Fear thy neighbour

• Last Updated: May 14. 2009 2:10PM UAE / May 14. 2009 10:10AM GMT

“Let’s not escalate things any further”: The US secretary of defence Robert Gates arrives at Riyadh Airport on May 5. Jason Reed / AFP

America’s hesitant outreach to Tehran has the Gulf states alarmed, F Gregory Gause writes, but there’s nothing new to be afraid of.

Last week Dennis Ross, the US state department’s envoy to the Gulf, completed his first trip to the region, with stops in Egypt and almost every GCC state. Ross’s portfolio is focused on Iran, and his mission was to reassure America’s Arab allies, especially in the Gulf, that Barack Obama’s plans for dialogue with Iran are not the prelude to a “grand bargain” with Tehran that will sacrifice the interests of the smaller Gulf states. To reinforce the point, the US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates is visiting Egypt and Saudi Arabia this week; Gates told the press that his message, “particularly to the Saudis”, is that “any kind of outreach to Iran will not be at the expense of our long-term relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that have been our partners and friends for decades”.

Why do the Saudis and their GCC partners need this kind of reassurance? Because they appear to believe that Iran holds the keys to many of the regional problems facing the Obama administration: in Iraq and Afghanistan and even the Arab-Israeli conflict. If, in order to achieve his goals, Obama cuts a deal with Tehran that leaves Iran the dominant power in the Gulf, then Gulf states would have to face an Iran that dwarfs them in terms of size and military strength, is developing nuclear weapons and wants not only to be the major regional power but also wants to influence their domestic politics. In short, they fear America will leave them to deal with Iran alone.

This fear of American abandonment is, to put it mildly, a bit exaggerated. The United States has extremely close relations with all the GCC states, bolstered by extensive military co-operation agreements and shared economic interests – while US-Iran relations have been hostile and antagonistic for three decades. Obama’s tentative outreach to Tehran, not exactly met with rosewater and rice by the Iranian leadership, is intended to slowly develop a more normal relationship with Iran – not to divide up the Middle East into spheres of influence. Moreover, the Obama administration has maintained a hard line against Iranian nuclear ambitions: Hillary Clinton testified in congress last month that outreach to Iran would actually enable further international support to make sanctions against Iran “as tight and as crippling as we would want” if Iran refuses to compromise on the nuclear issue. It does not sound like Washington is about to sell out the GCC to embrace Iran.

The reason that the Gulf states worry about an Iranian-American deal, struck over their heads and at their expense, even when all the evidence says that it will not happen, is structural. Their fears are based on the realities of geography and power in the international system. Smaller and weaker states quite naturally fear the machinations of the big powers whose actions determine their security environment, whether they are at war or at peace. Small states worry when the big guys are confronting each other, because conflict between larger powers might be played out on their territory. But they also worry when the big guys get cosy, for fear that their interests will not only be ignored, but maybe even sacrificed, in the interests of great power deals.

The GCC states are not unique in this regard: they occupy a structural position exactly equivalent to that of America’s Western European allies in the Cold War. During times of crisis between the United States and the USSR, the Western Europeans usually counselled restraint and diplomacy, afraid to have a third world war conducted on their continent. But during periods of detente between the superpowers, the allies worried that they did not have a seat at the table as American presidents and Soviet leaders made their deals. The Cold War quip was that the only thing that the Western Europeans feared more than superpower hostility was superpower peace.

One can get the impression that the GCC states feel the same way about Iranian-American relations. Iran is the dominant regional state in the Gulf, by virtue of its size and population. That is why the GCC states, despite their mistrust of Saddam Hussein, backed Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War – for fear of Iranian regional dominance. Even under the Shah, who was no threat to them domestically and was a close ally of their American ally – the Gulf states worried about Iranian intentions. Now, with Iraq in tatters, there is no credible regional power that can even hope to balance Iran militarily. That is why the GCC states need America more than ever to guarantee their security, as difficult and distasteful as they occasionally find that fact. But their need for American protection means they lack leverage with the United States: they are tied to an American regional policy over which they fear they have no real input.

When Iranian-American relations during the Bush administration looked likely to explode, the GCC states worried that an American military strike would invite Iranian retaliation across the Gulf, dragging them into war. If Obama’s outreach to Tehran fails and the drums of war resume their pounding, rest assured that we will hear the Gulf states urging caution on Washington. But for now, while attempted rapprochement is the order of the day, the chief worry in the Gulf is that any American accommodation with Iran will consecrate an era of Persian hegemony in the Gulf.

While Iran is a conventional military threat to the GCC states, the likelihood of any direct Iranian attack is very low. Their bigger worry is that Iran will try to destabilise their own domestic politics. This was the Iranian strategy during the time of Ayatollah Khomeini, as the new Islamic Republic tried to “export the revolution” to the Arab world. After nearly 20 years of more normal relations with Iranian governments under Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, Gulf and other Arab leaders see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reviving Khomeini’s revolutionary rhetoric and using ties with Arab parties and groups to meddle in the politics of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

Another concern in the Gulf is that if Iran can consolidate its influence in those countries and mobilise Arab public opinion with anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric, it will be tempted to renew efforts to meddle in their countries. A series of incidents in the past few months – all given major and sensational attention in the Arabic-language press – have stoked the flames: Morocco cut diplomatic relations with Tehran in February over allegations that Iran was trying to spread Shiism in the kingdom; Bahrain raised a chorus of protest throughout the Arab world after an Iranian official commented that the island used to be a province of Iran; Egypt arrested Hizbollah members involved in smuggling arms to Gaza and accused them of plotting to overthrow the government. The reactions of the Arab states to these incidents are a bit over the top, to be sure, given the relatively minor nature of the Iranian provocations. But they reflect the fear among Arab leaders that Iran can penetrate their domestic politics and threaