in Abu Dhabi by claiming—as they did with
the bridge—that it crossed through Saudi territorial waters and thus required Saudi
consent (Critchlow 2006).
Friction between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the mid point of the decade
contributed also to the failure of another planned GCC energy initiative. In December
2006, the GCC Supreme Council (of leaders) passed a resolution to launch a joint
Arab nuclear program that would be implemented by the six GCC states. The
then-Secretary-General of the GCC, Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, briefed
the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El-
Baradei, on the GCC-led Arab nuclear proposal in early 2007, and the GCC and IAEA
agreed to cooperate on a feasibility study for a regional nuclear power and desalina-
tion program (Howard 2007). Just as the idea was gaining traction, however, GCC
officials were blindsided in April 2008 when the UAE published its own independent
policy plan for nuclear energy, established the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation
as an Abu Dhabi–based public entity, and invited bids in 2009 for construction of its
first nuclear power plant at Ruwais which is set to begin operation in 2020 (Luomi
2009).
Most notably for proponents of closer GCC integration, two decades of progress
toward economic and monetary union came to a shuddering halt in May 2009 when
the UAE, suddenly and without warning, pulled out of the planned GCC single
currency a year before it was due to come into operation in 2010. Abu Dhabi had
campaigned vigorously to host the headquarters of the new GCC Central Bank and
had believed it had secured the support of other GCC members; thus, when the
decision was taken to host the bank in Riyadh instead, Emirati officials reacted with
visceral anger and, two weeks later, abruptly walked away from the entire project.
Their dismay at losing the central bank was magnified by the decision to locate it in
Riyadh which reinforced concerns held in Abu Dhabi at the time that the GCC was
becoming too Saudi-centric, with the GCC Secretariat also hosted there (Ulrichsen
2016).
Even after the cathartic shock of the regional political uprisings in 2011, which
extended to Bahrain in the Gulf and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, a lingering
mistrust of Saudi intentions undermined attempts to broaden and deepen the GCC
and laid bare the latent divisions within the bloc. In May 2011, King Abdullah of
Saudi Arabia surprised his fellow GCC leaders when he suggested that invitations
be extended to Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC in an associational capacity
(Hamdan 2011). Although the terms of membership were never entirely made clear,
and did not ultimately lead to anything more than an aid package from the GCC
to support its two fellow monarchies in the Arab world (Theodoulou 2011), it was
followed by a more substantive declaration by King Abdullah, at the annual GCC
Summit that happened to take place in Riyadh in December 2011, to move towards
“a stage of union in a single entity” (Roberts 2012). Once again, there was little
specific detail to flesh out what precisely the king had in mind, and, just as in May
2011 with Jordan and Morocco, it proved far harder to transform rhetoric into reality.
Although Saudi Arabia’s longstanding foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal
subsequently expanded King Abdullah’s utterance into a set of policy proposals
and convened a midyear “Consultative Summit” in Riyadh in May 2012 to consider
the GCC union, it ended in embarrassing failure for the hosts as only two other heads
of state attended, and the meeting broke up with only a pledge to form a committee
to examine the issue. Eighteen months later, in the run-up to the GCC’s December
2013 summit in Kuwait, talk of a move towards a GCC union was revived again,
as Saudi Arabia and the UAE asserted their political authority in the aftermath of
the coup in Egypt that effectively ended the Arab Spring. On this occasion, too, the
lack of consensus within the GCC exposed the deep divisions among member-states,
when Yusuf bin Alawi, Oman’s Minister of State Responsible for Foreign Affairs,
stated categorically, and in public at the annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, that
“We are against a union. We will not prevent a union, but if it happens we [Oman]
will not be part of it” (Kholaif 2013).
What became clear in the years preceding the first iteration of the GCC fracturing
over Qatar in 2014 is that any move by other member-states to try and forge closer
relations with each other would be resisted by Saudi Arabia, which instead preferred
itself at the center of a “hub-and-spoke” system of bilateral relationships. Hence,
there was resistance in Riyadh to the attempts by Qatar and the UAE, under ambitious
138 K. Ulrichsen
younger leaders in the new millennium, to aspire for greater regional autonomy out
from under the Saudi shadow. In addition to the above-mentioned opposition to the
bridge between Qatar and the UAE, the Saudis also derailed plans to extend the
Dolphin gas initiative to Kuwait by insisting that as the pipeline had to cross Saudi
territorial waters, their assent to the venture was necessary for it to go ahead (Dargin
2008).
And yet, throughout this period, there remained enough of a common ground
to ensure that each of the six member-states felt that, on balance, their common
interests outweighed bilateral friction, and they were, ultimately, stronger together
as a bloc. However, this persisted only so long as there remained an acceptance by
GCC members that they were unlikely to agree on every major issue and that the
resilience of the GCC lay in its flexibility that left room for members to pursue
their own national policies (Koch 2012). What both rounds of the “Qatar crisis”—in
2014 and again from 2017 onwards—have shown is that the attempt to strong-arm
states into acting on the basis of a set of policies laid down in Riyadh—and in Abu
Dhabi—has meant that the fissures that underlay the surface of GCC politics can no
longer simply be accommodated. If pragmatic acceptance of the fact that different
states will hold differing positions is not tolerated any longer, the problem for the
GCC going forward is that there is no clear or binary division among the states on
any aspect of regional contention.
There are undoubtedly deep geopolitical divisions that have created great tension
in the GCC as they have in the broader Middle East and Arab world. The shock of the
Arab Spring in 2011 and the reassertion of authoritarian political control in countries
that experienced some of the strongest initial protests continues to reverberate across
the region. Having lost control of developments once, in 2011, the “strongmen” of the
Middle East appear determined not to do so a second time and seem to have grasped
the second chance they were given, by the coup in Egypt in 2013, to recreate the layers
of political control in an even more authoritarian and securitized manner than before.
Unsurprisingly, it was Saudi Arabia and the UAE, together initially with Kuwait, that
extended immediate economic and financial support to the military-led government
in Egypt after it seized power and toppled the Muslim Brotherhood presidency of
Mohammed Mursi in July 2013 (Peel and Hall 2013). Perhaps inevitably, given
its own support for Mursi’s presidency, Qatar found itself in the crosshairs of the
aggressive reordering of post–Arab Spring relations by Saudi and Emirati leaders
who almost immediately subjected the young new Emir, HH Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad Al-Thani, to pressure to “conform” more closely to the Saudi-led line.4
In the supercharged and polarized atmosphere of post-2013 politics, however,
which was worsened many times over when Donald Trump unexpectedly triumphed
in the 2016 US presidential election, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi forged ahead with
a hyper-hawkish security-centered approach to regional affairs. This has shattered
4 In a television interview with Turkey’s TRT World in July 2017, Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah,
then Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, recalled that the Saudi-Emirati pressure on Qatar began in
July 2013, within weeks of HH Sheikh Tamim becoming Emir and Mohammed Mursi’s toppling
in Egypt.
any regional consensus that once existed and that enabled the GCC to survive for
so long as a group of like-minded states with enough in common to overcome their
differences on specific issues. The fault-lines in the Gulf are decidedly not clean-cut
and the demonstrative effect of the two power-plays against Qatar has been to magnify
concerns in other Gulf capitals that they could be next. As Shafeeq Ghabra of Kuwait
University, one of the Gulf’s most prolific and discerning public intellectuals, put it,
“If they can do this to Qatar, why not to Kuwait and Oman?” (The Economist 2018).
And, in truth, the potential for friction goes far beyond the simple Saudi/Abu Dhabi
vs. Qatar/Kuwait/Oman binary.
Brief examination of three regional flashpoints—sectarian Sunni/Shia tension,
relations domestically with the Muslim Brotherhood, and regionally with Iran, illus-
trate the diversity of responses among the six GCC states and the virtual impossibility
of shoehorning any of them into a common position. Whereas in Bahrain and in Saudi
Arabia there is an antagonistic relationship between the ruling elite and the Shia
communities—a majority in Bahrain yet a minority in Saudi Arabia—Kuwait’s Shia
communities are, by contrast, largely pro-government in their political outlook. This,
in part, stems from a closer historical relationship between the Shia merchant fami-
lies in Kuwait and the ruling Al-Sabah family, as well as from the legacy of the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait in 1990–91, when Kuwaiti Shia formed the backbone of many of
the resistance networks that emerged during the occupation, thereby “proving” their
loyalty at a time of existential threat to Kuwait (Meyer et al. 2007). Kuwait’s Shia
communities also rallied around the government after 2008 when sectarian tensions
in the country began to increase with the murder of Hezbollah operative Imad Mugh-
niyeh and, after 2011, the blowback from the Syrian Civil War in which prominent
Kuwaitis from both sects supported different sides (Azoulay 2013).
A similar plethora of views on the Muslim Brotherhood exists across the Gulf.
Local affiliates of the Brotherhood have entered the political arena in both Kuwait and
in Bahrain, albeit that over time the Islamic Constitutional Movement, the Kuwaiti
branch of the Brotherhood, has gravitated toward the political opposition, whereas in
Bahrain Al-Minbar National Islamic Society, the Bahraini affiliate, remained a part
of the Sunni bedrock of support for the Al-Khalifa ruling family. The designation
of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization by the Saudi and Emirati
authorities, in March 2014, therefore left the Bahraini government in a difficult
position, as having already alienated a significant proportion of its Shia population,
it could ill-afford to undercut its loyalist Sunni base as well (Hatlani 2014). In Qatar,
meanwhile, the local branch of the organization voluntarily wound itself up in 1999,
having remained a social rather than a political entity, while in the UAE attitudes
toward the Brotherhood and its local affiliate, Al-Islah, differed sharply among the
Emirates, with Ras al-Khaimah providing it with material support and leadership up
until the death in 2010 of its ruler, Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qassemi (Freer
2015).
Just as Qatar’s perceived closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood has formed one
of the flashpoints with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, so too have its more pragmatic ties
with Iran caused tension. Qatar has very real reasons to maintain at least a working
140 K. Ulrichsen
relationship with Iran, as the largest non-associated gas field in the world strad-
dles the maritime boundary between the two countries. Similar pragmatic reasons
are given for Oman’s decision to maintain cooperative bilateral ties with Iran, with
Badr bin Hamad Al-bu Said, an Undersecretary at the Omani Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, telling an audience at Chatham House in London in 2003 that “we try to
use our intermediate position between larger powers to reduce the potential for
conflict in our immediate neighborhood” (Al-bu Said 2005). Kuwait, too, shared
the Omani and Qatari preference for a workable relationship with Tehran over the
more confrontational stance favored in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and also Abu Dhabi,
where the hawkish position of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was
not necessarily shared by the Ruler of Dubai (and Prime Minister of the UAE) Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, who, in calling for the lifting of international
sanctions on Iran in January 2014, told the BBC that “we need to give Iran space.
Iran is our neighbor and we don’t want any problem” (Kerr 2014).
In the months leading up to the blockade of Qatar in June 2017, it was Kuwait
and Oman, rather than Qatar, which were at the forefront of a diplomatic initiative
to try and improve relations between GCC states and Iran that had deteriorated
dangerously in 2016. Kuwait had not joined Saudi Arabia and Bahraini in cutting
diplomatic relations with Iran after tensions surged following the execution of Saudi
cleric Nimr al-Nimr and the subsequent targeting of Saudi diplomatic sites in Iran
in January 2016. Neither was Kuwait heavily involved in the Saudi- and Emirati-led
war in Yemen, while in 2014 Kuwait’s Undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Khalid al-Jarallah, had described the relationship with Iran as “excellent,
historical, and developing,” illustrating the strikingly different stance taken by Kuwait
as opposed to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi’s confrontation with Tehran
(The National 2014). It was not, therefore, a surprise when Kuwait led an initiative to
try and defuse tensions in the Gulf at the start of 2017, which began after the Kuwaiti
Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled Al-Sabah visited Tehran and carried with
him a letter from HH Emir Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to President Hasan Rouhani
that sought to establish the “basis for dialogue” between the GCC and Iran (Finn
2017).
On 7 February 2017, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded positively
to the meeting with his Kuwaiti counterpart and to the Emir’s letter, stating that
Iran was ready for dialogue, and added that “we should aim together for a future
that looks different.” President Rouhani then visited both Kuwait and Oman on 15
February 2017, and HH Emir Sabah himself travelled to Muscat a week later to
meet with Sultan Qaboos bin Said and discuss ways to rebuild bridges between
Iran and Saudi Arabia. During his time in Kuwait, Rouhani had waxed lyrical about
the bilateral possibilities with Kuwait, stating that “There are vast potentials for
deepening and cementing relations […] that can be tapped for the two nations and
the region to benefit from” (Ulrichsen 2017a). Ultimately, however, the opening was
overshadowed by the schism within the GCC that erupted with the blockade of Qatar
in June 2017 and by the decision of the authorities in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi to
jump aboard the Trump administration’s bandwagon in the run-up to and aftermath
of the Arab–Islamic–American Summit in Riyadh with President Trump (Henderson

2017).
With the blockade of Qatar heading towards a third year with no apparent end in
sight, and US aspirations for resolving it not having made any headway in Riyadh or
Abu Dhabi, the standoff in the Gulf looks set to become the “new normal” in regional
politics for the foreseeable future. The resignation of retired US General Anthony
Zinni in January 2019 after eighteen frustrating months’ service as President Trump’s
“envoy” to the Gulf crisis, encapsulated the limited ability of the White House to
close the Pandora’s Box they inadvertently had allowed to open in 2017 (Karam
2019). Although the GCC managed to convene its annual summits, which took place
in Kuwait City in December 2017 and in Riyadh a year later, each meeting served to
reinforce the organization’s growing marginalization in the current state of regional
affairs. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE sent foreign ministry representatives to
the 2017 summit while Qatar reciprocated in 2018 and the crisis within the GCC
was noticeably not on the agenda at each event. Having failed on two occasions in
little more than three years to prevent three of its members from turning on a fourth,
the GCC has been conspicuously bypassed at every stage of the Gulf crisis, from the
conveying of initial grievances to Qatar to the subsequent formulation of conditions
and attempts at mediation (Ulrichsen 2017b).
What remains of a “Gulf consensus” in regional politics consists now of a ramrod
axis that runs between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that is as divisive as the earlier gener-
ation that put together the GCC tried to be inclusive. The announcement of the
formation of a Saudi–Emirati Coordination Council in December 2017 not only over-
shadowed the GCC Summit taking place in Kuwait that same day but also visibly
represented the new contours of political power in the Gulf. Co-chaired by the Crown
Princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, the Saudi–Emirati Coordination Council
held its first meeting in Jeddah in June 2018, at which the UAE Prime Minister
(and Ruler of Dubai) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum was noticeably
absent. Signs of tension within the UAE between Abu Dhabi’s hawkish politics and
embrace of Saudi Arabia and at least several of the other Emirates have come close
to the surface in recent months, with a son of the Ruler of Fujairah going so far as to
claim asylum in Qatar in May 2018 (Kirkpatrick 2018). Dubai’s positioning as the
“soft power” hub in the UAE and as an aspirational model for the Arab world more
generally has been damaged by the “hard power” projection of Abu Dhabi, while the
UAE’s centrality in the blockade of Qatar has hit Dubai’s reputation as a place one
could do business without politics or geopolitical considerations getting in the way
(Ulrichsen 2018b).
It may take many years, if not decades, for the Gulf to recohere after the attempt
by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi to force the members of the GCC into a regional
geopolitical straitjacket. The resilience of the GCC as the longest-lasting and most
successful intergovernmental organization in the Arab world lay precisely in its
flexibility that enabled a group of like-minded states to cooperate on issues that
mattered and “agree to disagree” in other areas. It will not be easy to recreate that
hallmark of success, at least while Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin
Zayed continue to dominate regional politics; and their age means they can expect to
142 K. Ulrichsen
continue to do so for the foreseeable future, certainly outlasting the two remaining
members of the generation that built the GCC—Emir Sabah of Kuwait and Sultan
Qaboos of Oman—who will inevitably depart from the scene at some point.
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Chapter 9
Popular Sentiments and Elite Threat
Perception in the Gulf: Iran in the Public
Discourse in Saudi Arabia
Éva Ádám
Introduction
In spite of the many anti-Shia and anti-Iran expressions, propagated mainly by the
religious elite, which have permeated popular public discourse since the foundation
of Saudi Arabia, and despite the revolution in Iran in 1979, diplomatic relations
between Saudi Arabia and Iran were improving until the first decade of the new
millennium. Although this statement might sound counter-intuitive and contrary
to public perception, it indeed corresponds with the regional and domestic political
scenes. Both countries had been part of the United States’ regional alliance system for
some time, they shared the same enemy (Iraq), and both had become dominant players
within the same institutional framework (OPEC). As for the domestic setting, the
existence of Shiism locally became pivotal early on for the Wahhabi movement and
religious tradition, which applied the anti-Shia and anti-Iran discourse as a tool for the
self-preservation of both the religious and the political elite. Saudi–Iranian relations
thus had been contingent on both domestic and regional settings and developments.
Up until the Arab Spring, and in spite of the many faces of the Iranian government, the
Saudi political leadership was able to steer bilateral relations in a positive direction
with the prospect of normalizing at least the trade relations between the two countries.
The Saudi regime always found opportunities to compromise its official stance of
anti-Shiism in order to uphold the stability of the regional status quo.
After a power vacuum was created during the Arab Spring, and regional devel-
opments provided an opportunity for Iran to extend its hard power capacities in the
Levant and Yemen, we see the deterioration of bilateral relations, which became
nearly unrepairable due to deep structural changes executed in Saudi Arabia by King
Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman. These new domestic and regional
settings suggest that anti-Iran sentiments will dominate the Saudi public discourse,
É. Ádám (B)
Antall József Knowledge Centre, Budapest, Hungary
e-mail: adameva87@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_9
146 É. Ádám
and the Saudi state will capitalize on the public’s rally-round-the-flag posture for
the further extension of its hard power capacities, to confront Iran and redefine the
regional status quo. Although a direct military conflict with Iran is undesirable from
a regional security perspective, the newly unfolding rapprochement between Israel
and Saudi Arabia adds to the unpredictability of Saudi foreign policy moves. It is not
the Saudi or Iranian foreign policy strategy that will necessitate a military conflict but
the day-to-day animosity between the two governments, and their quick, short-term
responses are of serious concern. Solutions cannot be found in the absence of both
long-term strategies and dialogue.
The next generation of Saudi rulers, of whom Muhammad bin Salman is the
forerunner, will rule over a population whose majority (as many as 70%) comprises
young people (below 30 years of age) (Niblock and Malik 2007) who are highly
unskilled and highly loyal to Muhammad bin Salman, whom they consider as a
role model. The information ecosystem in Saudi Arabia has changed dramatically
due to the penetration of digital and social media into the country, as well as social
messaging platforms that have become a part of daily life (Smith Diwan 2017), and
the Saudi rulers are now able to address and communicate with the people of their
constituencies directly. Saudi Arabia has the highest Twitter penetration in the world
as well as the highest per capita consumption of YouTube (Smith Diwan 2017)
while leaders, ministries, and individuals close to the government each maintain
official or unofficial outreach towards their constituencies. Muhammad bin Salman’s
generation grew up in an environment of elite and public discourse informed by the
geopolitics of the time, and it is to be expected that they will apply some of those
influences to the realities of the new millennium. This is a considerable development
both in Saudi politics and Saudi social reality, as previous leaders of the Saudi state
could have been considered status quo politicians in both the domestic and foreign
domains. In contrast, the older generations of society had been less susceptible to the
elite discourse of the 1990s and the first century of the new millennium, which had
been mostly dictated by the official religious establishment. This has often been a
utilitarian tool in the hands of the ruling family and has rarely mirrored geopolitical
and social realities. The Saudi ruling elite is becoming so highly concentrated in
this very limited age cohort that the cognitive heuristics of the 1990s are likely to
overwhelm the discourse between the elite and the public in the current era.
Amongst the many issues raised in the public discourse in Saudi Arabia, there are
only two interlinked matters which have attained a high level of consensus amongst
the constituencies of the state. These are the sentiment felt against the Shia, both as
an abstraction and a national and international minority, and against Iran as a direct
object that mobilizes Shiites worldwide. Although there is a clear tendency towards
increased anti-Shia and anti-Iran sentiment in the elite and public discourse in Saudi
Arabia, it does not in itself indicate a substantive change in Saudi domestic and
foreign policies. These feelings might remain a mere reflection of changing geopo-
litical realities. The Saudi state was built on an ideology and by constituencies that
embodied anti-Shia and anti-Iran sentiments. However, as a result of the dramatically
changing geopolitical environment, we might argue that Iran’s hard power projec-
tion in the Levant and the Arab Peninsula and the rapprochement between Israel and
9 Popular Sentiments and Elite Threat Perception … 147
Saudi Arabia will now make anti-Iran sentiment the dominant component of public
discourse. This might reach the point at which a direct confrontation with Iran will
be widely supported by the public. This, together with the easing of cooperation
between Israel and Saudi Arabia alongside other GCC member states, means it is
highly to be expected that Saudi Arabia will also apply and/or uphold its hard power
projection in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula to prolong these conflicts, to
the point where a direct military conflict with Iran will be nearly inevitable. As a
result of my observations, I argue that focusing the political framing on the anti-
Shia and anti-Iran sentiments might become a tool of double utility for the Saudi
state. These sentiments can provide for the growing patriotism and nationalism of
the Saudi citizens, while the overwhelming presence of these sentiments in elite and
popular discourse might support and legitimize Saudi foreign policy decisions. Thus,
the cumulative effect of the real and ontological insecurity of Saudi society might
lead to growing military assertiveness.
Anti-Shia incitement in Saudi media is not a new phenomenon. It is well docu-
mented that at times of crisis, and when tensions with the local Shia communities
grew—for example, after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and during the Shia uprisings
in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province before and after 2011—the Saudi media outlets
provided a platform for anti-Shia sentiments (Matthiesen 2015a). National-building
is a nearly impossible project for any government, and usually we can identify nation
theories in multiple versions, both official and unofficial; however, as Kamrava (2011)
pointed out: “in one key respect, unofficial nationalism overlaps and agrees with the
official version articulated by the state: right or wrong, a sizable portion of the middle
classes generally buys into the state’s explanation of the threats posed by foreign
(neighborly) conspiracies.” Saudi Arabia’s threat perception and reaction has grown
enormously with the deterioration of its close security environment and the retreat
of US involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. Since the Arab uprisings, the kingdom
has tried to initiate military cooperation and alliances on multiple occasions. In 2015,
an initiative for a NATO-like defense cooperation between the United States and the
Gulf states failed to materialize; however, the same year Saudi Arabia concluded the
foundation of the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC) of Arab
and non-Arab states. Just like in any other crisis, the official narrative is that Saudi
Arabia has been under attack from both domestic constituencies and neighboring
state and sub-state actors.
As regional and trans-regional alliances have always proved to be improper foreign
policy tools in a disintegrated region, the new Saudi leadership that took over in 2015
has pursued unusually active foreign and military policies that have been underlined
by massive traditional and new media campaigns. This does not only include the
established channels of traditional media and official statements by the state, but
also a growing number of unofficial statements by state-related figures, members
of religious communities, laymen and social bots that conduct a strong anti-Iran
and anti-Shia campaign through the new media channels. The interconnectivity of
the whole society and the whole region enabled the Gulf regimes to project their
nationalistic agendas across physical borders, highly affecting each other’s political
discourses. Although not a religious conflict by nature, the decades-long religious
148 É. Ádám
discourse on Shia and Iran provides an enormous public policy tool for the Saudi
state’s most recent nation-building process. As Banafsheh Keynoush stated:
Religion becomes a powerful tool to advance state decisions in the face of insecurity. Hence,
ideology can further the state’s decision-making power. Saudi Arabia more, and Iran to a
lesser extent, are incapable of subordinating ideology to rational decision making. They are
driven by ideology as opposed to possessing the ability to drive it. (Keynoush 2016: 15).
The basic elements that shape an individual’s perspective and religious incli-
nations are education—including informal teachings in mosques and in homes—
and what it is called “the new media” (Prokop 2003). Therefore, in the following I
discuss the development of the Saudi state, its national identity, and how the political
discourse developed to its current form, in line with the geopolitical developments
of the region.
Saudi Arabia, the Shia, and Iran During Saudi

State-Formation
After the foundation of the modern Saudi state, the ruling group created a narrative of
the state’s history with the intention of eliminating contentious facts and competing
interpretations, in order to generate compliance and extend the domination of the
ruling group. Alongside this official narrative, public imagination and disenfran-
chised groups created counter-narratives (Al-Rasheed 2017). This chapter intends to
highlight the differences between the widely accepted historical facts and outsider
reports, the official narrative of the state regarding the foundation and early history
of the peninsula, and finally, the counter-narratives of the Shia, the most disenfran-
chised group of the Saudi state. All of this will be put in the context of geopolitical
developments.
Following a chronological order of coexistence, we might distinguish between
early Arab–Iranian, Sunni–Shiite, Wahhabi–Shiite, and Saudi–Iranian relations. It
should be noted that there are many points of departure according to which we
can approach these relations. We can talk about political, social, trade, and religious-
doctrinal relations amongst many other issues. The earliest encounter between Arabs
and Iranians occurred when one empire was rising while another was already falling
apart. The Arabs successfully conquered the remnants of the Sassanid Empire whose
geographical area became one center of gravity in the Arab-Muslim Empire. Until
the sixteenth century, when the rulers of Iran distinguished themselves from Ottoman
rulers by accepting Shiism as a state religion, it had been only political decentral-
ization and ethnic differences that distinguished Persia from the more central parts
of Arabia. Early Sunni–Shiite division was a feature of the centrum of the empire
as early (Arab) Shiites settled in the eastern Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Bahrain, and
Yemen (Keynoush 2016). The modern Saudi official historical narrative states that
Shiites living on the eastern shore of the peninsula are foreign invaders who originated
in Iraq and Iran. This narrative has had certain political goals. It disregards any polit-
ical settlements outside of Najd in order to legitimize the Al-Saud’s conquests in the
eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and validate them as the unifiers of ungoverned
territories. However, this official narrative has been challenged by Shiite writers who
present the origins of the Shia community in Saudi Arabia as dating back to the
time of the Prophet Muhammad (Al-Rasheed 2017). It is also well documented that
these territories on the eastern shore had been governed by the Ottomans before
the Al-Sauds, and that besides being present in the territory, the Shiites established
a developed self-governance system at the times when they enjoyed independence.
This counter-narrative clearly defies the ‘unification’ theory of the state and describes
these events as ‘conquests’ or rather ‘occupation’ of the territories surrounding the
Najd (Al-Rasheed 2017).
Contrary to the Persian imperial top-down socio-religious development, the
formation of a religious identity on the Arabian Peninsula began through the personal
achievements of a popular movement leader, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, whose
eighteenth-century religious-social model empowered the Al-Saud clan’s political
movement. The articulation of the Wahhabi-Saudi state model was mainly based
on anti-imperial sentiments, but it had developed a strong cultural uniqueness and
identified cultural ‘others’ as threats to the movement. Amongst these cultural others
in the Wahhabi school of thought were the Shia, since the founder of the move-
ment based his collection of doctrines on his personal experiences with Shiism in
Persia (Bonacina 2015). This ambiguity in the Wahhabi interpretation of Shia history
creates an uncomfortable situation for any cultural dialogue between the Sunni and
Shiite populations of Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi official narrative on the foundation of the state is also silent on the many
challenges the Wahhabi-Saudi movement had to deal with. It narrates the events as
a natural flow of history in which the first Saudi state ended the era of chaos on
the peninsula in 1744 and unified the territories previously ruled by many tribes. In
fact, during the time of the first two Saudi-Wahhabi state formations—thus until the
beginning of the twentieth century—the many fiefdoms of the Arabian Peninsula,
Iraq, and Iran were struck by the militancy of the Wahhabi movement which was
considered by many to be an agent of British sovereignty over the peninsula (Ende
1990). Although it is conventional in scholarly articles to state that the modern Saudi
state is built on the pact between the Wahhabi and Saudi founders and is governed
by the two families, the reality is much more complicated. In fact, the relation-
ship between the Al-Saud and Al-Shaykh, thus the heirs of Muhammad ibn Saud
and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, respectively, had been turbulent. In the first
decades of the twentieth century Abdul Aziz ibn Saud had to limit the Wahhabi
militancy which was concentrated in the Ikhwan forces, as he was much more sensi-
tive about diplomatic issues than the puritan members of the Wahhabi movement.
Thus, the state-building process and the development of the Wahhabi movement
started to drag during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud
well understood that in order to preserve his political power and dominance in the
peninsula, he had to adhere to the regional status quo. He had to prevent militant
Wahhabis from damaging the interests of the great powers, first and foremost that
150 É. Ádám
of the British Empire. King Abd al-Aziz had struggled to establish and secure the
borders of his territory through coopting or coercing the tribal leaders and terri-
tories of the peninsula, while in Persia a developed form of nationalism already
flourished. As Keynoush (2016: 51) described it: “Persia’s historically expansionist
goals, combined with a sense of cultural superiority and strong Shiite identity, led to
more false pride, which contributed to Arab fears of its less-than-peaceful intentions.
The Arab states’ fledgling status as regional actors then led to exaggerated levels of
fear of Persia itself, which was often combined with resentment toward Persians
in general.” Thus, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud had a double headache, having to deal
with both domestic and foreign insecurities. However, although anti-Shia narratives
permeated public discourse, Saudi–Iranian relations had developed pragmatically on
the diplomatic level.
The Shia of the Arabian Peninsula enjoyed a limited but safe political status next
to the privileged Sunni chiefdoms allied with the Al-Saud. As Matthiesen (2015a:
8) put it,
The Wahhabi clergy has from the mid-eighteenth century onwards seen Shia Islam as one
of its main, if not the main, enemies. While relations between Shia political leaders and
individual members of the Saudi ruling family have fluctuated, and have improved at times,
the attitudes of the Wahhabi clergy towards Shia Muslims did not change and have remained
adversarial. […] The ruling family has tried to position itself as an arbiter between the
Wahhabis and the Shia. To the Shia, the ruling family implicitly promised protection from
the most extreme Wahhabi demands for the conversion or execution of Shia.
However, in political discourse the Shia had been clearly described from the
beginning of the modern Saudi state in terms that signified their exclusion from the
main political strata. They were referred to as the nakhawilah (from nakhl or “palm
tree”) or olad-sigeh (“children of concubines” in reference to the Shiite practice of
concubine marriages) (Keynoush 2016: 35). Thus, although Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud
understood the importance of pragmatism regarding political and religious relations
(as the leader of Saudi Arabia and the custodian of the two holy sites) and tried to
keep Shiite and Iranian relations normal on a diplomatic level, he could not—and
probably did not feel compelled to—control the popular public discourse on the
Shia and Iran. This was a utilitarian approach, enabling the pursuit of good bilateral
relations with Iran on the political level, while allowing the political framing of Shia
and Iran on the societal level, and keeping minimal the impact of the latter on the
former. The dyadic nature of the state policy led to the establishment of cognitive
biases towards the Shia and Iran in Saudi political thinking. However, these biases did
not fully permeate the elite political thinking, and created alternative discourses or
counter-frames and allowed independent political action until the time of the current
generation of Saudi rulers.
Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud had to manage many dichotomies and imbalances within his
territory, amongst them the hadari–bedouin, Sunni–Shia, Saudi–Ikhwani, and tribal
divisions. Basically, the Saudi state was a government limited to the central territory
of Najd, which tried to govern the peripheries with a varying degree of success. On the
official level, the traditional loyalty decree (bayah) guaranteed the unity of the state;
however, the society had been full of political and cultural pressures for a long time.
Many unresolved issues hindered the establishment of classic state-to-state relations

between Saudi Arabia and Iran. For decades, in fact, Iran hesitated to recognize the
suzerainty of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud over his territories in Najd and Hijaz. This was
for many reasons, the most direct of which was that Saudi Arabia did not recognize
Persia’s claim over Bahrain against the British, while other important issues, like the
unilateral decision of Ibn Saud to exclude other nations from the governance of the
hajj proceedings and the territory of the haramayn, also hindered friendly relations.
However, in the decades following the establishment of Saudi Arabia, Saudi–Iranian
diplomatic relations were affected by domestic issues related either to hajj incidents
or minorities, rather than by conflicts related to state sovereignty. In 1926, Shiites
were attacked by Ikhwan forces during an Ashura ceremony in Makkah, which
led Persia to issue a strongly worded condemnation against Wahhabism (Keynoush
2016). Incidents of this kind were recurrent throughout the twentieth century. In 1943,
a fight broke out between Iranian pilgrims en route to Makkah and local residents
who objected to the Iranian caravan’s morning call for prayers, which bears witness
to Imam Ali being the Prophet’s (PBUH) rightful successor. In the same year, an
archaic belief that Shiites were responsible for smearing excrement on the Black
Stone of the Kaaba—an act of desecration dating to the seventeenth century—led
to the execution of a Persian pilgrim, due to his illness being confused with an
intentional act against the sanctuary (Keynoush 2016).
During the oil era, the Saudi state started to have difficulties accommodating
its large Shiite minorities, the most significant of which had settled in the Eastern
province where the country’s natural resources are concentrated. In the 1950s, Saudi
Shiites employed by Aramco became one of many groups (including Sunnis) advo-
cating for fairer compensation of workers, leading the kingdom to develop suspicions
of Iranian interference in the Eastern Province: “A general Saudi apprehension about
Iranian Shi‘i was understandable, given Shi‘i clerical efforts to politicize religion
across the Gulf region at the height of the anticolonial movement in the Middle
East and North Africa” (Keynoush 2016: 69)—and this was an apprehension with
which the United States also sympathized. The cultural homogenization policy of
the Saudi state, enforcement of the official narrative on the state’s history, and the
maintenance of social order had been conducted largely through the religious police,
the successor to the Ikhwan forces, which created uniformity in both appearance
(clothing) and morality. However, the existence and activism of the Shia community
in Saudi Arabia has a very important function for the nationalistic state-building
process. Matthiesen (2015a: 1) neatly summarized the utility of the Shia community
when he stated that “the stigmatization of Shia Muslims as Saudi Arabia’s internal
‘Others’ fulfills an important function in Saudi religious nationalism. At times of
crisis the ‘Shia threat’ is used to rally the rest of the population, most of whom are
Sunnis of different persuasions, around the ruling family.” Thus, the mobilization of
the Shia during the oil boom era presented both a challenge and an opportunity for
the state to fuel the ontological insecurity of Saudi citizens receptive to the official
narrative. This utilization of the Shia community for nation-building and the official
narrative of Saudi history made the inclusion of the Shiites in the main group of
Saudi nationals nearly impossible. The state-building process thus created multiple
152 É. Ádám
frames regarding the Shia community and Iran. Most importantly, even in the face of
societal pressure towards stigmatizing the Shia, the official Saudi state policy always
favored consolidating its relations with Iran. However, securitizing the Shia minority
proved to be a useful policy for the building of the nation.
The Islamic Revolution in 1979 and its Impact on the Saudi

Public Discourse on Iran
Since the nineteenth century or earlier, there have been Sunni–Shiite polemics, news-
papers, books, and institutions discussing the options, methods, and opportunities
for rapprochement (taqrib) between the two religious communities present in the
Middle East. These have resulted in some agreement, more disagreement, and many
conspiracy theories about the Shiite plan to proselytize and conquer the Middle
East (Ende 1990). Wahhabi public discourse and action, however, has represented a
constant theme of anti-Shia and anti-Iran sentiment in Arab religious and political
thought. Nevertheless, political actions committed in Saudi Arabia with relation to
the Khomeini regime and the mobilization of the Shia community in Saudi Arabia led
to a growing assertiveness on the part of the Saudi regime and the elite on all levels of
religiousness in Saudi society. Whereas countries with predominantly Muslim popu-
lations might be labelled Muslim, a country with this same attribute that also conducts
its businesses on clear Islamist principles, such as the exportation and propagation
of its religious doctrines, should be labelled an Islamist country (Nagyné Rózsa
2018). The Saudi state definitely gained awareness and became Islamist following
the Iranian revolution.
It is noticeable that although the Saudi–Wahhabi political formations, including
the modern Saudi state, were founded on a sectarian premise (antagonism towards
Shiite, Sufi, and Christian praxis), the relationship between the modern Saudi and
Iranian states had been based on the international norms of diplomacy and reached a
high degree of normalcy both before and after the Islamic Revolution. The sectarian
nature of the Saudi state had been conserved only in some strata of the religious
establishment, and while state relations always aimed to achieve normalization,
the religious establishment was free to express anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite sentiments
against the rawafid (the so-called rejectionists). Until the end of the 1990s, the reli-
gious education of the Saudi population, which comprised 10–30% of the whole
curriculum, included a huge amount of anti-Shia propaganda and diatribe (Prokop
2003). Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the limited geopolitical threat had
been augmented by an ideological threat due to the pan-Islamic appeal of Khomeini’s
popular views on the unification of the whole Muslim community.
The uprisings by the Shiites of Saudi Arabia after the Iranian Revolution led
to greater surveillance over the population, more power-sharing with the religious
police, and new constraints on mobility and expression. At the same time, King Fahd
sought to bolster the legitimacy of the ruling family by appropriating the power of
Islam (Okruhlik 2004). This mission was built on the support of the conservative
religious establishment. A Saudi scholar described the situation this way: “Islam, of
course, has always been empowered and central to life in Saudi Arabia. The differ-
ence after 1979 was that only one very particular practice of Islam was empowered”
(Okruhlik 2004). Since the 1980s, Saudi rulers have expanded the state’s capacity for
religious education. “Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh, the Islamic
University in Medina, and Umm al Qura University in Mecca continued to grow,
even as other programs were cut back. By 1986, more than 16,000 of the kingdom’s
100,000 students were pursuing Islamic Studies. By the early 1990s, one-fourth
of all university students were enrolled in religious institutions” (Okruhlik 2004).
The religious education contained very simple and clear assumptions about the Shia
community, and this simplification of Sunni–Shia antagonism was repeatedly rein-
forced by prominent Saudi religious figures, amongst them Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah
bin Baz, once the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who declared that “the Shiites have
many different sects, each one having a variety of deviations. The most dangerous of
them is the Khomeinian Raafidhah Twelver Sect (the official religion of Iran), due
to the large number of their missionaries and all the major acts of polytheism found
in it …” (Baz n.d.).
Although the Islamic Revolution in Iran had great potential for being attractive
to the disenfranchised in the Arab world and especially in the monarchies of the
Gulf, it enjoyed very limited popularity there. The Islamic Revolution’s pan-Islamic
appeal was a direct challenge for the family-led Gulf monarchies. However, anti-Shia
sentiment had been deeply implanted in Saudi thinking for so long that Saudis could
not give credence to the Iranians who “insulted the first three caliphs” (Keynoush
2016: 109). The threat of revolutionary Iran and its ideologies had been compensated
for by the Saudi regime through different measures.
Responding to the military threat posed by Iran and Iraq, the Saudi regime
strengthened its good relationship with the United States and initiated a regional
integration process by becoming one of the founders of the GCC. Participating in the
regional balance-of-power politics and invoking the support of a great power guar-
anteed Saudi Arabia’s physical safety. On the other hand, the Saudi state had already
extended its global outreach through generous development programs and direct
financial help which had been complemented by religious proselytization (daawa).
The level of popularity guaranteed by Saudi benevolence could hardly be matched
by Iran’s endeavors to spread its revolution. However, Saudi clerics were encouraged
to develop an alternative Islamist discourse to counter the Iranian revolutionary chal-
lenge based on the tenets of Wahhabism that supported ruling monarchs (Keynoush
2016).
Saudi Arabia’s main concern was always upholding the regional status quo, and
therefore it never committed itself to hostile acts against Iran. This was the reason
why Saudi Arabia only reluctantly supported Iraq’s war against Iran, and why it
only decided to materially support the Iraqi army after several years. Even so, the
Saudi leadership was careful not to turn the conflict into a sectarian one, which
would have had unforeseen consequences for the Sunni–Shia divide within Saudi
Arabia. Despite the Saudi government’s careful consideration, ‘the political and
154 É. Ádám
religious elites retained stereotyped views of Iran, with even dissident preachers
such as Salman Al-Aoun referring to the “cultural pollution” that Persia posed to
the Arab heartland’ (Keynoush 2016: 115). As Keynoush points out, even many
in the Iranian diplomatic circles were confident in their belief that Saudi foreign
policy decisions had been mainly based on ideological conviction, although some
of them clearly saw the pragmatist elements in the Saudi elite circle. In the 1990s,
and up until the deposition of Saddam Hussein from power, Riyadh and Tehran
had a very turbulent relationship which was ultimately based on Iraq’s position as
a common enemy. In the end, the Saudi and Iranian governments always found an
opportunity to resolve issues related to geopolitics or the pilgrimage. In spite of the
continuity in anti-Shia and anti-Iran discourse there was also a continuity, or rather
an improvement, in the bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This was
mainly due to the personal efforts of Crown Prince and later King Abdullah on the
Saudi side, and presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khatemi on the Iranian side.
The two sides managed to reach a point in their bilateral relations where the two
countries had established business relations and agreed to hold regular meetings. In
the end, it was the animosity between the United States and Iran, and the American
involvement in Middle Eastern geopolitics and peace processes, that hindered the
consolidation of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The deposition of
Saddam Hussein, and Iran’s growing assertiveness, paired with latter’s ambitions to
develop nuclear capacities, led to the current state of affairs.
The Challenges of the New Millennium and the New

Generation of Saudi Rulers
After Iraq was invaded in 2003, the power vacuum and the reshuffling of politics and
ethnic-religious relations within the country posed an opportunity for Iran to extend
its soft power capabilities to the Iraqi Shia communities. After 2014 it decided to
put its military capacities into Iraq to face the threat posed by the Islamic State
terrorist organization. On the other hand, the perseverance of the Assad regime and
Hezbollah’s activity in the region both supported Iran’s regional ambitions. This
direct geopolitical threat for Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Sunni Arab states, and the
withdrawal of the United States from the region during the Obama administration,
demanded action from the Saudi state. Saudi Arabia also had to deal with growing
domestic public dissent from Islamic groups who were critical of government policies
and the fiscal and economic problems. As a result of the many external and internal
pressures, the government, as on many previous occasions, limited the space for
public dissent.
The events of the Arab Spring demanded strong commitment from the Saudi
leadership in order to survive the domino effect of the unfolding political events. In
the end, the Saudi regime not only averted domestic dissent but took a leadership
position in what experts labelled a “counter-revolution.” In terms of regional politics,
this assertiveness was manifested not only in Saudi Arabia’s direct and indirect
interference in the domestic politics of other Arab countries, but also in the clear
anti-Iranian stance and labelling that it started to apply.
In its April, 2011 meeting held in Riyadh, the GCC, at Saudi instigation, called on ‘the
international community and the Security Council to take the necessary measures to stop
flagrant Iranian interference and provocations aimed at sowing discord and destruction’
among GCC states. Condemning what it called Iranian ‘aggression’ against Saudi diplomats
in Tehran, the group maintained that it ‘categorically rejects all foreign interference in its
affairs … and invites the Iranian regime to stop its provocations’ (Kamrava 2012).
The post–Arab Spring environment in the Middle East has been described as
an “imbalance of power” or “disorder” (Lynch 2018) by many experts. Previous
assumptions regarding great power involvements have been questioned, regional
alliances have been reordered, and after many years of neutrality both Iran and Saudi
Arabia have directed their military capacities towards each other. While some experts
consider the Saudi–Iranian conflict comparably easier to resolve than for example the
Islamist–secularist one (Roos et al. 2018), I argue for the opposite. While it is difficult
to prove whether the current state of the imbalance of power in the Middle East is
a result of decades of political framing, it is easy to prove that a certain framing
in the respective countries does exist, and that it will only exacerbate the deeply
rooted conflict and the biased nature of international regional politics. Combining
political discourse theory with an analysis of the balance-of-power politics has a
very important role which is usually neglected in research. While political analysts
might be able to perfectly assess the foreign policies of certain governments and their
outcomes in international politics without applying linguistic analysis, they usually
neglect the power of political framing and how it differs between generations of
political leaders. This is the case with the current and future leadership of Saudi
Arabia, which is the first generation of the post-1979 Middle Eastern era to have
witnessed a high degree of anti-Iran political propaganda on all levels of the public
debate. Muhammad bin Salman’s generation has inherited the political framework
incorporated into their school curricula and broadcast on mass media channels. It is
the current state of power imbalance in the Middle East that not only substantiates
the political framing but renders any kind of pluralistic views a threat to survival.
A change in the geopolitical environment and political will are the elements that
usually define the framing and reframing processes of certain issues. Identity frames
are the most difficult to challenge, as the reframing of these might involve a challenge
to one’s self-conception and group affiliation. As Badawi et al. (2012) put it: “Moving
from adversarial frames and perspectives into a reflexive approach is a dramatic shift.
In the process of articulating antagonistic positions, the focus is on the other, on them,
with a strong outward view.” The more one’s identity frame is challenged, the more
the response can be expected to be harsh criticism of the challenger, reinforcing
affiliations with like-minded individuals and groups, and negatively characterizing
outsiders (Kaufman et al. 2017). Reflexivity, which has a strong outward view, is
difficult to achieve in an adversarial environment, such as that surrounding the new
Middle Eastern antagonism. Since the 1960s or earlier, scholars and policy executives
have pointed out the importance of the role that identity plays in sustaining conflicts
156 É. Ádám
and making them intractable and difficult to resolve. Researchers have demonstrated
that “the language of diplomacy and its efforts at reaching compromise between
various conflict parties are insufficient to produce sustainable results. Beneath inter-
ests, there is identity and its reflection in the mostly unspoken fears, dilemmas, and
prejudices …” (Kaufman et al. 2017).
Since King Salman and Muhammad bin Salman became the leaders of the present
and future generations of Saudi Arabia, they have started to tackle the many unprece-
dented challenges the country is facing through measures often framed as “liberal”
in the international media. However, the fact that economic and social reforms are
part of the response to the real and ontological insecurity of the Saudi state is often
neglected. This is very much proved by the changing Saudi perception of Iran. A
decade ago, Keynoush’s claim had already proved true: “in Saudi Arabia, where
foreign policy is developed by a small group of royals, frequent family schisms can
influence the kingdom’s position on how real or perceived the Iranian regional threat
actually is” (Keynoush 2016: 18). The most important development after 2015, as
Professor Madawi al-Rasheed has pointed out, is that King Salman and Muhammad
bin Salman have transformed the domestic balance of power between the many
fiefdoms of the Al-Saud by grabbing nearly absolute power over the political and
military strongholds of the state government (Al-Rasheed 2017). This is a clear sign
that Saudi foreign policy decisions will follow the Salmans’ logic in the future. In
2017, Muhammad bin Salman declared that a dialogue with Iran was impossible.
He declared that Iran has an expansionist military policy based on an exclusivist
ideology and is a supporter of terrorism, and therefore he sees no point in looking
for a rapprochement or even opening channels of communication with Iran until it
executes structural reforms (Saab 2017).
Public opinion survey data obtained from research conducted in the second year of
the Arab Spring showed that most Arabs hold broadly negative views of Iran across
a number of cultural and political dimensions (Gengler 2017). These results are both
related to the historical framing of the Shia and Iran in the case of cultural questions,
and are also in line with and representative of the Sunni–Shia divide, especially in the
Gulf countries with which Iran’s contemporary policies are concerned (Zogby et al.
2012). Research results from roughly the same period also showed that the Iranian
threat is only one component of the Gulf citizens’ ontological threat perception.
Other elements include the fall in the price of oil and its economic consequences,
and the Western influence and Western penetration into their domestic affairs. In
fact, terrorism and especially the Islamic State proved to be the most threatening
element (Gengler 2017); however, the changing regional circumstances might result
in the threat of Iran soon dominating the ontological insecurity perceptions of Gulf
citizens.
First, the Islamic State is disappearing from the physical realities of the Middle
East and the Saudi state is coping with its economic difficulties, at least on paper.
Second, the Saudi state is not only responding to but is also using the technological
innovations of the new media. As Mai Yamani (2010) pointed out,
While globalization is expanding the public space, the Saudi government is attempting
simultaneously to shrink it. The kingdom’s rulers continue to use their power and influence
to regulate the domestic cultural and political field in order to impose limits on public
debate and controversy, taming the effects of globalization by embracing its communications
technologies wherever the regime can then set the rules.
By supplementing direct and indirect ownership with strict administrative measures, Saudi
Arabia continues to have the region’s most controlled media, which are overseen by a
censorship committee, comprising representatives from various government ministries, that
monitors all local and foreign publications (Yamani 2010).
A global study conducted on social media manipulation concluded that it is preva-

lent on every societal level in Saudi Arabia from the government to the everyday
citizen. In terms of content, social media manipulation usually aims to improve the
number of pro-government comments. This activity is conducted by so-called “cyber
troop” teams who apply multiple tools and strategies (Bradshaw and Howard 2018).
Besides the ability to limit cyberspace and censor material, another tool at the
state’s disposal might be the reorientation of public opinion on previously stigmatized
issues. One example is the public opinion of Western penetration into the country’s
domestic affairs, which was already hotly debated during the British dominance on
the Peninsula and after the Kuwait war. While relations with the United Kingdom and
the United States have always been the subjects of debate, debating the Saudi–Israeli
relationship has long been anathema within both elite and public circles, due to the
prioritization of the Palestinian state over other issues. However, the most recent
developments show that Israel’s public image in the Gulf is gradually improving, at
the same time that the perception of Iran as a threat is growing. Many experts have
pointed out that for most of the Sunni Arab regimes Iran poses an immediate threat,
while it is already considered anachronistic to speak of a Palestinian state.
A short study conducted by an Israel-based online medium pointed out that “Saudi
intellectuals, journalists, and writers have increasingly expressed open support for
Israel, approving of its policy towards Iran and even calling to normalize relations
and make peace with it. This, they say, could put a stop to Iran’s hostile policies, since
the perpetuation of the Arab–Israeli conflict serves Iran’s expansionist ambitions. In
some cases, these Saudi intellectuals and journalists have also expressed support
for Israel in matters pertaining to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict …” (Harel 2018a).
While these assumptions might be both exaggerations and the biased opinions of
people in favor of an Israeli–Saudi rapprochement, they at least show that the question
of normalization of relations between the two countries has become the subject of
public debate. The most recent polls conducted in Saudi Arabia on the Palestinian–
Israeli settlement concluded that Saudis are divided on the question of whether an
alliance should be made between Arab countries and Israel. While almost half of the
respondents agreed that if Israel was to end its occupation of Palestinian territories,
an alliance would be desirable, half of the respondents ruled out any cooperation
with Israel (Zogby et al. 2017). Ultimately, the Saudi government will have a real
impact on which direction is more desirable for the country, and, as we can see,
it has tools at its disposal to lead the public discourse on the issue. In spite of the
division of Saudi citizens on the question of Saudi–Israeli relations, the growing
158 É. Ádám
perception of the Iranian threat seems to have united Saudi public voices in their
anti-Iran and pro-Israel stance. There are a few frequent questions that permeate
social media: should Saudi Arabia support Israel or Iran in the event of an Iranian
attack on Israel? Should Saudi Arabia make peace with Israel to the detriment of
the Palestinian peace process? Should the culture of hatred towards Jews be rooted
out of public discourse? Many progressive commentators seem to agree that Saudi
Arabia should defend Israel and attack Iran in the event of a military conflict, as Iran
is the real military threat. They argue that while Israel only occupies one part of a
small Arab state, Iran de facto rules over Damascus, Baghdad, Sanaa, and Beirut.
Furthermore, they argue that the Palestinian peace process is a failed project and
they should not focus on it while Tehran continues to occupy their territories (Harel
2018b). As for the cultural biases towards Israel, some commentators argue that
these should be rooted out from Arab culture and that Saudi Arabia should make
unconditional peace with Israel (Harel 2018c). These trends clearly indicate that the
subject of Arab–Israeli relations has pivoted from the Palestinian state’s framework
towards a geopolitical perspective.
It could be argued that religious politics will also have an influence on Saudi–
Israeli rapprochement and other reform-related issues. However, it should be noted
that state–religious elite relations have been successfully reshuffled as part of the
power redistributive policies of the King and the Crown Prince. In the past, economic
and social reforms and foreign relations have been the subjects of internal debate
between the royal family and members of the religious establishment. This was
the case at the time of King Abdullah; however, Muhammad bin Salman has clearly
expressed that Saudi religious figures must either follow the reform-minded thinking
of the government or they will be punished or isolated. As several examples show,
even the most conservative members of the religious establishment can be co-opted
(Saab 2017).
The Saudi religious landscape is very fragmented: many different groups might
be identified. Some of these are apolitical, while others pose a threat to the Saudi
royal family. The Saudi support of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the military
takeover of the Morsi government was a divisive issue, on which some Islamists
remained quiet while the Muslim Brotherhood–related elements raised their voices.
However, issues related to Iran’s hegemonic potential have had a unifying factor. The
airstrikes against the Houthis were almost unanimously supported, even by people
who had previously been very critical of the ruling family and its handling of the Arab
uprisings. Salman al-Awdah, the jailed Muslim Brotherhood–related sahwi scholar,
provided his full support for the government’s Yemen incursion. He even gave a
religious justification for the killing of the Houthis and reiterated the government’s
narrative that Iran was taking over Arab lands and needed to be punished, which made
the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen legitimate (Matthiesen 2015b). Muhammad al-
Arifi, another very prominent Saudi cleric with millions of followers on Twitter,
also endorsed the campaign: “He sent a message to the Yemenis fighting with the
Houthis that they should abandon them in order not to be used by the ‘Safawid’ state”
(Matthiesen 2015b: 8). As demonstrated by recent governmental practices, the Saudi
rulers apply zero tolerance towards members of the religious opposition, as well as
towards members of the official religious establishment such as prominent preachers

of the two holy mosques in Makkah and Madina. Therefore, anti-Iran sentiments and
related issues (such as the Qatar blockade) seem to become the only admissible topics
of religious public debate. Under the previous generations of Saudi rulers, clerical
figures had a huge impact on the state’s public and foreign policies. However, most
recently, their power had become extremely limited, mainly to offering supportive
commentary on state policies already executed.
As the Iranian government appears to maintain its regional ambitions and the
Saudi government capitalizes on this and uses anti-Iran sentiments for its nation-
building project, the domestic Shia population of Saudi Arabia is becoming further
victimized by the state. Although many Shiites interviewed by researchers said they
wanted to be accepted, integrated, and trusted by their Sunni peers and leaders, rather
than castigated as religious heretics and accused of being a fifth column for Shiite-
majority Iran, Shiite dissent in the Eastern Province of the kingdom provoked the
Saudi government to accuse some Shiite youths of “working according to a foreign
agenda,” an allusion to Iran (Murphy 2013) that led to the collective victimization
of the Shiites. Sunni co-citizens of the Saudi Shiites are sometimes suspicious of
their real intentions. Reportedly, the idea that Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to
their homeland is common among Sunni youths: “I have Shia friends; they are good
people. But I hate them when I feel they are more loyal to Iran than to my country,”
one of them explained (Murphy 2013). As many Saudi Shiites have at least a spiritual
attachment to Iran, which is presented as an untrustworthy aggressor, Saudi Shiites
remain the main reason for the ontological insecurity perceptions of the Saudi Sunnis.
Conclusion: The Effects of Regional Dynamics on Domestic

Developments—Permanent Transformation?
Since the Arab uprisings of the previous decade, it has become common sense to
claim that future developments are unpredictable in either the regional or domestic
political settings. However, the number and intensity of regional developments point
in the direction of the Saudi state and society becoming the subjects of a permanent
transformation during and after King Salman’s regime. The presence of the United
States in the region, which has been a guarantee of stability for decades, is no longer
to be taken for granted. The Palestinian peace process has reached a deadlock and
remains a burden for both the United States and the Arab states. There has been
unprecedented public debate on the options for an Arab–Israeli rapprochement and
recognition of the state of Israel, which has been anathema for decades. The number
of unstable states and regimes has grown since 2010, and these countries had been
penetrated by Iranian soft and hard capacities. From a Saudi perspective, the Middle
East has become a hostile environment. The Saudi public and political discourse has
been permeated by anti-Shia sentiments and an anti-Iran narrative was established
as early as at the foundation of the modern state. However, there has always been
160 É. Ádám
a discrepancy in the level of animosity between the rhetoric on the Shia, on Iran,
and concrete bilateral relations. The Shia of Saudi Arabia have always had a pariah
status in Saudi internal politics, which has affected Saudi–Iranian relations, although
not to a degree that hindered the normalization of bilateral relations. The fall of
Saddam Hussein, the Assad regime’s loss of power, and the Yemeni civil war had a
cumulatively disruptive effect on the regional status quo. As Iran was able to penetrate
all of these domains, the Salmans felt compelled to challenge Iran’s aspirations.
Subsequently, or as a result of King Salman and Muhammad bin Salman’s aspirations,
the Saudi regime had to make adjustments in its domestic settings in order to create
a safe environment for their mission against Iran. The forced transformation of elite
relations and the state’s control over the public debate have eliminated both the actors
and the issues that might create confusion over and threaten the regime’s agenda. As
a result, the anti-Shia and anti-Iran rhetoric became the dominant features of public
debate. In fact, the Saudi elite and the public have never been so consensual on
any issue as they have become during King Salman’s era with regards to the Iranian
threat. The lack of American control over regional politics, Iran’s ever more assertive
regional projects, and a monolithic Saudi elite which is consensual on the importance
of tackling the Iranian threat, might create a dangerous combination. The escalation
of the region’s conflicts, at this moment, seems to be inevitable.
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Chapter 10
The GCC, Iraq, and Iran: Perception
of Threats Before and After the Crisis
Shaikha Majed Al-Moslemani
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have long perceived Iran and Iraq as
major threats to their stability and security. Especially in the late 1970s, but also
since the 1990s, the behavior of these two countries has led to a breach of trust
which caused concern across the region and compelled the Gulf States to deepen an
existing alliance with the United States (an extra-regional power) in order to obtain
protection. Iraq was the primary aggressor in two regional wars: it began by attacking
Iran in 1980, and then invaded Kuwait in 1990. However, Iraq came to be regarded
as a primary source of danger only belatedly, since the region had hitherto been
preoccupied with the threat posed by the revolutionary Iranian state.
The deposing of Saddam Hussain by the United States in 2003 changed the balance
of threat in the region. Henceforth, Iraq was hardly seen as a threat at all, whereas Iran
once more aroused regional concerns. An Arab–Gulf coalition was formed to fight
the Houthi rebels and their ally Iran in Yemen, while the involvement of the GCC in
Syria, particularly through Saudi Arabia’s role, intersected with Iran’s involvement
in the same theater.
These regional threats affected the stability of the Gulf region. The two threats,
Iran and Iraq, occupy strategic locations, making them enemies for the long term.
Therefore, the GCC states are obliged to seek solutions that enable them to deter
and contain the threats themselves, rather than depending on external powers for
protection. In recent times, however, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have shown
themselves to be incapable of dealing with and facing down the Iranian threat in the
region. Yet these issues must be solved soon to avoid future unforeseen consequences,
because once the danger reaches a peak it will not be easy to cope with.
It is important to understand the sources of the GCC states’ enduring alliance
with the United States, as well as the nature of political relations between the three
regional axes, Iraq, Iran, and the GCC. This chapter attempts to provide an answer
S. M. Al-Moslemani (B)
Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: shaikha.m@qu.edu.qa

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_10
164 S. M. Al-Moslemani
to the following questions: how have GCC states perceived Iran since the Islamic
Revolution in 1979, and how have they perceived Iraq since its invasion of Kuwait
in 1990? What sorts of threats do GCC states perceive in Iran and Iraq? And how
has the Gulf crisis affected the perception of threat in the region?
The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section provides historical
background, covering Iran’s occupation of the three Emirati islands and its conse-
quences for GCC stability; the wider danger facing the Gulf during the Iraq–Iran
war; Iraq’s threat to Kuwait in 1990; Iran–GCC relations; and the second Gulf War
(2003). The second section looks at Iran’s intervention in the case of the Arab Spring,
in particular the Bahrain Uprising in 2011 and the tension between Iran and Saudi
Arabia that ensued. The third section elaborates the perception of threats after the
Gulf crisis.
Historical Background
Iran, the UAE, and the Case of the Three Islands
Ever since the British mandate was established over the Gulf, Iran has claimed title
and sovereignty over the islands of Abu-Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Its
location overlooking the Strait of Hurmuz (Muĝtahidzāda 1999) permits an occupant
of Abu-Musa to control and manage the passage of oil tankers, in addition to imposing
limitations on exports and imports. Britain, however, handed them to Sharjah and
Ras Al-Khaima. According to the Shah of Iran, “the islands were originally Iranian;
nevertheless Britain intervened over our sovereignty and managed to steal the islands.
Then it offered them to Sharjah and Ras Al-Khaima which are under its protection”
(Al-Nahyan 2014).
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Sharjah and Iran in 1971,
which clarified the rights of both states concerning the disputed islands. The agree-
ment consisted of several articles, including that Iran had the right to occupy the
north side of Abu-Musa, and had the right to raise its flag over the Iranian military
headquarters, while the rest of the island was to be governed by the emirate of Sharjah
(Muĝtahidzāda 1999). The ruler of Sharjah, Shaikh Khalid Al-Qasimi, approved the
terms but claimed he had been threatened by Iran and therefore had been compelled
to accept the division of the island. However, Iran claimed that Al-Qasimi accepted
the agreement voluntarily without coercion or pressure (Jalinusi and Arayee 2007).
From the beginning of the occupation, Iran sought to transform the islands into
a small military base in the Gulf. Iran’s occupation of the islands therefore posed
a threat to the United Arab Emirates, a much weaker power in comparison to Iran.
Even after the declaration of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s military forces continued
to arrive in Abu-Musa and Greater Tunb, which during the Iran–Iraq War were used
as bases by Iranian naval and armed forces, launching attacks via helicopters and
small boats against Gulf oil tankers as well as UAE oil stations. Subsequently, Iran
10 The GCC, Iraq, and Iran: Perception of Threats Before … 165
established an airstrip to permit an emergency response in case of a sudden external

attack, and troops were expanded to 4,000 (Foley 1999). Meanwhile, Iran conducted
military maneuvers around the three islands via its air and naval forces (Al-Nahyan
2014).
The Iranian military build-up at Abu-Musa was a matter of concern to the UAE
(Al-Kaabi and Al-Kaabi 2011), which worked through the GCC to bring the claims
of neighboring states against Iran. According to an online article, the UAE and
its GCC allies were determined to hold a meeting in 2012 with regard to a visit
by Ahmadinejad to Abu-Musa. This visit outraged the UAE, with Emirati Foreign
Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed declaring Ahmadinejad’s visit a violation. Bilat-
erally, however, the tension with the UAE has another dimension, for in fact the UAE
and Iran share commercial ties, being major partners in exports and imports: the total
value of goods imported and exported through Dubai to and from Iran in the first
nine months of 2011 was estimated at $8.7 billion (Reuters 2012).
In occupying the three islands, Iran’s primary aim is to maintain the security of
the Strait of Hurmuz, seeking thus to facilitate its exports and to secure oil shipments.
Iran recently threatened to close Hurmuz in the face of a standoff with the United
States (Johnson 2016), and is capable of initiating attacks against external threats
via the islands (Al-Jazeera Centre 2012). In addition, Iran has the capability to plant
mines around Hurmuz, maintaining around 200 patrols as well combatants on its
coasts ready to begin the laying of mines at any time.
In conclusion, despite the UAE initiating several attempts to seek solutions with
Iran to stop the conflict, Iran was not eager to participate in negotiations, due to
the belief that the islands were originally its own and had been taken unjustifiably
by Britain. Iran affirmed its sovereignty over the islands based on its geographical
proximity to them, and was willing to wage a war in order to keep them, claiming
“the Gulf States should pass a sea of blood if they demanded to return the islands”
(New York Times 1992). The unwillingness of Iran to participate in negotiations
resulted from its concept of a “Persian Gulf,” since a retreat from the islands would
not serve Iran’s geo-political ambitions in the region.
The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
After the Islamic Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
the region faced two internal threats, Iraq and Iran. Iraq, for its part, assumed that the
new regime in Iran was a threat to itself and to the Gulf, and initiated a war against
Iran in 1980. Various justifications were given for the outbreak of the war: first, there
was the dispute over the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway, which President Saddam Hussein
believed must remain under his sovereignty: “This Shatt shall again be, as it has been
through history, Iraqi and Arab in name and reality” (Ateş 2015).
Fear of the Iranian Revolution was another key factor. Iraq feared that Iran might
launch attacks against Iraq and provoke a revolution. Saddam Hussein, who was
also seeking to expand his regional influence, thought that through defeating Iran he
would increase his status among the Arab leaders, which would enable him to act in
a more aggressive manner. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to open the path for the Iraqi Shiites to attain
sovereignty over Iraq.
The war between the two regional powers destabilized the region’s security. The
UAE, therefore, along with the rest of the Gulf States, realized the sole solution to
deter the Iranian threat was to side with Iraq, a decision which was in essence forced
upon them. The prospect that the Iraqi government should be overthrown was a huge
concern for the Gulf, which perceived Iran’s intentions of emerging from the war as
the only power in the region.
Iran’s political behavior after the Islamic Revolution and during the Iran–Iraq War
impelled the Gulf States to accept the United States as a factor for preserving the
security of the region (Mansour 2016). Had the political vacuum not been filled by
the United States after Britain retreated, the Gulf States would be in a tragic position
indeed, due to their inability to protect themselves or to ensure mutual security.
The Gulf region thus found itself surrounded by two regional powers, and for two
consecutive decades these powers created a regional security gap. During the Iran–
Iraq War, due to the rise of the Islamic Republic and Khomeini’s theory of exporting
revolution, the GCC considered Iran to be the sole danger. The failure to realize that
Iraq was also a threat put the GCC in a difficult situation after the Iran–Iraq War
drew to a close.
Iraq’s Threat to Kuwait
In the years after the Iran–Iraq War, geographic proximity, aggregate power, and
aggressive intentions in addition to offensive capabilities, all contributed to Iraq
posing a direct threat to Kuwait and the Gulf. In terms of geography, Kuwait shares
a border with Iraq in the north, which facilitated the movement of Iraqi forces in
occupying Kuwait. Moreover, Iraq is much greater in size than Kuwait (Janssen
2018), with Kuwait’s small land area permitting the enemy to penetrate easily. The
joint borders with Iraq represented an entrance to the Gulf region: with Kuwait as
the passageway, Saudi Arabia could be Iraq’s next destination.
The intentions of Iraq were to take the Kuwaiti oil and control the OPEC quotas.
After the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq’s production of oil had dropped to less than 1 million
barrels per day (Clayton 2015); Saddam Hussein’s goal now was to expand produc-
tion, but this could not be achieved without taking Kuwait’s quotas of 20%, since
Iraq was incapable of investing either domestically or externally (Mabro 1994). By
seizing Kuwait’s OPEC quota, Iraq would obtain dominance in oil production.
The economic concern with oil was not the only factor; there was also a political
motive associated with the Kuwaiti regime. Saddam Hussein sought to fulfill his
goal of being the leader of the Arabs; and to achieve this objective it was important
that the regime of Al-Subah be overthrown. According to the Iraqi foreign minister
Tarek Aziz, the intention behind invading Kuwait was to provoke a military coup
against the royal family and replace the regime (Musallem 1995). By overthrowing
the Kuwaiti regime, Iraq had two intentions. First, the fall of Kuwait would entail
the fall of the entire Gulf region: the fragile GCC states would give way in the face
of Iraq, allowing Saddam Hussein to consolidate his authority in the region. Second,
the concept of Arab regional power—the idea of being “the guardian of the Gulf”—
had a significant influence on the evolution of Iraq’s hostile decisions. Iraq believed
that Kuwait must be protected against Iran, because Kuwait’s population contains a
large number of Shiites which Iran might take advantage of to export its revolution
(Hassan 1999).
Taking its offensive capabilities into consideration, Iraq was vastly superior. The
Iraqi army was the strongest army in the region and ranked in fourth place globally
(Cordesman 1994). The Iraqi army successfully managed to impose a full occupation
of Kuwait within two days, yet in spite of the size and the strength of Iraq’s military
forces, they were subsequently incapable of resisting the forces of the international
coalition. Pardew (1991) argues that Iraq miscalculated the ability of the US-led
coalition, which led to it misperceiving the weakness of its own military. Iraq’s
attitude was determined by its assumption that the coalition would be fragile, and
that its own small, well-equipped military was advanced enough to overcome the
coalition forces. As a result, Saddam Hussein became convinced that the United
States would not intervene in the region. Yet although his Republican Guards were
adequate for securing Saddam Hussein’s authority within Iraq, they were unable to
defend the country from the weight of the US coalition (Pardew 1991). To sum up,
Iraq’s military forces failed to defend its occupation of Kuwait. Recapturing Kuwait
as Iraq’s 19th province would have been Saddam Hussein’s road to Arab hegemony,
but this was not to be.
Iran–GCC Relations
During the Iraq invasion, Iran sided with Kuwait and supported UN sanctions against
Iraq, demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Iraqi troops. Based
on this, Iran–GCC relations entered a new positive phase after the liberation of
Kuwait. To boost Iran’s political image with the non-allied Gulf States, Hashemi
Rafsanjani articulated three major factors in Iran’s new policy towards the Gulf States.
Foremost, Iran’s intention was not to implement changes regarding the political map
of the region; rather it sought to sustain the present geography. Further, Iran identified
the US presence in the region as a source of balance of power. And, finally, Iran
endeavored to restore its relations with the Gulf countries, in particular with Saudi
Arabia as the leading regional country (Askari 2013). Iran’s main priority, therefore,
was to maintain stable relations with Saudi Arabia; an Iranian newspaper described
Rafsanjani’s visit to Saudi in 1998 as intending to establish a joint commission.
Economically, the states agreed to settle the price of oil after this had declined to $12
per barrel, and concerning OPEC they increased the quota of 10% (Tehran Times
1998). Saudi Arabia also guaranteed Rafsanjani that the presence of US bases in its
territory did not constitute a threat to Iran’s security.
The theory of exporting the revolution was sidelined during the presidencies of
Rafsanjani and Khatami, as both focused on improving ties with the GCC. With
Khatami calling for establishing mutual confidence and avoiding hostility, Saudi
Arabia announced at the UN General Assembly in 1998 that Iran was not a threat to
the region, but was a positive influence in promoting peace and preventing regional
instability (Keynoush 2016).
Yet regardless of these improved Iran–GCC relations, Iran still expressed its reser-
vations on the issue of the UAE islands. Although it rejected negotiations, it attempted
to form an agreement with the UAE. A declaration by Iran published in 1999 stated
that the UAE islands did not constitute a matter of concern in UAE–Iran relations
because neither side desired to ruin their relations (Keynoush 2016). Nor were the
islands a concern for Saudi Arabia, which had no desire to compromise its reconcil-
iation with Iran, seeing this as a turning point that was in the interests of both states.
Thus, Saudi Arabia warned the UAE not to antagonize Iran and encouraged it to
accept the Iranian claims.
Saudi Arabia and Iran thus both emerged as major powers in the region, and thus
their actions are key factors in strengthening regional stability or igniting conflict. Yet
in fact each state seeks to occupy the role of sole regional hegemon. In the two regional
wars between 1980 and 1990, Saudi Arabia had failed to play the role of a hegemon.
The fear of the Iranian Revolution and Saddam Hussein’s aggressive behavior had led
Saudi Arabia to abandon the desire for hegemony and instead take steps to secure its
national security. Yet despite restoring relations, Saudi and Iranian interests contradict
each other. After the Islamic Revolution, Iran had sought to impose its power on the
Gulf region and the Arab world, and this implied that Saudi Arabia should fall under
the Iranian hegemony. Hence, Riyadh fundamentally believed Iran was engaged
in a project of domination and transformation of the region, which could result in
the Shiite government of Iran being extended over the holy places of Makkah and
Madina. Since the majority of the GCC populations are Sunni, and regardless of
the brief period of cordial and stable Iran–GCC relations, matters worsened after
Mahmood Ahmadinejad won the elections in 2003 (Al-Dulaimi et al. 2017). And
after the definitive arrival of the United States in the region, the role of Saudi Arabia
was boosted.
Second Gulf War (2003)
The US invasion of Iraq, or the “Second Gulf War,” which took place in 2003 under
the banner of the “War on Terrorism,” was the reason for the escalating tensions in
Iraq and in the Gulf. The allegations by the United States against Iraq regarding the
possession of weapons of mass destruction and links with Al-Qaeda were deemed
adequate reasons to overthrow the regime and establish a new government which
would serve US interests. However, the failure of the United States to form such a
government opened the gate for Iran to penetrate Iraq’s domestic affairs, and Iran’s
behavior in Iraq henceforth increased the GCC states’ threat perceptions.
The 2003 US invasion was a golden opportunity for Iran to ensure that Iraq would
not pose a threat to it either now or in the long term. Arguably, then, Iran supported
the US invasion precisely in order to limit Iraq’s threat to itself. Iran subsequently
established political ties with its Iraqi Shiite allies, of which the Islamic Supreme
Council of Iraq (ISCI), founded in 1982 in Tehran, is the major ally of Iran; its Badr
militia organization received training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)
and fought alongside Iran in 1980–88.
The GCC perceived the Shiites and their influence in Iraq’s politics as a threat.
The perception that the Shiites were a source of danger had increased after 2003
when the Shiites became an ally to the United States (Ehteshami and Zweiri 2011).
This created fear among the GCC states because the shift of the US perspective on
the Shiites threatened to lead to an empowerment of their role in Baghdad and in
the Gulf States. There was an escalation of sectarianism when Iraq was transformed
into a Shiite-governed state, since this awakened the sectarian sense of the Shiite
communities in the GCC states, especially given that the Shiites in the GCC face
government restrictions and are not permitted to occupy sensitive political positions.
Iran did indeed hope to enhance the role of Shiites through encouraging them
to overthrow their regimes. Thus Iraq’s border with Kuwait entailed that the region
now faced two threats. In case of an outbreak of war, Kuwait and the GCC would
now also be obliged to engage in a civil war to secure Sunni supremacy. At the same
time, religious influence in Iraq is a matter of concern as several Iraqi Shiite cities
have become places of worship and now, instead of Makkah, promote the values of
Karbala, Najaf, and Samarra.
Iran and the Arab Spring
After the events of the Arab Spring in 2011, the policies of the United States, the
GCC’s “guardian,” were concentrated on assuring the Gulf States of the continuation
of US support so as to deter the Iranian threat in the region (Nasur 2016). However,
Saudi Arabia, as the leader of the GCC, was determined to control the situation alone.
Iranian–Saudi relations worsened after the arrival of the new regime in Iran. Since
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain host large Shiite populations, tension escalated due to
the apparent Iranian intent to replace the GCC monarchic regimes with government
according to Velayat-e Faqih, that is, the central role of clerics in politics. The Iranian–
Saudi dispute since 2003 has been punctuated by two key moments: specifically, the
Shiite uprising in Bahrain in 2011, and the execution of the Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr
Al-Nimr.
Being the smallest state in the Gulf, and with a population which is approxi-
mately 63% Shiite (Zweiri 2013), Bahrain has always been affected by Saudi–Iranian
hostility. From Iran’s perspective, Bahrain is a part of Iran, and the Shiites in Bahrain
would be glad if the state was annexed. Similar to Tunisia, Egypt, and other Arab
states, Bahrain was influenced by the so-called Arab Spring. On 14 February 2011
an uprising took place in Bahrain entitled the “Day of Rage,” led by the Shiite
majority (Gengler 2016). The revolt was driven by youth protests requesting imme-
diate reform in Bahrain, but the principal opposition groups were divided between
the Al-Wefaq Shiite organization and the Al-Haq movement. The youth protestors
called for the toppling of the Al-Khalifa regime in order to implement a new political
system which would improve Shiite status both politically and socially. However,
Al-Wefaq demanded constitutional reform, and instead proposed a conception of
Bahrain’s political future based on the “Manama document,” which emphasized
giving the Shiites the right to participate in politics (Kinninmont 2012). The Saudi
Shiites backed the Bahraini Shiites, claiming that the Shiite nation should not be sepa-
rated from the Sunnis and so demanding equal rights (Gerges 2016). Saudi Arabia,
however, perceived the Bahrain incidents as a sectarian revolution sponsored by Iran
(Butler 2011). The assumption resulted from a belief that the Shiites were devoted
to Iran and not to their own countries, whereas in fact the Shiites in Bahrain follow
Al-Sistani in Najaf (Mishal and Goldberg 2015) rather than endorsing the Velayat-e
Faqih.
To impose order in Bahrain, and to safeguard the Al-Khalifa ruling family with
whom Saudi Arabia shares close relations, military forces were deployed upon the
request of Bahrain from the Peninsula Shield Force (Ersoy 2013). The leadership in
Bahrain had conceived Iran as a threat even before the Islamic Revolution, due to
Iran’s longstanding claims that Bahrain belonged to it (Belfer 2014). The Bahraini
regime also blamed Iran for the 1981 coup in Bahrain, and accused the Islamic
Front of Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB) of attempting to overthrow the government
with the support of Iran (Ivanhoe 2012). In addition, sectarianism was a factor that
created instability for both states, in particular Saudi Arabia, since the kingdom was
concerned in case Shiite political unrest in Bahrain would encourage its own Shiite
minority to pursue similar actions against the Al-Saud regime. In contrast to Bahrain,
the authorities in Saudi Arabia impose restrictions over their Shiites, forbidding the
establishment of Shiite mosques and banning the celebration of their feasts in public;
whereas in Bahrain, the Shiites enjoy full rights to perform their religious obligations.
The expansion of Iran’s influence in the region was also a major concern, with
both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia suspecting Iran of backing the uprising, and charging
Iran with intervening in the domestic affairs of other states. And it was certainly
true that Iranian representatives, media channels, officials, and clerics expressed
sympathy with the people in Bahrain; and Tehran viewed this uprising as having
major significance for Iran, since it concerned the “oppressed Shiites” (Kinninmont
2012).
Yet Iran was in fact cautious in dealing with the issue, despite accusing Saudi
Arabia of murdering Shiite protestors. The Iranian government sent two ships to
Bahrain to support the dissident Shiites, yet these then turned back on Tehran’s
orders. Thus, Iran’s behavior led the Shiites to question the degree of trust they could
place in Iran, and to wonder whether Iran would indeed provide support in the event
of a confrontation with their governments. The Saudi–Iranian insecurity dilemma
thus increased the rivalry between the two states.
In addition to the issue of external threats, both Iran and Saudi Arabia are
concerned for their internal security, and this plays an important role in the states’
foreign policy. This was starkly illustrated by the case of Nimr Al-Nimr, a Saudi
Shiite cleric who became a well-known political and religious activist. The Saudi
authorities executed Al-Nimr in January 2016, based on several charges, the main
one being linked to Saudi fears of potential attempts to foment Shiite unrest in the
Eastern province. Al-Nimr was known for being against the regime of Al-Saud, and
also characterized himself as an ally of Iran. The Saudi cleric declared his full support
for the idea that Iran should intervene in Saudi Arabia to safeguard the Shiites therein.
From a Shiite perspective, Al-Nimr was a savior from persecution (Fisher 2016) and
a Shiite voice that represented their interests.
Iran and Its Political Intervention in Syria
Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Iran and Saudi Arabia have positioned
themselves deep in the Syrian crisis. The Arab Spring and the weaknesses it revealed
for several states, including Syria, encouraged Iran to penetrate the region’s affairs.
Iran’s military intervention in Syria was a consequence of a bilateral military agree-
ment that both states had signed in the early 1980s (Zweiri 2016), and now Iran
intervened very effectively via proxies such as Hezbollah and militia groups in Syria,
so as to provide support for the continuation of Assad’s regime.
The alliance between Assad and Iran caused concerns for Saudi Arabia, which
in turn sought to support the Syrian rebels against the Syrian government: the Jaysh
al-Islam militia is one of the rebel groups funded by Saudi Arabia. Further examples
of Saudi interventions in Syria have been mentioned in recent interviews by Qatar’s
former prime minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim, who confirmed that Saudi Arabia
asked Qatar to intervene to support the Syrian rebellion against the Assad regime
(Hamad bin Jassim 2017).
Another manner in which Saudi Arabia has sought to back the rebels is through
the sponsoring of international conferences, entitled “Friends of Syria,” in Turkey,
Tunisia, and Morocco. The aim of these initiatives is to strengthen the role of the
rebels and to obscure their weakness in the face of Iran and Hezbollah. Omer Kosh,
a Syrian researcher, argued that the events in the Arab region have thus increased
the degree of confrontation and rivalry between Saudi Arabia and its opponent Iran.
Saudi Arabia seeks to preserve its domestic stability and block Iran from destabilizing
the Gulf, whereas Iran is concerned about its political status and ongoing influence
in the Levant and Arab regions following the fall of Assad (Kosh 2013).
Iran’s Involvement in Yemen: The Closer the Threat, the More

Direct It Becomes
Regional security from the GCC’s perspective is concentrated on Iran (Mansour

2016). The Houthis in Yemen had not been a threat to Saudi Arabia, despite having
clashed with the Saudis in 2009 after attacking the kingdom’s borders. This changed,
however, after the Houthis entered into an alliance with Iran, which led to a deepening
of Iran’s influence in Yemen. Iran’s support for the Houthis thus influenced Saudi
Arabia to declare war in order to prevent the expansion of the Houthis in the region.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia instigated deep political reforms: the Saudi war in
Yemen was in fact directed at Iran, and at root was a contest over which state would
exercise hegemony in Yemen.
The intensity of the Iran–Saudi rivalry prompted other Arab and GCC states to take
sides in the proxy war in Yemen. The creation of a coalition entitled “Decisive Storm”
led by Saudi Arabia in 25 March 2015, in which all the GCC states were involved
with the exception of Oman, was intended to contain Iran’s potential expansion in
the region. To this end, the Saudis deployed numerous military forces, in the region
of 150,000 combatants and 100 fighter jets (Dolgove 2015), to fight the Houthi
rebels. Yet the coalition was unsuccessful, and the Houthis successfully expanded
their control in Yemen (Popp 2015); hence, the GCC began to provide the Yemeni
resistance with military training to prepare them to take part in the war against the
Houthis (Schmitz 2017). However, the Saudi effort was again insufficient to prevent
the expansion of the Houthis, who again furthered their control over the territory. The
Yemeni crisis illustrates the success of Iran in backing the Houthis and preventing
the local resistance forces from establishing a new government.
The Iran–Saudi proxy certainly has a religious aspect; yet this is overshadowed
by the political factor. Both states have key political ambitions in engaging in this
war (Cote 2017): dominating a state close to its rival would give Iran a key strategic
position in the Gulf region. Yemen is a vital strategic interest for both sides, due
to the shared borders with Saudi Arabia. Similar to the situation in Syria, for Iran
Yemen is the key to extending its influence in the Gulf, and the Houthi rebels are
being used by Iran as a tool to promote its regional hegemony. For Saudi Arabia,
on the other hand, the strategic aim is to expand its influence: it assumed that its
coalition would facilitate the defeat of the Houthis, and that therefore Yemen would
fall under its control. In addition, by working through a coalition, Saudi Arabia is
also taking advantage of the GCC states to extend its hegemonic role through their
participation in the Yemen theater. It seems that not all the GCC states which joined
the coalition did so willingly: in an online article published by Sputnik news, the
former minister of foreign affairs Khalid Al-Atia declared that Qatar had in fact been
forced to join the coalition.
The Middle East analyst Sigurd Neubauer argued that the GCC states had over-
stated the role of Iran in Yemen and misjudged its level of support for the Houthis.
He advised the regional states to desist from exaggerating the threat and instead seek
solutions to prevent Yemen from becoming a geopolitical battleground between Iran
and Saudi (Neubauer 2015). Yet Iran’s intervention via its Houthi proxy, even if indi-
rect, provides an opportunity for Iran to secure a new ally in the Gulf region and so
further its goal of hegemony. This threatens to set the region on fire, because it will
give Iran an opportunity to implement its concept of extending the revolution to the
GCC through encouraging the Shiite populations to seek liberation. Perceiving this
threat, Saudi Arabia thus took the decision to get involved in Yemen’s internal affairs,
aiming to restore the government of the Yemeni president Abed Rabbou Mansour
Hadi.
The Qatar Blockade: Changes in Perception
Qatar’s relations with Iran are rather different from those of its GCC neighbors. They
could be categorized as a combination of Balancing and Bandwagoning, or in other
words are a form of “hedging” (Kamrava 2017). Hedging behavior involves a state
simultaneously maintaining two mechanisms with another state, one being a mech-
anism for opening channels of dialogue, and the other a mechanism for countering
that state’s power. Such a stance is often adopted by small states in order to main-
tain relations with all actors within its region; such states typically desire to avoid
making enemies. According to Kamrava (2017), Qatar adapted this strategy in order
to maintain positive relations with the countries of the Middle East.
On 5 June 2017, notably in the holy month of Ramadan, three GCC countries,
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, as well as Egypt, imposed a blockade on Qatar.
This was not simply a diplomatic or verbal act: rather, it took the form of a blockade by
air, land, and sea. The incident occurred shortly after the Qatar News Agency (QNA)
was hacked and broadcast statements attributed to HH the Emir of Qatar Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. After later investigation by the CIA, UAE government
agencies were subsequently accused of hacking QNA, and evidence to this effect
was provided after the revelation of discussions by UAE officials concerning the
plan to make the hack. Qatar was consequently accused of supporting and financing
terrorism, as well of having unduly close relations with Iran. This prompted US
President Trump to declare that Muslim leaders must break off relations with Iran
(Walsh 2017).
For several days, Qatar suffered significant food shortages due to the blocking
of essential imports. In response to this unexpected act, and contrary to the desires
expressed by President Trump, Qatar reinforced its political and economic relations
with Iran.
As regards to politics, Iran–Qatar relations had been somewhat muted. Never-
theless, the relations strengthened after the blockade, and evolved to the level of
friendship. Following the blockade, Qatar proclaimed the resumption of its diplo-
matic mission in Tehran, led by its ambassador Mohammed Al-Hajri. Qatar stated
that the withdrawal of its ambassador from Tehran had been an expression of support
for Saudi Arabia after the violence against the Saudi embassy in Iran, in retaliation
for the execution of Al-Nimr. Qatar’s declaration now affirmed that it had no dispute
with Iran, as well as indicating that it had the capacity to move forward without its
Gulf allies. Iran called upon the boycotting countries to find an immediate solution to
end the tension and prevent any escalation. From the Iranian perspective, the pressure
placed on Qatar is against international law and totally unacceptable. According to
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Qatar and the boycotting countries must get
around the table to negotiate a solution for their differences, as continuing conflict
is not in the region’s interests.
Such support for Qatar might raise questions about Iran’s hidden intentions. Does
Iran have a particular objective that it seeks to achieve through aiding Qatar? Or does
Iran see this as an opportunity to boost its image in the region?
The Qatar–GCC crisis has clear implications concerning regional security, and
the 13 demands issued against Qatar by the blockading countries have significant
implications for the stability of the council. Bahrain called for a suspension of Qatar’s
membership of the GCC if it did not accept the demands; Qatar’s response, however,
was to declare that no states have the right to make demands of another which amount
to patent interference with its internal affairs. Qatar thus started to perceive the three
blockading countries as a threat to its national security, rather than as allies (Al-
Tamimi 2017), and subsequently strengthened its military ties with Turkey. Moreover,
the crisis led to a weakening of the effectiveness of the GCC as a mutual defense body,
with the UAE and Saudi Arabia announcing the establishment of a joint political and
military alliance separate from the other GCC members (Wintour 2017). Since the
Council was established for mutual defense to deter common threats, the existence
of this new alliance threatens the security of the rest of the GCC.
Further, the crisis led to internal division within the Gulf. The Gulf now is split
between Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman on the one side, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
and Bahrain on the other. This division threatens regional peace. Before the crisis,
the GCC was one single body facing external threats in unison; now the region is
threatened by both domestic and external disputes. All of this is of clear benefit
to Iran, which might more easily expand its leverage while the region is occupied
with its internal conflicts. In addition, this would decrease Saudi Arabia’s role and
weaken its efforts at confronting the Iranian influence. Thus, several GCC states,
e.g., Kuwait, have cautiously begun to open links with Iran in anticipation of future
political developments (Al-Tamimi 2017).
Saudi Arabia’s action against Qatar could be seen as a means to secure its regional
ambitions. Since emerging as the leader of the GCC, Saudi Arabia has desired to
further expand its regional hegemony. Pressuring Qatar to accept its demands is an
intimidation tactic designed to scare the rest of the GCC into following the Saudi
lead; while Qatar’s rejection of the demands could lead Saudi Arabia to withdraw
Qatar’s membership of the GCC, the Arab League, and the Arab-Islamic Alliance
(Al-Tamimi 2017). However, Saudi Arabia’s actions may in the end prove to have
weakened its hegemony, in particular in view of Qatar’s determination to maintain its
independent political position, which has in fact strengthened its role both regionally
and globally.
In the sequel, a new Qatari–Turkish–Iranian alliance became established in the
Gulf. Although Turkish forces had been present on Qatari territory before the crisis,
ostensibly as a means to improve bilateral relations, the true role of the Turkish
base did not become clear until the blockade. According to the Turkish newspaper
Ahval, a new military base was to be established in Qatar as a way of asserting
military cooperation which in the meantime would also help to enhance political
cooperation. In addition, Qatar and Turkey signed several deals to purchase Turkish
military equipment estimated to cost US$800 million.
For their part, the blockading countries are dead set against Qatari–Turkish coop-
eration, and accuse Turkey of sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood—an accusation,
incidentally, that was also levelled against Qatar in the list of 13 demands. In the
final analysis, the blockade of Qatar seems to emerge as a misstep by the blockading
states. Qatar seems to have been the winner in this game, with its position inter-
nationally recognized as the strongest and most legitimate. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
and the UAE sought to oblige Qatar to accept their 13 demands as a condition to
end the blockade, regardless of the lack of any evidence to justify their accusations.
Moreover, the blockade has proved Qatar’s ability to face regional challenges on its
own, while the new alliances with Turkey and Iran confirm that Qatar is willing to
establish new relations with states within or outside the region.
Conclusion
As this chapter has documented, the GCC states have seen both Iran and Iraq as threats
to regional stability. Thus the nature and the sources of the threats surrounding the
Gulf region have never been stable, but rather have shifted throughout history based
on the vicissitudes of the political environment. The GCC states took a miscalculated
decision to strike an alliance with Iraq during the Iraq–Iran war, which had serious
consequences for them in 1990.
Meanwhile, Iran’s political behavior has been characterized by animosity with the
Gulf States. Since the advent of the United States as an external power in the Gulf, it
has played a major role in preserving regional security, whereas Iran was excluded
from the paradigm of regional security and accused of destabilizing the Gulf States,
especially in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and Khomeini’s denunciations
of the GCC monarchs.
Geographical factors have been key to relations between Iran, Iraq, and the GCC.
The three Gulf wars—the Iraq–Iran war in 1980–88, the Kuwait invasion in 1990,
and the US invasion in 2003—in addition to the Arab Spring, engendered concerns
that the geographical map would be transformed due to Iran’s rising hegemony in
the Arab world. This resulted in rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with both
states desiring hegemony and seeking to extend their influence over states that are
experiencing internal strife, e.g., Yemen and Syria. Meanwhile, without the anti-Iran
alliance (that is to say, the GCC and the United States), the Gulf would not be able
to safeguard itself nor mount a defense against Iran. This alliance is therefore a vital
factor in the survival of the Gulf region, with the presence of the US bases prohibiting
Iran from interfering directly in the GCC states.
Saudi Arabia and the small weak states that comprise its coalition are incapable of
achieving victory over the Houthis in Yemen. The reason for this pertains mainly to
their lack of military experience: although the kingdom recently invested heavily in
arms and weapons purchased from the United States, these purchases have not been
expressed in any positive results because Iran remains superior on the battlefield, and
made considerable gains against the Arab coalition through its proxy involvement in
the Arab Spring.
Not all the Gulf Cooperation Council states, moreover, agree that Iran is the main
threat to the region. Oman, for instance, maintained its neutrality even while the
other GCC states sided against Iran in the war of 1980. Nor did Oman participate
in the coalition initiated by Saudi Arabia against Iran’s proxy in Yemen. And more
recently Qatar has followed the exact same path. After the political and economic
blockade launched against Qatar by Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia in June
2017, Qatar sought to strengthen its political relations with Iran. From the point of
view of its neighbors, however, this indicated that Qatar accepted Iranian influence
in the Gulf. Taking all the above into account, despite the GCC being nominally a
single organization, few of its members share the same positions.
Qatar no longer trusts its neighbors, nor does it rely upon them. After the GCC
states closed the door on it, Qatar was encouraged to seek alternative allies for
support and assistance. Moreover, Qatar might be seeking to secure a new major
military alliance as a substitute for America. It is heavily expected that this new ally
would be Turkey, as evidenced by the arrival of Turkish military forces in Qatar,
in addition to the Turkish political support provided to Qatar during and after the
blockade. Turkey appears to be Qatar’s preferred candidate in terms of security. This
might lead us to ask whether Iran would in the future agree to form a military alliance
with Qatar, given its crucial political and logistical support during the blockade. If
this took place, the Gulf would be divided in three: one group comprising Iran, Qatar,
and Oman; the second the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain; while Kuwait would
maintain its neutrality. Based on the contemporary events, it is clear that the Iran–
GCC tension will not be resolved in the near future. The parties are unwilling to sit
around the table to seek a mutually beneficial solution, and meanwhile tension and
animosity are escalating. What is more, given the historical and geographical facts
surveyed in this chapter, even if a solution to the current impasse is reached, the GCC
states will always view Iran as a source of suspicion and uncertainty.
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Zweiri, M. (2016). Iran and Saudi Arabia in the field of Syrian war. Al-Watan. Retrieved April 09,
2020, from https://www.al-watan.com.
Part III
Developing Strategic Relations
and Shifting Political Alliances
Chapter 11
The Qatar–Iran–Turkey Nexus: Shifts
in Political Alliances and Economic
Diversification in the Gulf Crisis
Robert J. Riggs
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was established in 1981, with six member
states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates)
agreeing to form a customs union. This would facilitate greater interstate trade and
eliminate tariffs between countries, and allow a stronger economic and social bloc
to emerge, which would act as an advocate for the shared interests of these states.
Ideally, that customs union was expected to lead to a common military security pact
and a mutual currency system, while permitting each member state to retain its unique
sovereign identity (Legrenzi 2015).
The first decade of the GCC’s journey saw the highest level of interstate trade,
which then leveled off in the mid 1990s. Simultaneously, Qatar began to move in
a more independent direction after a failed coup to overthrow the Al-Thani ruling
family in 1996, which is widely believed to have been supported by Saudi Arabia.
Also in 1996, the Al Jazeera satellite news channel was formed with the support of
the Qatari royal family. Al Jazeera broadcasts into the homes of millions of Arabic
speakers across the Middle East. The effects of Al Jazeera’s messaging, in which the
populations of the region were given access to unprecedented levels of information
about their governments’ activities as well as tools to criticize their leaderships,
have been studied extensively (e.g., Seib 2008). The ripple effects of the breaking
of the state monopoly on information produced multiple new understandings about
corruption, wealth inequality, and political awareness, and exacerbated pre-existent
tensions between Qatar and its fellow GCC member states (Zayani 2005).
At the same time, petrochemical reserves, such as oil and natural gas, filled the
coffers of the GCC treasuries, allowing for the emergence of new global trade and
finance metropolises. In particular, Doha (Qatar) and Dubai (UAE) sprang from the
desert to attract investment, and began to reinvest the profits from oil and gas rents
into sovereign wealth funds that enabled global investment portfolios of previously
R. J. Riggs (B)
Geopolitical Risk Analyst, Global Intelligence Insights LLC, Bronx, NY, USA
e-mail: rriggs@globalii.org

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_11
182 R. J. Riggs
unimagined scope. Large-scale building projects brought millions of migrant workers

to the region, predominantly from South Asia, culminating in Qatar’s successful bid
to host the 2022 World Cup (Khatib 2013). However, all of this impressive progress
came with a price.
Since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990–91, the GCC has been heavily reliant
on the United States for provision of a mutually beneficial security arrangement.
The United States leases land for air and naval bases in Qatar and Bahrain, giving it
critical strategic positions to protect trade routes crucial to the extraction and export
of petrochemicals and to counter Iranian power in the region. The United States
has military installations and infrastructures scattered around the Arabian Peninsula,
the most important ones being the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, Prince Sultan
Airbase in Saudi Arabia, Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base.
Additionally, the wealth of the GCC states and the accumulated trust they have
established with the United States over decades have facilitated massive weapons
sales to the GCC. Along with the sale of weapons has come the training of GCC
military personnel to use technologically sophisticated equipment (Barakat 2012).
What emerged from this confluence of wealth accumulation and defense expen-
ditures was a more robust, even aggressive, engagement of the national armed forces
of the GCC member states in regional conflicts. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,
the Qatari and UAE air forces in Libya, and the arming of various sides of the
Syrian civil war are prime examples of the increasing willingness on the part of GCC
governments to use military force as a foreign policy tool (Legrenzi 2015).
While the economic growth of the GCC countries has continued, even weathering
a recent decline in global oil prices, the terms “cooperation” and “council” have lost
relevance as the GCC political and economic unity came to a screeching halt on 5 June
2017 with the Saudi Arabia–UAE–Bahrain–Egypt blockade imposed unilaterally on
Qatar. The “shock and awe” strategy has been interpreted as an attempt to precipitate
the collapse of the Qatari government, or at least its capitulation to Saudi authority
within the GCC. Thirteen demands were presented to Qatar. They included shutting
down the Al Jazeera media network, reducing diplomatic relations with Iran, and
closing the Turkish military base near Doha. Qatar was also asked to pay reparations
for years of alleged damages caused by its policies to the blockading countries
(Wintour 2017).
Qatar was taken by surprise by the Saudi-led diplomatic offensive and was unpre-
pared for such a major escalation. However, the blockade largely failed to bring down
the country and has made Doha much more resilient. Moreover, although it does not
appear that the newly militarized GCC states will engage in a protracted military
conflict, the new reality resembles a cold war scenario, which two other regional
powers—Iran and Turkey—have been more than willing to exploit effectively
(Ulrichsen 2014).
11 The Qatar–Iran–Turkey Nexus: Shifts in Political Alliances … 183
Competition Versus Cooperation in the GCC: Fraught

Relationships
How have the competing economic and political interests of the contesting parties
sparked the conflict within the GCC? Before the blockade was imposed on 5 June
2017, tensions within the GCC had already flared once before. In March 2014, Saudi
Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, claiming that
Qatar had not implemented a security pact for “non-interference” in their internal
affairs (Black 2014). Doha’s independent foreign policy had irritated both Riyadh and
Abu Dhabi. However, the lack of sympathy towards their position from the Obama
administration prevented both Saudi Arabia and the UAE from taking further actions
against Qatar. Doha also opted for reconciliation at that time, with HH the Emir
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani seeking to have a fresh start with his neighbors.
Hence, after the Riyadh Agreement was concluded in November 2014, the three
GCC countries returned their ambassadors to Doha, and the leaders of Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, and Bahrain attended the annual GCC summit in the Qatari capital in
December 2014 (Aboudi et al. 2014).
In fact, when the Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive against the Houthi
rebels in Yemen in 2015, Qatar sent troops. In January 2016, Qatar also withdrew its
ambassador from Tehran in an act of solidarity with Saudi Arabia, following an attack
by angry protesters on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in the aftermath of the execution
of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by the Saudi authorities. The Qatari government also
considered providing financial support for the ailing Bahraini economy. Both the
Prime Minister of Bahrain, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, and the Bahraini
Crown Prince, Salman Al-Khalifa, paid separate visits to Doha in February and
March 2017, to discuss how Qatar could help in this matter (The Peninsula 2017).
However, tensions were still simmering below the surface within the GCC. In
November 2015, a group of Qataris, including members of the Al-Thani royal family,
entered the Al Muthanna Province of southern Iraq to hunt an exotic bird, and were
captured by elements of the Kata’ib Hezbollah Shia militia, which is famously linked
to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Its leader, General Qasem Soleimani,
was killed in a US drone attack in 2020.) This event triggered a crisis in which the
Qatari royal family paid a sum that may have been as high as one billion dollars
to secure the hostages’ release, which was also conditional on Qatar facilitating an
agreement between Iran and Qatar-financed Sunni rebel militias to move the popu-
lations of four Syrian towns to either the Idlib province or to areas around Damascus
and Latakia (Warrick 2018). The agreement, which was worked out between Iran,
Iraq, and Qatar, was finally resolved in March 2017. Qatar’s payments to Shia militias
in Iraq angered Saudi Arabia and was one trigger that likely sparked the blockade
and diplomatic break between Saudi Arabia and Qatar (Worth 2018).
In terms of economic competition, Henni points out that
the Gulf gas field, which Qatar calls the North [Dome] Field and Iran calls South Pars,
accounts for nearly all of Qatar’s gas production and about 60% of its export revenue.
Iran and Qatar hold the world’s second- and third-largest natural gas reserves, respectively,
184 R. J. Riggs
behind Russia. Their South Pars/North Field gas field holds an estimated 50.97 trillion
cubic meters of in-situ gas and some 50 billion barrels of condensates, according to the
International Energy Agency. Qatar joined major international firms to develop the field,
becoming the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Meanwhile, Iran’s development of South
Pars has been hampered by protracted delays, mainly because of international sanctions.
While competition between LNG producers is set to intensify over the next few years as
projects come on-stream, such as the ones in Australia, Qatar is set to cement its position as
a leading LNG producer. Qatari LNG is viewed as highly competitive, given its track record
in gas production and LNG production and exports. (Henni 2018).
In a world that is increasingly moving towards cleaner energy options, Qatar

and Iran are well-positioned for a future in which oil plays a smaller role. This
is in contrast to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which very much still depend on oil
rents to maintain their economies. Additionally, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring
protest movements, the then Emir of Qatar HH Sheikh Hamad took a decisive role.
Rather than joining Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in opposition to the pan-Arab Muslim
Brotherhood, Qatar, which had already served as a base for various Islamists in exile,
sought to tie itself to this growing force. Similarly, Doha’s backing of rebels in Libya
and Syria, where Saudi Arabia also intervened, compounded the suspicion of Qatar’s
support for dissident Gulf groups.
Simultaneously, Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential elections
shifted the dynamics of the GCC significantly. On 20 May 2017, Trump visited
Saudi Arabia as his first destination on his first trip outside the United States after
his inauguration ceremony. He then continued on to Israel during the same trip.
Just two weeks after his visit, the blockade against Qatar was enacted. Unlike the
Obama administration, which had negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) with Iran and limited its cooperation with the GCC on Syria, Trump’s
broad-based support for Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman appears to have been
a factor in the decision to aggressively confront Qatar. With a new president in the
White House who had indicated his willingness to back them, the leaders in Riyadh
and Abu Dhabi decided to resume the conflict with Qatar, with hopes of bringing it
to a decisive conclusion.
Doha–Tehran–Ankara: Charting New Regional

Arrangements
How has the aforementioned diplomatic fragmentation within the GCC affected
Qatar’s relations with Iran and Turkey? The governments of both Iran and Turkey,
which had previously enjoyed positive trade and diplomatic relations with Qatar,
moved very quickly to exploit the new rift within the GCC. For Qatar, the unintended
result of the blockade has been a reinvigoration of its partnership with Iran in trade
and diplomacy, as well as military cooperation and enhanced trade ties with Turkey.
Alongside the enhancement of their bilateral relations with Qatar, the blockade has
also led Iran and Turkey to put aside their historical rivalry as regional powers and
increase their cooperation.
In terms of trade, the Saudi-led blockade has been a publicity boost and an
economic boon to Iran, which, at the time, was facing increased hostility from the
US government, culminating in the withdrawal of Donald Trump from the JCPOA
on 8 May 2018 (Landler 2018).
Immediately after the blockade was enforced, Iran sent five planes filled with
food to Qatar in a highly publicized action that initiated a continual increased flow
of goods between Iran and Qatar (Sharafedin and Potter 2017).
Turkey, Iran and Qatar recently signed a transportation pact for boosting trilateral trade.
Turkey’s Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci and his Qatari counterpart Ahmed bin Jassim bin
Mohammed Al Thani were in the Iranian capital Tehran in November to sign the agreement
with Iran’s Minister of Industries, Mining and Trade Mohammad Shariatmadari. Under the
agreement, Iran will be the transit country between Turkey and Qatar. The deal is expected
to help accelerate commodity delivery and facilitate trade. “Iran is playing an important role
in the transport of goods from Turkey and Azerbaijan to Qatar,” said the Qatari minister
in a meeting with Shariatmadari. According to Mohammed bin Mahdi Al Ahbabi, a board
member of Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the land route between Turkey and
Qatar via Iran reduces the cost of transport of goods by about 80% compared to air cargo.
Turkey’s Customs and Trade Minister Bulent Tufenkci said last month that Ankara will
accelerate efforts to facilitate transit through Iran, especially to increase trade with Qatar.
(Financial Tribune 2018).
Likewise, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said the country is willing to
cooperate with Qatar on construction projects for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, amid a
boycott by its Gulf neighbors. The official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
reported that Rouhani spoke with the Qatari Emir, HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad
Al-Thani, on 26 August 2018:
During the call the two discussed business incentives for investors in the two countries,
strengthening port and maritime cooperation and establishing a joint shipping line after
the boycotting countries closed their ports to goods destined for Qatar. “Iranian companies
are ready to cooperate in construction projects in Qatar that will host World Cup 2022,”
Rouhani said, according to IRNA. Other topics discussed by the leaders included the US
decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and impose new sanctions. IRNA said Qatar
was opposed to the plans and escalation between Iran and the US. Sheikh Tamim expressed
a willingness “to develop all-out ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran” and thanked the
country for helping Qatar to source food and other goods after the boycott was imposed ….
(Gulf Business 2018).
In the first five months of Iranian calendar year 1397 (year starting 21 March
2018), Iranian exporters sent 624,840 tons of goods, valued at $119,437,000, to
Qatar. This is an 81.27% rise in exports from Iran to Qatar compared with the same
period during the previous year, according to the latest statistics released by the
Iran Customs Administration (MEHR News Agency 2018). This continued a trend
towards increased trade, first reported in a customs report in June 2018 which stated
that Iran had exported 216,585 tons of goods worth $47.666 million to Qatar during
the first two months of the current Iranian year (March 21–May 21 2018), showing
considerable growth in terms of value. Also, statistics show that the previously stated
186 R. J. Riggs
export amount makes up of 1.35% of the total weight and 0.62% of the total value of
Iran’s exports in the same period. Accordingly, Qatar now stands as the 20th largest
export destination of Iranian goods. These goods include iron, wood products, White
Portland cement, vegetables, confectionery items, henna, rose water, fruit, sugar and
sugar cubes, bitumen, steel profile tubes, livestock, and other assorted products.
In August 2018, Hadi Haqshenas, the deputy head for maritime affairs of Iran’s
Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO), announced that Qatari officials intended
to increase maritime shipping lines between the two countries:
“The Qataris who supplied their goods through Saudi Arabia and the UAE before (the siege
and) sanctions have now requested increased maritime shipping between Iran and Qatar to
bolster mutual trade” […] He added that the goods which are transited from Turkey and other
adjacent countries to Qatar can also use the appropriate shipping lanes at Bushehr port to
carry goods to the Qatari ports. “We are now witnessing an eye-catching growth in shipping
lines between the Iranian and Qatari ports” […]. (Albawaba Business 2018).
The blockade created a new diplomatic opening for Qatar and Iran. Historically,
Qatar had full diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, but it had withdrawn its
ambassador from Tehran in January 2016, following the attacks by angry protestors
against the Saudi embassy there in the wake of the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr
in Saudi Arabia. However, just eleven weeks after the beginning of the blockade,
on 23 August 2017, Qatar restored full diplomatic relations with Iran. “Qatar’s
Foreign Ministry announced that it was sending its ambassador back to Tehran after a
20-month hiatus that started in January 2016, when Qatar broke off relations after
attacks on two Saudi diplomatic facilities in Iran” (Walsh 2017). Although the govern-
ment of Qatar did not give any explicit reason for this restoration of full diplomatic
relations, a flurry of positive news emerged from Iranian media sources during the
same time period. In light of the aforementioned improved trade relations between
the two countries, one can draw a clear connection between trade and diplomacy.
Turkey and Qatar initiated a similar process to strengthen their diplomatic relations
in 2014, as detailed on the website of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Turkey enjoys deep-rooted ties of friendship and fraternity with Qatar and relations between
the two countries have been rapidly improving in all fields. While bilateral visits add a major
impetus to relations between Turkey and Qatar, both countries also closely coordinate and
cooperate on regional issues. (www.mfa.gov.tr, accessed 12 March 2020).
Throughout the first decade of the new millennium, Turkey and Qatar pursued
similar foreign policies and aligned their positions on many critical and controversial
issues. In doing so, however, they increasingly isolated themselves in the Middle East
as states challenging the status quo. This isolation, which became acute in the summer
of 2013, led the two countries to forge much stronger relations (Başkan 2016).
The Supreme Strategic Committee jointly formed by Turkey and Qatar was estab-
lished in 2014 as a bilateral mechanism for high-level dialogue and cooperation.
The first meeting of this Committee was convened in Doha on 2 December 2015,
and its second meeting took place in Trabzon on 18 December 2016 under the co-
chairmanship of President Erdoğan, and HH the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad Al-Thani. The third meeting was held in Doha on 14 November 2017, under
the same chairmanship. During these meetings, various agreements, protocols and
memoranda of understanding were signed, further strengthening Turkey’s relations
with Qatar. Over the course of the three meetings, a total of forty agreements were
signed.
Collaboration with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) constitutes another pillar
of Turkey’s bilateral relations with Qatar. In this regard, the High Level Strategic
Dialogue mechanism existing between Turkey and the GCC also provides a useful
platform for Turkey’s cooperation with Qatar on bilateral and regional issues (MFA,
n.d.). Therefore, the Turkish–Qatari diplomatic alliance has been born not from the
current blockade, but rather from prior military and trade cooperation. In Libya, both
Turkey and Qatar have supported the Islamist government of Khalifa Ghwell and the
Libya Dawn coalition since 2014 (Mezran and Varvelli 2017). It is likely that the
enhanced diplomatic and military cooperation between Turkey and Qatar is related
to the statements on the Turkish government’s website quoted above. Turkey has
been looking to expand its military presence across the Middle East, and particularly
in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea (Middle East Monitor 2018b).
In accordance with these plans, Turkey has based troops at the Al Udeid airbase
in Qatar since 2014, and increased those numbers in 2017 as the blockade began.
Although Saudi Arabia demanded that Turkey withdraw its troops from Qatar, this
is unlikely to happen. In October 2018, the then Turkish Foreign Minister Mouloud
Jawish Oglu stated, “The Turkish armed forces are deployed in Qatar under the
bilateral military and defense cooperation agreement signed between Turkey and
Qatar in 2014, long before the Gulf conflict in 2017.” He concluded, “Therefore,
there is no connection between the deployment of our military forces and the current
Gulf conflict … We believe this request is unrealistic … cooperation in the defense
industries is an important aspect of bilateral relations between Qatar and Turkey …
strengthens the military capabilities of the Qatari armed forces and contributes to the
security and stability of the Gulf region” (Middle East Monitor 2018a).
Turkey is a highly energy-dependent country, with nearly no petrochemical
resources of its own. Therefore it imports significant percentages of its oil and natural
gas energy needs from Iran, Iraq, and Qatar. Beginning in 2008, Turkey made agree-
ments to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Qatar, in an attempt to fulfill its
increasing energy needs (Martin 2009). In November 2016, the two countries signed
a deal to boost economic and political cooperation. Turkish companies have invested
an estimated $11.6 billion in Qatar, much of it connected to the 2022 FIFA World
Cup, and there are ninety-nine Turkish companies operating with Qatari partners
(Dogan 2016).
The Turkish support for Qatar translated into financial benefits as well. When
the US government levied financial sanctions against Turkey in the summer of 2018,
Qatar extended a fifteen billion dollar aid package to Turkey: “Qatar pledged to invest
$15 billion in Turkey after a lunch in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, between President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and HH the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-
Thani, representatives of both governments said” (Ewing and Gall 2018).
As relations between Turkey and Qatar strengthened, a former senior Iranian
diplomat, Nosratollah Tajik, told the press, “It could be predicted from the start that
188 R. J. Riggs
Saudi Arabia could not forge unity against Qatar. Kuwait and Oman were the most
important Arab players that did not accompany Saudi Arabia [in isolating Qatar].
Saudi Arabia wanted Iran to get involved in this situation, but we were wise and
cautious. Not to mention that Saudi Arabia’s actions have also upset Turkey, and
we can expect an overlap of interests between Tehran and Ankara” (Jafari 2017).
This overlap of shared economic and political interests between Iran and Turkey has
grown significantly since the blockade began.
Turkey and Iran have a history of cooperation and sometimes economic competi-
tion that reaches back to the founders of each modern state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
and Reza Shah Pahlavi. The two founders signed a Treaty of Friendship in Tehran on
22 April 1926 that remains in place today, and allows citizens of each country to visit
the other without a visa. Ankara has improved its relationship with Tehran through
their cooperation in combating the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and its Iranian
offshoot, the Party for Freedom and Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). In addition, Ankara
and Tehran cooperate on the import and transport of energy through pipelines from
Iran. Most importantly for Turkey’s security, it has been active diplomatically and
militarily in Baghdad and in northern Iraq (Martin 2009).
Turkish–Iranian relations have strengthened significantly since 2017, not least
because of the election of Donald Trump—an avowed opponent of the Joint Compre-
hensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement—as US president. After more
than one year of threatening to withdraw the United States from the JCPOA, on 8
May 2018 President Trump officially signed a memorandum in the White House,
withdrawing the United States from the agreement and demanding that its allies cease
purchasing Iranian oil (Landler 2018). On 24 July 2018, Turkey’s Foreign Minister,
Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, publicly resisted the US call to cut oil imports from Iran. “We
do not have to adhere to the sanctions imposed on a country by another country. We
don’t find the sanctions right either,” Çavuşoğlu said in a news conference in Azer-
baijan. “We held meetings with the United States in Ankara and told them openly:
Turkey gets oil and gas from Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Iraq. If I don’t buy from
Iran now, where am I supposed to meet that need from?” Turkey depends on imports
for almost all of its energy needs. In the first four months of 2018, Turkey bought
more than three million tons of crude oil from Iran, almost 55% of its total crude
supplies (Kucukgocmen and Gumrukcu 2018).
Relations between Qatar, Iran, and Turkey received a boost when, on 2 October
2018, the Saudi Arabian dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered inside
the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in an apparent assassination alleged to have been
directly ordered by the Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammed bin Salman (Barnes 2018).
That event has given Qatar, through Al Jazeera’s continuous coverage of the events
surrounding Khashoggi’s death, an opportunity to publicly pressure Saudi Arabia.
Simultaneously, Turkish media outlets allowed a steady flow of leaked intelligence
information implicating Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi’s killing, further increasing the
pressure. Iran, already a fervent critic of Saudi Arabia, has exploited this event
to exacerbate the rift between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Iranian censors
allowing the Iranian media to cover the event extensively (Iranian media see Saudi–
Turkey rift 2018). Essentially, the major media outlets of Qatar, Turkey, and Iran
have broadcast a common anti-Saudi message.
Conclusion
The emergence of stronger trilateral relations between Qatar, Turkey, and Iran indi-
cates an unexpected result of the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. Iran’s government
exhibited its geopolitical pragmatism in exploiting a regional rift within the GCC
to strengthen its position vis-à-vis a regional competitor, Saudi Arabia, and shored
up geopolitical support for its government in the face of increased tensions with the
United States and a tightening sanctions regime. Turkey, which had already been
projecting its military and economic power in the region since the early 1990s, took
advantage of the blockade to solidify its self-representation as an honest broker in
the Middle East. Thus, this chapter shows that Qatar’s enhanced trilateral relations
with Iran and Turkey has been both a cause and result of the blockade.
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WEB.DEF.pdf.
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Qatar-and-Bahrain-relations-have-historic-dimensions-1.
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Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books Inc.
Sharafedin B., & Potter, M. (2017). Iran Sends Planes of Food to Qatar Amid Concerns of Shortages.
Reuters. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from https://www.reuters.com/article/gulf-qatar-iran/iran-
sends-planes-of-food-to-qatar-amid-concerns-of-shortages-idUSL8N1J806M.
Tribune, F. (2018). Iran, Qatar Boosting Economic Cooperation (2018). Financial Tribune. Retrieved
November 15, 2018, from https://financialtribune.com/articles/economy-business-and-markets/
84152/iran-qatar-boosting-economic-cooperation.
Ulrichsen, K.C. (2014). Qatar and the Arab Spring: Policy Drivers and Regional Implications,
Retrieved November 7, 2018, from https://carnegieendowment.org/files/qatar_arab_spring.pdf.
Walsh, D. (2017). Qatar Restores Full Relations with Iran, Deepening Gulf Feud. The New York
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east/qatar-iran-boycott-saudi-arabia.html.
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Hostages. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 10, 2018, from https://www.washingto
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Chapter 12
Look Middle, Look East! The Future
of GCC Strategic Partnerships
Shareefa Al-Adwani
Introduction
In April 2018, the European Union (EU) concluded a Strategic Partnership Agree-
ment (SPA) with Japan, intended to deepen the ties between this international orga-
nization and its member states, and that particular country outside it. The agreement
covers cooperation on a multitude of issues of mutual interest, including energy secu-
rity, cyber-crime, and climate change, among many others. The first formal strategic
partnership initiated by the EU was with South Korea in 2010, and an agreement
with Canada soon followed in 2016 (ratified by the European Parliament in 2017).
While the EU has called the United States, Russia, Brazil, China, India, Mexico,
and South Africa strategic partners, much of the formal negotiations and paperwork
behind each of these partnerships is still underway or not yet ratified.1
These regional-organization-level negotiations and agreements are the fruit of the
EU’s plans for greater long-term regional stability, particularly as set out in the 2003
European Security Strategy.2 Perhaps this strategy of obtaining strategic partners (or
high-level strategic alliances) could be helpful for the long-term stability of other
regions, like the Arabian Peninsula. Specifically, a regional organization such as the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) may be the ideal candidate for forging strategic
partnerships.
The members of the GCC currently have long-term strategic relations with the
superpowers: the United States, China, Russia, and the EU. Recently, many of
these superpowers have been spending large amounts of their political and financial
resources on addressing their own domestic and internal dilemmas, leaving fewer
of these resources for the GCC. As such, and particularly during the ongoing 2017
Gulf Crisis and other intra–Arabian Peninsula concerns, GCC members should foster
S. Al-Adwani (B)
Department of International Relations, College of Arts and Sciences, American University of
Kuwait, Salmiya, Kuwait
e-mail: sadwani@auk.edu.kw

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_12
194 S. Al-Adwani
higher-level relations with other stable states in order to ensure continuity in areas
such as diplomacy, trade, and even security.
With which states should the GCC develop durable strategic partnerships? Which
states would be invested in encouraging peaceful political and economic relations
with and among GCC members? I advise GCC members to (1) look to middle powers
and (2) look east. Specifically, the middle-power countries of South Korea, India,
and Japan are all potentially strong allies in the long-term strategic plans of GCC
members.
In much of the international relations literature, there is substantial evidence
supporting the idea that commerce facilitates cooperation between states, and
promotes peace and stability. Thus, in order to foster GCC regional stability and
long-term strategic growth, there should be a collective interest in developing GCC-
level international partners that are invested in all the GCC states. There are existing
partners that fit this necessary condition: the top export destinations and import origin
states for trade include South Korea, India, and Japan for almost all the GCC states.
By developing strategic partnerships with these middle-power countries east of
the GCC, I contend that (1) both state-to-state and regional-organization-to-state
bilateral political, economic, and even security relations will grow; (2) there will be
a shared interest among GCC members and these middle powers to maintain and
increase stability and peace in the GCC region; and (3) the long-term partnerships
will provide a stronger and more unified “GCC voice” in alignment with key allies
for tough future GCC negotiations with superpowers.
I first discuss the literature on strategic partnerships and how the various elements
of strategic partnerships are associated with greater stability. I then apply the literature
to the GCC and, using trade data for GCC members, derive the states which are
most likely to have a large stake in GCC regional stability and are thus the most
appropriate long-term strategic partners due to interest alignment. From there, I
discuss the importance of forging GCC–middle-power-state strategic partnerships to
realize common GCC goals (relating to the Vision plans and to a common security
architecture) and to build a stronger negotiating position for the GCC in the present
and in the future.
Elements of Strategic Partnerships
Strategic Partnerships and Strategic Alliances
Neither within the international relations literature nor within diplomatic circles does
the term “strategic partnership” have a single, clear definition (Mytelka 1991; Kay
2000). In part, this could simply be because the term is not static because strategic
partnerships are not static, since partnerships evolve with ongoing negotiations
(Blanco 2016).
12 Look Middle, Look East! The Future of GCC Strategic Partnerships 195
While the term “partnership” connotes informality (Wilkins 2008), the existence
of the EU’s SPAs, among other partnership agreements, indicates that a strategic
partnership may indeed be formal. Yet strategic partnerships are not formal military
alliances, which focus on the single-issue area of military commitments between
member states vis-à-vis states external to the commitment (Snyder 1997). Instead,
strategic partnerships may—and do—address a multiplicity of issues.
Holslag (2011) presents five common characteristics of strategic partnerships,
providing a useful framework for understanding them. First, he suggests, these part-
nerships pursue common interests and expectations. Second, partnerships are built
for the long term and are goal-driven (Wilkins 2008), in contrast with short-term
ad hoc coalitions.3 The third characteristic is that they are often multidimensional,
addressing areas such as security, trade, and other political issue areas; and the fourth
is that strategic partnerships have a global range. Finally, he notes that without the
partnership, the mutual benefits may not be achievable.
Strategic partnerships that are between regional organizations and a state are
relatively rare. Since the European Security Strategy was passed in 2003, much
of the case-study work on strategic partnerships has been conducted on the EU’s
partnerships with various states (see Ferreira-Pereira and Vieira 2016, for a compre-
hensive list). There is little to no literature on other regional bodies such as the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and their strategic partnerships with single states.4
While Al Shayji (2014a) discusses a GCC–US strategic partnership, he does so
by breaking down the strategic partnership into bilateral, state-to-state relation-
ships. Other scholars who focus on these state-to-state bilateral relationships use the
term “strategic alliance” to mean “strategic partnership” (Al-Tamimi 2012, 2013; Al
Shayji 2014b). As a result, I will be using the terms “strategic alliance” and “strategic
partnership” interchangeably. Indeed, the absence of literature on GCC strategic part-
nerships is due to the fact that the GCC—as a regional unit—lacks formal strategic
partnerships with other states.
Interdependence and Stability
Trade
There is an extensive body of literature on the relationship between trade and

enhanced stability between trading partners. The logic behind the trade–stability
nexus lies in the costs of war. War can disrupt trade, which can be costly (see Oneal
and Russett 2001, for empirical support, and also Bennett and Stam 2000, for a
sophisticated and robust test, reaffirmed in Oneal et al. 2003). Thus, states engaged
in trade relationships, particularly those which trade extensively, are less likely to
enter into a dispute with one another compared to states with relatively fewer trade
ties.
196 S. Al-Adwani
While some realist scholars indicate that a potential for the asymmetric distribu-
tion of gains (and thus power) in trade may lead to conflict (Hirschman 1980; Gilpin
1981; Levy 1989; Mearsheimer 1990), other scholars disagree, noting that if the
two trading states have expectations of long-term future gains (despite these gains
being asymmetrical), trade decreases the likelihood of conflict (Copeland 2014).
The studies by Mansfield et al. (1999) and Mansfield and Pevehouse (2000) on
the relationship between trade and conflict indicate that Preferential Trade Agree-
ments discourage belligerence among the parties to such agreements. Moreover,
Maoz (2009) uses network measures to demonstrate that economic interdependence
(sensitivity interdependence) at the monadic, dyadic, and systemic levels dampens
conflict. His findings are supported by various robustness tests.
Military Cooperation
“Defense diplomacy”—or military cooperation such as exchanges of military

personnel, sending training teams from one state to another, arms sales, and military
agreements—is a tool used to attain greater stability between states. On its face, if
one country assists another militarily, there are low expectations for war between
those countries, at least in the short term. In the long term, scholars indicate that
defense diplomacy enhances stability between states.
Bilaterally, military cooperation is a common stability-enhancing tool used by
western states towards their partners (Cottey and Forster 2013). Military coopera-
tion may also work when two states do not always have the best relations, initially:
the cautious military cooperation between China and Russia has reduced military
tensions between the two states over time (Tsai 2003). Military cooperation within
regional organizations has also increased regional stability among its members:
defense diplomacy among ASEAN members has increased regional stability (Laks-
mana 2012), as has NATO’s cooperation with post-communist states, several of
which later became members (Cottey and Forster 2013). The defense diplomacy
between two regional organizations—the EU and NATO—is highlighted in the 2003
European Security Strategy.
There has been less exploration of defense diplomacy between regional organiza-
tions and single states in the international relations literature. De Luca (2013) offers
an in-depth discussion of France’s military cooperation with GCC states, which was
undertaken on a state-to-state bilateral level to enhance stability in the GCC as a
region. For De Luca, state-to-state defense diplomacy is associated with “state-to-
region” diplomacy. Fürtig (2004) encourages greater cooperation efforts by European
states, suggesting that the EU as a unit (rather than as single states) should coordinate
with the GCC to a much larger extent.
Diplomatic/Political Cooperation
Some issue areas do not fall neatly into one type of cooperation, and thus “diplomatic
cooperation” and “political cooperation” have been used to mean multiple processes
and/or are catch-all concepts for multiple-issue areas. Some scholars use the term
“political cooperation” to mean cooperation among regional organization members
(EU: Salmon 1992; Schneider and Cederman 1994; Harstad 2007, ASEAN: Snit-
wongse 1998; Cockerham 2010; Wong 2012, GCC: Ryan 1998; Baabood 2003) or
expansion of these regional organizations (Smith 1998; Sandholtz and Sweet 1998).
For Fürtig (2004), “political cooperation” indicates at least both military and
economic cooperation. Other issue areas may include cybersecurity, refugees, human
security, education, technology, science, and the environment. When there are
multiple issues, “political cooperation” is used by both scholars (Partrick 2011;
Antkiewicz and Momani 2009) and policy makers. The European Commission’s own
website uses the term “political cooperation” when describing its SPAs, negotiations,
and other multiple-issue area agreements with South Korea.5
“Diplomatic cooperation” is similar to “political cooperation” in that it is often
used as a catch-all phrase.6 For most scholars, diplomatic cooperation indicates
discussions between representatives of states on a multitude of topics, such as security
(Medeiros 2005) and trade (Pollins 1989), among others (Sun 2012).
The relationship between political/diplomatic cooperation and stability is critical.
Global issues such as epidemics, crime, terrorism, refugees, and pollution all require
multiple levels of cooperation to solve. Pollins (1989) uses a game-theory model and
empirical analyses to indicate that greater diplomatic cooperation increases bilat-
eral trade, thus increasing the stability of relations between states (Antkiewicz and
Momani 2009). Medeiros (2005) indicates that diplomatic cooperation is used as a
tool to increase the stability of relations between states, or, at minimum, decrease
rising tensions (Ikenberry 2011).
Strategic Partnerships and Stability for the GCC
The literature, taken collectively, suggests that cooperation and bilateral agreements
at the levels of security, trade, and politico-diplomatic exchange—all of which are
elements of strategic partnerships—are closely associated with increased/maintained
stability between the two actors. These two actors may be states or regional orga-
nizations. Studies utilizing network analyses support this claim: states with similar
international ties (security, trade, IGO-based political relations) are less likely to be
involved in conflict with each other, and states with trade ties and diplomatic ties
(IGO-based relations) are also less likely to get involved in conflict (Maoz et al.
2006). Additionally, and as the 2003 European Security Strategy for the EU clari-
fies, policy-makers agree that SPAs are a priority for current and long-term stability
between the regional organization and other states.
198 S. Al-Adwani
GCC Integration and Stability
Indeed, the willingness of states to establish a regional organization for greater inte-
gration across issue areas is in itself powerful evidence of the desire to increase
or maintain stability within the region. When the Gulf Cooperation Council was
founded in 1981, this was done, in part, to collectively counter-balance other states
in the region (Khaleq 1999). Efforts and plans to further integrate the GCC countries
have been discussed, including the deepening of (1) security ties, such as the 1986
establishment of Desert Shield, the 2000 GCC Joint Defense Agreement (framework
for a defense pact), and the 2009 GCC summit agreement to create a joint force; (2)
economic ties, such as the 1981 Joint Economic Agreement, the 2003 establishment
of a Customs Union (operating as of 2015, according to The Economist), and the 2008
plans for a Common Market and Economic Nationality; and (3) infrastructural ties,
including discussions on a common electrical grid, with the energy derived perhaps
through peaceful nuclear energy, and the introduction of the states’ various Vision
plans.7 These discussions, plans, and agreements for deeper integration of various
issue areas and institutions are associated with shared common goals, particularly
regional stability (Magen 2006; Regilme 2011).
Thus, it may be concluded that:
1. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates had
and have plans for the GCC’s increased integration, in part for the sake of regional
stability.
2. One way for a regional organization to establish regional stability is through
strategic partnerships.
Instability and the GCC
At this time, both exogenous and endogenous processes and situations threaten the
stability of the GCC. Internally, the organization is experiencing a rift between its
members with the ongoing 2017 Gulf crisis. In the region, various neighboring
states are failing (Yemen), are attempting to re-stabilize (Iraq), or are at negotiation
roadblocks with various regional powers and superpowers (Iran).
Internationally, previously stable superpower states with which GCC members
engage bilaterally on security, trade, and political issues are experiencing their own
internal/external struggles. The superpower partner states that are most critical to
the region’s security—the United States, China, Russia, and the EU—are spending
more of their political and financial resources on addressing their own issues, leaving
fewer resources for the GCC. The United States has been spending twice as much as
it receives through taxation, increasing the deficit by sixty percent (McGregor 2018);
the EU has spent much of its political capital attempting to resolve Brexit with the UK;
while Russia’s recent acquisitions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea, along
with its politico-military campaigns in Syria, are all costly ventures. China’s slowing
economic growth and the impact of its trade wars with the US (Hancock 2018),
along with holding an estimated one million Uyghurs in re-education camps (Senate
Report No. DAV18G88 2018), has been costly for its internal political resources.
The preoccupation of the superpowers with these internal and external issues may
indicate a level of unreliability and unavailability to the GCC, both in the present
and in the future. As such, and particularly during the ongoing Gulf crisis, GCC
members should foster relations with other stable states in order to ensure continuity
and stability in areas such as diplomacy, trade, and even security.
With whom should the GCC—as a regional organization—forge new strategic
partnerships? Put simply, the GCC should forge new strategic partnerships with
states that have an interest in the region’s stability and that possess the capabilities to
achieve that goal. In order to specify which states in particular have this interest, aside
from the superpowers, it may be useful to observe with which states GCC members
are separately establishing lower-level agreements, particularly trade agreements.
Table 12.1 lists the top export destinations and import origins of each GCC member
in 2016, just before the 2017 Gulf crisis. All country names are abbreviated using
the Correlates of War state abbreviations (2019) and the data is from the World Bank
(2019).
If trade partners from fellow GCC states and the superpowers are removed from
this list, we observe the following, as set out in Table 12.2.
In excluding the superpowers and other GCC states, we find Japan, South Korea,
and India consistently located in the top five importers and exporters of the GCC
states. The only slight exception is Bahrain, for which South Korea is only the sixth
largest export destination. This initial ranking of these middle-power states indicates
a rough balance of trade between the GCC state and each middle-power state (rather
than, for example, evidence of one-sided assistance). Thus, the GCC members all
have strong bilateral trade ties with India, Japan, and South Korea, three middle-
power states located east of the GCC. Please refer to Table 12.3 for the trade values
in USD.
Table 12.3 indicates the amount of trade (imports and exports) each GCC state
undertakes with each middle-power state. For many of these GCC states, the “bal-
ance” of trade is relatively close. States that have roughly equal stakes in the economic
success of one another are more likely to have relatively higher stakes in the overall
stability and success of their partner state, compared to states that have a very
large imbalance of trade8 with one another. Japan and South Korea, in particular,
as energy-dependent states, benefit greatly from secure access to energy exporters.9
Moreover, the stability of trade does not only rely on a state’s internal economic
success, but also requires its territorial integrity. Put simply, conflict disrupts trade
(Anderton and Carter 2001; Hegre et al. 2010). Many studies have indicated that
the greatest threat to a state is a neighboring state (Wallensteen 1981; Singer 1990;
Vasquez 1995). Singer (1990), using the Correlates of War database, found that over
80% of interstate wars were between neighbors. Spolaore and Wacziarg (2016) add
that populations close in proximity and close in genealogy (like the citizens of the
GCC states) are more likely to be involved in a dispute. In sum, immediate threats
to GCC stability include both other GCC states and states neighboring GCC states.
200
Table 12.1 2016 Top import and top export destinations for each GCC member (World Bank Data 2019)
BAH TID BAH TED KUW TID KUW TED OMA TID OMA TED QAT TID QAT TED SAU TID SAU TED UAE TID UAE TED
1 CHN SAU CHN ROK UAE CHN USA JPN CHN CHN CHN IND
2 USA UAE US CHN JPN UAE UAE ROK USA JPN USA SWZ
3 UAE JPN UAE IND CHN ROK CHN IND GMY IND IND JPN
4 SAU US JPN JPN US JPN FRN CHN UAE US GMY CHN
5 JPN IND GMY US IND IND UK SIN JPN ROK JPN OMA
6 IND CHN SAU SIN SAU US GMY UAE ROK SIN SAU IRN
7 AUL QAT IND UAE GMY SAU JPN THI UK UAE ROK SAU
8 UK ETH ROK EGY ITA IRQ SAU UK IND FRN TUR ROK
9 GMY THI ITA ETH IRN YEM IND EGY ITA SPN HK SIN
10 ITA KUW AUL ITA ROK QAT ITA USA FRN JOR MAL PAK
TID Top Import Destinations
TED Top Export Destinations
S. Al-Adwani
Table 12.2 2016 top import and top export destinations for each GCC member, excluding superpowers and other GCC members (World Bank Data 2019)
BAH TID BAH TED* KUW TID KUW TED OMA TID OMA TED QAT TID QAT TED SAU TID SAU TED UAE TID UAE TED
1 JPN JPN JPN ROK JPN ROK JPN JPN JPN JPN IND IND
2 IND IND IND IND IND JPN IND ROK ROK IND JPN SWZ
3 AUL ETH ROK JPN IRN IND ROK IND IND ROK ROK JPN
4 BRA THI AUL SIN ROK IRQ TUR SIN TUR SIN TUR IRN
5 ROK MAL THI EGY THI YEM AUL THI BRA JOR H.K ROK
*Bahrain TED 6th place: ROK
12 Look Middle, Look East! The Future of GCC Strategic Partnerships
201
202
Table 12.3 2016 Top import and top export destinations and amounts for each GCC member, excluding superpowers and other GCC members (World Bank
Data 2019)
BAH TID* BAH TED KUW TID KUW TED OMA TID OMA TED QAT TID QAT TED SAU TID SAU TED UAE TID UAE TED
IND 544 M 580 M 1.66 B 3.87 B 1.36 B 1.22 B 1.14 B 7.36 B 5.18 B 17.2 B 15.5 B 18.4B
JPN 908 M 981 M 1.98 B 3.81 B 2.59 B 1.59 B 1.88 B 10.3 B 6.04 B 17.5 B 9.2 B 15.7B
ROK 237 M 251 M 1.49 B 6.51 B 576 M 2.1 B 722 M 9.5 B 5.94 B 14.3 B 2.7 B 6.36B
*Amounts in USD (B = billion, M = million)
S. Al-Adwani
The tables and discussion above yield several conclusions:

1. The GCC as a region may count India, Japan, and South Korea—three middle-
power states—among its top trading partners.
2. States with a balance of trade with one another have higher stakes in the overall
stability and success of their partner state compared to states that have an
imbalance of trade with one another.
3. The GCC region’s top trading partners have a stake in the stability of the region
and thus a desire to decrease the probability of conflict both within and among
the GCC states.
4. One way to enhance the stability of the region is to integrate the GCC further by
establishing GCC strategic partners.
5. The best candidates for the GCC’s regional strategic partnership agreements at
this time are India, Japan, and South Korea.
Look Middle, Look East!
The member states of the GCC should all maintain their established and growing
bilateral ties with the superpowers—I do not argue that there should be any large
changes to these relationships. In the unstable political climate, if a GCC state were to
suddenly invest in deeper political, economic, and military-related ties with one of the
superpowers, it may be interpreted as an alignment choice by other superpowers and
regional actors. Those actions—while perhaps intended to stabilize the region—may
in fact destabilize a GCC state or the GCC region, as the sudden alliance choice may
upset the slow-changing power balance among the superpowers. These relationships
with superpowers should be maintained and allowed to evolve naturally.
Yet the recent political situations in which the superpowers are embroiled have
created a need for the GCC to expand its other ties for purposes of stability in trade,
security, and political relations. Moreover, with respect to the 2017 Gulf Crisis and
with other instabilities in the West Asian region, there is an immediate need for
trustworthy, stable partners. The most useful partners to the GCC would be states
that have a stake in the stability of the GCC region. In this kind of partnership,
an unstable GCC region would upset the partner state’s own interests, and thus the
partner would be more likely to take part in actions and agreements to maintain the
stability of the region. In part, because the six members of the GCC all have strong
trade ties with the middle-power states of India, South Korea, and Japan, located
east of the GCC, these three may be the best states with which to forge strategic
partnerships.
204 S. Al-Adwani
Begin with the Visions
The GCC–Japan, GCC–India, and GCC–South Korea strategic partnerships may find
their foundations in the unified goals of the GCC Vision plans. In general, common
goals of the GCC Vision plans include:
• Diversification of the economy.
• Revitalization and expansion of the private sector.
• Reduction of reliance on the government.
• Greater government efficiency.
• Building human capital educated for the future economic sector.
• Establishing a healthy society through renewed focus on healthcare.
• Creating infrastructure for new programs, organizations, firms, and processes.
• Creating infrastructure for communication and transportation.
• Sustainability, in energy and in environment sectors.
Taken collectively, these Vision plans forecast great state transformations for the
GCC, particularly in the economic sectors.
The three middle powers have some experience with their own state transforma-
tions. Japan’s economy collapsed after World War II, but subsequently grew into one
of the largest economies of the world, after the United States and China (Barboza
2010). South Korea’s process of transformation from one of the poorest states in
the world to one of the richest has not slowed despite the recent recession in the
first decade of the new millennium (Kleiner 2001; Rosser and Rosser 2011). India,
one of the world’s largest economies, surpassed China in its economic growth in
2018 (Stacey 2018). Moreover, many of these transformations occurred under a
mixed economy, rather than a highly capitalist economy. The GCC states, placing
great importance on social welfare, may receive useful governance advice from these
middle powers that did not simply mimic Western economic liberalism and privatiza-
tion, but instead adapted these systems to their own framework. In both state-to-state
and GCC-to-state relationships, these middle-power state partners have the potential
to provide great economic and political benefit to the GCC region.
At the time of writing, there have already been some bilateral negotiations on
Vision-related contracts and other agreements between these middle powers and
each GCC state. A brief listing of these may be helpful. In the case of Saudi Arabia,
40 contracts related to its Vision plan have been signed with South Korea (Khan
2018). The Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia has encouraged skilled Indian engi-
neers to take advantage of the opportunities in the Vision plan (Arab News 2018).
Japan is moving towards a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia, outlined in a
framework called “Saudi–Japan Vision 2030.” For Bahrain, expansion of ties in
trade, infrastructure, and security with South Korea is already underway (Hyun-woo
2017). For Kuwait, lower-level trade and infrastructure agreements with Japan are
in alignment with Kuwait’s Vision plan (Peter 2018). South Korea currently has
several large contract agreements in Kuwait and has stated, through its ambassador,
that its companies may be valuable partners to Kuwait in Kuwait’s future plans
(Arab Times 2018). Oman and South Korea have plans to sign a Memorandum of
Understanding to cooperate in building “smart cities” in Oman (Times of Oman
2018). Japan and Oman have begun stronger discussion about economic ties and
projects (Al-Lawati 2018). South Korean companies operating in Qatar are expected
to increase in number to contribute to various aspects of Qatar’s Vision plan (Gulf
Times 2018). The UAE and India have underscored their technological and scientific
opportunities as they fit into the UAE’s Vision plan (Kapoor 2017). Japan’s Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe and HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued a
joint statement on deepening their strategic partnership (Joint Statement 2018). South
Korea and the UAE recently completed the UAE’s first nuclear reactor, part of the
plan for energy diversification (The National 2018).
Thus, it may not be too difficult and will be less costly to integrate the current
bilateral relationships with these middle powers into one GCC strategic partnership
agreement per middle power. A useful example of an integrated plan may be the
development of the GCC Interconnection Authority (GCC Power Grid Authority),
under whose responsibility both inter- and intra-regional energy trading will take
place. The development of this regional body is not only less costly in the long
term for GCC states, but may also be a revenue-generating institution (Al-Asaad
et al. 2006). In large-scale projects such as these, the middle powers may prove to be
valuable in terms of planning, infrastructure, technology, and construction, providing
benefits for all state participants.
Collective Security Architecture
Establishing a collective security architecture would also be less costly. The GCC
has multiple shared security concerns: terrorism, cybersecurity, unstable and failed
neighbor states, and the possibility of a nuclear weapon in the region. Currently,
responses to regional crises, threats, and concerns are state-centric (and thus very
costly) and the strategic and tactical variation in the responses implies disagreement
on how to best address concerns. Yet the overall security goals of the GCC are not
dissimilar, and thus may prove to be a useful starting point. These goals include:
• Maintaining a secure trade route, particularly for energy exports.
• Reducing and eliminating the funding of terrorism 1989 FATF.10
• The development of cybersecurity for critical public and private sector institutions
(Economist Intelligence Unit 2018).
• The stabilization of unstable and failed neighboring states (GCC initiative) (Toumi
2018; KUNA 2003).
• The region becoming free from weapons of mass destruction (UNODA 2013).
While members of the GCC have consulted with superpowers—both on a state-to-
state level and at a regional organization level—on how best to achieve these goals, the
negotiations have not yet provided clear and successful solutions. Instead, the middle-
power states may provide fresh perspectives on how to achieve these goals through the
206 S. Al-Adwani
provision of new ideas (planning, strategies, and tactics) and the provision of human,
technological, and infrastructural capital. India has outlined its security engagement
with GCC members as one that is “non-descriptive, non-intrusive, non-judgmental
and not taking sides in intra-regional disputes” (Roy-Chaudry 2018) in its pursuit of
joint security goals such as combating cyber-terrorism and terrorist funding. GCC
leaders have acknowledged that Japan plays an important role in its trade security
(MEI 2015), and South Korea has taken a more active role in the security of the GCC
region with discussions on training and weapons trade (Seo 2018). The middle-
power states have indicated their willingness and capability to engage the GCC on
security- and defense-related issues. By building a collective security architecture in
coordination with the middle powers, the GCC could ameliorate security concerns
through incrementalism and multilateralism.
Current Partners, Future Benefits
Developing these strategic partners now may also offer greater benefits in the future.
The results of recent actions by the superpowers towards the GCC have highlighted
the GCC’s current weaker bargaining position; from demands for lower oil prices
to the GCC members not receiving invitations to the negotiating table for the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, the GCC has had to endure high pressures and disre-
gard from the superpowers in rapid cycles. Forming strong political partnerships with
the middle-power states will enhance the unity, stability, and position of the GCC,
and a stronger GCC, along with these new allies, may possess greater bargaining
power in its negotiations with superpowers. At the very least, the level of multilater-
alism provides greater diplomatic legitimacy and may allow for a greater respect for
the unified “GCC voice” in international politics.
Conclusion
It is already evident in observing the bilateral state-to-state relations and agreements

that all six GCC states are willing to forge stronger ties with these three middle-
power states. All of these state-to-state ties, be they trade, security, and/or political,
are associated with the longer-term stability of the parties involved.
I have argued that these state-to-state ties may be taken to another level and
formalized for regional stability: the GCC as a regional organization should make an
effort to forge regional-organization-to-state strategic partnerships with the middle
powers of India, Japan, and South Korea. All three states have economic, security,
and political stakes in the GCC, and thus would prove to be trustworthy long-term
partners for a stable GCC through those shared interests.
The long-term partnerships would yield several benefits to the GCC. First, the
GCC states would be unified through aligning their goals and working together to
fulfill the common Vision plans and security concerns. Secondly, the GCC as a
region would benefit from longer-term stability. Finally, the unity and stability of the
GCC would enhance the collective bargaining power of the regional organization by
framing negotiations as between a regional organization and the negotiating state.
Thus, superpowers and other regional actors would bargain with the GCC as a unit—a
more powerful negotiating entity than any single GCC state.
These findings are important to the policy-making world. For the policy-makers,
the discussion underscores and supports much of the strategic partnership rhetoric
with evidence from international relations literature. I draw a clear path for GCC
members by discussing which states the GCC should conclude SPAs with, on which
issues the SPAs should focus, and why the SPAs are beneficial to the GCC as a region
both in the medium and in the longer term.
Notes
1. As of November 2018.
2. A document that includes discussion of the EU’s plan for strategic partnerships.
See EU Memorandum (2004).
3. See Pierre (2002), for an excellent discussion of coalitions.
4. There exists a general framework for the EU’s “Strategic Partnership with
the Mediterranean and Middle East,” but nothing specifically on GCC–EU
strategic partnerships, in part because it has been cheap enough for the individual
countries on both sides to maintain bilateral relations (Nonneman 2007).
5. See https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/south-
korea/.
6. There is a small body of literature that confines diplomatic cooperation to
the realm of coordination at the level of diplomats, including the training of
diplomats, postings, etc. (Bale 2002).
7. Bahrain Economic Vision 2030, Kuwait Vision 2035, Oman Vision 2040, Qatar
National Vision 2030, Saudi Vision 2030, UAE Vision 2021.
8. Such as a trade surplus or a positive balance, or a trade deficit or a negative
balance.
9. India also relies on the GCC states for much of its imported energy.
10. The GCC as an organization is a member of the Financial Action Task Force
(FATF), an institution that combats the funding of terrorists.
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Chapter 13
The Malaysia–Qatar Relationship: The
Perspective from Malaysia—An
Emerging Middle Power
Ishtiaq Hossain and Syaza Farhana Mohamad Shukri
The premise of this study is that Malaysia is an emerging middle power. Malaysia’s
relationship with Qatar, therefore, should be understood through the lens of the
foreign policy behavior of an emerging middle power within an international envi-
ronment which is undergoing rapid changes, as well as a domestic context in Malaysia
which has also seen major shifts to its political order following the General Election
(GE-14) held in May 2018. The GE-14 results ended the 61-year coalition rule of
political parties known as the Barisan Nasional (the National Front, BN), in favor of
another coalition of political parties popularly known as Pakatan Harapan (the Coali-
tion of Hope, PH). Following the GE-14, in terms of foreign policy Malaysia has
mostly continued the previous government’s foreign policy directions; for example,
prioritizing relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
states and the Muslim world. However, it should be noted that, where necessary, the
PH government has adjusted its relationship with states like China, Japan, Russia, the
Middle Eastern nations, and the United States. The domestic political changes have
affected Malaysia’s relations with other countries as a result of the different ideolog-
ical commitments of the new cohort of leaders. The drive to fight the white-collar
corruption associated with some members of the previous government led by Najib
Tun Razak, was likely to affect Malaysia’s relationship with countries like China and
Saudi Arabia, with whom it has had close ties under Najib.
Among many factors, President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and the
US–China trade wars have contributed towards upsetting the liberal world order.
The world is now watching the rise of populism in the form of religious extremism,
I. Hossain (B)
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, International Islamic University Malaysia
(IIUM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
e-mail: ihossain@iium.edu.my; ishtiaq.hossain@gmail.com
S. F. M. Shukri
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, International Islamic University Malaysia
(IIUM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_13
212 I. Hossain and S. F. M. Shukri
Islamophobia, and even fascism in various parts of the world. Unfortunately, rather
than combating these dangerous ideas, political leaders in Europe and elsewhere now
understand very well that populism, not policy, has become the vote-getter. For the
sake of winning domestic elections, some countries seek to stir up their citizens at
the expense of the delicate balance of the international system. The consequence
of these developments is a much more fragile international system and an unstable
world order, wherein countries may seek to find political strength in bilateral relations
rather than multilateralism. This phenomenon does not augur well for the future of
the world. Like other members of the international system, Malaysia has to grapple
with this new challenge.
The US–China tit-for-tat trade wars have had an especially deleterious impact,
slowing down the economy not just in the United States and China but in the rest of
the world as well. President Trump’s accusation that China undertook unfair trading
practices that have supposedly hurt the American economy is his justification for
the United States’ tariffs on US$34 billion worth of Chinese goods in July 2018,
following the new tariffs on goods in early 2018 that did not specifically target
China. The two countries have attempted negotiations to end the trade wars, but
have failed to bring the dispute to a conclusion. On the other hand, future additional
tariffs by the United States would mean that all Chinese imports to the United States
would be subject to tariffs. As a result of the trade wars, economic growth has seen
a dampened outlook and the stock market has been unstable. However, Malaysia
is seeing a modest positive impact from its semiconductors manufacturing sector
(Subbaraman et al. 2019). Although it is for everyone’s benefit for the trade wars
to end, Malaysia might also be able to withstand this challenge by leveraging its
relationship with other countries, including Qatar.
The chapter is divided into seven sections. The next two sections discuss the justi-
fication for the study and offer a definition of an emerging middle power, followed
by an analysis of Malaysia’s foreign policy behavior as an emerging middle power.
The sections after that provide a brief literature review, a discussion of the contem-
porary international order, and an account of the domestic political changes and the
new foreign policy in Malaysia, which affects Malaysia’s relationship with Qatar.
The final section is devoted to a discussion of steps that may be taken to further
strengthen Malaysia’s trade and economic relationships with Qatar.
Justification for the Study
On 5 June 2017 the ministries of foreign affairs in Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and United Arab Emirates (UAE) issued coordinated statements announcing the
severing of diplomatic relations with Qatar. Saudi Arabia then shut its land borders
with Qatar and, together with three other countries, imposed a land, sea, and air
embargo on the Gulf country. This is a fatal blow to the unity of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC)—one of the most successful regional organizations in the world,
and, perhaps most significantly, the most successful regional organization entirely
13 The Malaysia–Qatar Relationship: The Perspective from Malaysia … 213
composed of Muslim-majority states. This blockade by a group of Muslim-majority

states on another Muslim state created ripples across the Islamic world. Other Muslim
countries were in a quandary over which side to take, and Malaysia was no exception.
Traditionally, Malaysia has always maintained good, friendly relations with the Arab
countries in the Middle East, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Although there are
many studies on Malaysia’s foreign policy,1 studies on Malaysia’s foreign policy
specifically as an emerging middle power are almost non-existent. In particular,
nothing exists on Malaysia’s relations as an emerging middle power with the countries
of the Middle East, with special reference to Qatar. This study, in that sense, is a
pioneering work.
Emerging Middle Powers, and the Foreign Policy Behavior

of Malaysia as an Emerging Middle Power
The concept of a middle power is not new. For a long time it has been used to describe
a wide variety of countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian states,
and New Zealand. Critical commentators have viewed middle powers as little more
than status-seekers: they are seen as powers that do not qualify for a place in the ranks
of the great powers, but which are unwilling to be classified with the “mediocre rest”
and seek alternative roles to exercise leadership (Flemes 2007). Malaysia, meanwhile,
is considered to be “emerging,” and therefore as not yet having reached the status
of a middle power to join the ranks of developed countries. Nevertheless, Malaysia
under the new PH leadership is more committed than ever to embracing its role as an
emerging middle power. In launching Malaysia’s new foreign policy framework on
18 September 2019 with a theme of “Change in Continuity,” Mahathir introduced a
framework that will see Malaysia “participating actively” (The Star Online 2019a, b)
especially in areas where Malaysia has traditionally been vocal, such as ASEAN and
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Moreover, Malaysia hopes to take a
more active role in influencing the great powers because, as discussed earlier, there
is an apparent lack of respect for multilateralism and international agreements in
the current international system, with the likes of unilateral sanctions and unilateral
revocation of special status by populist governments taking place.
By definition, emerging middle powers belong to the developing world. These
states may not be as militarily powerful as the great powers, but possess sufficient
military and economic capability to be considered key states within their respective
regions. Like other actors in the international system, emerging middle powers would
also like to influence international relations. They seek to do so by playing the role of
a mediator in international disputes. Instead of using military force, emerging middle
powers support the settling of international disputes by peaceful means, preferably
by multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. These states have high regard
for international law and norms, but where these laws and norms are violated, middle
powers will sometimes support the use of force against the perpetrators—as Malaysia
did in 1991 when it supported the Security Council in authorizing the use of force
to drive Iraqi military forces from Kuwait. The emerging middle powers are also
interested in trading. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, Jordaan (2003) argued
that a number of new states, which he identified as “emerging middle powers,” had
appeared in international affairs. He named the following as belonging to this new
category of emerging middle powers: Argentina, Malaysia, and South Africa.2
As an emerging middle power, then, Malaysia’s foreign policy behavior is marked
by the following features:
1. Non-use of military power in solving international disputes.
2. Recourse to the application of international law in solving international disputes.
3. Non-interference in domestic affairs of other countries.3
4. Developing South–South cooperation, especially developing technical coopera-
tion.
5. Expanding Malaysia’s international trade relationship.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1974, Malaysia and Qatar have
enjoyed a strong economic and trade relationship, despite the special relationship
between the respective leaders of Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. In an October 2017 visit
to Malaysia, the Emir of Qatar HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani was assured
of Putrajaya’s continued good relations with Doha. During the visit, the bilateral
ties between the two countries were strengthened with the signing of memoranda
of understanding in judicial cooperation, diplomacy, and education. ASEAN, of
which Malaysia is a core member, views the blockade of Qatar as a grave threat
to its economic interests, rather than as representing a beneficial counter-terrorism
measure. Economic ties, therefore, were at the top of the agenda during HH Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani’s visit to Malaysia. Following the visit, Qatar Airways
announced its plan to run direct flights from Qatar to Penang, a famous tourist
destination in the northern part of Malaysia. Moreover, Malaysia’s call for calm,
and its appeal for international actors to help end the dispute, shows the country’s
rising role as an emerging middle power.
Literature Review
This brief literature review is divided into two parts. The first part provides a general
overview of the literature available on the foreign policies of middle powers and
emerging middle powers, while the second part provides an overview of studies on
Malaysia’s relations with the Middle East, in particular with Qatar. Despite the fact
that the concept of middle power has been widely discussed by scholars of Inter-
national Relations (Wight 2005),4 some scholars remain skeptical of the concept of
emerging middle power (Jordaan 2017). In spite of this skepticism, there is never-
theless a wide range of studies on the foreign policies of emerging middle powers.
Scholars such as Öniş and Kutlay (2017), Black and Hornsby (2016), Schoeman
(2000), Balla (2012) Macdonald and Paltiel (2016), and Lee (2016) have devoted
attention to studying the foreign policies of a number of states dubbed either “tradi-
tional middle powers” or emerging middle powers, such as Australia, Canada, South
Africa, Turkey, Portugal, Norway, South Korea, and Sweden. These states are defined
as “traditional middle powers” because, as Chapnick (2006) argues, they have inter-
mediate influence in world politics. In other words, these states are powers that are
neither small nor great; yet these states do enjoy certain amount of international
influence.
Economically, Malaysia may not qualify as a “traditional” middle power, but due
to its foreign policy, which continues to champion the plight of smaller states region-
ally and globally, it is fair to consider Malaysia as an emerging middle power. Ping
(2005) has written a volume on middle powers and uses Indonesia and Malaysia as
comparative case studies to test his proposed hybridization theory. Another relevant
work is by Nossal and Stubbs (1997), which argues that even though statistically
Malaysia is not a middle power, it is an emerging middle power because it had begun
to act as one during Prime Minister Mahathir’s first tenure. They identify two reasons
behind Malaysia’s becoming an emerging middle power in the late 1980s: Firstly,
other countries looked at Malaysia’s extraordinary growth rate since 1988 with awe,
and wished to emulate the success. Secondly, Mahathir played a significant role in
becoming the voice for the unheard, with his focus on Malaysia’s foreign policy
after reigning in the domestic opposition in the 1980s. As is evident from the above-
mentioned research, very little work has been done that focuses on Malaysia as an
emerging middle power. This paper aims to fill that gap in the literature.
A number of academic books and articles have focused on Malaysia’s foreign
policy. These works deal with a wide variety of issues, from the role of Islam in
the country’s foreign policy to the nature of diplomatic relations between Malaysia
and other states, including the Middle East. But no academic studies deal specifi-
cally with the Malaysia–Qatar relationship in the way this study seeks to do. Some
commentaries have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in both Malaysia
and Qatar; however, these cannot be considered academic in nature. Nevertheless,
there is one exception to this rule: this is Thaib’s (2019) work on the evolution
of Malaysia’s diplomatic relations with West Asian states, with special mention of
Qatar. This study contains a wealth of information which is absolutely crucial for
this paper.
The Contemporary International Situation
What is the nature of the contemporary international situation that both Malaysia
and Qatar face? It is well described by a section of a report recently released by the
London-based Institute of International and Strategic Studies:
In 2018, the fraying of key international and regional institutions, the dissipation of the so-
called “rules-based order,” the boldness of China and Russia, the persistence of intractable
regional conflicts and the unpredictable leadership of the United States were some of the
dominant themes in commentary and debate about the international situation (Strategic
Survey 2018).
The discord among the G-20 member-states in Buenos Aires, Argentina, clearly
indicated that the liberal international order, which had upheld the multilateral trading
system in operation since 1947, is under serious threat from the very country that
used to champion that cause—the United States. The unstable world order forces
a country such as Malaysia to take a more proactive role, and thus has thrust the
country into becoming an emerging middle power.
The Economist (2017) recently remarked that
the rules-based international order that emerged from the wreckage of the Second World War
was a huge improvement on any preceding era. It stimulated trade on an unprecedented scale
and allowed even relatively small and weak countries to develop their potential without fear
of predatory interference. At the heart of that order was an underlying principle that perpe-
trators of aggressive war should not be rewarded. In particular, any territorial gains which
derived from their aggression would not be recognized by the international community as
being legitimate. Instead, aggressors should be subjected to punishment—usually economic
sanctions. Occasionally, concerted military action approved by the United Nations (UN)
forced them to relinquish what they had illegally seized.
Yet the liberal international order is under attack from various quarters. Notably,
Donald Trump’s “America First” policy explicitly repudiates it; for the first time
since the 1930s, the United States’ voters have elected a president who is actively
hostile to liberal internationalism. Trade, alliances, international law, multilateralism,
environment, torture, and human rights—on all these issues, President Trump has
made statements that, if acted upon, would effectively bring to an end America’s role
as leader of the liberal world order.
Simultaneously, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU), and a
myriad other troubles besetting Europe, appear to mark an end to the long post-
war project of building a greater union. The uncertainties of Europe, as the quiet
bulwark of the wider liberal international order, have global significance. In 2019
the United Kingdom gained a new prime minister in the person of Boris Johnson;
similar to President Trump, Johnson is a man who shoots from the hip. Liberal
democracy itself appears to be in retreat as varieties of “new authoritarianism” rise
to new salience in countries such as Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and Turkey.
Across the liberal democratic world, populist, nationalist, and xenophobic strands of
“backlash” politics have proliferated (Ikenberry 2018).
This is but one indication of the discord in the contemporary international liberal
order. Such developments do not help countries like Malaysia and Qatar, whose
economies flourish only with a multilateral trading system. The “America First”
policy of President Donald Trump has contributed to the current state of uncertainty
in international affairs. His refusal to clearly condemn right-wing hate groups has
encouraged the development of white supremacist groups in the United States and
elsewhere. It can also be argued that such ideas have contributed to the development
of right-wing populism in a number of European states and elsewhere. Trump’s
strong dislike for multilateralism has led to the renegotiation of NAFTA; in addition,
the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has
created problems for a country like Malaysia. President Trump’s open disdain for
and withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Change Treaty pushes
countries like Malaysia and Qatar one step closer to the mercy of climate change.
Perhaps more serious is his threat to withdraw the United States from the World
Trade Organization (WTO). These and many other factors bringing about changes
in the contemporary international system need close monitoring and analysis.
Besides the ongoing volatility in the West, closer to Qatar the Middle East is
also facing a challenging time amid rising geopolitical tension. In the span of a
few months, there were exploding tankers and drones being shot down over the
Strait of Hurmuz, on top of the resumption of sanctions on Iran. In the early hours
of 14 September 2019, the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility, in Saudi
Arabia, was attacked by drones. Saudi Arabia has said that the attack would reduce
the production of oil to half of its capacity. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen
claimed responsibility for the attack, but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted
on putting the blame on the Iranian government (Denning 2019). On a wider global
context, this tension within the region, especially between the United States, Saudi
Arabia, and Iran, can only be bad news for emerging middle powers. Malaysia
condemned the attacks and called for dialogue and diplomacy to ease the tension
and to avoid further conflict that might jeopardize peace and stability in the region
(Kanna 2019).
Changes in the Domestic Political Context of Malaysia
Changes in the domestic political order may leave their imprint on a country’s foreign
policy, and Malaysia is no exception to this rule. The slogan Malaysia Baharu, or
“New Malaysia,” following the victory of PH in the GE-14, galvanized popular senti-
ment in Malaysia. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s emphasis on the establish-
ment of rule of law, good governance, fighting corruption, and pursuing the corrupt
officials responsible for the infamous 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)
financial scandal, received wholehearted support from the people. As mentioned
earlier, in terms of foreign policy the new Mahathir-led administration does not
diverge too much from the previous administration—while the Najib administration
was criticized for favoring Chinese investors coming into the country, the current
government has honored deals brokered by the Najib administration. Perhaps it is
fair to say that in addition to China, Mahathir has returned to his comfort zone by
promoting further ties with Japan.5
Chinese investment into Malaysia has steadily risen since Chinese President Xi
Jinping came to power in 2012. After a trip to China in November 2016, Malaysian
Prime Minister Najib Razak returned with over $34 billion in deals largely oriented
around infrastructure development (Global Risks Insight 2018). Najib’s return was
met with both optimism and concern. The optimism stemmed from the benefits
that such infrastructure developments could potentially bring, whereas the concern
stemmed from the growing Chinese influence in Malaysia. At the center of these
investments is the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative, an ambitious plan to
increase regional connectivity and enhance Chinese soft power.
As part of the initiative, China has been supporting infrastructure development
along the old Silk Road between Europe and China as well as in Southeast Asia. The
East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), a $13 billion rail line, is a prime example: financed
with an 85% loan from the China Exim Bank, the rail line will connect the prosperous
west coast of the Malaysian peninsula and its relatively undeveloped east coast. The
line will ultimately run from Port Klang on the west coast of the Malaysian peninsula
to Kuantan Port on the east, and then up to the north-eastern corner of Malaysia. The
ECRL, however, will have a limited capacity. It is estimated that 53 million tons of
cargo will use the ECRL annually by 2040, less than 10% of what currently passes
through Singapore. Furthermore, the viability of such a route is limited by the logistics
of unloading and reloading cargo in order to use the ECRL. Taking all these facts into
consideration, the new PH government initially cancelled the project, but following
Prime Minister Mahathir’s visit to China in August 2018, both governments decided
instead to postpone the ECRL. As Malhi (2018) argues, these developments indicate
that the Malaysian election result is not a sign that the new government will repudiate
China, but rather represents a change in the basis on which Malaysia might mount
arguments for repudiating debts incurred by former prime minister Najib Razak.
Another example of the close relation between Malaysia and China is the develop-
ment of Iskandar Malaysia as the southern economic growth corridor of the country.
Beginning in 2006, the development of Iskandar Malaysia fell under the responsibility
of the Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA). The development required
foreign investment, and since 2006 the top foreign investors into the region have been
from China. Therefore, there were a lot of misleading headlines during the time of
ex-prime minister Najib Razak over the increasing number of Chinese investors
buying properties in Johor, which would supposedly threaten the racial balance of
the country. However, since the change in government this rhetoric has died down,
and now it is accepted that if Malaysia is to develop, the government cannot ignore
the financial resources offered by China. From 2016 until 2018, RM90.51 billion,
or 38% of total cumulative committed investment, has come from foreign investors,
with China leading the list. According to the CEO of IRDA, investment in the region
has led to the creation of 740,000 jobs. This is in line with the prime minister’s
emphasis that Chinese investors should focus on technology transfer and bringing
with them new factories that would benefit the people of Johor (Today 2018).
Malaysia’s relationship with Saudi Arabia also came under the spotlight during
the administration of Najib Razak. The first issue was the alleged involvement of
a Saudi company in the 1MDB scandal, in which $4.5 billion were alleged to have
been siphoned off. The case is still ongoing in the Malaysian court, but in a twist of
events, in October 2018 the then foreign minister of Saudi Arabia Adel Ahmed Al-
Jubeir denied that $673 million had been transferred by a Saudi prince into Najib’s
bank account. The second issue was the proposal for the withdrawal of a small
contingent of Malaysian troops from the Saudi-sponsored Islamic Military Counter
Terrorism Coalition (IMTCC). In 2015, when Saudi Arabia formed the IMTCC under
then Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman, Malaysia was caught off-guard by
its inclusion. Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein maintained that

Malaysia would support the initiative but stopped short of committing any military
presence to fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen (BBC 2015). However, in the same
year, Prime Minister Najib sent Malaysian troops to the kingdom to assist the evacua-
tion of Malaysian nationals in Yemen. The inclusion of Malaysia into this coalition is
a symbolic gesture at the close relationship between Malaysia and the Gulf region. But
after PH defeated BN in the 2018 election, the PH government’s Defense Minister
Haji Mohamad bin Sabu, commonly known as Mat Sabu, in a 2018 commentary
suggesting a potential Malaysian re-alignment of its Middle Eastern relationships,
noted that Saudi wrath has been directed “oddly, [at] Turkey, Qatar, and Iran … three
countries that have undertaken some modicum of political and economic reforms.
Instead of encouraging all sides to work together, Saudi Arabia has gone on an
offensive in Yemen, too. Therein the danger posed to Malaysia: if Malaysia is too
close to Saudi Arabia, Putrajaya would be asked to choose a side” (Dorsey n.a.).
The third issue was Malaysia’s decision not to go ahead with plans to set up the
King Salman Centre for International Peace (KSCIP) in Putrajaya—the adminis-
trative capital of Malaysia. During King Salman Abdul Aziz’s visit to Malaysia
in 2017, Prime Minister Najib announced that the government would allocate 16
hectares of land for this purpose. However, Mat Sabu announced in August 2018
that the center would immediately cease operations and its operations be absorbed
into the Malaysian Institute of Defense and Security, further straining the relationship
between Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
The State of the Malaysia–Qatar Relationship
The state of the Malaysia–Qatar bilateral relationship is good and has withstood
the changing nature of the international and regional orders in the Middle East and
Southeast Asia. The relationship between these two countries has developed due
to a number of factors, for example, shared political stability in both countries,
economic progress, and their image as progressive Muslim counties relative to other
Muslim countries that have a more conservative and fundamentalist view on domestic
and foreign policies. Malaysia and Qatar are touted as socially and economically
progressive, with vibrant and modern societies that are wholly supportive of growth
and development. Thus, Malaysia has attracted a lot of attention from many countries
in the Middle East as the gateway to further their investments in Southeast Asia. Qatar
is no exception.
In 1974, Malaysia and Qatar set up diplomatic relations on the basis of non-
resident representation. Following this, the relationship between the two countries
developed rapidly, which in 2004 led the two sides to upgrade their diplomatic rela-
tionship to resident embassy level. Since then, the relationship between Qatar and
Malaysia has been developing steadily at the political, cultural, and more impor-
tantly at the economic and trade level. In fact, in 2013, US$5 billion was invested in
the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex in Johor by Qatar Holding, which
is a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority. Furthermore, Qatar Holding

acquired companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. The attractive-
ness of Malaysia is helping the country to become an influential emerging middle
power that may have the ability to sway decisions by the great powers.
The following two reasons account for the steady improvement in the relationship
between Malaysia and Qatar. The first reason is explained by Thaib (2019) in the
following way: “As an active member in NAM and OIC, both Malaysia and Qatar
have enjoyed similarities in views and stand on foreign political issues, especially
with their ‘moderate foreign policy’ approach towards providing a peaceful resolution
to the conflicting parties in the Muslim world.” The second reason is their mutual
interest in expanding their trade and economic linkages. Malaysia needs foreign direct
investment, especially now that the government finds itself facing a mountain of debt
left behind by the previous administration. Although the current PH government
is also looking at Japan as a possible source of investment, Malaysia’s interest in
countries like Qatar cannot be overstated, due to the massive financial reserves of
the country with assets totaling US$320 billion,6 making it among the wealthiest
nations. Qatar, on the other hand, which is facing an economic blockade, would also
like to diversify its economic and trade relations with ASEAN states like Malaysia.
One of the initiatives taken by the Qatar Financial Centre is to develop a close
relationship with Malaysia and Turkey so as to become global hubs in the Islamic
finance market (Stott 2018). Due to the blockade, international companies in Dubai
have started to pour into Doha so as to reach this isolated Gulf country. These and other
factors which contribute to the growing healthy and mutually beneficial trade and
economic relationship between the two countries, also stand in need of monitoring
and discussion.
Furthering Malaysia’s Economic and Trade Relations

with Qatar
Total bilateral trade between Malaysia and Qatar in 2017 was valued at US$672.24
million, an increase of 18.6 percent compared to the total trade in 2016 (US$566.62
million). In 2017, Qatar was Malaysia’s 39th largest trading partner, 56th largest
export destination, and 34th largest import source. Among major Malaysian exports
to Qatar in 2017 were processed foods, machinery, equipment and parts, electrical and
electronic products, metal and palm oil, and palm-based agriculture products. The oil
and gas industry remained the main import from Qatar for 2017, with total imports
valued at US$263.86 million according to Ambassador Fadil. More recently, from
January until April 2019 (Q1), trade volume between the two countries was valued
at US$130 million (Gulf Times 2019). During that period, Malaysia experienced
a 19% increase in exports to Qatar, with jewelry leading the list of export goods.
Qatar, on the other hand, continues to export oil to Malaysia. The growth of bilateral
trade between Malaysia and Qatar remains promising, with development projects
under the Qatar National Vision 2030 in addition to the ongoing preparations for
the 2022FIFA World Cup. The strong relationship would be manifested further in
October 2019 with a Trade and Investment Mission by the Malaysian Minister of
International Trade and Industry to Doha, including 40 participants from various
economic sectors. It should be emphasized that Doha-based Malaysian development
and construction companies continue to participate and increase their operations.
Malaysia has shown keen interest in further deepening economic and trade rela-
tions with Qatar. The Malaysian government believes that the private sector should
play a positive role in developing the Malaysia–Qatar economic and trade relation-
ship. We can say with confidence that Malaysian companies highly welcome the
establishment of partnerships with Qatari companies. Like Malaysia, over the years
Qatar has also shown keen interest in enhancing co-operation between the countries’
private sectors in the fields of trade, investment, technology and services, and other
economic fields. During a visit by the Malaysian Investment Development Authority
(MIDA) to Doha in June 2019, a board member of the Qatar Chamber, Mohamed
bin Ahmed al-Obaidli, stated that Malaysia is considered one of the most important
economic destinations for the Gulf country. Qatari businessmen are eager to explore
the investment opportunities available in the Malaysian market, and especially in
Islamic banking, given Malaysia’s years-long expertise in developing the sector. In
addition, private equity from Qatar is expected to invest up to US$3.1 billion in
Lahad Datu in the state of Sabah (The Malaysian Reserve 2019), and is looking to
fund the development of the Sabah Palm Oil Industry Cluster (POIC), which would
be the largest investment in the state. At the end of 2018 there was even a rumor that
a Qatari individual was interested in investing in Prime Minister Mahathir’s third
national car project (Bernama 2018). Although the project has been awarded to a
Malaysian firm, Entrepreneur Development Minister Redzuan Yusof acknowledged
that an individual from Qatar is interested in investing US$400 billion worldwide,
including in Malaysia, even if not necessarily for the national car project.
With the aim of improving ties between the private sectors of both countries, offi-
cials of the Qatar Chamber, the Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia (MCCM),
and the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (NCCIM) signed
agreements on the sidelines of the Malaysia–Qatar Economic Forum in Kuala
Lumpur on 16 October 2017. The joint business council will collate the neces-
sary information on the economies of both countries, which will enhance bilat-
eral investments. The council will also submit recommendations on how to develop
economic and trade cooperation between the Qatari and Malaysian governments
and to encourage businessmen from both countries to participate in exhibitions
organized in Qatar or Malaysia. Developing cooperation and increasing Malaysia’s
international trade are two signs of the country being an emerging middle power.
Conclusion
Malaysia’s relationship with Qatar is good, although there is room for further cooper-
ation especially in the fields of science, technology, culture, and aviation. The Qatar
Development Fund has taken a positive step in this direction with the setting up of the
Qatar Charity office in Kuala Lumpur in August 2019, to focus on health, education,
and skills training for Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. Besides charitable linkages,
private investors in Qatar should also be encouraged to invest more in Malaysia’s
health and hospitality sectors.
HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir and Deputy Prime Minister of
Qatar, arrived in Malaysia for a working visit on 6 December 2018. It was his second
visit to Malaysia, his first having been in October 2017. It was viewed by the Gulf
Times (2018) as “a clear expression of the depth of the relationship between the two
countries.” Qatar, which is hosting the World Cup in 2022, has given the thumbs-
up to Malaysia’s economy and welcomes the participation of Malaysian companies
in development projects, particularly infrastructure. Besides economy and trade, on
which the two nations agree that ties should be increased several notches, Malaysia
and Qatar also want to see an end to conflicts in the Muslim world. The Malaysia–
Qatar relationship is based on the principles of mutual respect for the sovereignty of
states, non-interference in internal affairs, and the establishment of the best possible
relations between them. In other words, Malaysia is indeed playing a role as an
emerging middle power.
Our discussions in this paper have shown that Malaysia and Qatar are ready to
upgrade their cooperation in various sectors, especially in trade and investment.
During his December 2018 visit to Malaysia, Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman Al-Thani committed himself to
continuing discussions and dialogue in areas of investment and enhancing economic
cooperation, including encouraging more Malaysian companies to come to Doha.
“We are confident that the Malaysian economy is going to grow, especially with the
visions that we have heard from the Prime Minister (Dr. Mahathir Mohamad),” he
told reporters after the meetings between the two countries in Putrajaya (New Straits
Times 2018). Sheikh Mohammed said that Qatar encouraged Malaysian companies
to come to Doha and to participate in the development sector, especially in terms of
the infrastructure projects that were ongoing for the upcoming World Cup in 2022,
and beyond.
Notes
1. Resources on the foreign policy of Malaysia include the following: Karminder
Singh Dhillon, Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Mahathir Era 1981–2003:
Dilemmas of Development (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009); Ishtiaq Hossain, “For-
eign Policy,” in Abdul Rashid Moten, Government and Politics in Malaysia
(Singapore: Cengage, 2013), pp. 413–452; Muhammad Ben Muda, “Malaysia
at 50: Malaysia’s Foreign Policy and the Commonwealth Revisited,” The Round
Table, Vol. 97, No. 394, pp. 121–135; Johan Sarvanamuttu, “Malaysia’s Foreign
Policy in the Mahathir Period, 1981–1995: An Iconoclast Come to Rule,” Asian

Journal of Political Science, Vol. 4, No. 1 (June, 1996), pp. 1–15; Alan Chong &
K. S. Balakrishnan, “Intellectual Iconoclasm as Modernizing Foreign Policy: the
Cases of Mahathir bin Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew,” The Pacific Review, https://
doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2015.1013496; Sean Foley, “The Orientalizing of the
Gulf: The GCC and Southeast Asia,” Middle East Policy, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter,
2012), pp. 77–87; Khadijah Md. Khalid, “Malaysia’s Foreign Policy under
Najib,” Asian Survey, Vol. 51, No. 3 (May/June 2011), pp. 429–452; Cheng-
Chwee Kuik, “Malaysia’s US Policy Under Najib: Structural and Domestic
Sources of a Small State’s Strategy,’ Asian Security, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2013),
pp. 143–164.
2. For details, see Eduard Jordaan, “The Concept of a Middle Power in International
Relations: Distinguishing between Emerging and Traditional Middle Powers.”.
3. Perhaps the only exception is the case of the Rohingya crisis. It is no exaggeration
to say that Malaysia is the only ASEAN member-state which has consistently
criticized Myanmar, a fellow ASEAN-member state, for their inhumane treat-
ment of the Rohingya Muslim minority living in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. In
an unprecedented move, the Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad
under the Pakatan Harapan government (2018–2020) admonished Aung San Su
Kuyi for remaining silent on the issue.
4. See Martin Wight, Power Politics, (1978); John Hobson, The States and
International Relations.
5. Following the historic win by PH in 2018, Mahathir’s first trip abroad was to
Japan in June 2018.
6. This is an estimation of assets owned by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA)
by the US-based Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. The data is available at the
website of the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, https://www.swfinstitute.org/pro
file/598cdaa60124e9fd2d05bc5a, accessed 2 April 2020.
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Part IV
Foreign Policy Dynamics in a Post-GCC
Era
Chapter 14
Competing Radicalisms: A Comparison
of Saudi and Iranian Foreign Policies
After 2015
Mahjoob Zweiri and Majed Al-Ansari
On 5 June 2017, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt initi-
ated a blockade on the state of Qatar. While many justifications were offered for
the blockade, the blockading countries, led by Saudi Arabia, focused on Qatar’s
relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, the initial falsified statements
attributed to HH the Emir of Qatar, which were publicized through a hack of the
Qatar National News Agency1 and then used as pretext for the blockade, had heavily
focused on praising Iran. Furthermore, when the Saudi-led bloc issued its list of thir-
teen demands, the first two required that Qatar sever its ties with Iran and Iranian-
linked groups in the region such as Hezbollah2 ; and although Qatar maintained that
it did not have a special relationship with Iran, Saudi Arabia continued to pressure
Qatar to decrease its interactions with the republic. Iran, on the other hand, utilized
the rift in the Gulf Cooperation Council to further its foreign policy towards the
coastal states of the Gulf and especially Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman, pulling them
further from the Saudi sphere of influence.
The foreign policies of both Iran and Saudi Arabia had shifted significantly in
2015. On 14 July 2015, Iran signed a comprehensive nuclear agreement with the
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which was widely
expected to facilitate Iran’s reentry into the international community.3 Saudi Arabia,
meanwhile, had undergone a significant power transition following the death of King
Abdullah bin Abdulaziz on 23 January 2015. The political costs associated with
1 For more details, see: https://www.trtworld.com/mea/hackers-target-qatar-s-state-owned-news-
agency-7246.
2 For more on the demands, see: https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/qatar/what-are-the-13-demands-
given-to-qatar-1.2048118.
3 The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed on 14 July 2015, between Iran and
the P5 + 1: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, plus Germany.
M. Zweiri (B) · M. Al-Ansari

e-mail: mzweiri@qu.edu.qa

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_14
230 M. Zweiri and M. Al-Ansari
some of their subsequent decisions have had negative impacts on their foreign policy
conduct, national interests, and global image. Whereas Iran’s global engagement
efforts initially improved its image around the world, Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen
and its ambitious foreign policy arguably damaged the kingdom’s standing within
the international community.
The application of rational choice theory and the rational actor model can shed
light on the role of rationality in the foreign policy decision-making of the two
countries. Moreover, comparative analysis of the foreign policy of Iran and Saudi
Arabia since 2015 reveals differences in their policies towards regional conflicts, the
Trump administration, and their relations with other countries around the world.
Rational Choice Theory and the Rational Actor Model
The rational actor model has its roots in Adam Smith’s microeconomic principles,
which assess the behavior of the individual in furthering his or her perceived inter-
ests by calculating the opportunity costs associated with any particular decision
(Monroe 2001). The rational actor model focuses on the “actor,” whereas rational
choice theory, as an overarching theoretical framework, looks at the entirety of the
decision-making process rather than only the actions themselves. Both processes are
important for understanding international affairs and politics; however, their usage is
not interchangeable, but depends on the political system that exists in the state under
investigation. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, foreign policy decision-making often rests
in the hands of a single actor: the leader or the monarch. The process of carrying out
the action is handled by various institutional mechanisms responsible for executing
and implementing decisions. These institutional mechanisms are more robust in the
system of governance in Iran than in Saudi Arabia, but the ways in which they are
utilized are often selective, depending on the policy in question. Nevertheless, it is
important to differentiate how these two states adhere to or depart from the basic
tenets of rationality as defined by these theories. Moreover, any given case offers an
opportunity to explore the ways in which self-interests, defining goals, analyses of
available information, and cost–benefit calculations of risks and rewards are pursued
(Euben 1995).
Monroe (1995) argues that seven key assumptions underpin the rational actor
model: (1) actors pursue goals; (2) these goals reflect the actors’ perceived self-
interest; (3) behavior results from a process of conscious choice; (4) the individual
is the basic actor in society; (5) actors have preference orderings that are consistent
and stable; (6) in considering options, actors choose the alternative with the highest
expected utility; and (7) actors possess extensive information about the available
alternatives and the likely consequences of their choices. This model of a “rational
actor” matches the processes widely believed to be available in Western democracies:
thus, particular issues arise when considering the individuals in power in autocratic
states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. Leaders in the West pursue what they believe
will advance their self-interest, but institutional decision-making mechanisms also
14 Competing Radicalisms: A Comparison of Saudi and Iranian … 231
assure the validity and viability of the cost–benefit calculus of any particular action
and its implication for national interests. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, however, such
“checks” on the leader’s goals are relatively muted or entirely absent. Although some
of the principles of the rational actor model may apply, other aspects do not pertain in
Iran and Saudi Arabia. The following sections briefly explain the role of rationality
in foreign policy decision-making in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia.
The Rationality Factor in the Foreign Policy of the Islamic

Republic of Iran
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, rationality in foreign policy decision-making is

formulated differently than rational choice theory would suggest. Since 1979, Iran
and its foreign policy have been guided by the principles that shaped the revolution
and the Islamic Republic that emerged from it. The revolutionary zeal, the ideology
of Khomeini, and the concept of Velayat-e Faqih, as well as the objection to imperial
and Western domination, set the framework for Iran’s decision-making principles.
These principles run counter to the assumptions of rational choice theory, particu-
larly in terms of the cost–benefit analysis of national interest. As Mortazavi (2004)
argues, “Iranians, unlike the United States, do not use a cost–benefit analysis to
make decisions.” Especially in the early days of the Islamic Republic, the leadership
was first and foremost concerned with restoring a sense of national dignity “at any
economic cost.” Mortazavi (2004) explains that the choice to hold fifty-two Ameri-
cans as hostages had significant economic costs for Iran, thus concluding that “the
rational choice model was not used in making its decisions.”
Iran’s revolutionary ideology has shaped its foreign policy for some four decades
since the Islamic revolution, and the ideology of Khomeini persists even thirty
years after his death. As Takeyh (2012) contends, Iran continues to be committed to
Khomeini’s worldview. Iran thus differs from other revolutionary states, including
China and Vietnam, which eventually evolved beyond the ideology and guidance of
revolutionary leaders to fall more in line with the Western-led international system.
There is little doubt that Iran is a revisionist revolutionary state keen on challenging
the status quo of American domination in global politics and countering its influence
in the Middle East. Revisionist powers, according to Combes (2011–12), are funda-
mentally committed to remodeling the international system to better serve their “own
benefit and interests.” These benefits and interests may not follow the principles of
rational choice theory; and in Iran’s case the leaders may attempt to advance Iran’s
regional and international standing at any cost and without considering the principal
tenets of rationality in foreign policy decision-making.
In their political language, American policymakers according to Euben (1995)
have “long reflected the conviction that fundamentalist Iran is the embodiment of
the irrational.” The West sees Iran as “a nation of potential martyrs fueled not by
rational self-interest, but by ‘fanatical’ subservience to God and primal anti-Western

hatreds.” Consider statements by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for
example, insisting that Iranians are “apocalyptic” and arguing against viewing the
country’s leaders as rational (Zakaria 2015). Other Israeli officials, such as Moshe
Ya’alon, the former defense minister, have also characterized the Iranian government
as a “messianic and apocalyptic regime.” On the other hand, scholars such as Barrett
(2011) argue that “apocalyptic messianism does not drive Iranian policy” and, in his
words, “the driver is the geopolitical situation and how Iran perceives its interests.”
Rationality is defined by Iran itself as advancing perceived national interests, with
little regard for cost–benefit calculations. For example, General Martin Dempsey, the
former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, views Iran as a
“rational actor” when it comes to its calculations on the nuclear issue (Singh 2012).
Likewise, another former US general has asserted that Iran is “obviously” a rational
actor, arguing that “just because you don’t agree with somebody, doesn’t make them
an irrational actor (Gabreyes 2015). This perspective allows for the broadening of
rational choice theory, such that all seven attributes set forth by Monroe can be
adapted on a case-by-case basis.
John Mearsheimer, a notable realist, claims that rational actors are cognizant of
their “external environment” and are focused on “how to maximize their prospects
for survival” (Mearsheimer 2009). However, he also argues that rational actors in the
international system are prone to miscalculations, due to the fact that they are forced to
make consequential decisions based on “imperfect information,” or because domestic
politics distorts the decision-making calculus of leaders (Mearsheimer 2009).
During the transition of power from Khomeini to Khamenei in 1989, a decade
after the revolution, Iranian leaders moved away from a purely ideological foreign
policy modus operandi towards a more pragmatic and professional approach. While
it is true that Iran’s foreign policy is driven by the Supreme Leader alone, partic-
ularly so during the leadership of Khomeini, the office of the president has been
an important influencer and is the ultimate authority in implementing these policies.
Furthermore, the different foreign policy approaches of Iranian presidents can best be
explained by a comparative analysis of rationality in the foreign policies of Khatami
and Ahmadinejad as well as Ahmadinejad and Rouhani. As Shabani and Rouhi
explain, the decision-making process in Iran “resembles a pentagon, rather than a
pyramid,” constituting a complex process that incorporates the varying worldviews
of the different presidents and the implications of their often dissimilar approaches
(Shabani and Rouhi 2013).
The costs of Iran’s decisions in the early years of the Islamic Republic included
its estrangement from the oft-utilized international frameworks and platforms for
political and economic cooperation. Yet in recent years the Islamic Republic has
pursued a more pragmatic foreign policy that factors in the tenets of the rational actor
model. Even though Iran’s direct involvement in Syria and its indirect interference in
Bahrain and Yemen have had severe political and economic repercussions, its pursuit
of a nuclear agreement with world powers and direct negotiations with the United
States demonstrate a slight shift in its foreign policy decision-making. The economic
costs of engaging in Syria were acceptable for Iran’s regime, but the socio-political
costs of its involvement have seriously damaged its regional and international foreign
policy objectives. Thus, as has become clear in the years since the signing of the
nuclear agreement, Iran’s regional policies, particularly with regard to Syria, have
continued to limit its global engagement efforts and have become key factors in the
Trump administration’s policies with regard to Iran.
The Rationality Factor in the Foreign Policy of the Kingdom

of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia and Iran were the twin pillars of US policy in the Middle East until
1979. After the Iranian Revolution and its resultant adoption of an anti-American
stance, Saudi Arabia was quick to further its standing as the sole US partner in the
Gulf. Since then the kingdom has managed to pursue its foreign policy with the
strong backing of every US administration, while expanding its relations regionally
and globally. The conflict between Iran and the United States, coupled with the vast
increase in oil production and revenues from Saudi exports, allowed the kingdom
to pursue a largely rational foreign policy for decades with strong support from the
United States and other Western governments.
Saudi Arabia’s overarching foreign policy doctrine, according to Prince Turki al-
Faisal, rests on external security and energy security: “external security involves
[Saudi] affairs with other nations,” while energy security encompasses “overall
energy production policy as it is designed to maintain stable global energy markets.”
The prince asserts that “in all these areas Islam is central (Al Faisal 2013).” Beyond
this official formulation, Karim argues that Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy goals
include “expanding regional influence to counter threats against territorial integrity,
as well as containing supra-state ideologies that can threaten or question the legit-
imacy of the Saudi regime” (Karim 2017). Omni-balancing between internal and
external threats has been a key guiding policy, and when there is a need “to counter
an internal threat, support has been sought from external resources, and if an external
threat becomes menacing, internal unity and legitimacy have been used to counter
it” (Karim 2017). Domestic and foreign policies are often linked in Saudi Arabia,
and the rationality of decision-making must be viewed within this context.
Furthermore, foreign policy decision-making is largely a family matter in Saudi
Arabia. Faisal bin Abdulaziz served as the Saudi foreign minister from 1930 until
1960, then again from 1962 until 1975, when for the last eleven years he was also the
king of Saudi Arabia. Additionally, from 1975 until 2015, the foreign ministry was
in the hands of his son, Saud bin Faisal. Thus, for more than eighty years, the foreign
ministry of Saudi Arabia was run by a father and son who shaped the country’s
international affairs under the direct guidance of the monarch.
During the rule of King Faisal, the system of governance was a mix of absolute
power of the monarch as well as a variant of power-sharing among his brothers.
Within this context, the king was “primus inter pares among his brothers and half-
brothers” (Karim 2017). These unique factors require that Saudi Arabia’s foreign
policy be analyzed using both a leader-centric (or family-centric) model and a reac-
tionary framework with regard to regional events. Combining the two can better
explain the rationality (or irrationality) of decision-making within the ruling Al-Saud
family.
Soon after the Iranian Revolution and the start of the war between Iran and Iraq,
Saudi Arabia embarked on its most rational foreign policy quest, forming the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) with five of its Arab neighbors in 1981. Although oil
prices were significantly lower than in the previous decade, King Fahad, along with
other GCC rulers, spent billions supporting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his war against
Iran, to stop what was widely perceived as Iran’s attempts to export the revolution
around the region. Saudi support for Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran was rational
and succeeded in stopping Iran from pursuing expansionist policies in the region,
but the policy backfired when Saddam Hussein turned against the GCC and invaded
Kuwait in 1990. Because self-reliance in defense and security matters was not a viable
option for protecting the country against external threats, the invasion of Kuwait was
a clear sign that Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries needed to depend heavily on
the United States for their internal and external security. As Allen argues, Saddam’s
invasion of Kuwait “exposed the ineffectiveness of Saudi’s costly defenses and Fahad
had to accept American help to the dismay of his critics at home” (Allen 2005).
Although the choice to invite American patronage to help protect the country
from external threats was rational, the policy came at a heavy cost. Allen states
that “the presence of foreign ‘infidels’ on Saudi territory helped turn some Saudis
into virulent, anti-monarchist militants (Allen 2005).” This negative outcome can
be viewed in tandem with the calculated assistance offered to the Mujahideen in
Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979. For Saudi Arabia, the goal was
to stop the Soviet Union from supporting Arab and Muslim “progressives” and at
the same time win the approval of the United States through a joint partnership
supporting the Mujahideen. This action bolstered Saudi Arabia’s soft power as the
protector of the faith and burnished Saudi Arabia’s reputation throughout the Islamic
world. Yet although the decision to support the Mujahedin was viewed as rational at
first, the consequences were dire. Having unintentionally assisted the radicalization
of large segments of the fighters, Saudi policy motivated the subsequent actions by
Osama bin Laden and extremists alike. The lack of a clear approach to mitigate these
issues seriously hampered the country’s internal and external security. A new foreign
policy approach was needed.
First as crown prince and later as king, Abdullah pursued a more pragmatic and
rational foreign policy in reaction to geopolitical shifts in the 1990s as well as the
September 11 attacks in the United States. Abdullah believed that “Saudis cannot
remain the same while the world changes” (Ataman 2017). Among his initiatives
was a new push to engage diplomatically with Iran and move towards resuming and
expanding bilateral relations. For example, Abdullah visited Iran in December 1997
as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, to participate in the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC) Summit that was held in Tehran—the first official interaction
between the two countries on Iranian soil. The goal was to advance mutual interests.
Following these rational interactions, King Fahad stated during a speech in 1999 that
enhancing relations with Iran and strengthening relations with the Islamic Republic
was not just in the interest of the Arab states of the Gulf, but also in the interest of the
Islamic world at large (Masry 2016). In unison, Khamenei also pushed for expanding
cooperative relations with Saudi Arabia. These interactions led to the signing of
various agreements between the two countries in 2000, including on security and anti-
terrorism (Eltahawy 1999). These short-lived engagement efforts by Saudi Arabia and
Iran were among the most rational foreign policy decisions made by both countries in
recent decades; these new policies had the potential to significantly decrease regional
tensions as well as alter threat perceptions that entailed heavy economic costs. Yet the
continuous regional and international tumult—including the September 11 attacks,
the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the Arab uprisings—pulled Iran and Saudi Arabia
gradually away from one another.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the reformulation of Saudi regional poli-
cies so as to check Iran in its attempts to expand its sphere of influence. In addition,
Iran’s backing of Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia’s support for the Mustaghbal party,
as opposing groups within Lebanon, had a significant impact on the deterioration of
relations between the kingdom and the Islamic Republic. With the start of the Arab
uprisings in 2011, King Abdullah was forced to adapt his foreign policy approach
to meet the urgent need for stability in the Gulf region. Protests in Bahrain, Oman,
and even the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia pushed the king to act. The Saudi
government intervened in Bahrain “to save its ally” and demonstrate that “instability
in the GCC is a red line for the Saudis” (Karim 2017). In the terms of rationality, the
intervention was a well-calculated move that bolstered Saudi Arabia’s internal and
external security while also protecting an important neighboring ally. Such bold-
ness inspired the idea that Saudi Arabia could exert its force in other arenas as
well, including in Egypt, to support ruling authoritarian governments and inhibit the
success of revolutionary movements.
When King Salman came to power in 2015, however, he significantly altered the
mostly rational decision-making processes established by his predecessors. Salman
gave significant powers to his son, Muhammad, first as prince and then as crown
prince, as well as to a group of mostly young and inexperienced princes whose wide-
ranging initiatives have drastically altered Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy (Ataman
2017). According to Karim, “Saudi foreign policy is gradually evolving from being
cautious and calculated to more assertive and ambitious.” King Salman’s approach
“posits the kingdom as the main power defending political interests in the Sunni
Arab world” (Karim 2017). This evolution in foreign policy decision-making has
seemingly led to more irrational choices than sound and logical ones. This change
can be ascribed to the fact that the traditional, more consultative system of decision-
making, which resulted in a pragmatic, cautious, and non-interventionist foreign
policy, is viewed by the current rulership as inefficient and insufficient to address the
immediate issues and concerns of the kingdom. Under the rulership of King Salman
and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, foreign policy decision-making is now
more rapid, centralized, and exclusive, leading to an increase in miscalculations and

irrational choices (Karim 2017).
Comparative Analysis of the Foreign Policy of Iran

and Saudi Arabia Since 2015
In the 1980s and 90s, Iran was widely seen as irrational, whereas Saudi Arabia, in
comparison, was viewed as a rational actor in the region. When Iran was expanding its
adventurist foreign policy, Saudi Arabia was relatively unobtrusive. While Iran was
viewed as a threat to regional security in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia was considered the
protector of regional and international security interests. Today, however, these facts
have changed. While Iran’s foreign policy has remained more or less the same, only
with an increase in the diplomatic and economic measures meant to constructively
engage the international community, Saudi Arabia is now regarded as an irrational
actor. Adventurism has taken over its foreign policy, and regional and international
fears have been raised in response to its destabilizing actions.
Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the United States, the United Kingdom, France,
China, Russia, plus Germany and the European Union, concluded with an agreement
in July 2015 that has had a significant impact on the geopolitics in the Gulf, as well
as on regional and international relations, and more specifically on Saudi Arabia’s
foreign policy. The fear that a rapprochement between Iran and the United States
will affect the latter’s relationships with its traditional allies and partners, as well as
change the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor, has unsettled Saudi Arabia. As
Aras and Yorulmazlar (2014) argue, the Iranian–American détente was “perceived
by most of the region’s leaders as a major threat to the existing regional power
equations.” According to Kusch, other leaders “don’t want Iran as a player in the
JCPOA have contributed to rising tensions between Iran and at least three member
states of the GCC, most notably Saudi Arabia.
On 2 January 2016, while preparations for the implementation of the nuclear
agreement were underway in Iran, and at a time when the Islamic Republic was
keen on diplomatically engaging the GCC countries in a post-crisis era, Saudi Arabia
executed a prominent Shi’a cleric. As Karim argues, this action in Saudi Arabia linked
domestic security with foreign policy, because the “Saudi leadership clearly meant
to signal that any political attempt to destabilize the Kingdom would be handled
with severity regardless of the political repercussions” (Karim 2017). In response,
groups of angry protesters ransacked the empty Saudi embassy in Tehran and its
consulate in the city of Mashhad (Iran Newspaper 2017). This event led the Saudis
cut all diplomatic, commercial, and travel ties with the Islamic Republic and initiate
a campaign to convince all regional and international countries to follow suit (Wilkin
2016). Resentment against Iran increased and “generated a fervent backing for the
Saudi regime in its endeavor” (Karim 2017).
Regional Conflicts
Saudi Arabia under the de facto leadership of Mohammad bin Salman has embarked
on an ambitious, provocative, and assertive quest to change domestic and foreign
policies. As the defense minister and deputy crown prince, bin Salman orchestrated
the war in Yemen, an undertaking that was at first believed would conclude in a few
short weeks, but in fact has been on-going for more than four years. The irrationality
of this military engagement can be ascribed to miscalculations that resulted from
limited experience and incompetent or non-existent advisors. Within the context
of rational choice theory, which emphasizes the mental process and the subjective
limitations of an agent’s ability to decide rather than the outcome of the decision-
making process, bin Salman aimed at achieving relative “satisfaction” rather than at
“maximizing utility” (Euben 1995). If a cost–benefit calculus of risks and rewards
were weighed and evaluated with respect to the specified goal of protecting the
administration of Mansour Hadi, in keeping with the core tenets of the rational actor
model, it would have been clear that the choice to go to war had a much lower ranking
than any other strategic option.
The importance of the internal dynamics between Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates should also not be underestimated. That Muhammad bin Salman and
Muhammad bin Zayed were effectively the deciding actors in initiating the military
campaign soon after the transition of power in Saudi Arabia, proves the relevance of
the relationship. The war was supposed to showcase bin Salman as a strong military
figure and a protector of Saudi national security; indeed, he banked on this outcome,
so took a bold move to combat what was framed as Iranian incursions on Saudi
Arabia’s doorstep. Bin Zayed’s role as a brotherly advisor to bin Salman further
augmented the crown prince’s image in this regard.
The war in Yemen has aggravated economic and financial challenges in Saudi
Arabia at a time when oil prices have significantly decreased and the country is
implementing a wide-ranging economic diversification strategy as well as infras-
tructure development plans. One estimate suggests that Saudi Arabia spent US$5
billion in the first twenty months of its Yemen campaign, and the amount continues
to grow as the war goes on with no end in sight (Karim 2017). Various scholarly
assessments deem the war militarily unwinnable; the only way to end the impasse
is to pursue a sound political process through the United Nations. In response to
growing domestic pressures and discontents, the Saudi leadership has repeatedly
pointed to Iran’s role in the conflict: the war has been portrayed as a Saudi-led
campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels. This domestic dissatisfaction with the
war comes at a time when Saudi Arabia has introduced stringent subsidy cuts, raising
rates for utility bills, gasoline, and taxation. Focusing on Iran as a threat allows for
the silencing of criticism.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have adopted conflicting policies with regard to Yemen and
Syria. Whereas Saudi Arabia is actively engaged in the war in Yemen, its involvement
in Syria is limited to financial assistance offered to the opposition groups. Iran, on
the other hand, is active on the ground in Syria and has been a key figure in protecting
Bashar Al-Assad’s power; in Yemen, its involvement is limited to providing rhetorical

support and widely reported periodic shipments of military equipment (Riedel 2017).
While Iranian officials have admitted to providing assistance to the rebels, Iran’s
spending is a mere fraction of what Saudi Arabia has invested in Yemen and around
the region. At the same time, Iran has been significantly more successful than Saudi
Arabia in achieving its foreign policy objectives (Riedel 2017).
On the other hand, Iran failed to utilize the large sums of cash it received as part
of the nuclear agreement—estimated at between US$32 to 55 billion transferred to
the country in cash as well as released from international financial institutions—
on domestic infrastructure and development projects (Kessler 2018). Many Iranian
critics believe that Iran has spent the new capital on its plans in Syria, Iraq, and
Lebanon, as well as Yemen (Gertz 2018). The domestic discourse has severely threat-
ened internal security, and since December 2017 the country has witnessed growing
protests. The primary reason for this domestic as well as international dissatisfaction
is the perceived irrationality of Iran’s policy towards Syria, which runs counter to
core revolutionary principles that dictate support for the oppressed. Although Iran
invoked this principle in its policy towards other Arab uprisings in Bahrain, Egypt,
and Yemen, its continuing support for Assad in Syria has called into question its
oft-repeated justifications for interfering in regional affairs.
Iran’s actions in Syria are undoubtedly tied to its anti-Israel policy. Given that Iran
is not able or willing to wage war on Israel, owing to its limited military capacity and
fear of engaging the United States in an armed conflict, its maneuverings in Syria
are in a sense rational by default. The aforementioned limitations have forced the
country to act rationally. Yet the conflict between Iran and Israel has intensified in
Syria, particularly since 2017, and has negatively affected the situation. At the same
time, Iran’s policies are linked to the fact that the Islamic Republic is not keen to
facilitate the return of Syria to the Arab sphere of influence, nor is Iran eager to let
go one of the very few Arab allies it has.
Iran’s regional policies must also be viewed in tandem with the situation inside
Iran. Since 2017, Iran has faced terrorist attacks in Tehran, Khuzestan, and Sistan-
Baluchestan provinces. Given recent (and past) terrorist attacks, the Islamic Republic
has been presenting itself as a victim of terrorism—a notion that runs up against
the view of Iran, held by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and others, as a
perpetrator of terrorism. Furthermore, following the terrorist attack in the city of
Ahvaz on 22 September 2018, which killed 25 civilians as well as members of Iran’s
military and Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran pointed the finger at the United States,
Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In a statement following the terror attack, Ayatollah
Khamenei stated that “this crime is a continuation of the plots of the regional states
that are puppets of the United States, and their goal is to create insecurity in our dear
country” (Al Jazeera 2018). Iran’s regional actions could be viewed in relation to the
rivalry that exists between the country and its regional adversaries across the Gulf,
particularly Saudi Arabia, which had vowed to take the war “inside Iran” (Aboudi
and Fahmy 2017).
The United States as a Factor in Foreign Policy Decision

Making
Iran’s foreign policy has been shaped by an anti-imperialist principle that is often only
targeted at the United States, and its influence as well as actions in the region. Iran’s
most rational decision in the last decade was its agreement in 2013 to participate
in high-level negotiations with the United States over its nuclear program. These
discussions complemented and merged with the ongoing, unsuccessful talks between
Iran and European countries that had begun in 2002. The possibility that an agreement
would alter the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor was as intriguing to the
Islamic Republic as it was unnerving for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries.
Following the settlement of the nuclear issue with Iran, the United States planned to
decrease its role in the Middle East and address growing US concerns in East Asia.
Thus President Obama argued in an interview just months after the implementation
of the nuclear agreement that Iran and Saudi Arabia “need to find an effective way
to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace” (Goldberg 2016).
Iran was hoping for real change, but this comment was unwelcome to Saudi Arabia
and was a primary reason for the deterioration of relations between Riyadh and
Washington in the final year of the Obama Administration.
Even before the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, it
was clear that President Obama’s engagement efforts with Iran would not continue
under a Republican successor and that the United States would not abandon its
traditional Arab allies in the Gulf. With the announcement of the decision to end
US participation in the JCPOA and the re-imposition of sanctions that were lifted
as part of the nuclear agreement in May 2018, Donald Trump signaled his intent
to prioritize the containing and countering of Iran as the administration’s signature
Middle East policy. Ever since, President Trump has repeatedly stated that it needs
Saudi Arabia in its endeavor to counter Iran’s actions in the region. Saudi Arabia, on
the other hand, alienated by Obama’s foreign policy, was keener than ever to take up
the offer and join the United States in its efforts to reshape the regional balance of
power once again, and shift the US Middle East policy back to the Bush era.
Strengthening the relationship with the Trump Administration has been the single
most important and notable achievement of bin Salman in particular and Saudi Arabia
in general. Regardless of the fact that the relationship is now singlehandedly tied to
a non-contracted promise of US$450 billion in arms purchases, the young crown
prince managed to keep the Trump Administration’s focus on Iran, while receiving
praise and support for almost every single foreign policy action of Saudi Arabia.
From the decision to impose the blockade on Qatar, the detainment of prominent
Saudi businessmen, to the spat with Canada, the continuing war in Yemen, and the
aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the United States has either amplified its
support for Saudi Arabia or stayed silent when many in the international community
were expecting a strong response.
Donald Trump chose Riyadh as the destination for his first foreign trip, taking part
in an Arab–Islamic–American summit that notably excluded Iran. The event, held a
day after the 19 May 2017 presidential elections in Iran, offered a clear illustration
of how the Saudi bet on Donald Trump made rational sense and how Iran’s rational
decision to negotiate with the United States had not led to tangible, positive results.
The trip signified the importance of Saudi Arabia for the United States. It legitimized
the kingdom’s efforts in countering terrorism financing and set in motion a hawkish
anti-Iran policy that included the establishment of an Arab NATO-like pact dubbed
the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA).
Additionally, the Trump Administration has been pushing for the “deal of the
century” between the Palestinians and the Israelis and is heavily relying on Saudi
Arabia in working towards this goal. By way of expanding relations between
Mohammad bin Salman and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s special adviser and
son-in-law, the two countries seem to be on the same page with regards to a future deal
that will supposedly end the decades-long conflict. Yet this new approach departs
from Saudi Arabia’s often back-seat diplomatic maneuverings with regard to Pales-
tine since the 1940s. The deal is not only favorable to Israel with regards to recog-
nizing its claims over Jerusalem, but it also legitimizes the Israeli settlements in the
West Bank by offering limited autonomy in areas already under Palestinian control
(Filkins 2018). Saudi Arabia is surely seeking to bolster its ties with the Trump
Administration—to make sure that US policies in the Middle East do not shift focus
from containing Iran, to support bin Salman in his endeavors for reform and future
rulership, and to back the Saudi–Emirati position with regard to dealing with the
consequences of the Arab Spring. Iran, on the other hand, has pointed to the Saudi
position on Palestine to further its credentials as the “protector” of Palestinian inter-
ests and showcase its dedication to the cause of Al Quds by organizing various
conferences as well as providing rhetorical support in official statements. Addition-
ally, Iran has been using the Palestinian issue to garner support on the streets by
attacking the Saudi position.
The diverging regional policies continue in other arenas as well. The blockade
against Qatar, imposed soon after Trump’s visit to Riyadh, was as unexpected as
it was irrational. As Harb (2017) writes, the Saudi–Emirati-led blockade, joined
by Bahrain and Egypt, displays a careless disregard “of the basic tenets of rational
decision-making and brinkmanship.” The conviction that Qatar would be left with no
choice but to adhere to the list of unrealistic demands allowed for the implementation
of this irrational decision by the quartet. That the blockade was imposed just days
after Trump’s trip to Riyadh further fueled Saudi Arabia’s ill-conceived perception
of its actual powers and reach. Not only did the quartet fail to garner support from the
international community, but two of the other GCC countries (Kuwait and Oman)
did not join the blockade.
The irrationality became evident as soon as Qatar was able to secure imports,
ensure its security, and garner global support within a relatively short time. Although
terminating Turkey’s military presence and curbing diplomatic ties with Iran were
among the thirteen demands levied on Qatar, the blockade itself helped strengthen
and enhance relations among Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. As Harb (2017) argues, Qatar
was asked to “shed whatever independence, sovereignty, and freedom of action it has
secured over decades in return for nothing but a dependent relationship that places
its domestic and foreign policies under the control of its larger neighbors.” It was
rational for Qatar to refuse to subjugate itself to the demands by the quartet, and so
expose the irrationality of Saudi Arabia’s justifications for such actions.
At the same time, Iran’s overnight decision to alter its policies with regard to Qatar,
from hostile rivalry to friendly win–win relations, established the Islamic Republic
as a rational actor. Iran took advantage of the situation to boost its national interests
at no political or economic cost. Rouhani, for example, condemned the quartet for
imposing the blockade by calling it an unjust “siege,” and “vowed to stand with
Qatar” (Pradhan 2018). In addition, by providing support for Qatar, Iran managed
to score points against Saudi Arabia within the GCC context, and even though the
official interactions are limited, the situation led to the empowerment of Iran. These
developments in the region come to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and have had a
significant impact in preventing the kingdom from achieving its stated objectives
(Regencia 2017).
International Relations
Aside from Qatar, the Saudi government has engaged in a series of shocking,
irrational, and unsuccessful foreign policy blunders. The putative detainment of
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in a bid to end Iran’s influence in Lebanon and
diminish the role of Hezbollah, brought international attention to Saudi Arabia’s irra-
tional policies and foreign policy approaches. Hariri, a dual Saudi-Lebanese national,
traveled to Riyadh in an official capacity; however, reports conclude that he was
arrested soon after arriving and forced to videotape a resignation address. Hariri read
the speech, but many analysts and international politicians believe the words were
not his own. Saudi and American officials have denied cooperation on this matter, but
Filkins (2018) asserts that “there were indications that [bin Salman] had coordinated
his moves with the Trump Administration, possibly at the summit in Riyadh” and
had “received a ‘green light’ to remove Hariri.”
Hariri’s detainment prompted serious concerns about the foreign policy conduct
of Saudi Arabia. It also fueled domestic unease in the kingdom, because at the same
time as the Saudis seemed to be meddling in the affairs of Lebanon, the crown prince
instituted a wide-ranging and high-caliber anti-corruption purge involving the arrest
of several leading businessmen as well as members of the Al-Saud ruling family.
All were imprisoned at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh. The move was unique in
Saudi Arabia’s history. Although the arrest of “corrupt” individuals was widely seen
as a positive move in the country and garnered significant domestic support for bin
Salman, its audacity and methods challenged most pre-conceived notions of internal
dynamics in the kingdom.
Whether silencing critics and arresting rivals within the ruling family and busi-
ness elite, or attempting to subvert the legitimate prime minister of another country,
Saudi Arabia has changed its domestic and foreign policies. As Gause (2018) attests,
Mohammad bin Salam has “removed the restraints that have made Saudi foreign and
domestic policy cautious, conservative, and ultimately successful amid the crises of
the modern Middle East.” The crown prince further tested the international waters
and the patience of Western partners with a move to cut diplomatic ties with Canada
over a tweet about human rights and a detained Canadian-Saudi dual national. Saudi
Arabia’s anger blew out of proportion when the kingdom forced Saudi citizens,
mostly students, to leave the country within a short period of time. While the United
States and most other countries remained silent and did not back Canada, this irra-
tional foreign policy decision once again caught the international community by
surprise and called attention to the crown prince’s behavior as the de facto ruler of
the kingdom.
Iran, on the other hand, continues to implement its commitments to the nuclear
agreement and has been actively seeking to augment its diplomatic and economic
relations with the remaining signatories of the JCPOA as well as a number of other
European and Asian countries. Iran rationally calculated the cost and benefits of
remaining or withdrawing from the agreement after the Trump Administration’s
decision to pull out. Unexpectedly, the Islamic Republic remained committed to its
obligations under the agreement, creating tension in relations between the United
States and the European signatories to the agreement, and has significantly reduced
the impacts of the reimposition of US sanctions. Such policies and approaches by
Iran illustrate its change in foreign policy conduct, from being irrational in the early
years of the Islamic Republic to becoming a more mature and rational country that
has gradually learned the importance of following the tenets of rational choice theory.
At the same time, however, Iran’s actions in Syria continue to illustrate the irra-
tional tendencies within its foreign policy decision-making processes. The country
has seriously damaged its regional and international image by aiding and assisting the
Assad regime. Iran’s policies with regard to Syria have repeatedly shown its double
standards against its own principles and have severely hindered the country’s aspira-
tions to be recognized as a friendly regional Islamic power. At the same time, Iran’s
alleged terror operations in European capitals in 2017 and 2018 (foiled before their
execution) have reminded the international community of its actions in the 1980s
when a number of Iranian dissidents were killed on European soil. Such irrational
conduct, be it by rogue elements or at the directive of high-ranking officials, are
examples of a continuous pattern of wrongful policies that beget heavy economic
costs for the country. At the same time, however, these actions have been sidelined by
Saudi Arabia’s regional and international actions that have shifted the decades-long
focus on the Islamic Republic to a single person in the kingdom.
The most striking move by Saudi Arabia was the brutal murder of a Saudi Arabian
citizen and an internationally recognized journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in its consulate
in Istanbul. The killing prompted international media organizations and a significant
number of European and Asian countries to heavily criticize the country—in some
cases, for the first time in decades. Not only did the Saudi government at first denounce
any links between the kingdom and the murder, they also denied any knowledge of
the incident, pointed to “rogue” actors as perpetrators, and eventually named and
arrested eighteen individuals for the murder. Although five officials were dismissed
as the results of the investigation surfaced, the widely held belief that the crown prince
ordered the murder was never proven, thanks in large part to the support by the Trump
Administration. At the same time, the international response to Khashoggi’s brutal
murder has been widespread and swift. Aside from Saudi’s nominal partners (UAE,
Egypt, and Bahrain) and other benefactors of Saudi largesse, almost all countries have
condemned the Saudis and the killing. Furthermore, a significant number of interna-
tional businesses and corporations ended their investment plans in the kingdom and
boycotted a high-level economic forum, dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” in 2018.
Within the United States there has been more condemnation than quietude or
cover-ups. The majority of Democratic leaders in Congress are keen to end US
assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, and Republicans like Lindsay
Graham and Bob Corker have repeatedly voiced their concerns about bin Salman’s
rationality and viability as a partner. The murder of Khashoggi has shaken the stability
and durability of the partnership between the Trump Administration and the crown
prince. As the former US national security adviser Susan Rice (2018) contends, “this
litany of lunacy shows Prince Mohammed is not and can no longer be viewed as a
reliable or rational partner of the United States and our allies.” The enumeration of
irrational actions by bin Salman illustrates that Saudi Arabia, since 2015 and more so
since 2017, has been entrenched in an adventurist foreign policy, with hefty costs for
the kingdom at a time when rationality is needed in a country that is yet to implement
a wide-ranging economic diversification plan.
Khashoggi’s murder follows the crown prince’s ill-advised calculations and
repeated irrational actions since he was promoted to the position of crown prince
by King Salman. As Ignatius (2018) argues, the killing in Turkey can be understood
as part of a larger “power struggle within the Saudi royal family that helped feed
the paranoia and recklessness of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.” This latest
Saudi debacle has, at the same time, advanced Iran’s interests in the region. As Vakil
(2018) argues, “Iran has repeatedly seized on Saudi miscalculations to gain leverage
and protect itself from regional isolation,” and the murder of Khashoggi was the
latest of these Saudi gifts to the Islamic Republic.
The Khashoggi case seemed to prove Iran’s argument that a double standard exists
within the international media and the leadership of Western countries with regards
to human rights in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Zarif, for example, used Khashoggi’s
murder during his speech at the Munich Security Conference on 17 February 2019,
arguing that the US and European concern for human rights is a “charade,” especially
“considering that the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi did not interrupt
Saudi Arabia’s relations with Western countries” (Al-monitor 2019). Iran cannot,
however, hide its own abuses behind the misdeeds of other regional countries and
faces just criticism from human rights organizations as well European countries for
imprisoning environmental activists and women’s rights lawyers, plus arbitrarily
detaining dual nationals.
Conclusion
The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has largely determined the foreign policy
conduct of both countries. Whereas Iran was seen as an irrational actor in the 1980s
and 1990s, Saudi Arabia acted in a mostly rational manner; but since 2015, the
opposite has largely been the case. Both countries have often sacrificed national
interests in the pursuit of policies that were perceived to weaken the other. This is
the case when rational decision-making processes are in the hands of mostly inept
and ill-informed leaders or monarchs who fail to factor in the tenets of rational
choice theory and the rational actor model. The analysis illustrates the various points
of convergence in the focal determinants of policy-making as well as the points of
divergence in deducing precise national interest objectives. Furthermore, this chapter
sheds light on how revolutionary ideology in Iran and the ruling Al-Saud family in
Saudi Arabia are largely responsible for defining foreign policy priorities and courses
of action.
At the same time, this chapter reveals the many similarities in the conduct of
domestic and foreign policies in Iran and Saudi Arabia. From the baseless allegations
against individuals linked to activism who have been imprisoned at home, to regional
adventurism that has exacerbated the chaos around the Middle East region, and ill-
conceived actions detrimental to the peace and security of the Gulf, Iran and Saudi
Arabia have proven to be the leading actors responsible for the instability of the
region. The differences in their decision-making calculus and modus operandi have,
in large part, distinguished their foreign policy determinants and objectives to the
point that it has been rare to view both countries as rational at the same point in time.
When Iran is viewed as rational, Saudi Arabia is tagged as the irrational actor, and
especially so since 2015. With new developments in the region including the thawing
of the blockade against Qatar, the change in US strategy towards confrontation with
Iran, and the secret-channel negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it can be
argued that the reactionary mindset of the Saudi policy makers has given way in the
face of Iranian influence. While the Iranians still face existential threats from US
sanctions and popular movements in the Arab world, they have managed to steer the
foreign policy struggle with Saudi Arabia and other players in the region in their
favor.
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Chapter 15
The Gulf Crisis: Turkey’s Soft Power
in the Gulf
Nesibe Hicret Battaloğlu
Power in world politics is one of the oldest themes in international relations, and is
usually defined with reference to states’ military and economic capabilities. Hard
power instruments have been widely used by states as a means of coercion, forcing
other states to adopt positions that are more favorable to the coercing power. Yet in
recent years other forms of power have gained currency in the arena of international
relations. In this respect the term “soft power,” introduced by Joseph Nye (1990),
has come to forefront as a means to understand the changing nature of power. In the
simplest definition, soft power refers to “getting others to want the outcomes that
you want—[to] co-opt people rather than coerce them” (Nye 2004).
Given the increasing importance of soft power in world politics, winning hearts
and minds has become one of the indispensable policy priorities of Turkey in relation
to the Middle Eastern countries. The year 1980 can be considered as a turning point in
this regard, as Turkey went through a gigantic transformation domestically, with the
post-coup regime in Ankara embracing neo-liberal policies. This massive transfor-
mation in Turkey also altered its foreign policy perspectives towards the neighboring
Middle East and especially towards the Arabian Gulf states.
Since 2003, Turkey has gone through another tremendous transformation both in
terms of its domestic politics and its international stance, and the literature on Turkish
soft power therefore highlights the relation between this rapid transformation and the
increase in Turkey’s soft power. Oğuzlu (2007) argues that several domestic factors
have significantly contributed to Turkish soft power, such as the democratic reforms
associated with the revival of Turkey’s European Union membership bid in 2004, the
change in civilian–military relations, and general matters of de-securitization. Altınay
(2008) also addresses the economic dimension, noting that Turkey has achieved a
remarkable change since 1980, departing from statist economic policies in favor of a
market economy, which has enhanced Turkish soft power by leading to the emergence
N. H. Battaloğlu (B)
Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
e-mail: hicret.battaloglu@metu.edu.tr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_15
248 N. H. Battaloğlu
of a vibrant middle class and civil society which “randomly” engages with the rest
of the world.
As well as rapid economic development and domestic stability, İştar Gözaydin
(2010) elaborates the role of religion in Turkey’s international relations, noting that
Turkey’s relations with its immediate and extended neighborhood (Middle East,
Balkans, Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia) are to a certain extent shaped around
a shared faith, adding that “religion as soft power gets used by some faith-based
transnational actors affiliated with Turkey.”
As regards foreign policy orientations and Turkey’s soft power, there is a near
consensus among scholars that revitalizing relations with the EU and pursuing
an active yet all-inclusive foreign policy during the early years of AKP govern-
ment increased Turkey’s credibility and attractiveness in the eyes of other countries
(Altunışık 2008; Oğuzlu 2007; Gözaydin 2010). On the latter aspect, Altunışık (2008)
notes that Turkey has actively engaged in the resolution of problems in the Middle
East as a third party, and that Ankara’s main asset in playing this role has been
“its position of having good relations with the parties to different conflicts,” which
increased its legitimacy (and therefore its soft power) in the eyes of many regional
and international actors.
This chapter addresses the following research questions: What sources of soft
power can Turkey deploy vis-à-vis the GCC states? What are the determinants
(motives and motivations) of Turkey’s soft power policies towards the GCC states?
How does Turkey exert its soft power on people in the GCC states?
This chapter examines the record of Turkey’s soft power policies and impacts
within the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar,
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) since the 1980s, through the means
of analytical, normative, ideological, and empirical measures. The main concepts
and theories of soft power are applied and articulated to understand the non-coercive
means directed by Turkey towards the Gulf region. The chapter also studies the reflec-
tions of Turkish soft power in the six aforementioned countries through reviewing
public opinion surveys. Filling a significant gap in the literature, this research thus
offers an analysis of the public attitude surveys concerning Turkey, and studies the
underlying factors driving such attitudes, in order to draw a broad and comprehensive
picture of the soft power policies of this non-Arab regional state.
Turkish Soft Power in the Middle East Context
The arena where the application of Turkey’s soft power is most pronounced is the
Middle East, and most of the relevant literature focuses on or at least mentions this
aspect. Domestic and foreign policy developments in Turkey over the last ten to
fifteen years have had significant repercussions for the application of Turkish soft
power in Middle Eastern countries, including both its immediate neighbors and others
further afield. Altınişik (2008) analyzes Turkey’s significant soft power assets in the
Middle East in terms of two factors: first, the domestic reforms at home; second,
15 The Gulf Crisis: Turkey’s Soft Power in the Gulf 249
the increasing involvement in regional conflicts as a trusted third party, which has
enhanced Turkey’s credibility and attractiveness in the Middle East.
On the other hand, Kalın (2011), chief advisor to the Turkish president, highlights
that Turkey’s soft power assets in the Middle East go beyond a strong economic
performance, democratic reforms, and its active foreign policy in the region. In fact,
he asserts, it is
grounded in some larger concepts of cultural affinity, historical companionship, geographical
proximity, social imagery and how all of these create a sense of belonging. Combine this
with a Turkey that is democratic, strong and prosperous, and you have a very different picture
of regional dynamics. The old Turkish images of “Arab traitors” and the Arab perception
of “Ottoman imperialists” speak very little to the realities of the Arab and Turkish societies
today.
Some literature on Turkish soft power in the Middle East context also focuses
on Turco-Persian rivalry, again expressed in the form of soft power projection. With
Turkey’s rising popularity among Arabs in the region, some parts of the so-called
Iranian sphere of influence have fallen into the scope of Turkish soft power. On this
issue, Turkish journalist and Middle East expert Cengiz Candar (2009) argued that it
was interesting to witness a rapid increase in Turkish influence in neighboring Syria
and Iraq, which also have special relations with Iran.
The literature, however, tends to focus on Turkish soft power, both in general and
in the Middle East in particular, from the supply side. Thus, most of the relevant
articles and papers discuss Turkey’s soft power assets in such terms as its domestic
transformation and foreign policy steps; the actual influence of Turkey’s soft power
on the ground—the demand-side analysis—has been neglected, perhaps because of
the extremely limited availability of relevant public opinion surveys, which are one
of the most commonly used methods to assess this aspect of soft power. In fact, the
study by Çiftçi and Tezcür (2015) presents the first systematic analysis of the public
opinion dimension of soft power competition between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and
Iran in the contemporary Middle East; their work uses the Pew Research Center’s
Global Attitudes Project (GAP) surveys of 2012 and includes the four Arab countries
of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon. Based on their findings, anti-Americanism,
religious identity, and to some extent favorable views towards democracy are the
main determinants of soft power projections in the region (Çiftçi and Tezcür 2015).
As a non-Arab regional power, Turkey has always been an important player in
the Middle East, including the Gulf region. The domestic and regional developments
since the 1980 military coup in Turkey, however, have been a turning point which
significantly affected the nature of relations between Ankara and the Gulf monar-
chies. In order to present the evolution of Turkey–GCC relations since 1980 and to
lay the foundation for a soft power assessment of its relations with GCC states, this
section examines the dynamics in Turkey–GCC and covers the relations since the
beginning of 1980 to underline more relevant aspects with the main points.
Turkey has become more visible in its relations with GCC countries since the
moderate Islamist AKP came to power in 2002. Yet there were times in which Ankara
made significant efforts to reach out to the Arab Gulf states, especially during the
years of Turgut Özal (1983–1993). In fact, Turkey–GCC relations, notably with Saudi
Arabia, had been facilitated since the beginning of the 1980s for at least three reasons:
the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the common threat perception this engendered; the
second oil crisis and Turkey’s dependence on Gulf oil; and the substantial economic
reforms in Turkey and concomitant need for market expansion.
Against this background, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait did not hesitate in celebrating
the coup in Turkey, which was followed by an official visit by the leader of the coup
and President Kenan Evren to Kuwait in 1982 and to Saudi Arabia in 1984 (Erhan and
Kürkçüoğlu 2002). In a sense, largely due to the new security dimension, during the
1980s bilateral relations between Turkey and the Arab Gulf states gained the most
significant boost they had had since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in
1923 (Mercan 2008). The security threats for the Gulf States stemming from Iranian
Revolution, and the war that erupted between Iran and Iraq, consolidated Turkey’s
role as a counterbalancing power in the eyes of Arab Gulf states and the United
States (Oktav 2015). From an energy and security angle, the oil crisis following the
Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War impelled oil-dependent Turkey to seek
alternative sources to its main suppliers, Iran and Iraq. As a result, in November
1980 Turkey signed a contract with Texaco, envisioning oil imports from Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia, although most of the amount was not in the end delivered, as the
crisis soon passed (Liel 2001).
The economic reform process led by Özal following the 1980 coup was another
factor pushing Ankara to seek closer economic relations with the Arab Gulf states.
Subsequently, the export-oriented economic policies adopted by Turkey enhanced
relations with oil-producing Arab Gulf States, and the number of Turkish construction
companies operating in the Gulf increased substantially, as did labor flow to those
states from Turkey. By the end of the decade, the number of Turkish workers in Saudi
Arabia had reached 150,000, and the value of contracts by Turkish companies in Arab
countries jumped from US$1.6 million in 1978 to US$17 billion (US$5 billion in
Saudi Arabia alone) in 1988 (Liel 2001).
During the 1990s, however, Turkey’s relations with the Gulf monarchies took
turns both for the better and for worse. The course of relations over the decade was
shaped by two crucial developments: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the growing
cooperation between Turkey and Israel. Regarding the first aspect, when Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Turkey dropped its neutral position in
Middle Eastern affairs and supported the US-led international coalition against Iraq.
Ankara implemented the embargo on Iraq through closing the Iraqi pipeline to the
Mediterranean (Rosenthal 1990). From the perspective of Turkey–GCC relations,
Turkey’s support for the liberation of Kuwait had shown goodwill towards the GCC
states and economic relations were to a certain extent boosted.
The rapprochement between Turkey and Israel in the mid 1990s, however, notably
upgrading relations to ambassadorial level and enhancing military cooperation,
adversely affected Ankara’s relations with Arab Middle East countries in general
and the Gulf states in particular. Indeed, the nature of Turkey–Israeli ties is one of
the factors determining Turkey’s popularity in the eyes of many Arabs as well as
shaping its relations with the Gulf States. In this respect, while Turkey felt a need
for closer cooperation with Israel through the end of the decade and inked series of
military agreements in 1996, relations with Syria and to lesser extent with other Arab
states deteriorated (Eisenstadt 1997). Coupled with Ankara’s efforts to construct a
dam on the Euphrates River that reduced the volume of water flow to Syria, Damascus
was able to rally some Arab countries including Saudi Arabia against Turkey (Oktav
2015). Through to the end of the decade, Turkey was marginalized in the Arab world
due to its close relations with Israel and disagreement over water resources with the
neighboring Arab countries.
With the turn of the century, the dynamics and determinants of Turkey–GCC
relations changed significantly in a time that saw a tectonic shift in the Middle East
as well as important domestic changes in Turkey. While the US invasion of Iraq in
2003 created a balance of power problem in the region, raising fears for both Turkey
and the Arab Gulf states, the victory of the moderate Islamist AKP and the rapid
economic and political reform process in Turkey transformed Turkey–GCC relations
and brought them closer.
The Gulf was one of the regions most affected by the shock waves of the 2003
Iraq War, amid a constellation of worries over increasing Iranian influence in Iraq.
Given the Iraqi power vacuum, which was likely to lead to Iraq falling into the Iranian
sphere of influence, the GCC states have started to seek multilateral cooperation to
enhance their security (Yaffe 2004). For Turkey, on the other hand, while post–Cold
War dynamics allow Ankara to pursue a more independent foreign policy, the Iraq
invasion led to a resurgence of Turkish fears about an independent Kurdish state in
northern Iraq that would directly threaten its domestic security (Altunişik and Martin
2011). The Turkish concerns, and its more autonomous foreign policy objectives,
materialized on 1 March 2003 when the Turkish Parliament rejected the deployment
of US troops on Turkish soil for a so-called Northern Front for the invasion of Iraq
(Bourdeaux and Zaman 2003). Although the parliament’s decision caused a setback
in Turkey–US relations, it increased Turkey’s image in the eyes of many Arabs who
were against the invasion. The converging security concerns over the scenarios in
post-Saddam Iraq facilitated Turkey–GCC cooperation on economic, political, and
security matters. In that respect, King Abdullah Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud visited Turkey
in 2006, marking an historical moment in relations between the two states—the last
visit of a Saudi monarch to Turkey having been by King Faisal in 1966 (Qusti and
Khan 2006).
Turkey has also emerged as a significant player in bridging between some GCC
states and NATO, under the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) launched in 2004.
This initiative has offered all the six GCC states bilateral security cooperation with
NATO and its member states, with four GCC members, the exceptions being Saudi
Arabia and Oman, having already joined the initiative signed in Istanbul (NATO
2011). However, the turning point in Turkey–GCC relations was the establishment of
the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council (HLSCC) in 2008, which laid a multi-
lateral basis through several intergovernmental meetings (Kardas 2012). Through the
council Turkey became the primary strategic partner outside the Gulf region and the
nature of Turkey–GCC cooperation moved towards political and strategic dialogue
(Larrabee 2011).
Apart from systemic changes, the momentous transformation in Turkish domestic

politics is another factor contributing to the flourishing of Turkey–GCC relations,
especially in economic aspects. In this regard, Altunişik and Martin (2011) highlight
at least three important domestic developments as sources for further Turkish engage-
ment in the Middle East region; first, the AKP government itself, which considers the
Middle East to be an important foreign policy area due to its important yet neglected
historical and religious ties; second, the political reform process that curbed the role
of the military in Turkish politics and shifted the previous threat perceptions; and
third, further economic liberalization that was fueled by the religiously conservative
so-called Anatolian Tigers, who are eager to do business with the Middle Eastern
region (Altunişik and Martin 2011). To sum up, the Sunni-Islamic oriented leader-
ship, the demilitarization of Turkish foreign policy, the de-securitization of Middle
East relations, and the empowerment of a vibrant conservative business class, have
played a significant role in the enhancement of Turkey–GCC relations.
The so-called Arab Spring has created, first and foremost, another change in
the regional balance in Middle East. The popular uprisings against the rulers in
Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Syria caught the neighboring states by surprise
and forced them to adopt or re-orient their positions in a very short time (Chubin
2012). Traditionally strong states such as Egypt, Iraq and Syria, which had acted
as balancing powers, became too weak to exercise their influence vis-a-vis other
states in the region. From the GCC states’ perspective, the uprisings also resulted
in unwanted changes that were inspired by extremist ideologies such as “political
Islamic thought,” “liberal political ideas,” and “sectarianism,” which poses the threat
of destabilizing the conservative socio-political structure that has underpinned the
Gulf region since the pre-state era (Binhuwaidin 2015).
The Arab Spring also posed challenges for Turkey and its policy of “zero prob-
lems” with neighbors, which aimed at economic interdependence and more enhanced
relations with the Middle Eastern countries based on cultural affinity. Inevitably, the
dilemma of ethics versus self-interest shaped Turkish foreign policy during the early
stages of the Arab Spring (Onis 2012). Yet, despite facing this dilemma initially,
Turkey quickly reoriented its foreign policy towards the Middle East, adopting a
more liberal democratic tone in support of popular legitimate uprisings.
Despite their diverging interests and policies, Turkey and the GCC states have
found common ground for cooperation in the wake of the Arab Spring era, especially
in Syria, and as a means to counter Iran (Ataman and Akkaya 2015). Turkey and the
GCC states have also been on the same page in fighting against so-called Islamic State
(IS) in Syria and Iraq. In the international coalition against IS, all six members of
the GCC contributed to the fighting through means ranging from hosting US forces
to humanitarian aid for those affected, while Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and
Bahrain joined the airstrikes with their own forces (Drennan 2014). Similarly, Turkey
also declared its support for the coalition against IS, with the Turkish Parliament
approving the use of military force against IS and hosting foreign troops in order to
launch strikes (Fantz and Pearson 2015).
In 2015 Turkey and Qatar signed a cooperation agreement, moving a step forward
through a strategic partnership which includes military training, cooperation of
defense industries, joint exercises, and the deployment of military forces by the
two countries when necessary (Al-Haj 2015). The special bond between Turkey and
Qatar during the AKP era, which is shaped around common political values, was
clinched by the decision to establish a Turkish military base in Qatar (Finn 2015).
The base gives Turkey a status in Gulf security similar to that of France and the
United States. An analysis from the Washington Institute asserts that
Turkey’s move in Qatar will make Ankara all the more valuable to its Arab partners, and
to an American ally seemingly inclined to share the burden of Gulf security. The new base
will also reinforce Qatar’s autonomy vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia. In addition, it could contribute
to the security effort for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a major and persistently controversial
endeavor for Qatar. (Decottignies and Çağaptay 2016)
Motives and Motivations for Turkey’s Soft Power in the GCC
In general terms, the motivation of a state to wield soft power is to reach its desired
favorable outcome without resort to coercive measures, and instead with the use of
co-opting ones. Defining a given state’s motivation for exerting soft power is closely
linked to the definition of its national interests (Nye 2004). This section explains
the rationale behind Turkey’s use of soft power in the Gulf region, from ideological,
economic, and foreign policy perspectives.
Ideological Interests
During the 1980s and until the end of the Cold War in 1991, the rigid international
system and security concerns surrounding Turkey motivated Ankara to rely more
on military arrangements when it came to achieving its interests. Therefore there is
little to say about the soft power motivations of Turkey towards the Gulf region from
the ideological aspect. However, during the years of Turgut Özal (Prime Minister
of Turkey 1983–89, and President of Turkey 1989–93), a new perspective can be
highlighted in understanding the ideological dimension of Turkish foreign policy.
Ataman (2003) argues that one of the important dimensions of Özalist foreign policy
was his inclusive approach to the Muslim and Arab world. In that respect, Turkey
pursued low-level relations with Israel until the mid 1990s and became one of the
first countries to recognize a Palestinian state in order to build trust with the Arab
States (Yeşilada 1993). According to Hale (1992), developing friendly relations with
Arab countries (including the Gulf States) based on trust and cultural/religious ties
was an important motivation in Turkish foreign policy under Özal.
With the arrival of the AKP government in 2002, the ideological imperatives for
wielding soft power in the Gulf became much more apparent. The main component
of this new ideology of the Turkish government is the Strategic Depth Doctrine
(Stratejik Derinlik) developed by Ahmet Davutoğlu.
1
According to the doctrine, the power of a given country is composed of (a)
Constant Parameters (CP) of history, geography, population, and culture; (b) Poten-
tial Parameters (PP) of economic, technical, and military capabilities; (c) Strategic
Mentality (SM); (d) Strategic Planning (SP); and (e) Political Will (PW). This is
formulated as the equation
Power = (CP + PP) × (SM × SP × PW) (Davutoglu 2001)
In his formulation, Davutoğlu also defines the geographical spheres of influence in

which Turkey must be active in order to strengthen its global position: (a) the land
basin consisting of the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus; (b) the maritime
basin comprised of the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, and
the Gulf; (c) the continental basin, including Europe, North Africa, South Asia, and
Middle and East Asia. According to Davutoğlu, the Gulf basin, with which Turkey
has historical and cultural ties, is a sphere of influence for Turkish foreign policy
and is crucial in “transforming Turkey’s regional influence into a continental one”
(Davutoğlu 2001).
It is also important to note that the Strategic Depth doctrine found expression
in AKP party programs and election campaigns, and bore important commonalities
with Turkish foreign policy in the post–Cold War era (Alpaydın 2010). In a master’s
thesis, Alpaydın (2010) analyzes soft power in Turkish foreign policy under the AKP
government and remarks that “it can be argued that the foreign policy sections of
all these documents include the evaluation of the post–Cold War environment made
by Davutoğlu as a basis for the AKP’s projection of Turkish foreign policy.” This
is especially true for the AKP 2007 Election Manifesto, when Davutoğlu was the
chief foreign policy advisor to the then Prime Minister Erdoğan, which mentions “a
multi-dimensional foreign policy based on a well-identified and integrated frame-
work owing to the historical accumulation, geographical and cultural depth, and the
strategic location of the country” (AKP Election Manifesto 2007).
To achieve this goal, the use of our deterrent/coercive hard power and our soft power with its
diplomatic, economic and cultural qualities within a well-coordinated form are an absolute
necessity. That is why we embrace a pro-active and dynamic foreign policy method which
is principled, balanced, performed in contact with all global and regional actors, based on
rational grounds and well-timing. (AKP Election Manifesto 2007)
Therefore, it can be concluded that since the beginning of the new millennium, the
new approach developed by Davutoğlu and articulated in the AKP agenda represents
the most important ideological aspect of Turkey’s soft power motivation in its foreign
policy towards the Gulf.
Economic Interests
Turkey’s economic interests in the Gulf region can be underlined as another incen-
tive to facilitate relations through soft power. The complementary characters of the
Turkish and GCC economies indicate the economic motivations for Ankara’s soft
power policies in the Gulf. The complementarity of the Turkish and GCC economies
in terms of demand–supply balances in energy, investment, tourism, and export prod-
ucts is clearly one of the motivating factors for Turkey. According to The Oxford
Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Group report (2015), the complementarity is
based on the lower value-added commodities on each side. The key complemen-
tarities lie in the GCC states’ oil and gas resources and foreign exchange surpluses
and Turkey’s agricultural and arable land surpluses; and trade and investment in
the higher-value-added sectors of construction, manufacturing, transport, real estate,
defense, and banking and other services.2 For Turkey, soft power instruments and
policies are important to secure more investment and energy deals, to attract more
tourists from the Gulf, and expand Turkish exports to GCC states.
Economic liberalization since 1980 and Turkey’s emergence as a trading state
under AKP rule have enhanced the economic motivations of Ankara for wielding
soft power over the GCC states, so as to enhance market diversification for Turkish
exports as well as attract FDI inflow from the oil-rich countries. In that regard, Turkish
officials, businessmen, and analysts have emphasized the importance of achieving
economic targets through soft power means. As reported by the Financial Times,
the then finance minister Mehmet Şimşek underlined Turkey’s “concerted efforts”
to enhance ties with GCC countries to increase those countries’ FDI volumes in
Turkey, adding, “we have historical and cultural links with the Middle East, and
we are now rediscovering them”; Alpaslan Korkmaz, the former head of Turkey’s
investment agency, also remarked, “The relationship between Turkey and the Gulf
is deepening. We share common values and common interests. In the future we will
be a lot more closely integrated with the Arab world” (Wigglesworth and Strauss
2010). Soft power resources such as historical, cultural, and religious ties and shared
values are often highlighted by Ankara as a base for further economic cooperation
between Turkey and the GCC countries.
Foreign Policy Interests
Turkey’s foreign policy objectives towards the GCC states since the 1980s are also
important drivers of its expression of soft power in the region. These foreign policy
objectives are closely linked with the ideological and economic motivations, although
some aspects can be treated as pragmatic interests, independent of the former. It is
also important to note here that the foreign policy objectives of states are not static,
and have changed in line with significant transformations in the international system
(the end of Cold War in 1990) and regional developments (Iran–Iraq War, Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, the US invasion of Iraq, and the Arab Spring).
Turkey’s foreign policy interests in the Gulf during the 1980s were shaped around
security concerns, stemming from a common threat perception towards revolutionary
Iran and the regional instability as a result of the Iran–Iraq War (Mercan 2008; Fırat
and Kürkçüoğl 2001; Oktav 2013); relations between Turkey and the Arab Gulf states
thus gained momentum during the 1980s based around shared security concerns. A
specific foreign policy motivation for Ankara is difficult to identify here, and thus
the use of soft power strategies becomes appropriate.
The end of the Cold War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked the 1990s as a
significant decade in which Turkey recalibrated its foreign policy objectives towards
the GCC countries. Turkey assessed the Kuwait invasion as an opportunity to extend
its influence through the region, in a new multi-polar world where middle powers
have more room for maneuver than before. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait therefore
created an opportunity for Ankara to reassert its importance. As we have noted,
Turkey took a stance against Iraq, and by breaking its rule of non-interference in the
region, showed good will towards the Arab Gulf states (Hale 1992).
Turkey’s Soft Power Policies in the GCC Region
Turkey has thus been wielding soft power over the GCC countries through various
means, at different times, and with different intended recipients, in order to obtain
preferable foreign policy outcomes. Such soft power policies range from public
diplomacy to the appealing rhetoric of the key political figures. With the advancement
of communication technologies and the increasing importance of media tools, Turkey
has also found new avenues for wielding effective soft power policies. Turkey’s efforts
since 1980 to generate soft power in the GCC region can be analyzed under three
categories: the demonstrative effect, public diplomacy, and foreign policy initiatives.
Demonstrative Effect
One of the main aspects of wielding soft power is so-called leading by example.
As Nye (2004) argues, the values that governments champion at home and in their
foreign policies strongly affect the preferences of others. One should note here,
however, that the credible implementation of such values in a country’s own domestic
and foreign policies is often key in soft power projection; and that if one country’s
claims are perceived as hypocrisy or mere propaganda, the soft power is substantially
undermined.
Against this background, it can be claimed that during the 1980s Turkey failed to
project a domestic and foreign policy model which appealed to people in the Gulf.
This claim also supports the core argument that Turkey has emerged as a strong
soft-powerhouse in the region after achieving the significant domestic, economic,

and foreign policy objectives mentioned above, and this at a time when the image
of other regional states, especially Iran, had deteriorated in GCC countries. In any
case, the demonstrative effect, or in other words “leading by example,” has been an
important tool through which Turkey has been able to appeal to people in the region.
Turkey emerged from having been perceived during the 1980s as an ineffective
democracy, a marginal economic power, a purely secular state, and a pawn in the
Western powers’ orbit, to being seen after the ascent of the AKP as a Muslim state
with an effective democracy and flourishing economy, as domestically independent,
and as an active and assertive player internationally and in the GCC region (Fraihat
2016). On the perception of Turkey in the Arab world during the 1980s and 90s,
Bengio and Özcan (2001) note that Arabs had ridiculed Turkish democracy as a
farce and a “democracy of tanks.” Further, despite trade liberalization after 1980
and substantial progress in its exports, Turkey failed to sustain economic growth,
and since the end of the 1980s the Turkish economy had seen numerous recessions
(Ercel 2006).
Turkey’s demonstrative effect has gained momentum under the AKP government,
in power since 2002. Kirişçi (2011) notes that Turkey’s demonstrative effect is a
function of three domestic policy developments:
the rise of the “trading state,” making Turkey visible through commerce, investment and
trade; the diffusion of Turkey’s democratization experience as a “work in progress”; and
the positive image of Turkey’s “new” foreign policy, including the introduction of policies
encouraging freer movement of people between Turkey and the Middle East.
Although Kirişçi (2011) is concerned with Turkey’s demonstrative effect within

the context of debates about Turkey as a model for the transformation of the Arab
Middle East, it is closely linked to Turkey’s soft power in the GCC region overall.
Indeed, the literature on Turkey’s soft power addresses the same aspects (Oğuzlu
2007; Altınay 2008; Altunişik 2008). It can be argued that, therefore, Turkey has
taken significant and coherent policy steps in the realms of domestic politics, the
economy, and foreign policy, which have provided effective and solid foundations
for its public diplomacy efforts in the region, and enhanced its soft power.
Public Diplomacy
Soft power and public diplomacy are closely linked. As Nye (2008) argues, public
diplomacy is an instrument for governments to articulate soft power resources,
communicating with and attracting publics in other countries. In this regard, the
communication revolution after the Second World War has enabled information to
be disseminated to broad publics and “has turned public opinion into an increasing
factor in international relations” (Melissen 2005). Therefore, public diplomacy is key
for wielding soft power. On the relation between soft power resources and public
diplomacy, Nye (2008) writes:
Public diplomacy tries to attract by drawing attention to these potential resources through
broadcasting, subsidizing cultural exports, arranging exchanges, and so forth. But if the
content of a country’s culture, values, and policies are not attractive, public diplomacy that
“broadcasts” them cannot produce soft power. It may produce just the opposite.
Against this background, Turkey pursues public diplomacy through broadcasts,

cultural events and promotions, social media, and official and non-governmental
exchanges, so as to transform its soft power resources into preferable outcomes.
As explained earlier, cultural resources are important assets with which Turkey
seeks to produce soft power in the region. Turkey therefore focuses on promotion
of its culture and language through official channels such as embassies and cultural
centers,3 initiating cultural events in the GCC region to enhance its soft power. Ahmet
Demirok, former Turkish Ambassador to Doha, said that the Turkish embassies in the
Arab Gulf region are playing a crucial role in public diplomacy and cultural promo-
tion. Speaking on cultural activities and government initiatives in Qatar, Ambassador
Demirok noted:
In cooperation with our Qatari counterparts, we have organized numerous events both in
Qatar and Turkey within the scope of Qatar–Turkey Year of Culture 2015. Besides, we opened
Yunus Emre Institute in Doha and we have initiated opening of the Turcology department
in Qatar University to create affinity between the two societies. Cultural centers’ scope of
activities are wide and they are very influential in producing soft power. (Demirok 2016)
Another important mechanism with which to reach out to the publics is broad-
casting and other media channels. For the bulk of the time period with which this
chapter is considered, it could be argued that Turkey had limited communication
channels, given the limitations of mass communication technologies such as satellite
TV and Internet in the region until the 1990s. However, with the rising oil income
flowing to the Gulf since the 1970s, print and recorded media became very important
tools for conveying messages and news. Turkish attempts at conveying messages to
the GCC region during the 1980s and 90s were quite limited; but since the establish-
ment of the Office of Public Diplomacy in 2010, however, two main narratives have
emerged: one on Turkish identity, economic prosperity, and adherence to democracy,
and another on international credibility (Huijgh and Warlick 2016).
The changing nature of communication technologies since the beginning of the
1990s, with satellite TV and the widespread use of Internet and social media,
has transformed the conditions for the projection of soft power (Nye 2004). It
also diffused the sources of information among multiple actors, including but not
limited to private companies, non-governmental organizations, and even individuals
(Keohane and Nye Jr 2000). Turkey has established satellite channels broadcasting
in Arabic to reach an audience in the GCC region on a daily basis.4 Further, social
media has become one of the key tools for communicating with the target audience
in the region. According to the Arab Social Media Report, GCC countries dominate
the ranks of Arab Facebook users as a percentage of their population. Saudi Arabia
leads the Arab countries in terms of Twitter users, followed by Kuwait and the UAE
(Salem and Mourtada 2012).5 Given that this is the case, prominent Turkish govern-
ment officials including President Erdoğan have official Twitter accounts in English
and Arabic,6 and are active users of social media with a considerable number of
followers across the world, including in the GCC region. Op-ed articles written by
prominent political figures can also be highlighted as a way to convey messages to
the targeted audience.
Third, governments are not the only agents promoting a positive image of a given
country. The successes of various Turkish series, which are produced for profit by
private companies, are one of the most prominent aspects of soft power and public
diplomacy in GCC countries. The themes represented in soap operas—such as a
liberal lifestyle, a romanticized past, an idealized Turkey, love affairs, and gender
issues—appeal to many people in the Gulf (Huijigh and Warlick 2016). The Turkish
government also capitalizes on the popularity of the these series and utilizes them
as a means for projecting soft power in the region. In 2008 Turkey’s ambassador
to Saudi Arabia was quoted as saying, “Turkish dramas have succeeded in boosting
the number of Saudi tourists from 30,000 last summer to 100,000 this year” (Al
Tamimi 2012). In a visit to Zayed University in the UAE, former Turkish President
Abdullah Gül had a meeting with Emirati students in which they discussed Turkish
soap operas. Gül also stressed that Turkish soap operas were the focal point of
meetings with officials of the United Arab Emirates (Hürriyet Daily News 2012).
Foreign Policy Initiatives
By creating sentiments of gratitude and sympathy, foreign policy initiatives can

articulate the soft power currency of benignity between the soft power wielder and
its target (Vuving 2009). Foreign policy is also important for a country’s beauty, as
Vuving notes:
Beauty can come from a country that acts as the agent of a value, a country that is perceived
as the avatar of an ideal, a country that champions a cause, or a country that articulates a
vision compellingly. When it holds fast on a cause, champions a value, devotes itself to an
ideal, compellingly articulates a vision, it gains credibility as a representative, a torch, or a
firm supporter and guardian of the cause, the value, the ideal, or the vision. From here comes
credibility, legitimacy, and even moral authority.
In that respect, the foreign policy initiatives of Turkey have been important tools to
project soft power in the GCC region. The foreign policy initiatives of multilateralism,
diplomatic support, and adherence to international norms, as well as resistance, an
assertive foreign policy, and the rhetoric of charismatic leaders, have been presented
as soft power tools of Turkey in the GCC countries.
To start with multilateralism, diplomatic support, and adherence to international
norms, the end of the Cold War has enabled Turkey to engage in the region based
on such norms. As explained previously, the foreign policy orientations of Turkey
under Özal aimed at enhancing relations with the GCC states. Ankara’s stance against
Saddam Hussein’s aggression and its support for Kuwait’s territorial integrity can be
highlighted as foreign policies that were based on the aforementioned aspects of soft
power tools. Condemnation of the invasion, and commitment to UN resolutions and
the economic embargo on Iraq, showed Turkey’s adherence to international norms

and support for multilateralism. Therefore, Turkey articulated benignity in the eyes
of GCC states through its foreign policies.
In the following years, however, Turkey’s image significantly deteriorated in the
Muslim world and in the GCC due to its 1996 military agreement with Israel. The
re-securitization of Turkish foreign policy due to its fight with Kurdish separatists
and the rapprochement with Israel made it hard for Turkey to project multilateral
and peace-promoting foreign policy tools at that time. During a meeting of foreign
ministers at the 1997 OIC summit, two resolutions were adopted indirectly criticizing
Turkey for its military cooperation with Israel and for its military campaigns into
northern Iraq (Hürriyet Daily News 1997).
Multilateralism, peace promotion, and mediation in international conflicts have
been milestones for Turkish foreign policy tools under AKP leadership, however. In
fact, in an article published in Foreign Policy, the then foreign minister Davutoğlu
(2010) addressed the links between such foreign policy methods and Turkey’s soft
power, referring to “the adoption of a new discourse and diplomatic style, which
has resulted in the spread of Turkish soft power in the region. Although Turkey
maintains a powerful military due to its insecure neighborhood, we do not make
threats. Instead, Turkish diplomats and politicians have adopted a new language in
regional and international politics that prioritizes Turkey’s civil-economic power.”
Within this framework, Turkey not only maintained its relations with the EU,
NATO, and the United States, and had restored its relations with Russia as of 2009,
but engaged actively in the Middle East through this new discourse and diplomatic
style, exemplified by pre-emptive peace mediations and multilateralism. A number
of initiatives can be highlighted here. First, in 2003 Turkey initiated the “Iraq’s
Neighboring Countries Process,” the first meeting of which was held in Istanbul, and
which continued until 2009. The main aim was to support the territorial integrity
of Iraq and ensure “the participation of those who did not take part in the previous
elections, the Sunni Arabs” (Hürriyet 2005); the Turkish initiative was able to bring
together many countries neighboring Iraq, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
and Kuwait. Second, Turkey has also increased its efforts as a trusted third party
for mediation in the region. In 2008, Syrian–Israeli talks started in Istanbul, the
Turkish Chambers and Commodity Exchange (TOBB) launched an Industry for
Peace Initiative between Israel and Palestine, and mediation was attempted between
different parties in Lebanon (Altunışık 2008). Third, like former Iranian President
Khatami’s “Dialogue among Civilizations,” Turkey supported the initiative of the
“Alliance of Civilizations,” which was initially proposed by the then Spanish Prime
Minister Zapatero in 2004. Turkey became the co-sponsor of the initiative given its
Muslim and democratic character. Turkey’s participation in the initiative is signifi-
cant for many reasons. First of all, it shows Turkey’s preference for multilateralism
over unilateralism and for conciliatory efforts over conflict-seeking ones. Second, it
was important for Turkey to annul Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis and
show that Islam and democracy can be embodied simultaneously. Yet perhaps most
importantly, Turkey thereby for the first time became the spokesperson of the Islamic
world in a global initiative (Balcı and Miş 2008).
Apart from benignity, an assertive foreign policy and the rhetoric of political
leaders in Turkey are also important in producing soft power in the region, albeit
dependent on the regional context. In that respect, resisting Western or any kind
of domination, standing against injustices, and championing Muslim causes, have
constituted the soft power currency of beauty and contributed to the increased popu-
larity of Turkey in the eyes of many people in the Middle East, including in GCC
countries.
The post–Cold War environment, and the emergence of a Turkey with solid demo-
cratic and economic credentials, has enabled Ankara to pursue a more independent,
active, and to some extent more assertive foreign policy under AKP leadership; its
foreign policy agenda has changed accordingly. In that sense, Ankara’s foreign policy
discourse started to challenge Iran’s monopoly over championing the anti-Western
and anti-Israeli Muslim cause. In 2007, then Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan lashed
out at the then Israeli President Shimon Peres during a panel on Gaza at the Davos
World Economic Forum meeting. Erdoğan was quoted as saying, “When it comes to
killing, you know well how to kill” (Bennhold 2009). In 2010, Israel had raided the
Turkish humanitarian aid flotilla Mavi Marmara on its way to Gaza and killed nine
Turkish citizens; Ankara had immediately severed its diplomatic relations with Israel.
In this sense, Turkey’s uncompromising attitude towards the Palestinian cause as a
foreign policy objective had repercussions in the Middle East, increasing Erdoğan’s
popularity in many Arab capitals (Perry 2010; The Jerusalem Post 2011; Migdalovitz
2010). In 2014, Erdoğan also stood against the decision-making structures under the
auspices of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in dealing with the Pales-
tine issue, civilian killings in Iraq and Syria, and the coup in Egypt. In the UN General
Assembly meeting, to enthusiastic clapping, Erdoğan said,
the double standards by the modern world leads to serious and significant distrust … thou-
sands of people dying and we are only speaking about this issue. And not acting on it … We
have to address these issues as the UN without any further delay … Let me also say the world
is bigger than five. The fact that five permanent members of UNSC have rendered the UN
ineffective, despite the situation in the world, cannot be acceptable by global consciousness.7
Concerning foreign policy as a soft power tool, one should note that although the
foreign policies and rhetoric of political leaders in Turkey were not directly targeted
at the GCC countries, the repercussions of such policies reached mass audiences
in the Arab Gulf region thanks to mass communication technologies. Therefore, it
would be fair to consider that the foreign policies of Turkey, whether deliberately so
or not, are important tools for wielding soft power in the GCC region.
Turkey and the Gulf Crisis
It seems that Turkey’s efforts to garner soft power in the Gulf region finally bore fruit,
and its positive image increased substantially. According to a 2002 survey by Zogby
International, Turkey had been viewed quite unfavorably in the GCC, with 49% of
Kuwaitis, 64% of Saudis, and 75% of Emiratis expressing negative attitudes towards
Ankara (Zogby International 2002). A decade later, however, the picture of Turkey’s
image in the region was completely changed. A 2013 survey in all six GCC countries
revealed that Turkey has a positive image in the region, with 63% of Kuwaitis, 48%
of Bahrainis, 49% of Qataris, 58% of Emiratis, 66% of Omanis, and 71% of Saudis
stating that they viewed Turkey favorably (Zogby 2013). Further, on perceptions
towards Turkey in the GCC, annual surveys conducted by TESEV (in 2011, 2012,
and 2013) show that the positive image of Turkey in the GCC region was prevailing.
The 2011 TESEV Ortadoğu’da Türkiye Algısı (Perceptions toward Turkey in the
Middle East) survey revealed that positive attitudes toward Turkey stood at 89%
among Saudi respondents and 76% in respondents from five other GCC countries.
The survey also showed that positive attitudes towards Turkey had increased in Saudi
Arabia from 72% in 2009 to 82% in 2010. Annual polls of perceptions towards Turkey
followed in 2012 and 2013: according to the TESEV poll results, positive perceptions
of Turkey in Saudi Arabia remained high (77% in 2012 and 76% in 2013), and the
majority of respondents in the other GCC countries still had positive perceptions of
Turkey despite a considerable decline in 2013 (see Fig. 15.1).
The recent Gulf crisis, however, has posed a significant obstacle for Turkey to
reach out to the Gulf region through soft power means. In June 2017 Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Doha and imposed a
land, sea, and air embargo on Qatar. The accusations from the quartet concentrated
on Qatar’s “support for terrorism,” friendly relations with Iran, and meddling in
their internal affairs. The blockading countries also issued a list of 13 demands,
including the shutting of the Turkish military base in Qatar, with a ten-day deadline
(Al Jazeera 2017). Qatar rejected the claims and demands. Further, despite facing
Fig. 15.1 Positive perception towards Turkey: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman (Source
TESEV polls 2011, 2012, and 2013)
severe sanctions and an actual physical blockade from the neighboring Gulf States,
Doha managed to weather the initial shock waves without surrendering, thanks to
its ability to diversify its economic, political, and security partners. Doha was quick
to adapt to the “new normal,” that is, functioning well as a small state in isolation
(Ulrichsen 2018).
Turkey’s initial response to the crisis was to offer even-handed support as a medi-
ator, so that Qatar could find a solution. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoğlu
and President Erdoğan paid visits to Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in the following
weeks seeking a reconciliation. Yet Ankara’s efforts were turned down, with the
UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash writing on his Twitter
account that “The Turkish president’s visit did not carry anything new, and the hasty
stand his country had taken made neutrality as the best option for Ankara” (Reuters
2017). Turkey then positioned itself as a major supporter of Doha both politically and
materially. President Erdoğan denounced the blockade against Qatar as a violation of
Islamic values (Al Jazeera 2017), and Ankara offered help in providing food supplies
and basic materials to Qatar across the blockade. Within weeks, Turkish exports to
Qatar had tripled, reaching $32.5 million with $12.5 million food supplies (Hürriyet
Daily News 2017).
From a broader geo-political perspective, the recent intra-GCC crisis and the
Turkish–Qatari alignment has been the culmination of a series of events unfolding in
the Middle East since 2013. The post–Arab Spring political (dis)order in the region
has changed the balance of power and sharpened threat perceptions. Whereas the
traditional powerhouses in the Middle East have fallen from power, new actors like
Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have entered into a competition to shape
the future political landscape of the region. Among the various factors in play, the
most significant is the different security perceptions towards the role of Islamists,
mainly Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, by the Saudi–UAE axis on the one hand and
the Turkish–Qatari position on the other, which pits the two Sunni blocs against each
other. Turkey and Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in seeking a change
in the regional geopolitics has been harshly opposed by “the status-quoist Saudi-
UAE line, which categorically opposed the overthrow of fellow dictators (Aras and
Akpınar 2017).
The Gulf Crisis has shown that Turkey has been tilting towards more hard-power
policies in the Gulf region in order to meet its geo-political interests. In this respect,
Turkey’s uncompromising support for Qatar was supplemented with the building of a
Turkish military base in Qatar. In 2014, Turkey and Qatar ratified and agreed to open
a Turkish military base in Qatar, Turkey’s first military installation in the Middle
East, as an attempt to enhance their already cordial relationships in the military field.
Soon after the crisis, Turkey increased its military presence with 250 soldiers under
the Qatar–Turkey Combined Joint Force Command. In November 2017 President
Erdoğan paid a visit to the military base and told Turkish soldiers, “Our expectations
are from our heroes in Qatar; you must conquer the hearts of the people of Qatar with
our love and respect while performing your military duty with your gun and your
heart” (Daily Sabah 2017). According to news reports, Turkey is also extending its
military presence in Qatar with the construction of a new military base, while the
installation of new soldiers is reaching “a drastic figure” (Fırat 2019).
From the soft power perspective, its position in the crisis and its military presence
in Qatar pose both opportunities and challenges for Turkey as regards pursuing its
goals in the Gulf region. According to poll results, Turkey is now wildly popular in
Qatar, with 90% of Qataris saying that good ties with Turkey are valuable for Qatar,
and 81% declaring that they like Turkey’s current Middle East policy (Pollock 2017).
In this sense, through Qatar, Turkey will be able to reach into the Gulf to meet its
political, economic, and security ends via soft power policies.
On the other hand, the Turkish military presence in the Gulf could sharpen the
already febrile threat perceptions towards Turkey in other GCC states, and might ulti-
mately undermine Turkey’s decade-long soft-power efforts and policies designed to
garner a brilliant, beautiful, and benign image amongst the Gulf publics. According
to a report from the Middle East Monitor, Saudi Arabia launched a campaign encour-
aging a boycott of Turkey by all means possible, and consequently the number of
tourists from the kingdom dropped by over 30% over the first six months of 2019 as
compared to the same period in 2018 (Middle East Monitor 2019). Turkey thus seems
to face a dilemma between maintaining its position in the Gulf Crisis as against the
status quo powers in the Middle East, and enhancing its soft power capabilities so as
to reach out to the Gulf region more widely.
Conclusion
The overall aim of this chapter was to analyze the role of soft power in Turkey’s
foreign policy towards the GCC region in the period since the 1980s. Despite the
increasing importance of soft power in international relations, there is currently
only a limited—albeit growing—literature on Turkey’s soft power. The conceptual
framework devised by Joseph Nye and other scholars has here been revisited to
provide a theoretical basis for analyzing various aspects of Turkey’s soft power
approach in the GCC region. In this sense, a refined version of the soft power approach
that has evolved over the decades since the 1990s has been utilized to answer the
research questions posed here. This research, therefore, capitalizes on the notion
of power in international relations, the definition of soft power, its sources, tools,
and measurement, as well as the role of perceptions in international relations and
moreover the limitations of a soft power approach.
One of the main findings of this chapter is that soft power is not independent
from its context of application; the domestic and regional developments surrounding
the soft power wielder and the targeted countries play an important role in both
perceptions and soft power projection. The domestic and regional developments
after the 1980 military coup in Turkey played an important role in shaping the course
of its foreign relations. Further, the end of the Cold War and the emergence of
a multipolar world system has enabled middle-sized states like Turkey to operate
more independently in their foreign policies towards the Gulf region. Regional and
domestic developments during the 1990s, specifically the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,
and Turkey’s increasing security concerns and consequent rapprochement with Israel,
certainly determined the dynamics of the relations with GCC countries. The same is
true for the new millennium.
The third part of this chapter evaluated the relations between GCC countries and
Turkey from the perspective of soft power, amid the domestic and regional adjust-
ments manifest since 1980. The chapter also analyzed the potential resources, curren-
cies, as well as motives and motivations pertaining to Turkey in exerting soft power
in the Arab Gulf region. In this sense, academic studies of soft power combined
with information gained through personal interviews have been the principle sources
utilized. The findings underline that Turkey still has considerable cultural, military,
economic, ideological, and political resources, all of which reinforces the utility
of Vuving’s (2009) conceptualization of soft power currencies in terms of “bril-
liance,” “benignity,” and “beauty.” Further, the chapter also surveyed the ideological,
economic, and political incentives (motives and motivations) for Turkey to invest in
soft power policies in the GCC region.
According to available poll results, Turkey’s popularity among the GCC publics
has increased substantially compared to the early years of the new millennium. Its
profound political and economic transformation, the attractiveness of Turkish popular
culture, and its use of this in framing soft power policies since 2005 are important
elements for its success in emerging as a respected state in the region. Apart from that,
increasing cooperation between Turkey and GCC states on various key international
and regional developments also played a role in aiding Turkey’s penetration into
the region through soft power means, at least until 2013. The geo-political shift
in the Middle East following the Arab Spring has created a new environment for
Turkey and Gulf states, to which they are having rapidly to adapt. The divergences
among GCC member states and the subsequent crisis within the bloc forced Turkey
to recalibrate its soft power projections in the region: the increasingly close relations
between Turkey and Qatar in the face of the crisis have since brought the two into an
alliance on regional issues, and further enhanced Turkey’s positive image in Qatar.
However, as mentioned above, the soft power of a state is highly dependent on the
regional and domestic political context in which that state seeks to project influence.
The post–Arab Spring dynamics have increased the assertiveness of GCC states and
brought the divergences among Gulf States up to the surface. The Gulf Crisis is the
most apparent manifestation of this conflict. In this context, Turkey has found itself
bound to take a pro-Qatari line, given the convergence of interests between Ankara
and Doha. Yet at the same time it seems that, as a consequence, Turkey will find
it more difficult to deploy its soft power resources beyond Qatar in the Gulf states
more widely.
Notes
1. Ahmet Davutoğlu served as the Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan from 2003 to 2009, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2014, and
Prime Minister of Turkey from August 2014 to 2016.
2. Further details of the complementarity of the Turkish and GCC economies

can be found on the website of the Oxford Gulf and Arabian Peninsula
Studies Forum, see “Turkey–GCC Relations: Trends and Outlook,” available
at http://www.oxgaps.org/files/turkey-gcc_relations_trends_and_outlook_2015.
pdf, accessed 7 April 2020.
3. During personal interviews, Dr. Shahram Akbarzadeh, Dr. Mahdi Ahouie, and
Turkish Ambassador to Doha H. E. Ahmet Demirok mentioned that the govern-
ment sponsors cultural activities as an important mechanism for producing soft
power in the GCC countries.
4. Al Alam TV and Al-Kawthar are two Iranian broadcasts in Arabic; TRT Al
Arabia is Turkey’s official channel broadcasting in Arabic.
5. For the full report, see http://www.arabsocialmediareport.com/UserManag
ement/PDF/ASMR%204%20final%20to%20post.pdf.
6. For the Twitter accounts, see https://twitter.com/jzarif, https://twitter.com/
khamenei_ir, https://twitter.com/hassanrouhani, https://twitter.com/a_davutog
lu_eng, https://twitter.com/trpresidency?lang=tr. For the Arabic accounts of Pres-
ident Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu, see https://twitter.com/rterdogan_
ar?lang=tr, https://twitter.com/DavutogluAr.
7. The full speech of President Erdoğan with an English translation can be found
at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zghm_cFpYvY.
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Chapter 16
Iran’s Pragmatic Foreign Policy
in Response to Regional Crises: The Case
of the Blockade Against Qatar
Mehran Haghirian
Iran has time and again adapted its foreign policy in response to regional crises and
sought to take advantage of disorder to advance its national interests. Looking at
Iran’s response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, its maneuvering
with regards to Iraq after 2003, and its support for the 2011 uprisings in Bahrain, we
can see that the Islamic Republic of Iran has had a varying and often unpredictable
reaction to regional upheavals. The blockade that was imposed on Qatar in June 2017
was the latest region-wide crisis to expose the disunity within the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), and this prompted a pragmatic shift in Iran’s foreign policy.
This paper analyzes Iran’s foreign policy decision-making process with respect to
the Persian Gulf region by looking at the level of pragmatism in its approach towards
regional crises. The blockade is used as a case study to examine Iran’s policy shift
towards Qatar, moving from rivalry to a practical and mutually beneficial relationship.
By presenting a brief history of the key factors and events that have shaped relations
between Iran and Qatar, this paper examines Iran’s decision to assist Qatar at a critical
juncture in the changing geopolitical environment of the Persian Gulf.
With the objective of assessing the nature and durability of this revived relationship
and its impact on regional politics, this paper also delves into the State of Qatar’s post-
conflict regional approach to enhancing its relations with Iran in order to guarantee
the food security of its population, ensure an air-route for its leading international
airline, and secure further regional diplomatic support for the country. While severing
relations with Iran was among the 13 demands levied on Qatar by the Quartet,
the extent of this bilateral relationship was minimal in comparison to some of the
other GCC countries.1 It was indeed the blockade itself that propelled Qatar towards
enhancing its relations with Iran, and the blockade was thus the primary reason for the
changes in the regional status quo with respect to alliances and partnerships between
the countries of the Persian Gulf.
M. Haghirian (B)
e-mail: mhaghirian@qu.edu.qa

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_16
272 M. Haghirian
Pragmatism in Iranian Foreign Policy
Over its history of more than two millennia, Iran has undergone major transforma-
tions, and it is continuously evolving its foreign policy approach in accordance with
the prevailing political environment in the region. As a country with a strategic and
unique geographic position, Iran has been directly or indirectly impacted by many
events that have occurred in neighboring countries as well as the dynamics of power
and politics within its borders. Since the era of Cyrus the Great in the sixth century
BC, Iran has been contemplating the balance between ideology and pragmatism in
both its domestic and foreign policies. As Ramazani (2004) asserts, “in every major
period of Iranian history the dictate of circumstances has forced Iranian foreign
policy-makers to interpret their religious ideology pragmatically in order to advance
the state interests.”
Westbrook’s definition of pragmatist politicians describes the decision-makers,
often leaders, as those who are willing to “settle for a glass half empty when standing
on principle threatens to achieve less” (Ralston 2011). He further argues that “prag-
matists are concerned above all about practical results.” Unlike classical realists
who are focused on a fixed set of state preferences, pragmatists are in a strong sense
similar to liberalists who believe that priority should be given to “selecting intelligent
means, such as tools for situational problem-solving, and cultivating common-sense
approaches, such as consulting best policy-making practices.” When analyzing Iran
through this definition of pragmatism, the country’s foreign policy approaches can be
divided into three major modi operandi: (1) Ideological, where tenets of pragmatism
are relatively absent; (2) Pragmatic, where the pursuit of advancing national interests
is paramount; and (3) A mélange of both ideological and pragmatic approaches.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, and indeed its foreign policy, has been rooted in
an Islamic revolutionary ideology since the 1979 revolution. The objectives and
determinants of Iran’s foreign policy were framed in the early days of the revolution
with particular reference to Islamic principles and opposition to imperialism and
Western interference, as well as Ayatollah Khomeini’s personal views on Iran, Islam,
and the world. Thus, Iran dramatically and radically changed in 1979 and surfaced
as an ideological state with a strong inclination towards revolutionary and revisionist
policies, with pragmatism largely pushed to the back seat in the first decade following
the revolution.
If a status quo power is defined as a state that aims to “work within the existing
international system and not challenge the current order,” revisionist powers can be
described as countries primarily concerned with their “own power and prestige above
all other considerations” (Combes 2011/2012). According to Combes (2011/2012),
revisionist powers seek to “remodel the international system and order” for their
“own benefit and interests.” In line with this definition, Zionts (2006) argues that
in order to be considered a revisionist power, Iran would have to have been “pur-
suing a goal of reshaping the regional status quo by meddling with the politics or
territorial boundaries of another state.” By this definition, Zionts (2006) contends:
16 Iran’s Pragmatic Foreign Policy in Response to Regional Crises … 273
“Indeed, Iran’s goal was decidedly revisionist,” since Ayatollah Khomeini had reit-
erated the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy goals during the Iran–Iraq War, for
example, when the fight was viewed more as defending Islam rather than seizing terri-
tory or advancing national interests. According to Zionts (2006), during the Iran–Iraq
War, which largely shaped the Islamic Republic’s regional as well as global foreign
policy, “the calculus of realpolitik did not hold in a situation where the ideals of the
revolution itself, not a relative increase of security in the international system, were
at stake.”
A revisionist characterization, however, is insufficient for some scholars who
argue that the Islamic Republic should be viewed as a revolutionary country with
revolutionary goals and aspirations. In this respect, Tenembaum (2012) asserts that
“the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be described as a revisionist power,” since doing
so “would hardly reflect the dimensions of its regional objectives or the means it is
willing to employ in order to bring them about.” The Islamic Republic inherently has
a revolutionary ideological structure in all aspects of governance, and the leaders of
Iran have implemented and followed policies in line with this vision. What is impor-
tant, however, is the varying levels of ideological and revolutionary influence on the
different presidents, which have resulted in diverse foreign policies and approaches
in international relations.
While it is clear that ideology took center stage following the 1979 Revolution
and during the ensuing eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, pragmatism has largely
prevailed in the past three decades. Through the change in leadership following the
passing of Ayatollah Khomeini, there has been a dramatic shift in Iranian policy and
decision-making processes. As Posch (2013) contends, the Islamic Republic moved
away from “the phase of aggressively ideological or utopian foreign policy,” and
since Ayatollah Khamenei and Ayatollah Rafsanjani assumed their respective offices
in 1989, “pragmatism, professionalism and national interests have come to the fore,”
without ideology being abandoned as “a frame of reference.” The Islamic Republic
established a series of ideological red lines that continue to dominate decision-making
processes and constrain the implementation of radical changes and reforms. However,
as Hunter (2003) argues, upon the realization that the undue and costly “emphasis
on achieving vague Islamically oriented ideological goals” rarely served to secure
immediate national interests, the Islamic Republic was forced to move towards de-
ideologization.
As a result of the changes in the leadership cadre, the maturation of the Islamic
Republic’s determinants, objectives, and an understanding of national interests,
coupled with the shifting geopolitics of the region, Iran has moved away from
expressing a desire to export the revolution and towards aiming for the establishment
of strong and durable foreign relations. Many scholars, including Menashri (2007),
attest that the early enthusiastic and reactionary policies of the revolution have been
replaced by pragmatic considerations following the sobering realities of years in
power. While the revolutionary intent dictated the Islamic Republic’s general outward
approach, Menashri argues that the “actual realities have often forced a somewhat
greater realism” and an emphasis on the interests of the state as opposed to an “ide-
ological crusade.” He goes so far as to say that, with few exceptions, “whenever
274 M. Haghirian
ideological convictions have clashed with the interests of the state—as prescribed
by the ruling elite—state interests ultimately have superseded revolutionary dogma
in both foreign relations and domestic politics.”
Iran’s Reactions to Regional Crises
Iran’s foreign policy towards the GCC and the broader Middle East can be best
understood through the events that occurred following the 1979 Revolution. The
war between Iran and Iraq that started a year after the establishment of the Islamic
Republic greatly influenced its foreign policy formulation, as well as its regional
political and security approach. Furthermore, the Iran–Iraq War also strained relations
with the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf and continues to be a major influencer of
the country’s bilateral and multilateral relations with the GCC countries. The legacy
of the Iran–Iraq War has arguably been the dominant force behind Iran’s policies in
the three subsequent major regional events: the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990,
the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, and to an extent, the uprisings in Bahrain in 2011.
However, Iran’s system of governance has both core attributes and flexible
elements, which generates distinct approaches towards different regional crises based
on established red lines and the leadership styles of different presidents. In other
words, while there is an established framework that all leaders of the Islamic Republic
observe, there is a wide gap between the approaches of different leaders. The core
elements, such as following Islamic principles in policy-making and resisting foreign
presence and dominance in the Middle East and across the Muslim world, are strict
practices in the Islamic Republic’s international affairs. However, Iran’s foreign
policy is increasingly driven by the presidency and the flexibility it allows through
the transition of power.
One approach to analyzing pragmatism, or lack thereof, in Iran’s regional foreign
policy is to look at the abovementioned events following the Iran–Iraq War that
dramatically altered the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s actions in response to
these regional crises allow for a better understanding of the objectives and determi-
nants of the Islamic Republic’s approach to the blockade that was imposed on Qatar
in 2017.
Invasion of Kuwait in 1990
Although the Iran–Iraq War ended on 3 July 1988 without a victor as both countries
signed a cease-fire agreement brokered by the United Nations Security Council,
Hussein claimed victory for Iraq on behalf of the Arab world.2 This was because
Kuwait, along with other GCC partners, the United States, and dozens of other
countries, supported Saddam Hussein during the war against the Islamic Republic
and provided military and financial assistance to Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s actions after
the end of the war with Iran, however, illustrated the need to reassess geopolitical
strategies and policies for the GCC countries. Hussein’s lack of appreciation for the
assistance received from the majority of the GCC states, and his invasion of Kuwait
that followed less than two years after the war ended, proved to the GCC countries
and the international community that the ruling regime in Iraq could no longer be
trusted. Even though he had been a client of the GCC in “balancing against Iran in the
1980s,” Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait “revealed him as a menace” (Alterman 2007).
If Iran’s ideological policies had dominated at that time, Iran would have accepted
Saddam’s proposal to join Iraq’s invasion instead of adopting a policy of active
neutrality. Iran viewed Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait as counter to its interests as
the invasion’s success would have bolstered its most important regional adversary,
changed the geopolitical landscape of the Persian Gulf, and further damaged Iran’s
already-dim relations with the GCC countries. Within this context, Iran pragmatically
decided to not directly interfere in the crisis and at the same time maximize its own
interests. As such, President Rafsanjani disregarded the proposals for peace and
cooperation that were presented by Saddam Hussein, and instead called for Iraq’s
withdrawal from Kuwait.
As Ekhtiari Amiri and Soltani (2011) argue, “Iran’s pragmatic decision in the
crisis presented it as [a] rational and responsible actor which changed Iran’s image
in the region and the world and paved the way for international cooperation.” Iran’s
position during this crisis was “in sharp contrast to its interventionist and adventurist
policies of the post-revolution period,” and as Ehteshami (2002) argues, “Tehran’s
neutralist and nonaligned stance and support for the UN position throughout, coupled
by its condemnation of the invasion, brought the republic substantial kudos.” Thus,
the invasion of Kuwait paved the way for a constructively positive new era in relations
between Iran and Kuwait specifically, as well as relations between Iran and the Arab
states of the Persian Gulf more broadly.
With the decision to not interfere in the Persian Gulf War, Ayatollah Rafsanjani
managed to lift the shadow of hostility and mistrust that had strained Iran’s relations
with the GCC countries in the 1980s. Iran was facing severe economic problems
after the end of the Iran–Iraq War and the primary objective of the Rafsanjani admin-
istration was the reconstruction of the country. As a pragmatic leader, Rafsanjani
proclaimed that “Iran needs to stop making enemies,” and as Molavi (2015) argues
he “saw the GCC states not as ripe pawns to be toppled, but as cash-rich investors
to entice.” Iran’s position opened the doors for the GCC to recognize the Islamic
Republic as a partner in regional security, and as Ekhtiari Amiri and Soltani (2011)
explain, in the 1990 Summit in Doha the GCC members “welcomed the prospect of
future cooperation and Iranian participation in regional security arrangements” for the
first time since the revolution. Ramirez (1994) adds that as part of Ayatollah Rafsan-
jani’s foreign policy approach to foster economic cooperation with the region as well
as the international community, Iran’s “stance toward Saudi Arabia also altered.” For
example, to officially begin a new era in relations, Iran and Saudi Arabia signed an
agreement of cooperation in 1993 to increase economic relations and collaboration
as OPEC members. As a result of Iran’s pragmatic approach towards this crisis, its
276 M. Haghirian
bilateral relations with the GCC countries changed from confrontation to construc-
tive cooperation, which led to increased levels of trade, the restoring of direct flight
links, and money being allowed to flow more freely across borders.
The Fall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait forced the recalibration of the regional, political, and
security policies of Iran and the GCC countries. With the United States’ military
involvement in Iraq that began in 2003, and its subsequent ousting of Saddam
Hussein, the security and political dimensions of the Persian Gulf once again dras-
tically changed. According to Molavi (2015), along with the aftermath of Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, the 2003 invasion “weakened Iraq” and thereby strengthened
“Iran’s relative regional power as it poured resources into shaping post-Saddam
Iraq.” Kamrava (2011) adds that “for Iran, the significance of the elimination of a
major regional rival, and the subsequent political ascendance of Iraqi Shi‘ites, cannot
be over-emphasized.” Following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, Iran was
presented with new security challenges as well as with tremendous economic oppor-
tunities to pragmatically advance its national interests. In contrast, however, the
Islamic Republic’s growing influence in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and
the accession of a Shiite government into power in Iraq were major points of concern
for Saudi Arabia and other GCC states, as Iran’s ideological and religious tendencies
once again resurfaced in tandem with its pragmatic approach.
Rafsanjani’s pragmatic foreign policy continued during the presidency of
Mohammad Khatami, which further strengthened bilateral relations with the Arab
states of the Persian Gulf. Khatami’s approach was viewed as counter to the inherently
conservative, revolutionary, and ideological policies of the Islamic Republic and even
more prudent and pragmatic than Rafsanjani’s. As a result, there was an increased
domestic rivalry for power by factions with differing views on Iran’s economic poli-
cies, level of religiosity, and foreign relations. Ansari (2008) writes that “at the very
time when Khatami was seeking the desacralization of the state and a concentration
of power within the republican organs of government, his ideological enemies were
countering with a process of sacralization,” which was expanded dramatically in 2005
with Ahmadinejad’s accession to power. These differing visions within Iran paved
the way for the country’s mixed approach towards Iraq after 2003, where ideological
and pragmatic policies were implemented in parallel to one another.
Particularly looking at the Khatami era, Ramazani (2004) contends that Khatami’s
“conciliatory foreign policy” in pursuit of Iran’s national interest “paid off hand-
somely,” and for example “the improvement in the relations between Iran and Saudi
Arabia was unprecedented, and the rapprochement also helped reduce tensions with
Iran’s other neighbors.” Iran’s pragmatic policy towards Iraq after 2003 was evident
in that priority was given to advancing national security by ensuring the inability of
pro-Saddam Iraqis and members of the Ba’ath party to take power. However, ideo-
logues within the Iranian leadership also advanced their interests of pursuing policies
that were reminiscent of the early years of the revolution and the urge to export the
revolution abroad. Thus, it is best to explain Iran’s reaction to the fall of Saddam as
an ideological policy that was coupled with significant elements of pragmatism.
The fall of Saddam Hussein, and Iran’s evident, calculated maneuvering in Iraq,
was crucially important for the Islamic Republic, for reasons such as concerns over
ethnic and sectarian conflicts, the dangers that a fragmented Iraq would pose, the
potential for the spillover of insurgent and terrorist activities, and more importantly
the presence of hundreds of thousands of American troops within striking distance of
Tehran (Kamrava 2011). For these reasons, Kamrava (2011) contends, Iran encour-
aged “the emergence of a viable, pluralist, and stable central government in Baghdad,”
as it “ensures that the country remains intact, that the insurgency is contained, and that
the American occupation forces are likely to withdraw from the country sooner rather
than later.” However, as Rubin (2009) points out, it was hard for Iraq “to demonstrate
to the world that it is free of Iranian influence.” Rubin argues that “Iran’s influence
is indisputable,” and that the country that harbored the greatest uncertainty was, and
continues to be, Saudi Arabia. Regarding the Maliki administration in Iraq which
tilted heavily towards the Islamic Republic of Iran, Prince Turki Al-Faisal explains
that Saudi Arabia had “told the United States previously that when it brought a
Shiite-dominated government to power,” it handed Iraq to Iran “on a golden plate.”
Thus, the differing aspirations for Iraq added to the already complex geo-strategic
rivalry between Iran and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, while at the same time
significantly advancing Iran’s national and regional interests.
Uprisings in Bahrain in 2011
Iran’s foreign relations and policies once again shifted dramatically with the victory
of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential elections. The Islamic Republic’s
ideological, revolutionary, and confrontational policies once again resurfaced, and
according to Maloney (2013), “Ahmadinejad’s presidency reversed the trajectory of
Iran’s post-war path of moderation and put the revolution back on a collision course
with the international community.” As a result, Khatami’s dialogue among civiliza-
tions was “replaced by an eventual clash of civilizations”; the pragmatic approach
in reforming the country “gave way to growing conservatism,” and the policy of
détente was replaced by growing regional and international “tension” (Menashri
2007). Ahmadinejad’s revamping of the domestic and foreign policies of the previous
two administrations had a negative impact on Iran’s relations with the GCC coun-
tries, and as Molavi (2015) puts it, “the days of détente seemed a distant memory.”
What further damaged the Islamic Republic’s relations with the GCC countries was
Iran’s support for the uprisings in Bahrain, which further intensified the move from
reconciliation to direct hostilities between Iran and the Arab states of the Persian
Gulf.
Ostovar (2016) writes that Iranian officials were initially vocally supportive of
the Arab uprisings that occurred across the Middle East and North Africa starting
278 M. Haghirian
in December 2010. He adds that “when protests erupted across Bahrain and Egypt,
Iran’s leaders cheered the outpouring of discontent as righteous and legitimate.”
Furthermore, he recollects that “Iranian officials were particularly vocal regarding
Bahrain, where they called on the ruling Sunni Al-Khalifah family to respect popular
democracy and the will of the country’s people,” creating a new wave of tensions
between Iran and the GCC countries. Due to its revolutionary and ideological nature,
the Islamic Republic generally supports the concept of political uprisings against
monarchies and countries that are dependent on Western hegemonic powers, or as
the constitution declares, “while it completely abstains from any kind of intervention
in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the struggles of the oppressed for
their rights against the oppressors anywhere in the world.”3
Bahraini leaders and their allies in the GCC and the West had a strong belief that
Iran was behind the Shiite uprisings in Bahrain, even though the uprising in Bahrain
was, according to Ostovar (2016), “a populist, grassroots movement by a marginal-
ized, yet demographic-majority community, seeking greater inclusion and political
reform.” As it was a Shiite uprising, however, it “triggered the deeply ingrained
fears” of the leaders in some of the GCC states as they viewed “Iran’s hand in the
unrest and collectively moved to crush it.” Other scholars, including Fürtig (2013)
also believe that the GCC countries “did not only fear the knock on effect of a popular
uprising, but also an imminent Iranian victory.” Similar to Ostovar (2016), Fürtig
(2013) argues that “the presence of a Shi’a majority in Bahrain gave rise to their
suspicions that an insurgent victory would, in fact, constitute a success for Tehran,”
increasing the necessity of putting an end to the uprisings.
What is clear from Iran’s actions following the uprisings in Bahrain is that the
Islamic Republic once again resorted to a purely ideological approach and aban-
doned its pragmatic foreign policy decision-making calculus. Furthermore, the case
of Bahrain illustrates that not all of Iran’s responses to the crises in its immediate
region were pragmatic. It exemplifies Iran’s constant struggle in choosing between
pragmatic and ideological foreign policy approaches, and the consequences this
choice has had on the country’s foreign relations as well as the advancement of its
national interests.
Iran’s Reaction to the Blockade Against Qatar
Following the imposition of the blockade against Qatar in June 2017, Iran once again
chose to approach the crisis in a pragmatic manner. At that time, Iran was once again
under heavy pressure from the United States following the Trump administration’s
repeated threats to withdraw from the nuclear agreement and the call for establishing
a United Arab Front to counter and contain the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, Iran
was also isolated by the majority of the GCC countries following the incident at Saudi
Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad in response to the execution
of Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr in January 2016. The blockade presented Iran with a myriad
of opportunities to prove and establish itself as a viable partner for Qatar, and at the
same time to hinder Saudi Arabia and the other members of the blockading Quartet
and prevent them from achieving their objectives.
Hassan Rouhani’s foreign policy, which had a “pragmatist tone” and a “constant
emphasis on realism and prudence,” once again released Iran from the dogmatic ideo-
logical approach and shifted the country towards moderation and global engagement
(Sen 2016). The Rouhani administration not only succeeded in ending Iran’s nuclear
portfolio at the UN Security Council, which led to the lifting of international sanctions
on Iran, but in doing so, managed once again to reduce Iran’s isolation while fostering
unprecedented engagement with the international community. Molavi (2015) argues
that President Rouhani “made outreach to the GCC States a priority,” and that his
administration “hails from the Rafsanjani camp that believes in pragmatic engage-
ment” with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and “not confrontation.” While Iran
managed to alter its hostile relations with European and Asian countries, the growing
regional contentions have inhibited the betterment of relations with the GCC coun-
tries. The Syrian and Yemeni conflicts are major arenas for confrontation between
Iran and some GCC states, and coupled with the shift in regional dynamics arising
from the nuclear deal, the Rouhani administration was faced with a soaring level of
rancor from some of its Arab neighbors, which inhibited a wide-ranging rapproche-
ment. Indeed, these hostilities also led to the decision by the GCC states to sever or
downgrade ties with Iran following the 2016 incident at the Saudi Arabian diplomatic
missions in Iran.
The blockade and the ensuing crisis in the Persian Gulf presented the Rouhani
administration with an opportunity to enhance and expand relations with another
member of the GCC in tandem with the growing diplomatic and economic rela-
tions with Oman and Kuwait. Rouhani’s pragmatic and opportunistic response to the
blockade against Qatar resembles Rafsanjani’s approach to the invasion of Kuwait
by Saddam Hussein, and is far away from Ahmadinejad’s policies with regard to the
uprisings in Bahrain. The Islamic Republic could have acted in the same ideological
manner that it did with regard to the situation in Bahrain in 2011 in order to illustrate
its anger towards Qatar over its hosting of an American airbase, support for Saudi
Arabia during a period of tensions with Iran, and opposing policies with regard to
Syria and elsewhere in the region. However, the pragmatic president in Iran did not
consider such an approach and rushed to take advantage of the situation to advance
national interests and score points against Saudi Arabia.
Unlike the cases of the invasion of Kuwait and the fall of Saddam, and similar to the
case of the uprisings in Bahrain, Iran was named as one of the reasons for the crisis.
The blockading Quartet levied a list of thirteen demands against Qatar, and top of the
list was the curbing of diplomatic ties with Iran by closing its diplomatic missions,
expelling members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and cutting off any military
cooperation (Wintour 2017). The demands went so far as to dictate that “only trade
and commerce with Iran that complies with US and international sanctions will be
permitted.” As Clarke (2018) argues, “if the goal is to attenuate Iran, the continued
obsession with Qatar is having the opposite effect—it is, naturally, forcing Doha
into closer relations with Tehran as a means of mitigating the negative economic
consequences of the continued blockade.”
280 M. Haghirian
While severing relations with Iran was among the thirteen demands levied on Qatar
by the Quartet, some of the other GCC countries—the UAE, Oman, and Kuwait—
have had, and continue to have, far greater economic and diplomatic relations with
the Islamic Republic. It was indeed the blockade that propelled the State of Qatar’s
post-conflict regional approach to enhance its relations with Iran in order to guarantee
the food security of its population, ensure an air-route for its leading international
airline, and secure further regional diplomatic support for the country. In contrast to
the expectations of the Quartet, Qatar restored its diplomatic representation in Iran
to their pre-2016 level by reinstating its ambassador in Tehran, and the two countries
have vowed to substantially increase economic and trading ties (Pradhan 2018).
Iran, in addition to Turkey, has been a central actor in post-blockade Qatar. With its
close proximity and strategic objectives, Iran acted swiftly following the imposition
of the blockade and has guaranteed the importation of key foodstuffs and products
into Qatari markets. The blockade “forced Qatar to rely on Iranian airspace and
shipping routes,” which has caused a political reshuffling in the region and a blow to
the objectives of Saudi Arabia and other blockading countries (Sergie 2018). With
the closure of Qatar’s only land border by Saudi Arabia, the only shipping and air
routes for Qatar were through the Persian Gulf, and Iran was consequently the only
source of entry into the country by both air and sea. Additionally, it is a widely held
belief that “Iran stands as the sole victor,” to which statement Michael Greenwald,
the former US Treasury attaché to Qatar and Kuwait, attests (Sergie 2018).
Iran strongly condemned the imposition of the blockade, calling it an unjust
“siege”; it seized the opportunity offered by a divided GCC and “vowed to stand
with Qatar” (Pradhan 2018). “Iran has emerged as the primary beneficiary of the
intra-GCC rift” and the irrational pressure to implement the list of demands has
moved Qatar “closer and closer to Iran with each passing day, since the boycott”
(Pradhan 2018). Furthermore, the breakup of the GCC is considered an advantage for
the Islamic Republic as it will significantly damage Saudi Arabia’s regional policies
and objectives. As Ambassador Mousavian argued in an interview with the author,
the most important objective for Iran in assisting Qatar “was to prevent a regime
change attempt by Saudi Arabia,” and as “Riyadh has already dominated Bahrain,
the measures taken through the blockade could have been attempts to dominate Qatar
as the second phase of a broader strategy to dominate all GCC member countries.”4
He further stated that “Iran’s strategy played a key role in saving Qatar and blocking
the domino effect of Saudi Arabia’s domination strategy.”5 In addition, and in line
with these statements, Cafiero (2017) argues that Iran’s response to the blockade has
allowed it “the opportunity to tell Arabs that it is Saudi Arabia, not Iran, that threatens
Middle Eastern countries’ sovereignty,” and to advance its image as a non-sectarian
regional power.
Iran and Qatar as Partners?
The relationship between Iran and Qatar has one unique feature that has bound the
two countries together: the shared gas resources in the Persian Gulf. As a result of
this natural resource linkage, both countries have developed strategic partnerships
and mostly accommodating relations since the end of the Iran–Iraq War. Interactions
between the two have gradually increased, and ever since Khatami’s official trip to
Doha in May 1999 relations have mostly been positive, or, if not, at least without
hostilities (Eltahawy 1999). As many scholars argue, Qatar’s independent approach
in foreign policy, especially since 1996 and more so since 2011, has illustrated
its unique standing among the GCC member states. In Guzansky’s (2015) words,
Qatar’s foreign policy is “a combination of opportunism, ambition and strategic
maneuvering, backed by tremendous economic power and a willingness to use it for
political purposes,” which have given its leadership the required confidence to forge
its independent approach towards Iran.
As the first Iranian leader to attend the event, Ahmadinejad was invited to the GCC
summit in Doha on 3 December 2007, where he proposed twelve points for improving
brotherly relations and expanding cooperation between the seven countries (Ebtekar
2007). As a result of the increased political exchanges, according to Iran’s former
Ambassador to Qatar, Abdullah Sohrabi, Iran and Qatar forged official partnerships
in a wider range of areas in 2010, including maritime security cooperation, joint
efforts to fight piracy and terrorism, and coordination in countering organized crime,
specifically drug trafficking.6 The strategic relations between Iran and Qatar were
further strengthened with the election of Hassan Rouhani and the subsequent series
of diplomatic engagements between the two countries.
The strategic importance of Qatar to President Rouhani’s foreign policy was illus-
trated in October 2015 when Iran and Qatar signed a security agreement for the
stability of the regional waters in the Persian Gulf, as well as when Iran trained
Qatari naval forces as part of increased maritime cooperation in the same year. The
expansion of ties occurred at a time of intense frictions within the GCC, and at a
crucial moment in the region’s history with regard to the successful conclusion of the
nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers, and as such it is illustrative of
Qatar’s strategic maneuvering in its regional policies. After the blockade these offi-
cial agreements expanded, and in April 2018 the two countries signed an agreement
to “increase the joint patrolling of their maritime boundary” (Pradhan 2018). Further-
more, as Iran and Turkey are the two major countries that have been assisting the
post-blockade food and goods markets in Qatar, the three countries signed a trans-
portation pact in November 2017, to boost trilateral trade and ensure the smooth
transfer of Turkish products through Iranian territory (Vakil 2018).
The mutually beneficial relations, particularly with respect to the shared gas field
between the Islamic Republic and Qatar, have inhibited the escalation of tensions
over regional issues, and Qatar’s welcoming of the nuclear deal signified a calculated
approach towards Iran’s diplomatic success. Being among the first of the GCC leaders
to praise the nuclear deal, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani
282 M. Haghirian
called it a positive and important step at the UN General Assembly on 28 September

2015, and remarked: “I assure that Iran is an important neighboring country, and that
cooperation between it and our countries is in the interest of the region.”7 He further
claimed that “bilateral relations between Qatar and Iran are growing and evolving
steadily on the basis of common interests and good neighborliness,” and added that
“there is no dispute concerning bilateral relations between our two countries.”8
While Iran and Qatar have many mutual interests, the Qatari government’s regional
policies are often at odds with Iranian interests, including policies with regard to
Syria and Hamas (Bianco and Stansfield 2011). Additionally, regardless of whether
the likelihood is high or minimal, there remains the possibility that the blockade will
cease to exist and Qatar and Saudi Arabia will resume friendly ties. Furthermore,
Qatar continues to have a strong strategic partnership with the United States that
is currently more important to the sheikhdom than any other factor. These issues
could be seen as the primary reasons for the limited official contacts and contracts
between the Iran and Qatar after the blockade. However, even though Qatar has
strong strategic relations with the United States and shares a land border with Saudi
Arabia, with which it has many religious commonalities, it “shares its wealth with
Iran” (Seznec 2016). This fact has been a key barrier for confrontation and a solid
reason for constructive cooperation between the two countries.
Iran holds the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Half of those reserves are
situated in the world’s largest gas field, which it shares with Qatar, and which holds
an estimated thirty-five trillion cubic meters of Iranian and twenty-four trillion cubic
meters of Qatari reserves. (Seznec 2016). While there are no official agreements
between Iran and Qatar on the fields, the South Pars/North Dome fields are viewed
as a shared interest rather than as a battleground for rivalry. Furthermore, following
Doha’s decision to withdraw its membership from the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) in January 2019 (Colgan 2018) it is expected that
Qatar will focus more on expanding its role in the global gas market and growing
cooperation between Iran and Qatar in this field is very likely.
Iran and Qatar’s shared gas field is an example of energy interdependency in
the Persian Gulf. There are operational and proposed gas pipelines from the South
Pars/North Dome fields to other GCC countries, Iraq, and across the region. These
pipelines can have an enduring impact on bilateral and multilateral relations due
to the fact that these countries are in need of sustained gas imports. In addition
to satisfying the gas needs of the GCC countries, the long-lasting nature of these
pipelines will further bind the countries together and secure long-term cooperation.
Qatar’s advancement in the development of the North Dome and its longer experience
working with international corporations can be helpful to Iran as it endeavors to
develop its fields. Qatar can share its experience with the Islamic Republic to not
only ensure the sustainability, security, and safety of the fields but also to profit from
the investments and partnerships. Furthermore, as Seznec (2016) proposes, “Qatar
could toll Iranian South Pars natural gas into LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) for export
worldwide.”
On another note, while the new US policies have been successful in limiting
Iran’s trade with the UAE—the largest trading partner of Iran within the GCC—after
the reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran in 2018, this new situation has
allowed Qatar to attract Iranian businesses and act as the possible re-exportation
hub for goods destined for Iran. As Vakil (2018) argues, since January 2018, “amid
increased tensions with the UAE over banking and trade, Iran has begun to shift such
activities to Doha as a replacement for its longstanding Dubai ties.” The expansion
of business-to-business ties has become easier with the expansion of Qatar Airways’
flights to multiple cities in Iran, as well as the removal of visa restrictions for Iranian
travelers. As the Chief Executive of Qatar Airways, Akbar al-Baker, said in a state-
ment, “these latest launches are further evidence of Qatar Airways’ commitment to
Iran, as well as the expansion of our network in this thriving market” (Cornwell
2018).
At the strategic level, Iran and Qatar continuously expanded and broadened the
scope of their engagements following the 2017 blockade. Iran’s President and the
Emir of Qatar spoke several times on the phone and held meetings on the side-
line of regional and international summits on a number of occasions. Zarif, for
example, made Doha a regular stop following the imposition of the blockade on
Qatar, and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani also traveled to
Iran a number of times. The diplomatic back and forth ultimately led to the first offi-
cial state visit of Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Iran as the Emir of Qatar in January
2020, with the expectation of an official state visit by Rouhani to Doha prior to the
end of his term in 2021.
Qatar has been prioritizing its diplomatic relations with Iran, more so than ever
before the blockade. Qatari leaders have been vocally against the Arab states’ policies
with regard to Iran, have been supportive of the JCPOA, and have vowed not to take
part in any military action against Iran. Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister
of Defense, Khalid al-Attiyah, for example, called for salvaging the JCPOA at a
security conference in Singapore in June 2018, arguing that “Everyone should keep
holding on to this [agreement],” in addition to also opposing military action against
Iran, proclaiming that “In my own judgement, I think the United States is wiser
than to enter in a war with Iran” (Associated Press 2018). Al-Attiyah also insisted
that “Iran is next door. We should call Iran, put all the files on the table and start
to discuss to bring peace rather than war” (Associated Press 2018). Having adopted
a policy of engagement and dialogue, Qatar also opposed the statements issued by
the emergency summits of the Arab League and the GCC which were held in Saudi
Arabia following the attacks in Abqaiq and Khurais in May 2019. While Qatar did
condemn the attacks, the Foreign Minister opposed the statements because they “did
not refer to a moderate policy to speak with Tehran,” arguing that “they adopted
Washington policy toward Iran, rather than a policy that puts neighborhood with Iran
into consideration” (Reuters 2019).
Just days before the state visit of the Qatari Emir, Qatar’s foreign minister made
an unannounced trip to Tehran following the assassination of the Iranian General,
Qassem Soleimani. Some media outlets had alleged that the drones that were used
for the attack were launched from Qatar’s Al Udeid airbase which hosts the U.S. Air
Force, causing a moment of concern for the status of relations between Iran and Qatar
(Arab News 2020). This trip, however, was an attempt by Doha to mediate between
284 M. Haghirian
Iran and the United States with the objective of de-escalating a highly sensitive
situation in the region. Qatar’s new position as a close partner of both Iran and the
United States could have allowed it to foster further support to act as a mediator,
however, the underlying intra-GCC issues have, and will continue to, inhibit Doha
from reaching the full potential of relations with Iran. While Qatar has benefitted from
its pragmatic policy of dialogue with Iran, the “apparent rapprochement between
Doha and Tehran against Riyadh, if cemented,” might represent “a casus belli in
appearing to confirm Qatar’s intention to conspire with the common enemy” (Bianco
and Stansfield 2011). As such, Qatar has been, and will continue to be, cautious in
its decision-making calculus towards engaging Iran.
Conclusion
While it is difficult to forecast the future of relations between Iran and Qatar, as these
countries are located in one of the most unpredictable regions in the world, it can be
inferred from past policies and approaches that Iran and Qatar will gradually expand
ties without being considered major allies. Primarily because of the sensitivities in
neighboring GCC countries, Qatar will continue to have limited official relations
with Iran while at the same time attempting to expand ties by testing the waters
occasionally and in response to geopolitical events in the region. Iran, on the other
hand, is much keener to make the relationship official, to illustrate its non-sectarian
and friendly regional policies to other members of the GCC as well as other countries
in the region and beyond.
Iran’s pragmatic foreign policy, sometimes limited by the approach of ideological
presidents and frictions in domestic politics, has broadly and effectively replaced
the revolutionary dogmas that were first introduced after the 1979 revolution. Most
recently, the case of the blockade against Qatar has clearly illustrated the importance
of this shift in foreign policy decision-making. However, as the trend in Iranian
politics has shown, it is likely that a more ideological and less pragmatic president will
succeed Rouhani following the end of his second term in office in 2021, and the future
foreign policy approach of the Islamic Republic remains nebulous. Nevertheless, the
leaders of the Islamic Republic seem to have positioned the betterment of relations
with the majority of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf at the top of the state’s
foreign policy agenda, and it can be inferred that expanding relations with Qatar will
continue to be an important endeavor for Iran.
Notes
1. The blockading Quartet consists of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain, and Egypt.
2. United Nations Security Council Resolution 598.
3. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Article 154.
4. Ambassador Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, Interview by Mehran Haghirian, 2
December 2018.
5. Ibid.
6. Ambassador Abdullah Sohrabi, Interview by Mehran Haghirian, 21 January
2017.
7. Statement by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani at the United Nations General
Assembly, United Nations, New York, 28 September 2015.
8. Ibid.
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Part V
Qatar’s Economic Strategies in the Face
of the Blockade
Chapter 17
The Gulf Blockade: A Fifth Qatari
Economic Stage is Imminent
Moustafa Amin Mohammed Ali
Certain challenges may unexpectedly play a significant role in saving countries from
economic catastrophes, rather than aggravating them. This chapter briefly explores
some of the crucial economic challenges that have contributed to the development
of Qatar’s economy, particularly in the aftermath of the Gulf Crisis and blockade,
and the emergence of a new era in the developmental history of Qatar’s economy—a
fifth economic phase. This chapter first explores the economic perspective of the Gulf
Crisis through conceptualizing the blockade as an economic warfare tool. Second, it
throws light on the four previous phases of Qatar’s economy according to the liter-
ature on the subject (Alkhater 2016). In its third section, it discusses how Qatar’s
economy is embarking on a fifth economic phase—an era that is very likely to trigger
fundamental changes to the traditional rentier GCC Economic Model. The primary
observations made in this chapter highlight how Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds
(SWFs) have come into play, helping the state to overcome grave economic vulner-
abilities and to take significant steps towards achieving strong economic resilience.
This chapter uses generic research methodologies and primary document analysis.
Approaching the Concept of Blockade
The widely accepted definition of a blockade, as cited by von Heinegg (2006:10),

is as a “belligerent operation to prevent vessels and/or aircraft of all nations, enemy
as well as neutral, from entering or exiting specified ports, airfields, or coastal areas
belonging to, occupied by, or under the control of an enemy nation.” Rawlinson
(1967) highlights the relevance of a status of enmity between the nations involved.
Moreover, if such a blockade is solely aimed against the enemy’s economy, “the
M. A. M. Ali (B)
e-mail: ma1703620@student.qu.edu.qa

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_17
290 M. A. M. Ali
legality of a blockade has to be judged in the light of the law of economic warfare and
of neutrality” (von Heinegg 2006:10). The current blockade, not imposed against a
background of war, yet obtaining between countries of the same religion, culture, and
language, is unambiguously intended to harm Qatar’s economy, besides demonizing
it regionally and globally. This is consistent with contemporary views on blockades
as acts of economic warfare, thus highlighting the importance of understanding how
such a full-fledged blockade is viewed from an economic perspective. I agree with
von Heinegg (2006:1) that blockades as acts of economic warfare are the exception
rather than the norm in modern times, since they are normally imposed as an integral
part of a military operation. However, a protracted blockade will indeed weaken
the enemy’s military, through weakening the economy that sustains and supports it.
Although the GCC blockade did not actually include any military actions against
Qatar, there is abundant information on plans prepared by Saudi Arabia and the UAE
to invade Qatar, seize Doha, and potentially gain access to Qatar’s SWFs. Moreover,
multiple reports of potential military action against Qatar were carried by a myriad of
reputable international newspapers, without any denial from the US administration,
let alone the blockading Quartet. The successful intervention by Rex Tillerson, the
former US Secretary of State, which seemingly prevented a military invasion, is
perceived to be the reason why he lost his job in the White House (Emmons 2018).
Nevertheless, when we survey the air, land, and sea blockade as declared by the
Quartet, it is clear that the blockade does not apply to exports of natural gas from Qatar
to Dubai, which means that there is still trade occurring between those states. This
suggests that the Qatari leadership is willing to leave some doors open in the hope
that the dispute may be resolved; or at least, from a practical economic perspective,
that it prefers neither to cut off sources of revenue in times of hardship, nor be the
cause of Dubai’s inhabitants having to go to sleep after the sun goes down.
For a state such as Qatar, given its geographical limitations, depletable reservoirs
of natural resources, regional significance, and overdependence for its food security
on imports from neighbors, it is unequivocal that its economy might be vulnerable
to external shocks. This is especially true in the midst of the current diplomatic
rift, which is unprecedented in depth and breadth in the modern history of the Arab
countries, let alone the GCC. Importantly, the “carrot and stick” policies that the
blockading countries adopted, inviting other countries to join their boycott of Qatar
in order to impact its economy, have in fact acted as a stimulus for the investigation of
the blockade’s implications for Qatar’s economic sectors. An International Monetary
Fund (IMF) report on Qatar’s economy raises serious concerns about the diplomatic
dispute and how it “could weaken confidence and reduce investment and growth, both
in Qatar and possibly in other GCC countries as well” (IMF 2017). According to the
IMF report, “the direct economic and financial impact of the diplomatic rift between
Qatar and some countries in the region has been manageable,” which implies that
the blockade has not achieved its main goals. Kamel (2018) underscores that what is
happening in the Qatari case patently contradicts the predictions of the mainstream
literature (e.g., von Heinegg 2006) on the impact of a blockade—be it economic or
military. Not only has the blockade worked in favor of the country under siege, but
it has had negative impacts on the Quartet’s own economies; although the effect on
17 The Gulf Blockade: A Fifth Qatari Economic Stage is Imminent 291
Saudi Arabia’s economy has been limited, it has clearly had a major impact on the
economies of Bahrain and the UAE (Kamel 2018). I tend to believe that another
aspect of the blockade may be the projection of power in order to force Qatar back
into the mainstream political trajectory of the GCC states.
It is important, in this context, to note that it is not my intention to argue that it
was solely such motives of power projection that triggered the blockade; nor do I
maintain that economic factors were the main motives behind it: rather, there was
an accumulation of economic concerns as political disputes piled up. Moreover, Al-
Baharnat argues that behind the blockade there is also an historical motive, regarding
how the UAE in particular views Qatar, namely as the would-be eighth emirate (Al-
Baharnat 2004). This seems plausible from a counterfactual perspective, since Qatar
would have been among the richest emirates of the UAE if the federation initiative
had been a success. That said, it is also plausible that relations between Qatar and the
UAE are much more intense and complicated compared to their counterpart relations
with Saudi Arabia, especially if we bear in mind the special veneration Qatar used to
have for Saudi Arabia. I tend to think that one of the main economic factors that could
have contributed to the blockade was Qatar’s intent to launch a regional Renminbi
clearing center, the first of its kind in the MENA region, its main objective being
to “offer RMB clearing and settlement … increase financial connectivity between
China, Southwest Asia and the MENA region and increase opportunity to expand
trade and investment between China, Qatar and the region” (QCB 2015). This is
understood to have aroused the resentment of the UAE at the regional level, as well
as fury of the United States. The UAE’s resentment is conspicuously directed towards
the Qatar–China clearing hub, which is a fierce competitor to Dubai’s International
Financial Center—previously the only such center in the region—as well the expected
outcome that Qatar would attract global clients and businesses.
Furthermore, Engdahl argues that Washington had a desire to discipline Qatar
for its willingness to perform natural gas transactions with China in the latter’s
currency, and not in US dollars; this particularly appalled the US administration
since Qatar is the world’s largest and leading LNG exporter (Engdahl 2017). This
would mean that the anger of the United States regarding the establishment of a
Yuan Clearing Center for trading with China—in the heart of the Gulf, which is
a major US “petrodollar” generator—is an equally crucial factor in the origins of
the blockade. The United States granted Saudi Arabia and the UAE carte blanche
to impose a “Saudi-led”—yet UAE-planned-and-triggered—blockade on Qatar, in
which Bahrain followed the former and Egypt acted upon the directions of the latter,
with the Trump administration’s oversight. Therefore, the argument that the United
States made this blockade happen, in an “ugly exploitation of the political disputes
between the Gulf states, especially Qatar and KSA, to project its ‘soft power’ on one
of its allies but this time through ‘proxy, … Riyadh’, to discipline those not ‘behaving’
according to Washington’s wishes” (Engdahl 2017) has some justification.
292 M. A. M. Ali
The Development of Qatar’s Economy According

to Alkhater’s Classification
According to Alkhater (2016), Qatar’s economic development has witnessed four

major phases. The following lines provide a brief background of these four stages:
The Pre-Independence Oil Economy: 1949–1971
The year 1949 marked the burgeoning of Qatar’s economy through the exportation
of oil, almost three decades after the pearling industry declined. The discovery of oil,
and the revenues which later flowed, represented a milestone in the historical record
of Qatar’s economy since it facilitated the country’s early steps towards various
aspects of modernity. The economy of this pre-independence stage was marked by the
introduction of the first government budget, the establishment of the first British bank
in Qatar—the Eastern Bank, in 1950—and the creation of the first Qatari national
bank in 1965 (Alkhater 2016). However, at this stage it was still too early for the
financial sector to be part of the international monetary system, probably due to the
existence neither of a national Qatari currency nor a monetary authority, let alone
the absolute absence of the capital market (Alkhater 2016).
The Early Post-Independence Oil Economy: 1971–1980
After independence, generous increases in oil revenues in the aftermath of the 1973
OPEC oil embargo quadrupled oil prices and resulted in a brisk progress in the
development of Qatar’s economy. This stage of the oil-based economy was marked
by introduction of the Riyal, the first national Qatari currency, and the establish-
ment of the Qatar Monetary Agency, “the first sovereign monetary authority in the
country’s modern history” (Alkhater 2016). As this was a burgeoning economy, the
introduction of a national Qatari currency required some kind of credible monetary
policy. Therefore the Qatari Riyal was pegged to the US dollar, using the latter’s
own monetary policy to secure Qatar’s economic stability. Consequently, according
to Alkhater (2016), although this led to the abrogation of Qatar’s macroeconomic
management strategy of controlling its monetary and exchange rate policies, the
use of “a one-sided fiscal policy, fiscal spending,” as a “single-tool macroeconomic
policy framework worked fairly well for the economy.”
The Slow Growth Period: 1980s–1990s
The 1980s and 1990s stage of economic progress was marked by the sharp decline in
oil prices that began in the mid 1980s and continued until the beginning of the 2000s.
As just noted, Qatar’s financial sector at this time employed a very limited fiscal
toolbox, and the remedies and responses of the Qatari government were represented
by “cutbacks in public spending … where the economy basically stabilized on steady-
low growth path” (Alkhater 2016). This slow-progress stage overshadowed Qatar’s
GDP and trade sector, as well as the entire financial sector.
The Rapid Economic Expansion Period: 2002 to Present

(2016)1
The stage up to the present represents the best performance of the Qatari economy in
its entire history, due to the unprecedented surge in global oil prices. This happened
mainly because of the emergence of multipolar economic powers such as China
and India, as the growth of their economies depended on hydrocarbon products.
According to Alkhater, the “growth-resource boom driven by higher oil prices and
expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in Qatar” represents a fundamental
internal response to the external changes at the global level (Alkhater 2016). In almost
a decade, Qatar has emerged as a strong developing economy, with its key indicators
reaching unprecedented levels:
For instance, Qatar’s nominal GDP reached $212 billion in 2014, a 300-fold increase over its
level in 1970, while per capita GDP was, globally, the highest at $93,714 in 2013, 34 times
its level in 1970. Exports and imports rose 315- and 199-fold respectively, relative to their
levels in 1972. Money supply, domestic credit, total deposits, and the ratio of bank assets to
GDP increased by 122, 203, 148, and 3.9 times respectively, relative to their levels in 1978,
while government expenditure increased by 21 times relative to its level in 1980. (Alkhater
2016)
In this context, it is notable that the classification of the progress of Qatar’s

economy development into four stages is centered around two major factors: (i)
the periods before and after independence; and (ii) low and high oil prices. Hence,
the classification of the first two stages is centered around independence, whereas
the second two stages are centered around how lower prices for oil triggered
economic recession and cutbacks in public spending policies, and how rocketing oil
prices brought about unprecedented levels of development in all economic sectors.
However, it is important in this respect to highlight that the fourth stage of rapid devel-
opment was to a great extent dependent on revenues from the hydrocarbon sector and
the steep rate of development it enabled, and thus was greatly concentrated on the
export of hydrocarbon products and investment in the non-tradable sector as repre-
sented in construction and real estate, whereas the country was importing everything
else in the tradable sector, as represented in goods and services (Alkhater 2016).
294 M. A. M. Ali
A Fifth Qatari Economic Phase is in the Making
Before unravelling the aspects that demonstrate that the Qatari economy is embarking
on a new, fifth economic development stage, it is important to briefly throw some light
on three concepts relevant to the story of Qatar’s economy under the blockade. These
are vulnerability, economic resilience, and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs); by refer-
ence to these key concepts, we may understand how, under the current blockade, Qatar
has not only managed to avoid the multifaceted vulnerabilities which confronted its
economy but also managed to turn them into economic resilience.
The Concepts of Vulnerability, Economic Resilience,

and SWFs
The Concept of Vulnerability
There is an extensive literature on the concept of vulnerability from the concep-

tual and empirical perspectives; this literature emphasizes that states with limited
geographical space, i.e., “small states,” are “characterized by higher degrees of
economic openness and export concentration” (Briguglio et al. 2008), which results
in their “exposure to exogenous shocks, that is, economic vulnerabilities” (Briguglio
et al. 2008). Cordina shows “that increased risk can adversely affect economic growth
as the negative effects of downside shocks would be commensurately larger than
those of positive shocks. The high degree of fluctuations in GDP and in export earn-
ings registered by many small states is considered as one of the manifestations of
exposure to exogenous shocks” (Cordina 2004, as cited in Briguglio et al. 2008).
Cordina (2004) and Briguglio et al. (2008) conclude that “the economic well-being
of nations is more dependent on man-made policies than on inherent vulnerabilities,”
and affirm that “adequate policy approaches can be used to successfully overcome
the handicaps posed by vulnerability.”
Briguglio introduces the “Singapore paradox,” which “refers to the seeming
contradiction that a country can be highly exposed to exogenous shocks, rendering
it economically vulnerable and yet still manage[] to attain high levels of GDP per
capita”. He explains this “in terms of the juxtaposition of economic vulnerability
and economic resilience and proposes a methodological approach in this regard.”
Through this perspective, he ascribes economic vulnerability to inherent conditions
which affect a country’s exposure to external shocks, whereas he associates economic
resilience with actions made by policymakers and private economic agents that enable
a country to “withstand or recover from the negative effects of shocks. Actions which
enable a country to better benefit from positive shocks are also considered to be
conducive to economic resilience” (Briguglio et al. 2008).
Vulnerability, therefore, is a broad term that has multifaceted environmental,
social, geographical, economic, and even cyber-security dimensions. Through each
of the aforementioned forms, an analysis can be conducted to convey and sustain

a specific point of view on several global issues. However, vulnerability can be
classified into four major categories: physical, social, environmental, and economic
(Bagla 2017). The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) expands the
discussion on these four categories. While it sees physical vulnerability as “often
determined by aspects such as population density level, the remoteness of a settlement
and the site, design and materials used for critical infrastructure and for housing,”
it views social vulnerability as “normally linked to the level of well-being of indi-
viduals, communities and societies,” and explains environmental vulnerability as
“the extent of natural resource depletion and data on resource degradation.” It views
economic vulnerability as “the economic status of individuals, communities and
nations related both to the possibility of higher proportional losses among the poor
when a disaster strikes … lack of economic diversity, and equally, inadequate access
to basic socio-economic infrastructure such as communication networks, transport,
water, and healthcare facilities” (UNDRR RAED 2011).
Economic vulnerabilities include economic dependence on depletable natural
resources, overdependence on foreign labor, and border security instabilities, all
of which are shared by the six Gulf states. However, Qatar may add several more
vulnerabilities of its own, such as overdependence on foreign food product imports
for its food security, given the arid nature of its land, and, in particular, being a
landlocked area. These two factors played significant roles that are, however, the
reverse of what might be expected. First, Qatar’s overdependence on imported food
products from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf countries, through its Abu
Samra border with Saudi Arabia, was in part what lured the blockading countries
to besiege Qatar, thus closing the frontier in order to damage Qatar’s economy.
As a result, however, they awakened Qatar’s latent capabilities and determination
towards embarking on a journey to a diversified economy, which the blockading
countries never planned for; they certainly did not imagine themselves praising such
an outcome, as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman did, a year and a
half after the blockade, and thus acknowledging Qatar’s resilient strong economy.
Moreover, from Qatar’s point of view “the main channel through which the
blockade hit the Qatari economy has been via trade disruptions since the blockade
has made it extremely difficult for Qatar to import goods and materials required for
the growth of its economy. Therefore, imports fell by more than 30% y/y in both
June and July” (Tuvey 2017). This unequivocally influenced Qatar’s fiscal policies
in terms of its expenditures, since it was immediately forced to find alternative food
import sources. This incurred exorbitant costs, due to the unexpected and volumi-
nous demand for food imports alone, not to mention other materials fundamental
to the economy of a country under a blockade. Qatar’s GDP decreased by 2.1% in
2017 following the blockade (Tuvey 2017), followed by a journey to recovery in
2018, when it increased by 2.6% (IMF 2017), all of which indicates Qatar’s strong
ambitions for a resilient and diversified economy.
296 M. A. M. Ali
The Concept of Economic Resilience
Resilience is hard currency in a nation’s economy. According to the Oxford English

Dictionary, resilience is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
It is also defined as “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape;
elasticity.” It is an economic aspect that is required, hailed, and commended by
the International Monetary Fund as a national target for any economy (IMF, 2016).
In addition, the UNU-WIDER defines economic resilience as “the policy-induced
ability of an economy to withstand or recover from the effects of such shocks”
(Briguglio et al. 2008). According to this, “the relatively good economic performance
of a number of small states is not because, but in spite, of their small size and inherent
economic vulnerability” (Briguglio et al. 2008). One of the major areas by which
to measure the stance of a nation’s economy is the resilience of its macroeconomic
sector.
For Qatar, however, as a small yet rich state, the resilience of its economy does
not stem from the policy-induced ability of its economic system, as the definition
suggests, but rather from its substantial sovereign fund reserves. The blockading
Quartet intended to harm Qatar’s banking system, since they were aware that, just
like in the other GCC countries’ banking systems, there were considerable concerns
over liquidity. Therefore, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt withdrew funds
equivalent to QAR150 billion. The effects of this were obvious following the initia-
tion of the blockade. Had Qatar not been one of the world’s richest countries in terms
of its substantial sovereign wealth funds, the withdrawn non-resident deposits would
have led to severe damage to—or the total collapse of—its banking sector. To rescue
its banking system, and consequently its economy, Qatar injected over US$38.9
billion. Had these large amounts of money not been available, would resilience have
remained the main outcome of the Qatari macroeconomic sector’s performance, as
per the IMF’s report in 2017 (IMF 2017)?
Two years prior to the blockade, Qatar had embarked on a macroeconomic
adjustment trajectory, which is still ongoing. This reflects a common understanding
and agreement among the macroeconomically-oriented Qatari officials about what
resilience means, and how to achieve it, given the surrounding critical challenges.
In other words, what can be elicited from the IMF report (2017) is that the Qataris
seem to have transitioned from a situation of “the problem of awareness” to “the
awareness of the problem.”
This understanding has triggered a series of actions directed towards not only
achieving economic resilience but also economic diversification. This became
obvious in Qatar’s economic decisions in the aftermath of the blockade. The IMF
emphasizes that “strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth and the ability
to absorb and overcome shocks are fundamental to resilience” (IMF 2017).
Although the geo-political situation is demonstrably unshifting, the social,
economic, and security repercussions are still unfolding. Qatar’s regional and global
diplomatic status, as well as its investments, have proven its soft power projection,
since its response to the blockade encompassed overcoming the economic implica-
tions, furthering its relations with Turkey, and boosting its relations with the United
States, thus gaining more ground at the global level and calling Saudi Arabia’s domi-
nance in the Gulf region into question. Qatar’s diplomatic build-up has finally paid
off (Rossi 2019).
Sovereign Wealth Funds
Within the global investment environment, the term Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs)
was first coined by Andrew Rozanov to distinguish SWFs from other traditional
funds, i.e., public funds and national currency-backing reserve assets. He describes
SWFs as “A by-product of national budget surpluses, accumulated over the years
due to favorable macroeconomic, trade and fiscal positions, coupled with long term
budget planning and spending restraint” (Rozanov 2005; see also Dehman 2017).
The United States Department of Treasury gives a narrower definition of SWFs as
“Government investment vehicles funded by foreign exchange assets, and managed
separately from official reserves,” further categorizing them into “commodity funds,
which are established through commodity exports, either owned or taxed by the
government; and non-commodity funds, which are typically established through
transfers of assets from official foreign exchange reserves” (Kimmitt 2008). Whereas
Rozanov’s definition introduces a sense of protectionism, other definitions convey a
meaning of governmental obligations towards future generations. Moreover, both of
these definitions tend to reiterate the timeline of the evolution of the SWF concept.
Great portions of these SWFs reside in the local banks of the nations that own them.
One feature of SWFs that “is unanimously adopted by academics is that they are
state-owned investment vehicles” (Dehman 2017).
Edwin Truman of the Peterson Institute introduces a distinction between govern-
ments operating their SWFs within their own borders, and outside them. In the
first situation governments are sovereign, as the operation of the SWF is within
their borders; whereas in the second they “are not sovereign in the same sense”
(Truman 2008). In the Qatari situation, the SWF operated within Qatar’s borders,
thus reaffirming Qatar’s sovereignty both economically and politically.
The role of these SWFs in the rescue of Qatar’s economy, through providing
internal banks with liquidity and backing the Qatari Riyal in foreign exchange
markets, is undeniable. Through SWFs, Qatar managed to overcome a major hit
to its banking sector in which all the blockading countries withdrew their deposits
abruptly in order to undermine its liquidity and credibility. Thus, the Qatari financial
institutions—mainly represented in the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Qatar
Central Bank (QCB)—managed, through SWFs, to inject around 40 billion QAR to
maintain the health and reputation of its banking sector.
298 M. A. M. Ali
Facets of the Forthcoming New Qatari Economic Era
In the Gulf states, there has long been a phenomenon that has preceded serious plans
for agriculture and economy programs, simply a sort of political crisis, either at the
regional or the international level. This phenomenon can be described as “The Gift
of a Crisis.” By this I mean that political crises that have economic repercussions
have proven to trigger fundamental changes in the GCC region, some of which
have proven to be successful, and others not. For instance, in the aftermath of the
OPEC oil embargo in 1973, and due to fears of a counter embargo by the West,
a massive program dedicated to agriculture was launched by the government of
Saudi Arabia (Woertz 2014), thus providing substantial subsidies that encouraged
the creation of agricultural businesses, amongst which were companies producing
dairy products as well as animals, such as Almarai, a leading global dairy and animal
producer (Lambert 2017). To give another example, in the aftermath of the shocks to
the international food market during the first decade of the new millennium, Qatar
initiated several investments, “particularly in Australia, to import some live cattle and
compensate their relative lack of a domestic industry” (Lambert 2017). Moreover,
the GCC political disputes in 2014 led to the creation of other successful programs
under the auspices of Hassad Food, Qatar’s premier investor, which have proven to
be a success (Lambert 2017).
It can therefore be argued that the deeper the crisis, the greater is the determination
to succeed, specifically for affluent countries such as Qatar. The unprecedented Gulf
blockade—the worst crisis Qatar has ever confronted—gave the decision-makers in
Qatar an understanding of the absolute reality of Qatar’s food insecurity through a
shocking real experience, since Qatar depends on its neighbors to provide almost
90% of its food and material imports. Aside from the contingency plans to address
the blockade’s repercussions in the first two weeks, there has been a Qatari determi-
nation to achieve self-sufficiency, particularly in dairy and animal products, through
engaging the private sector, as an initial step towards achieving economic diversifica-
tion. The blockade has simply quadrupled the acceleration of these self-sufficiency
pursuits. An example of excellence in realizing part of these goals is Baladna, a Qatari
dairy production company. The company has not only achieved self-sufficiency in
dairy products in two years after the blockade, but is now also exporting its products,
thus turning Qatar’s vulnerability of dairy insecurity into resilience, and asserting
the common aphorism that the blockade has proven to be a blessing, not a curse. In
another sphere, Qatar has achieved 100% self-sufficiency in fresh poultry food, with
self-sufficient livestock levels reaching 1.75 million animals, 86% self-sufficiency
in fish, and levels of vegetables remaining high (Ataullah 2019; Lambert 2017).
Nonetheless, of great salience is the sustainability of this initiative from a cost
perspective, an area that needs to be explored by case study research.
What can be understood from this acceleration in activating the role of the private
sector, particularly in the tradables (services and goods), is that it will gradually
become the growth engine of Qatar’s economy. To this end, Qatar is working on
several reforms in various areas, such as the legislature environment, fiscal and
financial adjustments, Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) Infrastructure,

free and special economic zones, customs procedures, institutional governance, and
Public–Private Partnerships. More importantly, the acceleration that is taking place is
happening at a rapid pace in all areas. Therefore, it can be observed that, for instance,
the Qatari government’s decision to implement reforms to fuel subsidies, in order to
decrease fiscal expenditure and consequently reduce the fiscal deficit, was happening
at a gradual pace between the years 2011 and 2016; whereas petrol prices are being
increased on a monthly basis starting from 2017. Although the outcome will not be
of great benefit to the government’s budget, it represents an initial step towards more
fiscal adjustments to come, such as the VAT introduced in 2020 (IMF 2017).
It is also observable that when the government of Qatar implements reforms in
subsidies, (such as in fuel or medical insurance) they tend to implement them grad-
ually, whereas in the aftermath of the blockade it is noticeable that projects for self-
sufficiency or the preparations for the FIFA World Cup 2022 were “simultaneously
accelerated.” Hence, the two characteristics, “simultaneous acceleration” and “grad-
ualness” seem to be the norm in such planned subsidy reforms and projects, since
the Qatari “government is undertaking a structural reform agenda to broaden the
geographical composition of trade and financial transactions, improve the business
environment, enhance domestic food production, promote special economic zones
(SEZs), and allow majority foreign ownership of companies” (IMF 2017).
One of the facets of the impending new Qatari economic era is the creation of
the Qatar Research Development and Innovation Council, an initiative that aims
to support national research development and innovation strategy and ecosystems.
It will also orchestrate RDI activities between government entities, private sector
companies, and research and academic institutions across Qatar, in order to “enhance
Qatar’s resilience and prosperity through locally empowered and globally connected
Research, Development and Innovation” (QRDI 2018). As well as the value that an
institution such as the QRDI can create, it is expected to generate thousands of jobs
within Qatar, thus boosting the employment sector in the national and international
spheres. The institution is also expected to contribute no less than QAR30 billion to
Qatar’s annual GDP from its RDI-based activities. In this respect, the QRDI remains
an important area to explore for researchers interested in the building blocks of
Qatar’s next economic era, an endeavor this research is not intended to cover.
According to the Governor of Qatar Central Bank (QCB), the Qatar RMB Center,
based in the Qatar Financial Center, is
the region’s first RMB clearing center in Doha which creates the necessary platform to realize
the full potential of Qatar and the region’s trade relationship with China. It will facilitate
greater cross-border RMB investment and financing by businesses, and promote greater
trade and economic links between China and the region, paving the way for better financial
co-operation and enhancing the preeminence of Qatar as the financial hub in MENA (QCB
2015).
The RMB Center, within six months of its creation, has managed to clear around
RMB131 billion (around US$20 billion), thus acting as the first RMB clearance
financial hub in the region, as well as being included by the IMF in “the benchmark
Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies, joining the US Dollar, Euro, Japanese
300 M. A. M. Ali
Yen, and British Pound as of October 2016” (Kanady 2015). The annual gradual
expansion of the center’s financial transactions helps Qatar in its pursuit of “further
diversifying its investor base” (Gulf Times 2019).
By the same token, Hamad port, even though operational in December 2016,
was officially inaugurated in the aftermath of the 2017 Gulf blockade, specifically
in September 2017, and is expected to be completely operational by the advent of
2020. The port is “capable of handling 7.8 million tons of products annually, the bulk
of trade which passes through the port consist[ing] of food and building materials”
(Davison 2017). The port’s functions are not confined to receiving food and material
imports, and it is very likely to act as a potential re-export hub. Surprisingly, two
years after the blockade, Hamad port had acquired 28% of the trade volume in the
Middle East (Kumar 2018). Thus, apart from emerging as a strong competitor to the
UAE’s glitzy ports of Rashid and Jebel Ali, Hamad port will be another building
block in the diversification of the economy, since it has the potential to be a regional
and global re-export hub.
Hence, each of the facets previously mentioned represent signs of a major change
that is taking place, whether gradually as in subsidy reforms, or as part of a simulta-
neous acceleration as in other projects. It is important in this respect to reiterate that
such facets of an oncoming new economic era, in the light of what is stated in the
literature, suggest that the World Economic Center of Gravity is moving eastward
(Alkhater 2016). This can be translated into tangible outcomes when the planning
of the economy is in harmony with the requirements of Qatar’s national priorities. It
is also salient that each of the facets or signs of a forthcoming new economic stage
for Qatar requires separate, case-study-based research in order for the economic
dynamics of this era to be identified. Whether this likely fifth economic stage would
be better named after the Gulf blockade or otherwise, it is fairly safe to conclude that
the blockade made a significant contribution to the acceleration of these economic
dynamics. It is also noteworthy that Qatar still needs to consider pegging its currency
to a basket of stable currencies, rather than relying on pegging its Riyal to the USD.
Conclusions
There was an economic motive behind the blockade, particularly if it is viewed as an

“economic warfare tool,” since it was imposed in order to bring Qatar to its knees, or
at least bring it back to the mainstream politics of the GCC countries. The impact of
the Gulf blockade on Qatar’s economy has two facets, the first of which had sharp but
short-term consequences; while the second facet proved to be an absolute reverse of
what the blockading countries had planned, triggering a fundamental change in which
the Qatari leadership sought to change their economic vulnerabilities into economic
resilience. They exploited their SWFs to maintain the liquidity of their banking
system lest it should collapse, and gained a better understanding in major areas
to achieve Qatar’s food security and self-sufficiency in dairy and poultry products
through promoting private-sector engagement in establishing companies such as
Baladna. They continued gradual reform in fiscal expenditure, namely fuel subsidies,
established the Qatar Development Research and Innovation Council (QRDIC) to
develop Qatar’s national development research and innovation strategy in order to
make Qatar a leading world hub for research and innovation, and planned the launch
of a number of simultaneous regional and international initiatives such as Hamad
port and the RMB Center, in pursuit of economic diversification.
The number of fundamental initiatives launched in the aftermath of the Gulf
blockade in 2017 makes it unequivocal that the blockade has triggered the simulta-
neous acceleration of such national projects. Moreover, the totality of such projects
and initiatives implies that there is a new era approaching in the historical record of
Qatar’s economy, which is very likely to transform Qatar into a higher-economic-
status country, particularly if reforms in the business regulatory environment quicken
their pace. This chapter suggests that researchers interested in the dynamics of Qatar’s
economy should separately explore and investigate each of the economic facets in
pursuit of a comprehensive coverage of their characteristics. Finally, pegging Qatar’s
currency to the USD makes Qatar vulnerable to volatile exchange rates, whereas
pegging the Qatari Riyal to a basket of the most stable international currencies boosts
its stability.
Note
1. Alkhater set out this classification in 2016.
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Chapter 18
To What Extent Has the Sovereign
Wealth Fund Assisted Qatar’s Security
and Foreign Policy in Resisting
the Blockade?
Fahad Al-Marri
The blockade of Qatar by its neighbors since June 2017 has divided the Gulf Cooper-
ation Council (GCC), with Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman on one side, and Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the other. The dispute stems from the
accusation that Qatar is involved in “detrimental activities including supporting the
Muslim Brotherhood which is regarded as an extremist group” (Gordon et al. 2017).
With just one day’s notice, an embargo was imposed on Qatar that included closing
land and sea routes, the cancellation of flights, the withdrawal of diplomats and the
expelling of Qatari nationals. Other actions taken in the blockade include the designa-
tion of 59 Qatari nationals as “terrorist supporters,” the prohibition of the screening of
Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV network, as well as the UAE banning the showing of sympathy
towards Qatar (Gordon et al. 2017). The other Arab country that has joined the three
GCC countries in this embargo is Egypt. Despite challenges associated with the
embargo and the fact that Qatar Airways has had to re-route its flights to Doha, Qatar
has managed to weather the storm, thanks to alliances with regional powers like
Turkey and Iran, as well as the use of its Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF).
Although it is currently the wealthiest country in the world on a per capita income
basis (Katzman 2017), Qatar is nevertheless a small “vulnerable country situated in
the turmoil of the Middle East” (Baabood 2017:1). The country faces an existential
geopolitical threat that comes primarily from rivalry with its much larger neighbors,
especially Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. With its overreliance on its hydrocarbon
wealth, Qatar is also vulnerable to shifts in resource prices on the world market,
which impact its ability to support its social contract with its citizens. Additionally,
the country’s traditional population faces social issues originating from the pace of
transformation into a modern society, as well as the cultural friction associated with
its large immigrant population (Baabood 2017). Furthermore, regional instability
such as the conflicts in Iraq and Syria pose existential threats to Qatar, because they
F. Al-Marri (B)
Georgetown University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: alfahed@hotmail.com; fa543@georgetown.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_18
304 F. Al-Marri
Fig. 18.1 Composition of real GDP by Sector (Source Callen et al. 2014)
are breeding grounds for militias and terrorists that could threaten the security of the
country. Such threats are particularly detrimental for the United States’ military bases
in the country as well as for Qatar’s liquefied petroleum gas (LNG) and oil facilities
that are the lifeblood of the economy (Hermes 2016). Economic diversification in
Qatar, as with the rest of the GCC, is also still limited, with more than 50% of Qatar’s
GDP still being derived from mining and utilities (Callen et al. 2014), as can be seen
in Fig. 18.1.
Hvidt (2013) argues that economic diversification has always been part of the
economic plan of the Gulf States, because of their awareness of the finite nature of gas
and oil. However, political emphasis on economic diversification has fluctuated with
the income being derived from these resources at any given time. Morakabati et al.
(2014) agree, and indicate that Qatar, for example, has developed strategies over the
years to limit its dependence on its oil and gas reserves, although some of these plans
such as the development of tourism as a possible substitute for hydrocarbon exports
require further investment. Some of the changes that are required include the creation
of a strong distinctive image that includes personal safety for visitors, civil liberty,
and political stability, none of which are common in the region. Other challenges for
Qatar include effective management of its Vision 2030 agenda, acquiring adequate
human resources, and developing an efficient communication strategy (MDPS 2017).
Despite these challenges and the current blockade of the country by its neighbors,
Qatar has been able to develop resilience in various ways including the formation
of the Qatar Investment Authority. This is the primary manager of the country’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund, which has grown since 2005 and now provides additional
revenue to the national economy (McSparren et al. 2017). England and Kerr (2017)
indicate that since the embargo, the Qatari government has been able to return $20
billion of its more than $300 billion SWF onshore to cushion the impact of the
embargo. Finance officials in the country argue that the Qatar Investment Authority’s
18 To What Extent Has the Sovereign Wealth Fund Assisted … 305
deposits are being used to create a ‘buffer’ and provide liquidity to the banking
system, after the gas-rich state suffered capital outflows of more than $30 billion
(England and Kerr 2017). This tallies with the constructivist explanation of state
interest by Finnemore (1996), which indicates that states become what they do,
and that there is a social construction of entities that continually evolves with the
development of new bureaucracies to manage new tasks. The article provides an
analysis of how Qatar has developed resilience through such constructions, especially
in using the country’s SWF to withstand the effects of the embargo.
Theoretical Discussion and Qatar’s Blockade Issues
In seeking to provide an overview of sanctions, Biersteker (2014:1) indicated that

“sanctions in international relations are restrictive economic measures imposed by
a state, a group of states or the United Nations Security Council to persuade a
target to change its behavior.” The intention is to constrain the target from engaging
in activities that are proscribed and violate the norms of international behavior
(Biersteker 2014). This tallies with Caruso’s (2003) argument that the purpose of
boycotts and embargoes is to deprive a target country of some of the gains that
accrue from trade, with the eventual inducement of lower welfare within the target
state. Caruso (2003) indicates that the more the target state is integrated into trade
relations with the enforcing country, the more exacerbated the effect of the sanc-
tion will be. However, it has also been shown that enforcing countries could also
be adversely affected, likewise depending on the degree of economic integration
(Davis and Engerman 2003). With Saudi Arabia’s economy being the largest among
the GCC states (see Fig. 18.2) and exerting an influence across the region’s other
economies, as well as the fact that since 1983 the GCC has had a free trade agree-
ment to help reduce trade restrictions between member states (Al-Mawali 2015), the
embargo on Qatar was meant to cause considerable economic difficulties that would
break the country’s resilience. A variety of reasons have been provided to support the
imposition of the blockade, which Qatar has thus far withstood with relative ease.
Rivlin and Friedman (2017) indicate that the reasons for the blockade on Qatar
by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt are complex, with some of the expla-
nations being obscure. Some of the reasons given for the blockade include that
“Qatar supports Islamist fighting in Syria as well as supporting Hamas in Gaza.”
It has also been intimated that Saudi Arabia and others imposing the blockade are
opposed to Qatar’s closeness to Iran, and there are reports that Qatar “paid a $1 billion
ransom for the release of members of the ruling family who were kidnapped in Iraq”
(Rivlin and Friedman 2017). The complexity and obscurity of some of the reasons
for the blockade are highlighted by the accusation that Al Jazeera (Qatar’s television
network) criticizes all Gulf countries except the Qatari government, and that HH the
Emir of Qatar reportedly criticized the Saudis while praising Iran (Roberts 2017;
Rivlin and Friedman 2017). The wide-ranging reasons put forward by Qatar’s neigh-
bors for the embargo demonstrate the dynamics among the geopolitical players in
306 F. Al-Marri
Fig. 18.2 Economic share of GCC countries (Source Al-Mawali 2015)
the Middle East. This is clearly seen from Davidson’s (2017) analysis of the crisis,
in which it is argued that Qatar has been resilient. However, the strategy adopted by
Saudi Arabia and others was not only geared towards punishing the country, but also
towards ensuring that changes would be brought about in Doha that would support
the political narrative being heralded by the Saudi king-in-waiting.
Qatar’s resilience has been built over decades, and as Roberts (2017) indicates
is based on its traditional and innovative approaches to foreign policy and security;
these, supported by other theoretical developments, are now helping it to withstand
the effects of the embargo. Cognizant of its small size, Qatar has over the years
developed a foreign policy underpinned by hegemonic relationships directed at its
security. The United States has played that role most recently, with its US Central
Command being based at the Al Udeid Air Base (Roberts 2017). A similar hege-
monic approach has been employed since the embargo to ensure that the country does
not experience shortages of essentials. In such situations, Qatar allows a dominant
international power such as the United States to provide security through associa-
tion, or a regional power like Iran or Turkey to provide for the passage of essential
commodities through a blockade. Kabbani (2017) indicates that after the sudden
embargo by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, Qatari residents rushed to stock
up on food as well as foreign currency, given that cargo was held up at the Saudi
border, UAE ports, and offshore. Yet within just two days, the Qatari government
was able to replenish its stocks via alternative sources including Iran, Turkey, and
other countries. By appealing to regional powers like Iran and Turkey, Qatar was
both being innovative while also using its traditional approach to conflict resolution,
foreign policy, and security.
The effectiveness of sanctions is seen as the key desired outcome of a policy
of embargo, and in this respect some estimates have been produced regarding the
material outcomes of sanctions and embargoes. Work by Hufbauer et al. (2007) and
Morgan et al. (2009) show that only in one-third of cases are sanctions effective.
Others have found that the effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions is even lower, at
approximately 22% on an average (Biersteker et al. 2013). Such research has sought
to distinguish the different purposes of sanctions, including coercion, constraints,
and signaling. Biersteker et al. (2013) indicate that UN sanctions that were meant
to coerce a target state to change its behavior were typically only effective in 10%
of cases. Lacy and Niou (2004) refer to this as the paradox of economic sanctions,
indicating that on the most pessimistic views, their effectiveness is as low as 5%. The
reason for such a low degree of effectiveness according to Hovi et al. (2005) is that
the threat of sanctions is most often more effective than the sanction itself, because
the target state’s leaders become determined to show their citizens that they have the
ability to keep the country going without the support of those imposing the embargo
or sanctions. Additionally, the targeted state could choose to demonstrate that it is
diplomatically more mature than the countries imposing sanctions. For example,
Kabbani (2017) indicates that the UAE (one of the embargo-imposing countries in
the present case) receives 30% of its liquefied natural gas from Qatar; however, Qatar
has chosen not to stop the supply of liquefied gas to the UAE. Qatar is aware of the
integration of the GCC countries, given not only the cultural but also the economic
ties. For example, before the embargo, 40% of Qatar’s food came overland through
Saudi Arabia and the remainder came through shipping routes via ports in the UAE.
Cross-border investments are also considerable, with the Saudi and UAE banking
sectors having made loans to Qatar totaling tens of billions of dollars (Kabbani 2017).
With such intense economic and social integration among the GCC countries, an
embargo of this kind can have consequences that go beyond those that are intended.
Andreas (2005) argues that each implemented policy development has both intended
and unintended consequences, with sanctions tending to leave a legacy of criminality.
Sanctions and embargoes have also been known to strengthen the rule of authoritarian
regimes, and possibly increase rights violations where there is a lack of checks and
balances.
Biersteker (2010) argues that such authoritarianism is especially pronounced
when state agents increase their capacity to monitor suspicious financial transac-
tions. Hernandez-Truyol (2009) provides a classic example of the US embargo of
Cuba, which increased the resolve of the authoritarian government and effectively
ensured that its ideological purposes were promoted even more vehemently. It must
be indicated that despite the high failure rates of sanctions and embargoes, Biersteker
(2014) argues that they are important instruments for contemporary global gover-
nance, which, when applied in conjunction with policy measures such as threats,
legal referrals, and negotiations, can prompt the target to engage with the interna-
tional community and desist from the proscribed activities. For Qatar, the challenge
in negotiating with its neighbors stems from a 13-point list of demands that includes
curbing diplomatic relations with Iran and closing its missions, severing ties with “ter-
rorist organizations” and handing over “terrorist figures,” shutting down Al-Jazeera,
and closing the Turkish military base, among others (BBC 2017:4). With Turkey and
Iran being the two main regional powers that have ensured Qatar can withstand the
308 F. Al-Marri
current embargo and meet the needs of its domestic constituents, the likelihood of
negotiations is greatly reduced.
It would appear that the intention of the embargoing countries is to ensure that
Qatar’s sovereignty is eroded and that it becomes a satellite region of one of its
neighbors, without the ability to pursue an independent foreign and security policy
in the region. Caruso (2003) argues that it is possible to look at economic sanctions
from three perspectives: the objectives, the actors involved, and the object of the
sanctions. With regards to the objectives, the work of Barber (1979) identifies three
categories: primary objectives are concerned with the action, as well as with the
behavior of the government of the state against which the embargo or sanction is
being imposed; secondary objectives relate to the status, the behavior, as well as
the expectations of the governments imposing the sanctions; and tertiary objectives
are concerned with the wider international considerations related to the international
system as a whole or in part. It can be seen that for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the
UAE, their primary objectives seem to be to overturn Qatar’s unilateral stance on Shia
Iran, whose Sunni neighbors would like to see collectively isolated. Other primary
objectives pertain to the complex web of allegations such as support for terrorism,
including hosting Hamas leaders, and supporting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt and the wider region (Warren 2017). The secondary objectives include
showcasing the hegemony of Saudi Arabia in the region, with the UAE and Bahrain
following suit because of historical issues, as well as the rise of Qatar to a position of
international significance (Ulrichsen 2014). The tertiary objectives include concern
about international terrorism and the variety of actors connected with such networks,
as well as the rise of Qatar in the international geopolitical system and its economic
significance due to the vast LNG deposits that have enabled the country to become
the richest in the world on a per capita basis. Ulrichsen (2014:5) indicates that Qatar
has been able to adopt an “activist foreign policy and attempt to balance competing
interests because of its need to preserve the security of its resources.” It can be seen
that the issue of the GCC members’ embargo against Qatar is a complex regional
challenge with geopolitical implications. Qatar’s ability to withstand the effects of
the sanctions is based on its innovative foreign policy as well as its SWFs. These
contributions are analyzed in the following two sections.
Qatar’s Security and Foreign Policy
Qatar’s security and foreign policy has changed over the years from the time of its
independence as a British protectorate in the Gulf. Qatar’s security and foreign policy
was based on the traditional approach of bandwagoning. Given Saudi Arabia’s size,
economic clout in the region, and support from the United States, Qatar has usually
followed Saudi Arabia’s position in all foreign relations since the country’s inde-
pendence, engaging in no provocative foreign disputes and concentrating instead on
domestic developments (Roberts 2016). Diversion from the foreign policy of Saudi
Arabia gradually began from 1985 onwards, as the influence of the previous crown
prince, HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, spread among diplomats before
his eventual ascendency. HH Sheikh Hamad used the period of low Arab–Persian
tensions to improve Doha’s relations with Iran, including striving to build a pipeline
from Iran’s Karun Mountains in order to import fresh water for Qatar. These foreign
policy actions indicated that Qatar was developing an independent foreign policy,
which was controversial because of its refusal to listen to advice from Riyadh. Qatar’s
independent foreign and security policy emphasizes multilateral process and uncon-
strained international co-operation, and demonstrates a philosophy of inclusion (Al-
Attiyah 2013). Independence has been enabled by Qatar’s vast natural gas reserves
and its prudential development over many years. Qatar has the third-largest proven
natural gas reserves and, as of 2014, was the second-largest exporter of liquefied
natural gas, as can be seen in Fig. 18.3.
In recent years, Qatar has developed a more activist foreign and security policy
with roles in regional conflict resolution, in addition to supporting the US-led coali-
tion in Libya in conjunction with support for Syrian opposition forces, making Qatar
atypical of many small states in terms of international relations (Young, 2013).
Foreign Minister Al-Attiyah (2013) argues that Qatar’s intervention in Syria was
motivated by a desire to protect human life, create a safe humanitarian corridor, and
provide humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees.
As a microstate, Qatar’s foreign policy is positioned within the realist paradigm
of self-preservation, being designed to gain power by aligning with a much larger
and more powerful country. While Qatar aligned itself with Saudi Arabia following
independence, the country later opted to bandwagon with the United States to create
the means of pursuing independent security and foreign policy without being a stooge
of Saudi Arabia. Bandwagoning with the United States, along with Qatar’s wealth
Fig. 18.3 Ranking: liquified natural gas exporters (Source Krane and Wright 2014)
310 F. Al-Marri
from oil and LNG, has provided the means for the country to form alliances with
other countries (Kaussler 2015). Abdullah (2014) argues that after independence in
1971, Qatar generally pursued foreign and security policies in accordance with Saudi
Arabia but by the mid 1990s the country began forming an independent policy that
better suited its interests. Qatar’s new foreign and security policy not only emphasizes
mediation and an activist posture, but is also open to relying on soft power instru-
ments such as humanitarian intervention, economic development, media, education,
culture and sports, among others (Abdullah 2014). Qatar’s constitution indicates
that its foreign policy comprises principles that coalesce around the strengthening
of international peace and security through the encouragement of the peaceful reso-
lution of disputes. It also emphasizes the support of people for self-determination
(Wipo 2009). This supports Ulrichsen’s (2014:7) argument that “Qatar’s emergence
as an increasingly powerful actor has been facilitated by broader changes to the
structure of the international system.” This is primarily because of the acceleration
of globalization, which has made it possible for Qatar to use its soft power (Ulrichsen
2011).
Qatar’s foreign and security policy has also included carving out a regional niche as
a mediator. Qatar’s diplomatic mediation has formed part of its independent and inno-
vative policy, thereby distinguishing itself from its neighbors. Such foreign policy
development by Qatar stems from its leadership’s awareness that such moves provide
an opportunity to make a statement about autonomy, both at the regional and inter-
national level (Gulbrandsen 2010). Speaking in 2007 at the United Nations General
Assembly, HH the Emir of Qatar indicated that the world’s conflicts have become too
numerous for one power to manage (Janardhan 2011). This was a signal that Qatar
was ready to provide leadership in resolving some of the conflicts of the world.
Three of the main conflicts that Qatar dedicated substantive resources and time to
resolving were Yemen (2008–10), Lebanon (2008) and Darfur in Sudan (2008–10).
Qatar also mediated between the Sudanese and Chadians in 2009 as well as between
Djibouti and Eritrea in 2010 (Ulrichsen 2017). In addition to these mediations and
the push for an independent foreign and security policy, Qatar’s leaders actively
engaged various parties during the Arab Spring, in addition to committing substan-
tial financial resources to affect its medium-term outcome. It should be noted that
despite its many engagements and mediatory efforts, Qatar experienced significant
weakness given the lack of a large professional diplomatic corps that could push
forward initial engagement into successful implementation and conclusive agree-
ments (Ulrichsen 2017). In addition to all of these mediatory foreign policies and
security initiatives, Qatar continued its self-preservation and bandwagoning policy
and had already developed strong ties with the United States represented by the two
US bases in the country (Salem and de Zeeuw 2012). Because Qatar lacks some
of elements of the classic pyramid of power, notably the inventory of instruments,
resources, and capabilities (Hill 2003), it has developed an independent foreign and
security policy by developing soft power that provides implicit influence for other
states to develop a foreign policy that supports Qatar’s security policy (Barakat and
Zyck 2012).
Sovereign Wealth Fund: Purpose and Investment
Qatar’s vast natural gas reserves and its innovative development has made it possible
for the country to carve out an independent foreign and security policy that has
sometimes led its neighbors to be taken aback. Although not officially part of the
foreign and security policy elements of most countries, Perera (2015) argues that the
pattern of SWF investment in Western democracies can be linked to their search for
security. Like its neighbors, Qatar has been able to accumulate sizeable surpluses
during periods of high oil prices. Some surpluses have been invested into SWFs, and
the purposes of such funds vary. Steigum (2013) indicates that SWFs have grown
rapidly, with various jurisdictions choosing to form their own. Nominal assets under
the management of SWFs doubled between 2005 and 2007 and they have been rising
ever since (Truman 2010). SWFs are government-owned funds that are invested both
inside and outside the country or jurisdiction that owns them. The International
Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, which was established in 2009, states that SWFs
are
special purpose investment funds or arrangements, owned by the general government.
Created by the general government for microeconomic purposes, SWFs hold, manage or
administer assets to achieve financial objectives, and employ a set of investment strategies
which include investing in foreign assets … (IFSWF 2009).
Investing in foreign assets has been seen by SWFs as a way of shoring up against
future challenges such as a shortfall in government revenues. Another reason for
establishing SWFs from both oil and other resources includes macroeconomic fluc-
tuations (Steigum 2013). The International Monetary Fund has identified five types
of SWF according to their intended purposes, and the recent use of at least $20
billion of Qatar’s SWF to ensure that the domestic economic situation was stabi-
lized following the embargo is emblematic of one such type. The five types are as
follows: Stabilization funds—these are formed to buffer the country’s budget against
possible commodity price volatility as well as external shocks. These SWFs typi-
cally have investment horizons that have liquidity objectives that could be compared
to central bank reserves. Savings funds—these have the intention of sharing wealth
across the generations by transforming non-renewable assets into various financial
assets. Usually, their investment portfolios have high risk-return profiles with higher
shares allocated to equities and other investments. Development funds—these are
specifically established to allocate funds to socio-economic projects that support the
development of the country. Pension reserve funds—these are assigned to meeting
outflows that are pension-related liabilities on the government balance sheet. Reserve
investment corporations—these are intended to offset the negative carry cost that
accrues from the holding of large reserves or to earn higher returns on reserves. It
should be noted that such funds continue to be counted as reserves for countries that
have chosen to pursue such objectives (Al-Hassan et al. 2013).
Figure 18.4 illustrates the approximate allocation of SWF resources to various
investment portfolios, as indicated by the International Monetary Fund Global Finan-
cial Stability Report of 2012. It shows that for stabilization funds, almost 70% goes
312 F. Al-Marri
Fig. 18.4 SWF types and asset allocations (Source IMF 2012)
into sovereign fixed income, whereas savings funds invest almost 60% into equities.
For pension reserve funds, at least 40% is invested in equities. For most reserve
investment funds, at least 66% is invested in equities (IMF 2012). The opaque nature
of most SWFs makes it very difficult to be certain what the precise investment strate-
gies and purposes of such investments are (Behrendt 2009), despite the Santiago
Principles that are geared towards improving the transparency of SWFs.
The objectives and investment decisions of SWFs are dependent on the circum-
stances of the specific country and may evolve over time. A stabilization fund, for
example, may adopt a short-term investment horizon, whereas savings funds would
typically have long-term investment horizons. Such investment horizons may also
be related to macroeconomic purposes including fiscal policy, monetary policy, and
the exchange rate. The reason for this could be withdrawal rules derived from fiscal
rules as well as significant fluctuations in fiscal revenues and the investment of SWF
resources abroad to help insure against variation in exchange rates (Das et al. 2010).
The investment strategies of most SWFs are intended to achieve diversification of
portfolios across many asset classes and world regions so as to support risk reduction
(Steigum 2013). Additionally, the type of SWF as well as its investment horizon and
funding sources affect the strategic asset allocation (Das et al. 2010). Long invest-
ment horizons would usually be associated with the ability to assume greater risk,
where risk can involve the probability of a loss or underperformance with refer-
ence to other assets. Also, long investment horizons usually indicate the ability to
invest in illiquid assets that provide the means to accrue the benefit of an illiquidity
premium (Kunzel et al. 2011). This indicates that assets such as infrastructure, real
estate, and private equity may take a longer time to exit without adversely affecting
the prices of these assets. SWFs with long-term investment horizons often venture
into the former asset classes. On the other hand, investors with short or uncertain
investment horizons such as stabilization funds usually have a larger proportion of
their holdings in cash portfolios and other relatively liquid assets like bonds that
enable them to meet potential unexpected outflows without incurring substantive
losses. Qatar returned $20 billion to stabilize its domestic economic situation in the
face of the sudden embargo by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt, which
was a classic example of how the diversification of SWF investments is strategic in a
changing geopolitical environment in which friendly countries can suddenly become
belligerent (Hvidt 2013).
Such investments must take into consideration debates about SWFs, which Balin
(2008) argues are complex and multidimensional. The business and social element
of this debate can be seen from the large losses that the world’s SWFs made during
the financial crisis of 2008, estimated by Morgan Stanley to be in the range of $500
to $700 billion, but also the prediction that SWFs will continue to grow, reaching $15
trillion by 2015 (Jen and Andreopoulos 2008). Gunes (2016) argues that SWFs can
be seen as an expression of the rise of state capitalism with state-owned investment.
This supports Hatton and Pistor’s (2012) assertion that SWFs can be used for the
maximization of autonomy in the shadow of great powers. Furthermore, SWFs have
become political, with some countries still not very forthcoming with data about their
investments. The Santiago Principles provided a voluntary code of conduct, referred
to as the Generally Accepted Principles and Practices, but has remained voluntary.
Therefore, some SWFs still lack the transparency required by recipient countries
(Behrendt 2009). SWFs and their purchases of strategic assets in the United States
and Western Europe have prompted much political debate about their intentions.
Indeed, Bahgat (2011) assessed GCC SWFs and indicated that recipient countries
(especially the United States and western European nations) viewed them as having
a possible alignment with state national interests, a political agenda that goes beyond
business. This concurs with Draniceanu’s (2014) argument that SWFs could possibly
be foreign policy vehicles. Such debates indicate that SWF investors must begin
to ensure that transparency becomes the hallmark of their investment practices, to
ensure that the debate about SWFs is not seen from a shadowy perspective. In seeking
to provide analysis of the workings of the GCC’s SWFs, Setser and Ziemba (2009)
found them generally to be opaque. Over the years, Qatar’s SWF has announced most
of its acquisitions and investments, and has grown its portfolio since its formation in
2005.
314 F. Al-Marri
Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment
According to the Boston Consulting Group, the GCC SWFs are some of the largest
in the world and have a tendency towards direct investment including in infrastruc-
ture. Three challenges that have been identified concerning GCC SWF investment
include seeking to invest using equity instead of debt; favoring investments in mature
markets as well as selective emerging markets that provide stable cash flows with
limited political and regulatory liability; and requiring an internal return rate of
approximately 15% and a minimum equity stake of at least US$50 million (Boston
Consulting Group 2012). It can be seen that GCC SWFs invest selectively and that
their criteria for return on their investment is quite high. This is the environment in
which the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which manages Qatar’s SWF, oper-
ates. Before the establishment of the QIA to invest Qatar’s budget surpluses, Qatar’s
Ministry of Finance had a small in-house team responsible for this task. The QIA
was founded with the remit of strengthening the country’s economy by diversifying
into different asset classes, strategies, and investments (SWFI 2016). The Sovereign
Wealth Fund Institute indicates that Qatar is one of the fifteen largest SWFs, with
$320 billion dollars under investment (SWFI 2017). It should be noted that Qatar’s
SWF is believed to manage assets totaling between $320 billion and $345 billion,
according to various sources including Kottasová (2017), who indicates that most
of Qatar’s global SWF has been invested in various institutions, most notably in
Western countries.
Bahgat (2011) indicates that the primary objective of the QIA is to pursue revenue
diversification for the country. This goal is achieved by the QIA investing its funds in
international markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, other Euro-
pean countries, and Asia. Additionally, the QIA invests in Qatar and the wider region
in the non-energy sector. The four main areas that the fund focuses on when investing
include public equity, real estate, private equity, and investment funds. By 2011, some
of the main investments held by Qatar’s SWF included Four Seasons Healthcare in
the UK, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), the London
Stock Exchange, Sainsburys, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Volkswagen, and the Commer-
cial Bank of China (Bahgat 2011). While it is true that the QIA initiated most of the
SWF’s investments in Europe’s mature markets with their stable political and regu-
latory base, the SWF has also been busy extending its reach into emerging markets in
Asia, North America, and Latin America. Saidi (2017) indicates that QIA’s purchase
of Singapore’s well-known Asia Square Towers was the largest office transaction in
Singapore’s history. Meanwhile, in the United States, the QIA bought 10% of the
Empire State Realty Trust and now has an office in Silicon Valley to further grow
its investments in the United States. It can be seen that Qatar’s SWF has become
a global investor with holdings of both liquid and illiquid assets that not only offer
the stability required by its mandate but also provide the means to promote Qatar
globally.
This shows a forward-thinking country that is building an economy that is “not
merely reliant on hydrocarbons or imports of food from other countries, but one
that seeks to address its own resiliency to future challenges” (McSparren et al.
2017:1). Qatar’s use of its mediation and humanitarian activities (Al-Attiyah 2013),
along with its investments in different parts of the world, provide the means to
acquire influence. This is comparable to the geopolitical advantages and influences
developed by advanced economies such as the United States through their foreign
aid programs. Milner and Tingley (2013), based on McKinlay and Little (1978),
indicate that foreign aid has geopolitical and strategic purposes depending on the
goals of the donor. Qatar’s determination to continue to develop its autonomous
foreign and security policy despite the actions of its neighbors is evident in recent
announcements concerning continuing new foreign investments by the QIA despite
the blockade (Reuters Staff 2017). QIA’s investment pattern (in accordance with
most GCC SWFs) has provided the means for its portfolios to be able to achieve
resiliency. Approximately 62% of GCC SWF assets are direct investments in devel-
oped economies, but the figure for Qatar’s SWF is as high as 92%, as can be seen in
Fig. 18.5 which indicates the investment patterns of Qatar Holdings and the QIA. To
introduce greater diversity, the QIA and Qatar Holdings have increased their invest-
ments in three North African countries. Morocco has received investment totaling
$600 million in a luxury housing and tourism complex, while Tunisia has benefitted
from several infrastructural projects, especially in real estate and tourism. Finally,
Egypt (one of the four countries enforcing the blockade on Qatar) has received real
estate investment along the Nile and in the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Qatar
Holdings has also embarked on joint projects with other SWFs such as the Kuwait
Investment Authority to develop tourism in Morocco through Morocco’s Fund for
the Development of Tourism (Boston Consulting Group 2012). It should be noted
that despite the stance taken by Egypt, Qatar has maintained a policy of positive
engagement.
Through its investments in these various countries, Qatar has been able to create
a web of supporters that are not only necessary for its foreign and security policy but
also provide allies in its ongoing economic blockade. With the exception of Egypt,
Fig. 18.5 GCC country allocation of direct investments (Source Boston Consulting Group 2012)
316 F. Al-Marri
all other North African countries that have traditionally looked to Saudi Arabia as an
Arab leader have refused to support the Qatari blockade, instead calling for dialogue
and a diplomatic solution to the problem (Cherif 2017).
Analysis of Reasons for the Sanctions and Blockade of Qatar
In seeking to envisage possible scenarios for an outcome to the Qatari blockade and
to the challenges that accompany the current situation between the GCC countries,
Sailer and Roll (2017) recall that political tension between Qatar and its neighbors
has existed since the 1970s in the form of border disputes. This supports Zafirov’s
(2017) argument that the Gulf Crisis is not an isolated incident but a product of
smoldering tensions. Added to this is the fact that Qatar’s path to an autonomous
foreign and security policy has diminished Saudi strategies for hegemony over the
Gulf region, and its policies clearly infuriate the Saudi regime, especially the Crown
Prince. For a region in which family ties cross national borders, this has led to the
pitting of relations against each other in the midst of nationalist themes and vitriolic
media coverage (Freer 2017). Egypt followed the lead of Saudi Arabia and the UAE
in order to demonstrate its gratitude to these two countries that had supported the July
2013 coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. Jordan, on the other
hand, gave only cursory support to the embargo, sufficient to appease the embargoing
states. It did not fully break with Qatar, although it downgraded its diplomatic ties
and revoked Al Jazeera’s license to operate in Jordan. Bahrain has been obliged to
follow Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their blockade of Qatar, given that since the
Arab Spring and the support of the Saudis and Emiratis in quelling the Manama
uprising, Bahrain has been unable to develop an independent foreign and security
policy (Al Jazeera Centre 2017). A small number of other Arab countries have also
opted to support the embargo. These included Djibouti and Mauritania, as well as the
Riyadh-based Yemeni government and the Emirati-supported Libyan government in
Tobruk (Al Jazeera Centre 2017). Caruso (2003) argues that the effectiveness of an
embargo is dependent on the role of the interest group in managing the sanctions and
ensuring that they work. With most neighboring countries failing to support or only
partially supporting the embargo, this effectively provides Qatar with a way out.
The complex and convoluted reasons that have been provided for the sanctions
(some of which have been outright dispelled) continue to be debated. In the weeks
before the embargo was suddenly imposed, Ulrichsen (2017:6) recalls, the website
of the Qatar News Agency (QNA) alleged that HH the Emir had stated that Qatar’s
relationship with the Trump administration was tense, had described Hamas as “the
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” and called Iran “a big power in
the stabilization of the region.” Although Qatar reported that the QNA website had
been hacked and the information was false, the media (especially in Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates) began to discredit Doha, despite US investigators
indicating that the Russians were behind the hack of the QNA (Jones 2017).
The convoluted reasons for why Riyadh and its allies embargoed Qatar have been
linked to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. Swisher and
Grim (2018) indicated that Charles Kushner (Jared’s father) had solicited funds from
the Qataris including the finance minister as well as HE Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim
Al-Thani, Qatar’s former foreign minister. Yet the funding was not forthcoming and
Jared, whose brief in the White House includes the Middle East, then provided critical
support to Qatar’s neighbors led by Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that in addition to
the accusation that “Qatar supports terrorist groups connected to Hamas, the Muslim
Brotherhood and forces in the Syrian civil war,” there seem to be other forces at
play in the very complex web of reasons why Qatar was embargoed. So far, Qatar
has been innovatively resisting the embargo through its foreign and security policy
that has ensured it maintains good relations with Iran and Turkey along with other
Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries.
Use of Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund to Resist the Blockade
In addition to Qatar’s innovative foreign and security policy, the country’s SWF has
helped to resist the embargo. Baabood (2017) argues that throughout its history, Qatar
has sought to develop its own mode of state and society resilience. While resilience
is an opaque concept in the discourse of international relations, it has been used
in the context of advancing sustainable development (Perrings 2006), which is an
intrinsic element of Qatar Vision 2030. Resilience is also considered to be important
in the European Union 2016 Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, and its
definition covers a wide range of concepts including individuals and entire societies,
with facets such as democracy, institutional trust, sustainable development, and the
capacity to change (European Commission 2017). Qatar has been following this path
of change through its autonomous economic, political, social, foreign, and security
policies that are geared towards making the country more individual. This trajectory
has seen the monarchs of country looking to transform Qatar from a poor state to a
high-income economy, which has the highest per capita income in the world as of
2017, at approximately $130,000 (Statistics Times 2017).
This forward-looking vision led to the development of the Qatar Investment
Authority in 2005, to ensure that budgetary surpluses can be invested to “cushion
against the harmful effects of economic slowdowns” (Baabood 2017:5) as well as
for the purpose of economic diversification, which is critical to the future of Qatar’s
resilience. It is for this reason that Naser (2016) argues that one of the roles of SWFs
in Gulf States is to deliver on strategic socioeconomic objectives. Analysis of the
QIA’s SWF investments indicates that the variety of assets in which it has invested
have made it easy to quickly transfer some into liquid assets after the embargo was
imposed. With more than $300 billion in the SWF, investments have been made in
both the domestic and foreign markets. Torchia and Finn (2017) indicate that the
portion of Qatar’s SWF that is in foreign bank accounts, tradable bonds, or listed
equities that could easily and quickly be liquidated when a need arises, is a state secret,
318 F. Al-Marri
although this has raised questions regarding Qatar’s true financial strength. Faced
with capital flight from Qatar due to the embargo, the QIA was able to transfer at
least US$20 billion to the Finance Ministry to ensure that the country could withstand
the impact of the embargo (Torchia and Finn 2017). This tallies with Alkhereiji’s
(2017) assertion that Qatar’s SWF has repatriated $20 billion to help ease the effects
of the embargo. The finance minister indicated that this transfer was a pre-emptive
measure and that it has always created a “buffer” that provides liquidity within the
country’s banking system. The smooth transfer of some of Qatar’s SWF to support
the economy in the face of the sudden embargo indicates the preparedness of the
Qatari system to work in unison to preserve the resilience of the country.
Foreign and Security Policy Implications for Qatar

and the GCC
By using innovative foreign and security policies to resist the embargo, including its
SWF, Qatar’s various alliances have been reshaped by the crisis, while the prospects
for further GCC integration and coordination have been fundamentally undermined.
The Washington Institute indicates that due to the embargo, Qatar is establishing
new trade routes to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of its population. On
the first day of the embargo it began using C-17 Globemaster military transport
aircraft to import food from Turkey. These airplanes had previously been used to
carry troops to Iraq as part of the US-led military effort against Islamic State from
the Al Udeid Airbase. With the Turkish government eager to enter the Qatari market,
the government suggested that Turkish suppliers take advantage of the crisis in the
GCC to increase prices. The Turkish government has also taken advantage of the
situation to diplomatically press the Qatari government to select Turkish vendors
and to sign long-term agreements. Given Qatar’s dependence on food imports, some
of the possible trade routes that Doha could use if the embargo persists for a prolonged
period could be sea routes from Turkey to Doha, a land route from Turkey followed
by sea to Doha, and a route from Aqaba in Jordan to Doha by sea (Washington
Institute 2017). By strategically developing its foreign and security policies in the
region and beyond, Qatar has been able to change the course of its challenges to
exercise the resilience it has developed over the years.
It is in this light that Champion and Sergie (2017) indicate that Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates’ possible estimation that Qatar would rapidly capitulate
in the face of the embargo has proven to be wrong. Qatar’s isolation from the GCC
regional organization could push it closer to Turkey and Iran, albeit that with two
US bases in the country, its relationship with Iran must be balanced in the face of US
hegemony. Collins (2017) argues that a simple look into history would have shown the
Saudis and Emirates that embargoes push states into making sudden policy changes
that often have unintended consequences, and most often do not work. Without a
clear endgame the embargo of Qatar was risky, and past experience teaches that
embargoed countries usually find a way around the embargo (Hufbauer et al. 2007).
This is particularly true when the state against which the embargo has been placed is
small, well-resourced, has a small population, and is not necessarily dependent on the
countries that are imposing the sanctions (Collins 2017). The economic ramifications
for Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also clear, given that Qatar quickly expanded its
liquefied natural gas production just after the embargo, thereby demonstrating its
systematic importance in the global gas market. Additionally, while the embargoing
countries export goods and services to the value of US$5.6 billion to Qatar, they
import goods and services to the value of US$5 billion from Qatar (Collins 2017),
which thereby indicates that Saudi Arabia and its allies will lose out financially in
terms of trade.
Carey and Champion (2017) argue that although Saudi Arabia dwarfs Qatar in
almost every measure, there are many ways in which the current tussle could end up
hurting the Saudis. Qatar’s economic advantage and its relationship with Turkey have
both improved in light of the embargo, and some Turkish troops have been deployed
onto Qatari soil. Turkish support for Qatar makes a quick win for Saudi Arabia and
its allies impossible. Additionally, Carey and Champion (2017) indicate that Qatar’s
perception that the Saudis and their allies’ embargo is an attempt at regime change in
their country creates even more resistance. The issue of maintaining its sovereignty
and identity in the face of Saudi hegemony in the region has driven Qatar to use
its economic muscle to ensure that their sovereignty is respected. Trenwith (2017)
argues that given the sociocultural dimension of the Gulf, a solution to the problem
will require each side to make compromises in a face-saving exercise that provides
the means for each side to come out claiming its own kind of victory.
Ehteshami and Mohammadi (2017) indicate that Qatar and Saudi Arabia espouse
different politics in their dealing with the Middle East and Mediterranean region.
From a Saudi perspective, the key concept is that of being the leader of the Muslim
world, or Pan-Islamism; whereas Qatar’s politics is one of Pan-Arabism, with an open
foreign policy that supports its relationship with various Arab and other countries.
Kose and Ulutas (2017) argue that the Qatari embargo and the formation of different
alliances in the region makes the Middle East highly vulnerable, exacerbating existing
problems such as the wars in Yemen and Syria as well as the ongoing instability in
Libya and Iraq, among others. The crisis could also lead to the isolation of the Middle
East as the region becomes increasingly polarized. With various countries taking
different sides in the Qatari crisis, this splinters the region even more, which could
increase political conflict. The security dilemma created by the embargo of Qatar
can only be overcome by the region realizing that their interests are tied together and
that whatever happens to one country could affect the others.
Conclusion
The embargo imposed by Qatar’s neighbors on this small Gulf country is indicative of
the ongoing uncertainty in the volatile Middle East. Given that the main actors (Saudi
320 F. Al-Marri
Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain) are members of the GCC, more careful consideration
should have been given to the situation before such drastic action was taken. The
multilayered reasons given by Saudi Arabia and its allies for imposing the embargo on
Qatar indicate that smoldering issues have been reignited, including Qatar’s support
for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as well as the hosting of Hamas leaders and
support for opposition forces in Syria. Importantly, these are situations that could have
been resolved without the need to impose the embargo. US President Trump quickly
declared support for Saudi Arabia and its allies, although given the allegations that
the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s inability to secure funding from Qatar
may have influenced his support for the embargoing countries, questions may be
raised about whose interest is being served.
With its innovative foreign and security policies, Qatar has been able to use its
influence with allies in the region (including the regional powers Iran and Turkey)
to ensure that the impact of the embargo on its domestic market, especially for
food and essential goods, has been muted. With one of the largest SWFs in the
world, Qatar has been able to draw upon these assets to help stabilize the domestic
banking market. Thanks to its innovative processes, the country’s SWF has enabled
substantive funds to be easily and quickly converted into the liquid assets urgently
required in the country. Not only that, but Qatar has expanded its liquefied natural
gas production from 77 million tons to 100 million tons, thereby bringing an extra $6
billion into the country. With the second-largest proven deposits of natural gas and
with numerous stable customers in Asia, such as Japan and South Korea, the country
is well prepared to withstand the economic effects of the embargo. The historical
failure rate of embargoes also indicates that the solution to the current impasse is
a negotiation in which each party would compromise, so as to ensure that a region
already facing serious challenges does not have to experience a further crisis.
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Fahad Al-Marri is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) where he teaches and researches on small
states, regional security, intelligence & national security, and political economy. He is the co-
editor of Small States Security: Lessons for Qatar (HBKU Press, 2021) and has published widely
in scholarly journals and policy outlets as well as the international media. These publications
include: “The Impact of the Oil Crisis on Security and Foreign Policy in GCC Countries: Case
Studies of Qatar, KSA and UAE” (Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, 2017). A member
of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. He has served on several advisory boards for
governmental and non-governmental organizations in Qatar and the UK. He is also a senior
advisor to the President’s Office at the General Retirement & Social Insurance Authority, Qatar.
Chapter 19
The Role of Qatar Airways
in the Economic Development of Qatar:
Before and During the Gulf Crisis
Catalina Petcu
The aviation sector started to shape the evolution of the Arab Gulf States in the
beginning of the twentieth century, when the British Empire and other major powers
(Italy, United States) recognized the strategic position of the region in their commu-
nications spheres (Williams 1957; Peterson 2000). The Gulf’s location is a pivotal
point on the global aviation map, while its natural resources provide the necessary
means to support the growth of air transportation. It is not a coincidence that oil
was first discovered in 1931 in Bahrain, and one year later the same Gulf state had
established the first Arabian international airport (Haji 2016).
With Dubai International Airport the busiest airport in the world for international
passenger traffic in 2015 (Ulrichsen 2015), and Doha and Abu Dhabi regarded as
global super connectors (Economist Intelligence Unit 2010), the aviation sector in the
Gulf region has seen a meteoric rise. The factors encouraging the rapid development
of the Gulf’s aviation industry are the strategic location, high disposable income,
low operating costs, global market liberalization, the absence of a railway network
in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and the access to cheap capital
(Scourse 2013). Cash reserves from oil and gas assets enabled the governments
of the Gulf states to invest heavily in infrastructure and airport development and to
fund high rates of airline capacity growth. For instance, Qatar Airways, Emirates, and
Etihad have benefited from governmental support via lower fuel costs and lower labor
costs (Scourse 2013), and via the construction of highly technologized infrastructure:
Hamad International Airport in Doha, Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai,
and Midfield Terminal Complex in Abu Dhabi (Ulrichsen 2015).
While the governmental subsidies have been the essential drivers of the aviation
industry in the GCC, the region’s states are designing national visions to encourage
the growth of the non-oil sector and to strengthen the process of economic diver-
sification. However, the Gulf states have encountered difficulties in turning their
C. Petcu (B)
e-mail: kataleenah@yahoo.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8735-1_19
326 C. Petcu
economies away from hydrocarbons sector, which threatens to be unsustainable due

to its volatility, its status as a major source of revenues, and the future depletion of
resources. Despite the fact that many scholars suggest that the private sector is the
best option to diversify an economy, given the weaknesses of the GCC private sector,
few GCC governments are willing to cede their leading role in the economy. There-
fore, the Gulf states tend to utilize state-owned enterprises (SOE) as instruments for
economic development.
The present study restricts its focus to a specific Gulf country, namely Qatar, and
examines whether the state-owned aviation company Qatar Airways has the potential
to facilitate the process of economic development in Qatar, especially during the
ongoing crisis which has restricted connectivity. Hertog (2010) describes the SOEs in
the GCC as lucrative and efficient, and therefore an in-depth assessment of this state-
owned airline and its role in the process of economic diversification can contribute to
an evaluation of the GCC approach in diversifying their economies with a focus on
the recent Gulf crisis. The following discussion is divided into five sections. The next
two sections provide an overview of the aviation industry in the GCC and the profile
of Qatar Airways, followed by a discussion of Qatar Airways from a neoliberal and
developmental state perspective. The final section briefly examines the consequences
of the Gulf crisis for the aviation industry in Qatar, and the national airline’s strategies
to continue its growth.
The GCC Aviation Industry
The GCC aviation industry has grown rapidly over recent decades, outpacing other
regional markets. The fast ascendance of the Gulf airlines has propelled the region
to global attention. The region’s strategic location, abundance of funding, and
strong infrastructure are the main drivers behind such meteoric growth. A peculiar
characteristic of the GCC is that the aviation industry is largely state-controlled.
The rise of the aviation industry worldwide can be summarized via an assessment
of its global revenues, which have increased from US$379 billion in 2004 to US$751
billion (1% of global GDP) in 2014 (Al Masah Capital 2015). According to the
International Air Transport Association (IATA), aviation’s global economic impact is
around US$2.4 trillion (3.4% of global GDP), supporting 60 million jobs worldwide.
Between 2004 and 2014, the Middle East registered the highest passenger traffic
growth in terms of Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPK) (Al Masah Capital 2015).
The traffic growth in the Middle East has a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of
approximately 12% for the period 2011–15, compared to 6% globally (Seifman et al.
2016). In 2015 the Middle East region carried a 5% share of global passenger traffic
(El Beyrouty and Tessler 2015). A study released by Air Transport Action Group
(ATAG) in 2014 shows that air transport in the Middle East supports 2 million jobs
and contributes US$116 billion in GDP for the region. Emirates, Qatar Airways, and
Etihad are the Gulf airlines which dominate the Middle East market, accounting for
75% of its total traffic (Seifman et al. 2016).
19 The Role of Qatar Airways in the Economic … 327
The governments of the GCC countries have strongly supported the infrastructure
of the industry by heavily investing in airports. The focus on infrastructure arises as
part of a plan to promote tourism in the region by attracting more inbound traffic.
Overnight tourist arrivals increased by 27% across the region from 2007 to 2013, and
a further 92% increase is expected from 2013 to 2024 (El Beyrouty and Tessler 2015).
Moreover, each Gulf country is focusing on its own airline. The Qatari government’s
commitment to stimulate the aviation sector is exemplified through the withdrawal
in 2002 of its 25% share in Gulf Air, based in Bahrain (Ishutkina and Hansman
2009). The State of Qatar decided to augment its focus on the development of the
national airline and to direct its resources allocated for the aviation sector only to
Qatar Airways.
The growth of the aviation sector in the GCC has been supported by the strategic
location of the region, connecting the Western world with the Asia-Pacific; by the
travel requirements of the large expatriate population (20 million) in the GCC; and
by growing urbanization and high per capita income, at an average of US$33,000
for the whole GCC in 2013 (Al Masah Capital 2015). Moreover, the demand for
business and leisure travel by air is expected to increase as income levels grow in
the GCC (Alpen Capital 2014). The governments have stimulated the aviation sector
by investing around US$313 billion in developing airports, with the infrastructure
contracts being evaluated at US$45 billion in 2014 alone (Al Masah Capital 2015).
Fuel supply, provided at a lower cost than for competitor airlines, has been another
driver of aviation development in the Gulf (Alpen Capital 2014).
Another factor which has supported aviation growth in the Gulf is cheap foreign
labor. The labor policy in the GCC is based on the “contract worker” model, which
allows companies to hire foreign employees for a certain period of time in different
sectors where the expertise of locals is absent. The nationals of the GCC countries
prefer to seek employment in the public sector due to its stability and high income.
This has led to the division of the labor market into public versus private and national
versus non-national (Al-Waqfi and Al-Faki 2015).
Qatar Airways—Company Profile
Qatar Airways Company Q.C.S.C. is the national carrier of Qatar and a part of
the Qatar Airways Group, which encompasses the airline and airport operations,
aviation and catering services, retail outlets and hotels. The services offered by the
airline are airline travel services, corporate travel, advance passenger information,
transit accommodation, online check-in, mobile services, and in-flight entertainment
services (IDC Research 2016).
Qatar Airways was founded in 1994 under the ownership of the Al-Thani royal
family, being relaunched as a full-service carrier in 1997 under a new management
team, having Mr. Akbar Al-Baker as Group Chief Executive until the present day.
The airline began as a 50% state-owned company, the other 50% held by private
investors (Ishutkina and Hansman 2009), however, in 2013 the airline became 100%
328 C. Petcu
state owned. The company is not publicly listed, the only two Gulf carriers which
are listed being Air Arabia and Jazeera Airways, both low-cost airlines (Al Masah
Capital 2015).
Between 2000 and 2008, Qatar Airways was one of the fastest-growing airlines in
the world, with a 35% year-on-year growth rate (Ishutkina and Hansman 2009). The
airline grew from 4 aircraft in 1997 (El Beyrouty and Tessler 2015) to 250 in 2019,
including both passenger and cargo aircraft (Qatar Airways Group 2019). By March
2019, the total number of Qatar Airways Group employees had reached 46,685, of
more than 150 nationalities (Qatar Airways Group 2019).
Qatar Airways Group includes a variety of companies specially designed to sustain
the expansion of the aviation industry within the country. The Group supports the
economy by creating job opportunities via outsourcing, however, most of the compa-
nies created (except Dhiafatina Hotels, Qatar Distribution Company, and Qatar
Executive) operate as service providers for Qatar Airways and Hamad International
Airport, without extending towards other economies or other sectors within Qatar.
Of these companies, Qatar Airways has the largest number of employees, followed
by Qatar Aviation Services and Qatar Duty Free. The airline’s growth is envisioned
upon a diversified service mix which incorporates a diverse workforce, a highly tech-
nologized fleet with inflight entertainment, and a check-in facility of up to 12 h prior
to the flight at Hamad International Airport. Another strength is represented by strong
partnership agreements with other airlines (Asiana Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, GOL,
Middle East Airlines, etc.), hotels (Marriott, Hilton, Radisson Blu Hotels, Sheraton,
Shangri-La, Kempinski, Anantara, Wyndham, etc.), car rentals (Sixt, Hertz, Avis,
Europcar, Budget and Rentalcars), banks (Qatar National Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank,
Burgan Bank, Housing Bank), and travel services (Ooredoo, Air Miles, My Rewards
Points, Qatar Stars League, Qatar Airways Holidays, Joyalukkas Jewellers, Travel-
ling Connect, Columbus Travel Insurance, Al Jaber watches, Chic Outlet Shopping,
Booking.com), all of which enhances the global presence already established via
more than 150 destinations.
As a state-owned airline, Qatar Airways incorporates political and economic
national strategies into its performance. The challenges of investment and acqui-
sitions consist in modifying Qatar Airways’ focus towards global expansion; and
boosting management bandwidth, as a surplus of competent managers is required to
conduct proper supervision of this type of acquisition. Another acquisition driven by
sovereign interests is in Indigo LCC India, Asia’s third-largest low-cost carrier. Qatar
Airways planned to purchase shares in Indigo via the Qatar Investment Authority
(Kotoky and Kamel 2016). Investing in Indigo would bring Qatar Airways economic
benefits through exposure to one of the world’s fastest-growing travel markets, Indigo
being the only Indian airline which had profit each year during 2009–16 (Kotoky
and Kamel 2016). Moreover, it would promote Qatar’s national interest in India, its
third source market after UAE and Saudi Arabia before the crisis (CAPA Centre
for Aviation 2016). In terms of exports, India is the third country of destination,
accounting for 12% of Qatar’s exports (Ministry of Development Planning and Statis-
tics 2016). Purchasing stakes in the most profitable Indian airline would encourage
Qatar Airways’ involvement in the air transport activities of India. The open-sky
policies should be designed according to the needs of each country, respecting the
principles of competition and free market.
Qatar Airways from a Neoliberal Perspective
Emphasizing the value of free market competition, neoliberalism promotes a flow of

trade and capital with minimal state interference. For the neoliberalists, a capitalist
economy provides stability. Their proposed policies aim at improving economic
performance by restricting the power of the government and of trade unions and
implementing an active free market. By imposing lower taxes, companies would
have the opportunity to save and invest, while under financial deregulation the market
incentives would flourish (Kotz 2015). The case of the GCC states is a peculiar
one, however, as the Gulf countries benefit from surplus capital, which is finan-
cial and resource-based capital that has to be put into productive use. By necessity,
capital formation in Saudi Arabia has been under governmental control until 1980s
(Hertog 2012). Most of the Gulf countries decided that the development of new
sectors should be done via public enterprises, which have been supported through
large initial capital injections, continued concessionary loans, and dedicated infras-
tructure (Hertog 2012). The privileges offered to SOEs run counter to the concept
of free market competition proposed by the neoliberal school. Despite the fact that
deregulation and lower taxes are applicable to public enterprises, these policies do
not follow the neoliberal practices as they are not implemented for the entire market.
This prevents private firms from competing on a level playing field, especially when
SOEs tend to dominate entire sectors (Callen et al. 2014). The Gulf states view
the public and private sectors from different perspectives. There are certain sectors
considered vital for the economy, which require large-scale state investment and the
creation of SOEs, such as heavy industry, logistics, and network-based industries;
while in real estate, commerce, distribution, and light manufacturing the state allows
the involvement of local merchant families (Hertog 2012).
The biggest challenge faced by SOEs is that they may not be able to escape
the infant industry circuit of protection, neither to generate a higher profit than the
injected governmental capital (Kornai 1979) nor to operate independently of their
political leaders. As governments tend to protect certain industries, the investigation
of the competition appears to be a duty for Western companies which are guided by
neoliberal strategies. In the vision of Freiburg neoliberals, a “strong state” acquires
power “through self-restraint, through its ability to say ‘no’ to the demands of special
interest groups, its ability to credibly commit itself to universal moral principles of
the rule of law enshrined in a privilege free economic constitution” (Wohlgemuth
2008). Thus, from the neoliberal perspective, competition becomes the instrument to
create benefits for consumers in an ethical and social manner. Open sky agreements
appeared as a tool for eliminating governmental restrictions on international route
rights, on the type of aircraft that can be operated on specific routes, and on the
number of designated airlines (InterVISTAS 2015).
330 C. Petcu
The company’s skyrocketing advance in the global aviation sector has been ques-
tioned by European and American carriers on a competitiveness basis, as well as in
view of its alliances. The section provides an analysis of the airline’s fleet, and the
aviation infrastructure and taxation system in Qatar, as they are important stimulants
in Qatar Airways’ development. As competition is a key component of neoliberal
policies, Qatar Airways will be examined by looking at the reports released by Amer-
ican airlines against the Qatari airline, and at Qatar Airways’ documents issued as a
reply to the accusations of not respecting the values of competition. Qatar Airways’
financial statements will be intensively utilized in this section as they constitute the
primary source of data with regards to the airlines’ economic performance.
Qatar’s airport project value is the highest among the Gulf countries, with a
governmental investment of US$16 billion, followed by Dubai World Centre (US$8
billion), Dubai International airport (US$7.8 billion), and Abu Dhabi International
Airport (US$6.8 billion) (Alpen Capital 2014).
In the report of economic statistics in Qatar released by the Ministry of Develop-
ment Planning and Statistics, the real GDP growth rate of Qatar stood in the second
quarter of 2016 at 2% (Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2016). Even
with halved oil prices (the oil price dropped to US$35 a barrel in 2016), the GCC
governments continued their investment in various projects as an effort to diversify,
with Gulf aviation benefitting from government investments of more than US$300
billion in developing airports (Oman Arab Bank 2016). The rapid growth in govern-
ment spending on infrastructure has led to the strong development of low-value-added
sectors such as construction, trade and retail, transport and restaurants (Callen et al.
2014).
Hamad International Airport commenced its operations in April 2014, with an
initial capacity of 30 million passengers a year. Alongside the project of Hamad
International Airport, the project of Aerospace City has been designed to include a
business airport for general aviation and helicopters operated by Gulf Helicopters,
a military area, an education and research area incorporating a university campus,
a business and residential district with a marina, chalets, and swimming pool, an
aerospace museum and a theme park (Holland Aerospace and Aviation 2016). The
project was launched in 2012, having Qatar Foundation as a prime contractor, the
technical assistance being provided by Qatar Petroleum (Holland Aerospace and
Aviation 2016). Moreover, the airport infrastructure will be complemented by a
maintenance organization specially constructed for Qatar Airways, which will be
the largest in the world.
The massive expansion by Qatar Airways of its airport infrastructure and fleet
is a strategy which aims at facilitating trade, tourism, travel, and logistics. Qatar
Airways is embedded in the national plans for development, and thus the aviation
industry is one of the vehicles utilized for this purpose. American airlines perceive
this phenomenon as a threat to the growth of their own companies, to competition
in a free market, and as a violation of the Open Skies Agreements. Delta Airlines,
American Airlines, and United Airlines (the Big Three) released a report in 2015
named “Restoring Open Skies: The Need to Address Subsidized Competition from
State-Owned Airlines in Qatar and in the UAE.” The report makes public the financial
statements of Qatar Airways and the UAE airlines (Emirates and Etihad), arguing
that huge subsidies have supported the rapid growth of the three airlines and that these
subsidies have an adverse distorting impact on the marketplace and on the profitability
of the US and third-country airlines. The report posits that Qatar Airways, Etihad, and
Emirates do not operate as independent companies, but rather they act as extensions
of their governments. Moreover, the three state-owned airlines, due to their huge
advantage built on subsidies, are considered to be intending to dominate the US
market share and to shift US aviation jobs overseas.
According to the “Restoring Open Skies” report (2015), the current fleet of the
three Gulf airlines will soon be enhanced with the arrival of a large amount of newly
ordered aircraft, and together they will have a greater capacity than the entire US
commercial wide-body fleet. The American airlines fear that once these aircraft fly
the US routes, they will capture market share from other airlines, especially given
that the populations of UAE and Qatar are very small.
The Middle East region is considered poised to become one of the world’s fastest-
growing air transport markets. The major airlines of the Gulf, Emirates, Qatar
Airways, and Etihad, have followed policies of aggressive route expansion, their
business model focusing on transporting passengers between Africa, Asia, Australia,
Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas via their hubs (Dresner et al. 2015). The
Gulf carriers are well positioned to increase market share in the lucrative long-haul
market, as the average flight of Emirates is amongst the largest in the world—2,816
miles, compared to the average length of a Lufthansa flight which is 796 miles
(Oxford Analytica 2013). The rise of Gulf airlines as major players in the world
air transport business seems to be at the expense of long-haul carriers in the United
States, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific.
The US airlines claim that Gulf carriers have an unjust competitive advantage,
and call for restrictions on the Gulf airlines accessing their markets (Dresner et al.
2015), as, according to Grimme (2011: 333), “market entry for Gulf carriers seems
to be easier because they can obtain slots at attractive times.” The advantages of Gulf
airlines comprise: airline fleet, innovation in product development, low labor costs,
investments in infrastructure, non-dependence on locally generated traffic (Oxford
Analytica 2014), tourism development, access to highly liquid Sovereign Wealth
Funds (Oxford Analytica 2008), political and economic advantages, partnership-
generated revenues (e.g. Oneworld alliance), stakes in other airlines (Qatar Airways
owns 21.43% of IAG), and operations from airports with lower fees (Oxford
Analytica 2015).
The traffic growth in the Gulf is envisioned to turn on long-haul international
traffic, not on regional traffic. The Australian carrier Qantas has broken a 15-year
joint venture with British Airways in favor of a global partnership with Emirates,
thus positioning Dubai as Australia’s gateway to Europe (Oxford Analytica 2013).
Qatar Airways flies to more than 160 destinations, most of which are in Europe,
Africa, South Asia, Asia-Pacific, North America, and South America. This provides
evidence that the Qatar Airways strategy is to serve mainly medium- and long-haul
destinations, especially after the blockade.
332 C. Petcu
Compared with the aviation industries of the United States and Europe, which
have faced bankruptcy, rising fuel costs, tightening credit conditions, and fewer busi-
ness passenger flights, the Gulf aviation industry has proven to be stable and strong
(Oxford Analytica 2008). The Gulf airlines’ traffic flows that accompany the market
have affected the European and the US aviation industry. As an example of how new
market entries affect the competitors, Grimme (2011) describes how the entrance of
a low-cost airline has led to a fall in market fares, meaning that new entries pose
challenges on the local market. European airports saw their connectivity level fall by
5.7% in 2013 due to the emergence of Middle East hubs. Lufthansa and Air France
KLM requested the European Commission to withdraw traffic rights from Emirates,
Qatar Airways, and Etihad, as they have received government subsidies, seeking a
limitation of the Open Skies Agreements with the Gulf Airlines (Oxford Analytica
2015). According to an analysis conducted by Oxford Analytica (2013), the major
global airline alliances, Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance, initially rejected
partnerships with the Gulf airlines, considering that Qatar Airways, Emirates, and
Etihad do not meet their requirements due to heavy subsidies. Nevertheless, the
global growth of the Gulf airlines has since motivated the alliances to accept them
as members (Oxford Analytica 2013).
The US airlines remain unsatisfied with the entry of Gulf airlines into their market.
They campaign to convince the US government and other important players in the
aviation industry that Qatar Airways, Emirates, and Etihad are not adhering to the
policies of Open Skies Agreements, as they are building competitive advantage on
the grounds of massive capital injections from their governments.
The fact that the aviation sector has been treated as an infant industry is indubitable.
The status given by being an SOE has conferred on Qatar Airways substantial privi-
leges, partially quantified by the American Big Three. In reply, Qatar Airways claims
that the Open Skies Agreement has partnerships with other state-owned compa-
nies, which the Big Three did not address. Moreover, it says, the US and European
carriers are requiring greater transparency from the Gulf airlines, without taking
into consideration that they may be accused of double standards since the European
airlines too have been sustained by their governments (Air France, Sabena, Lufthansa,
TAP, Olympic) and the US airlines received aid to recover from the consequences
of September 11 and have used Chap. 11 protective bankruptcy to avoid collapse
(Oxford Analytica 2015). As studies show, the impact of the rise of the Gulf airlines
on US fares, on routes to Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceana, and on passengers
carried, has been negative. Nevertheless, the growth of the GCC airlines is not based
only on governmental aid, but also on their location and geographic proximity to
high-growth regions such as South Asia (Dresner et al. 2015). Geopolitics acted as
a powerful factor in their growth, enhanced by large resources and the capacity of
governments to pour capital into their aviation industries.
Qatar Airways from a Developmental State Perspective
The assessment of Qatar Airways using the neoliberal perspective has confirmed the
status of the company as a privileged entity, a public player which benefits from
governmental support at various levels. In order to assess Qatar Airways from a
developmental state perspective, the variables of knowledge, innovation, and connec-
tivity have been selected. Qatar Airways aligned its policies to the Qatar National
Vision 2030, and the creation of a knowledge-based economy represents an impor-
tant pillar in national economic development; a knowledge-based economy also
includes innovative processes. Improved connectivity has the potential to lead to
other economic processes (knowledge transfer, foreign direct investment), thus it
has also been selected as an important variable in defining the role of Qatar Airways
in the economic development of Qatar.
Knowledge plays an important role in economic development; however, its inte-
gration into socioeconomic systems is slow and shows a gradual evolution (Hossain
2013). According to Thierstein et al. (2006), the pillars of a knowledge economy are
Advanced Producer Services (APS), High-Tech Industries, and knowledge-creating
institutions (universities, research centers). Knowledge is a driver of productivity and
economic growth, being directed towards enhancing the role of technology, infor-
mation, and learning in economic performance. The Knowledge Economy Index
designed by World Bank assesses the knowledge economies on four pillars: (a)
Economic and Institutional regime, (b) Innovation, (c) Education, and (d) Information
and Technology.
In terms of a Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE), Qatar is still weak (Thierstein
et al. 2015). One of the reasons behind this weakness is represented by the shortage
of unskilled and skilled manpower in the GCC countries (Hossain 2013). This is
an important factor, as human capital encompasses the skills, intellect, attitudes,
and tacit knowledge commanded by employees and management structures. The
networks developed by companies’ relational capital can create synergies within the
entire value system (Lopes et al. 2016). Due to the shortage of local manpower in
the GCC states, 70% of the labor force is constituted by expatriates, a phenomenon
which challenges the involvement of the national workforce in the competitive sector
(Hossain 2013). As an effort to overcome this challenge, Qatar plans to increase the
national workforce and to produce qualified employees via the implementation of the
“Qatarization” program. Qatar Airways is embedded in national strategies, and there-
fore the airline developed the Al-Darb Qatarization Programme in order to generate
highly educated workers who will help to transform the economy into a knowledge-
based economy. This represents a contribution to Qatar’s development strategy, by
increasing the national workforce in technical and professional occupations.
Within the class of establishments employing 10 employees or more in the Trans-
port and Communication sector in Qatar, 11,276 employees (out of a total of 59,794)
are registered under the occupation of “Specialist and Technicians” (Ministry of
Development Planning and Statistics 2015a, b). As a knowledge-based economy
entails an increased labor market demand for highly skilled workers, the training
334 C. Petcu
and education of Qatari nationals represent important factors in its creation. With its
rapid growth, the GCC aviation industry would require more than 35,000 new pilots
and 50,000 new technical personnel over the next two decades (Al Masah Capital
2015). Knowledge and skilled workers are definitely valuable strategic assets for
a country (Hossain 2013). According to Wilson (2012), “it is the accumulation of
knowledge, rather than the accumulation of physical capital and the exploitation of
natural resources, that is the engine of long-run economic growth.” Research and
development (R&D) generates knowledge, university research having significant
spillovers in industry.
In 2010, Qatar Airways, in partnership with Qatar University, Qatar Science and
Technology Park, and Qatari Diar Vinci Construction, started to invest in the Algae
Biofuel Project. The research is led by Qatar University’s Center for Sustainable
Development and is based on the identification of 98 strains of algae in Qatar and
on the classification of each strain for biomass growth potential, resilience to local
climatic conditions, and potential as a biofuel feedstock (Qatar Airways Sustain-
ability Report 2016). The first stage of the project was completed in June 2015 and
has involved the establishment of indoor laboratories and an outdoor demonstration
facility to cultivate, harvest, and analyze large-scale micro-algae production with
the potential to apply algae biomass to biofuel production (Qatar Airways Sustain-
ability Report 2016). In addition to this, Qatar Airways invested in California firm
Byogy Renewables, which makes jet-fuel from alcohol (Lane 2012). Airbus, British
Airways, and Cranfield University (UK) are other entities exploring the growth of
algal biomass for aircraft fuel. This shows the expected importance of biofuels in
commercial aviation. The Bio Fuel Project in Qatar, later labeled the Algal Tech-
nologies Program, not only serves the development of biofuel for aviation, but also
develops technologies that can protect the environment by utilizing Qatar’s non-
fossil fuel and diversify the economy by capturing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
and producing animal feeds locally (algaeindustrymagazine.com 2016). This type of
project brings benefits to Qatar at a food security level as well as promoting economic
diversification.
Innovation represents the conversion of knowledge into benefits which can take
the form of new or improved products, processes, or services for commercial or
public use (Cutler 2008). Innovation “is a process of continuously generating and
applying new ideas, complements and facilitates the knowledge creation and appli-
cation process, […] is one of the key drivers of economic growth, [and] is essential to
the competitiveness and sustainability of an economy” (Wilson 2012). According to
the Global Innovation Index 2016, Qatar ranked number 50 in the world among 128
countries with a score of 37.47, and ranked number 3 in the Arab World. According
to Hossain (2013), there is poor R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the
GCC countries, thus showing that R&D activities are not sufficiently encouraged
even though the Gulf countries have high per capita income.
Three components have been identified as key for an innovation-driven economy:
a common innovation infrastructure, cluster development, and the capacity for
entrepreneurship (Khalifa 2012). While the role of the innovation infrastructure is
to augment productivity, cluster development (science and engineering workforce,
access to universities, ICT infrastructure) stimulates innovation, facilitates commer-

cialization, and strengthens the linkages and spillovers across companies and associ-
ated institutions (Khalifa 2012). The aviation industry presents cluster characteristics
as its industrial chain requires cooperation, stimulating the technology developments
of other related industries, while the internal cooperation enhances the sharing of
technologies and division of labor (Zhu et al. 2012). The capacity for entrepreneur-
ship includes developing entrepreneurship training, risk capital providers, tax policies
encouraging risk capital, infrastructure that promotes access to facilities, incubators
and services for startups, policies promoting ease of doing business, and a culture
of public recognition of entrepreneurs and awareness of the risks of failure (Khalifa
2012).
Innovation lies at the basis of the development of the aviation industry. From
the point of view of industry cluster innovation, the performance and competitive
advantages of the industry cluster can be improved by the optimization of the value
chain as well as technology sharing and diffusion (Zhu et al. 2012). In 2012, Qatar
Airways and Thales (the airline’s In-Flight Entertainment and Connectivity French
supplier) opened a new technology research, development, and training center located
at Qatar Science and Technology Park (MENA Report 2012). The Joint Innovation
and Technology Project has been established to develop in-flight entertainment solu-
tions (touch-screen technology, seat-back screens, etc.) for Qatar Airways. As Qatar
Airways aims at introducing pioneering products for its passengers, the technological
innovation process is a vital element in developing new services that will help attract
more customers. Furthermore, Qatar Airways received awards for content innovation
at the fourth annual in-flight workshop and awards event at Aircraft Interiors Middle
East, held in partnership with F&E Aerospace.
Technological progress leads to the development of a more efficient application
of operations research, facilitating large-scale optimization and the implementation
of strong real-time solutions (Oancea 2015). In terms of innovation, in 2015 Qatar
Airways created a new fleet-management system called Total Operations System
which “integrates data from multiple sources and produces a holistic view into the
airline’s operation, from the global scale to the individual flight level, in order to
anticipate and notify operations staff of any potential issue and provide solution
options” (Qatar Airways Group Annual Report 2016). The system has a tail assign-
ment optimizer (aircraft are assigned to specific routes according to the route’s oper-
ational requirements and aircraft’s capabilities), NOTAM manager (to increase the
situational awareness of dispatchers and operations staff), and Flight Watch (offers
operations personnel multiple filters, such as weather patterns, flight path routing,
and restricted or prohibited air space so that the team of professionals in the airline’s
Integrated Operations Center have near-perfect awareness of each airborne flight,
and the ability to communicate quickly with the flight deck) (Qatar Airways Group
Annual Report 2016). Qatar Airways adds technical innovations to its in-service
aircraft before entering the market. The A320 aircraft is enhanced with a Sharklet
wingtip device which saves each aircraft up to 900 tons of CO2 per year, while the
B777 Performance Improvement Package reduces fuel burn by 0.9% (Qatar Airways
Group Annual Report 2016).
336 C. Petcu
As we have seen, Qatar Airways aligns its strategies with the national vision and
with the strategies of its partners, with both Qatar Airways and Airbus focusing on
certain similar projects in the aviation market. This consolidates the aviation industry,
which is improving its performance by following strategies implemented worldwide.
Civil aviation plays an important role in developing networking between nations,
additionally contributing to economic growth and development (Lopes et al. 2016).
From Qatar Airways’ hub in Doha, the airline has created a global network of more
than 160 destinations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Asia-Pacific,
North America, and South Asia.
Qatar Airways is also a member of Oneworld Alliance. Such strategic alliances,
codeshare agreements, and slots represent just a few of the intellectual resources
which drive the airline companies by influencing the turnover (Lopes et al. 2016).
At another level, the connectivity developed by Qatar Airways through its various
destinations can enhance the performance of corporations in the knowledge economy.
These corporations split their activities into different units and locate them in places
rich in knowledge resources and industrial culture (Dicken 2007), and Qatar Airways
can facilitate rapid access to these places. According to a study conducted by
Thierstein et al. (2015) on Doha’s connectivity pattern, Doha’s Advanced Producer
Services (APS) economy has a strong spatial linkage to major European cities
(London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Vienna, Madrid) and to New York (showing the
highest gross connectivity from among 20 cities). For high-tech companies, the most
connected cities are Singapore, Moscow, Paris, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires, the
European and the Asian spatial scale being relevant within their value chain processes
(Thierstein et al. 2015).
The connections created between cities and markets are an important infras-
tructure asset which enable foreign direct investment (FDI), with business clus-
ters and other spillovers having positive impacts on the productive capacity of the
economy (Oxford Economics 2011). Qatar Airways has around 30 routes which
connect Qatar to cities of more than 10 million inhabitants, and has increased its
daily flights to economically important destinations. Qatar Airways’ presence in the
United Kingdom was significantly increased in 2018, “as direct daily services were
launched to Cardiff, hence becoming the first Gulf carrier to serve the Welsh capital
and opening up options for passengers in the west and south-west of England. Qatar
Airways also began direct services to London Gatwick in May, 2018, raising the total
number of U.K. gateways to six.; services to Manchester also increased from 16 to
18 per week” (Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2019). These high frequencies
provide high-speed access for business and leisure purposes, bringing benefits to air
transport passengers, markets, tourism, and trade.
A developed connectivity contributes to the performance of the economy as it
benefits productivity in firms outside the aviation sector, offering a rapid access by
domestic firms to foreign markets and facilitating the freer movement of investment
capital and workers between countries (Oxford Economics 2011). Thus, firms are
encouraged to specialize in areas where they have a comparative advantage and to
invest outside their home countries. Improved connectivity can also favor inward
investment from foreign firms (Oxford Economics 2011).
The Gulf Crisis and Qatar Airways
Since 5 June 2017, the Arab “Quartet” (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain, and Egypt) have continued to boycott the State of Qatar. Building on the
pretext of a hack of the Qatar News Agency website, the four nations initiated a
geopolitical crisis that divided the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and captured the
attention of major powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France,
and Germany. The ongoing crisis has affected not only the parties directly involved,
but also the entire Middle Eastern region and the Horn of Africa (Kinninmont 2019).
The diplomatic attempts by Saudi Arabia to isolate Qatar in 2014 were not
successful, and therefore in 2017 the dispute escalated into blocking Qatar’s only land
border as well as its air routes. The closure of land borders and the air traffic disrup-
tion were intended to have major consequences for Qatar’s economy and society
(Stephens 2017). Such actions were challenging for the Qatari officials, as major
adjustments were required to keep the country solvent, sovereign, and open for
business (Johnson and Huxham 2017).
As the Gulf economy is heavily reliant on transport (Yadav 2017), it is worth
investigating how the crisis has affected one of Qatar’s most important economic
players, Qatar Airways. With the Quartet cutting off Qatar Airways’ rights to use
their airspace, the airline had to re-route over Turkey and Iran, losing 50 flights per
day, 18 destinations, and seating capacity, and increasing flight time. This was a
substantial challenge for the airline, as Qatar Airways generated an estimated 30%
of its revenue from flights within the Gulf (Yadav 2017). Moreover, the impact of
air restrictions was even greater since Qatar Airways operated more flights on the
affected routes than all other airlines combined (CAPA Centre for Aviation 2017).
Prior to the embargo, the ascension of Qatar Airways was measured at an annual
growth of 20% (Law 2017). With a rapid fleet expansion consisting of massive
orders of new planes (more than 300 aircraft, worth more than US$85 billion still on
order), Qatar’s national airline had emerged as a leader in the Gulf aviation market,
challenging the United Arab Emirates’ airlines (Emirates and Etihad). Qatar Airways
executives regarded the blockade as a maneuver to inhibit the growth of their business,
which was posing a serious threat to the Emirati airlines’ market dominance (Law
2017).
The immediate impact of the embargo shook Qatar, however, the country proved to
be resilient. Losing access to the four boycotting countries, imports and flights were
immediately disrupted. According to Kinninmont (2019), Qatar’s imports decreased
by 40% in value in June 2017 compared to June 2016. The immediate suspension
of 18 destinations from Qatar Airways’ global network caused major disruptions to
suppliers working within Qatar (Qatar Airways Sustainability Report 2018); it also
led to stranded passengers and separated families, as Qatari residents living in Saudi
Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain were expelled, with exceptions subsequently being
implemented for Qataris married to Quartet citizens (Kinninmont 2019).
On 5 June the Qatar Airways website was blocked, and passengers were advised
to use its Facebook channel in order to make bookings. Thousands of flights were
338 C. Petcu
rebooked during the day. The airline’s offices in the four countries were locked
and 500 Qatar Airways employees were denied access to their work (Law 2017).
Their primary goal was to assist passengers and residents stranded by the embargo,
and in this respect charter flights operated by other airlines were used to repatriate
residents. Qatar Airways Cargo played a vital role in maintaining food, medical,
and manufacturing supplies to Qatar, and a new Climate Center was opened in May
2017 to ensure cool storage of the large volume of food imports (Qatar Airways
Sustainability Report 2018).
Prior to the embargo, around 40% of the country’s food supplies came via the
land border with Saudi Arabia. In response to the crisis the airline deployed its 22 air
freighters, and through collaboration with Turkey and Iran the threat of severe food
shortage was solved within two days of the implementation of blockade (Law 2017).
Qatar Airways Cargo imported 4,000 cattle from Australia, Hungary, and the US on
60 flights (Johnson and Huxham 2017), and helped Moutaz al-Khayyat, chairman
of Power International Holding, to establish a farm which “provides the residents
of Qatar with an important local source of fresh milk and dairy products” (Qatar
Airways Sustainability Report 2018).
The airline executives pointed out that the crisis had had a negative impact, with
Qatar Airways losing 20% of its passenger traffic. Flight duration increased since the
sudden measures prohibited Qatar-registered aircraft from overflying the airspace of
the Quartet countries. Airspace restrictions reduced the number of Qatar Airways’
air corridors from 18 to 2 (see Fig. 19.1), increasing the distance to numerous desti-
nations. In terms of fuel consumption and emissions, the additional fuel required to
reach the destinations increased the CO2 emissions from aviation fuel consumption
by 11.3% (in comparison to 2016–17) (Qatar Airways Sustainability Report 2018).
Being re-routed over Oman, Iran, and Turkey, flights became longer and thus less
attractive for customers. Such a negative consequence compounded the difficulty
of making operating profits even before the blockade. Having most of its flights
confined to the narrow entry and exit corridor, an extended time in the air, and higher
fuel consumption, Qatar Airways headed towards a financial operating loss (Johnson
and Huxham 2017). For the fiscal year 2017–18, the airline reported a loss of US$69
million, attributed to the embargo (Deutsche Presse Agentur 2019). The loss mounted
Fig. 19.1 Qatar Airways’ air corridors

during the following year, with the airline reporting a loss of US$500 million for the
fiscal year 2018–19 (Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2019).
Despite the predicted financial loss, however, the company showed business confi-
dence immediately after the embargo, announcing a bold acquisition move of a 49%
stake in the Italian airline Meridiana (Law 2017). The airline’s strategy to minimize
the effects of the blockade proved to be aligned to the national strategy. In defiance of
both the immediate and longer-term negative results of the boycott, Qatar managed
to limit the impact on its economy. Being the host of the world’s third largest gas
reserves, Qatar secured long-term agreements with powerful nations (China, UK,
India); and even the UAE still receives natural gas from Qatar through the Dolphin
pipeline (Kinninmont 2019). Hence, the “economic boycott could only marginally
harm one of the wealthiest countries in the world” (Lynch 2017). Applying a judicious
strategy, “Qatar used gas contracts and Sovereign Wealth Investments to consolidate
relationships with various countries all over the world” (Kinninmont 2019). The US
and Turkish military presence in Qatar deterred the military threats, while the global
reaction to the demand to close Al Jazeera made it difficult for the blockading coun-
tries to criticize Qatar’s regime (Lynch 2017). The crisis certainly had economic
effects; however, these were not as major as the Quartet expected. According to
Johnson and Huxham (2017), Qatar Airways “made up for its lost flights with new
ones, the government has created new business partners, and the two together have
found new ways to supply its country with essentials like food.”
Mass media played an important role in defining the crisis. In an attempt to
scope out the international news coverage of Qatar during the diplomatic crisis,
Northwestern University in Qatar collaborated with Meltwater (a media monitoring
firm) to gather data on Qatar’s coverage between May 21 and September 25 (North-
western University 2018). After reviewing the articles containing the word “Qatar”
in the headline or lead paragraph, the results showed that the key topics of interest
that appeared frequently alongside Qatar in leading publications in the UAE, the
UK, and the United States were “crisis” (2256), “terror” (1255), “airline/airways”
(989), “demands” (772), “Trump” (746), and “bank” (560) (Northwestern University
2018). The UK and the United States primarily referred to the diplomatic event using
the term “crisis,” hence suggesting a deep rift with ripple effects across the entire
region. On the other hand, the significant effect on daily travel between Doha and
Dubai was clearly reflected in the UAE publications, the results on “airline/airways”
reflecting the importance of connectivity between the two countries for the Khaleeji
population.
In response to the blockade and its impact on connectivity, Qatar initiated new
shipping links to compensate for the loss of access to the Quartet ports. The costs
of the imports through Turkey, Iran, and Oman increased, but by the end of 2017
imports reached pre-crisis levels. Moreover, Qatar signed shipping agreements with
China, India, and South Korea, mapping new routes between Doha and their ports
(Kinninmont 2019).
Qatar Airways took many steps to continue its operations as usual and made
adjustments to the deployment of the aircraft previously flying to the blockaded
destinations. Within two weeks of the embargo, new destinations to Sohar, Prague,
340 C. Petcu
and Kyiv were launched, while a certain number of crew and aircraft were leased to
British Airways (Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2018). During the financial
year 2017–18, Qatar Airways’ route map was increased by 14 new destinations:
Dublin–Republic of Ireland; Nice–France; Skopje–Republic of Macedonia; Sohar–
Sultanate of Oman; Prague–Czech Republic; Kyiv–Ukraine; Sarajevo–Bosnia and
Herzegovina; Adana–Turkey; Chiang Mai–Kingdom of Thailand; Saint Petersburg–
Russian Federation; Pattaya–Kingdom of Thailand; Penang–Malaysia; Canberra–
Australia; Thessaloniki–Greece. From the first day of blockade up until 31 March
2019, the airline launched 24 new destinations. However, planned new destinations
in West and Central Africa and South America were suspended due to the embargo
(Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2019). As Johnson and Huxham (2017) noted,
“Qatar Airways seemed to be doubling down on new destinations to counteract the
effects of losing a large portion of their Gulf flights.”
Qatar Airways emerged as the first international airline (other than Middle East
Airlines) to obtain permission from the Syrian government to overfly Syria, Beirut
and Larnaca, two destinations that required significant detours due to the blockade,
can now be reached by crossing Syrian airspace (Macheras 2019) and the flight from
Beirut to Doha is one hour shorter than the detour which avoided Syria.
Not only has it established new routes, but the airline has also invested heavily.
In March 2019 it acquired a 25% stake in Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport.
Qatar Airways mainly focused on airlines with strong management and access to
healthy markets (Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2019). In January 2019, the
airline announced the purchase of 5% of the total issued share capital of China
Southern Airlines. This was added to the existing portfolio of holdings which includes
a 49% holding in Air Italy, 21.43% shares in IAG, 10% investment in Latam, and
9.99% in Cathay Pacific (Qatar Airways Annual Report Fiscal 2019).
Proactive engagement with partners around the world served as another strategic
pillar in the evolution of Qatar Airways. Finding itself in the third year of the airspace
blockade, the airline is set to benefit from a sustainable framework for future opera-
tions generated by the successful conclusion of the negotiation of a Comprehensive
Air Transport Agreement between Qatar and the European Union (6 February 2019).
Qatar Airways’ aero-political engagements were oriented towards diversifying its
markets, and were manifest through delegations to the International Summit in Delhi
(September 2018) and the Global Aviation Summit in Mumbai (January 2019), which
emphasized the need to access the Indian market; discussions with US officials to
preserve flexibility for the airline; and participation in the Africa Aviation Summit in
Kigali, Rwanda (February 2019) to change the current hubbing dynamics for Africa
(Qatar Airways Annual Report 2019).
The diplomatic conflict reiterated the importance of maintaining a diversified port-
folio that can sustain any regional disagreements and weather their economic, polit-
ical, and social consequences. Qatar Airways’ move to purchase stocks in different
airlines reflects an intention to diversify and develop defensive techniques should a
crisis similar to the blockade arise in the future, particularly in the context of mistrust
between GCC partners.
Conclusion
The aviation industry in the Arabian Peninsula has transformed the region into a
global hub, the Gulf airlines being propelled into the global market of the aviation
industry. This chapter aimed at analyzing one Gulf carrier in order to observe the
effects of a state-owned airline on global free markets, and most importantly on its
national economy.
Neoliberal theory was utilized in order to understand the economic performance
of the airline under neoliberal policies. It was concluded that Qatar Airways operates
in a privileged environment created by the government of the State of Qatar via the
expansion of the airport infrastructure, taxation system, and capital injections in the
form of equity.
For assessing the growth of the airline within the national vision for economic
development, the developmental state theory provided a theoretical background for
understanding the role of Qatar Airways in the economy of Qatar. As a flag carrier,
the airline internalized the policies of development prescribed by Qatar’s National
Vision 2030. Thus, the airline reflected the Qatarization policy by developing a Qata-
rization Program whose innovative processes focus on environmental development
and whose research is conducted in partnership with scientific centers such as the
Qatar Science and Technology Park and Qatar University, aligning its progress with
the government’s strategies towards the creation of a knowledge-based economy.
The greatest contribution of Qatar Airways to the national economy comes from
improved connectivity, which stimulates the connection with foreign markets and
develops the tourism sector. Moreover, in terms of gross value added, the value
added of air transport represents almost half of the value added of the entire Trans-
port and Communication sector. Compared to the contribution to GDP by sectors
such as Mining and Quarrying, Construction, and Manufacturing, the Aviation
sector’s contribution is still moderate, yet growing. The aviation industry in Qatar is
building the capacity to further impact national economic development, while its real
contributions are starting to be seen in terms of revenues and generated employment.
Qatar is reliant on foreign investment to diversify its economy through boosting
its technology and knowledge in the non-oil sectors. The embargo limited the share
of regional trade, and hence its diversification strategies were inhibited, especially
those linked to regional demand. With the 2022 FIFA World Cup in sight, recon-
ciliation with the blockading countries presents various opportunities for tourism.
A comprehensive solution should have a component of economic cooperation that
involves a resumption of transport connections, investments, joint energy programs,
and tourism initiatives.
342 C. Petcu
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Gulf Studies 3

The 2017 Gulf

More information about this series at https://www.springer.com/series/16417

The 2017 Gulf Crisis

ISSN 2662-4494 ISSN 2662-4508 (electronic)

Doha, Qatar Mahjoob Zweiri

1 The 2017 Gulf Crisis: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I Gulf Security

Part II Threat Perception

9 Popular Sentiments and Elite Threat Perception in the Gulf:

Part III Developing Strategic Relations and Shifting Political

Part IV Foreign Policy Dynamics in a Post-GCC Era

Part V Qatar’s Economic Strategies in the Face of the Blockade

About the Editors

Md Mizanur Rahman is Associate Professor at the Gulf Studies Program, Qatar

Éva Ádám is an international relations manager and a researcher at the Antall

Corvinus University of Budapest and from Eötvös Loránd University. He is a Ph.D.

Noof Rashid Al-Dosari is a research scholar at the University of Essex,

entitled “From Political Islam to Democrat Muslim: A Comparison between Rashid

Fig. 4.1 Illustration of different research approaches to the question

Table 1.1 A 13-point list of demands, presented to Qatar, to resolve

Mahjoob Zweiri, Md Mizanur Rahman, and Arwa Kamal

M. Zweiri · M. M. Rahman (B) · A. Kamal

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 1

Table 1.1 (continued)

on them. Meanwhile, the government of Qatar continued to pursue unconditional

The 2017 Gulf Crisis: A Continuity of the Animosity

cannot be said to be anything new—it is simply a continuation of the long-running

Qatar Under the Blockade

Structure of the Book

2017 crisis, looking primarily at three waves of security transformations: in the

10. Divided Gulf pp 1-18, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-13-

Mahjoob Zweiri and Betul Dogan-Akkas

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 21

Honeymoon of the Arab Spring

be defined as de facto nationalism, in other words an instantaneous set of actions

Conflicting Approaches to Regional Politics

Is the Muslim Brotherhood the Fault Line of the GCC?

Saudi Interventionism in the Region: Yemen

This could be understood as saying that Qatar was supportive of non-military

Simply an Intra-GCC Rivalry?

Where Iran and Turkey Stand in This Regional Complexity

Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin

1 In Turkish, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, commonly abbreviated AK Parti or (unofficially) AKP.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 35

Foreign Policy Change and Its Structural Ramifications

The Roots of the Change in Turkish Foreign Policy Towards

Changing Qatar’s Foreign Policy: The Rift Between the Gulf

A Framework for Qatar–Turkey Rapprochement

The above-mentioned change in Turkey’s foreign policy strategy, accompanied by a

The Gulf Security Sub-complex: From Bi-polarity

Regions are of paramount importance in understanding the perplexities of world poli-

Noof Rashid ALDosari

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 51

Perception and Reality: How Do Leaders’ Perceptions

Perception here is defined as “a concept that describes the construction of reality

A salutary story of misperception is represented by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of

Because the process of decision-making and its consequences matter, perception

Post-structuralist Discourse Theory and Foreign Policy

My aim here is to build upon the literature on post-structuralist discourse theory,

Following Howarth’s lead, it is worth defining these categories. Discursive means

Discourse Analysis and Foreign Policy: Discursive Approach

The Political Discourse of the Qatar Crisis: GCC States,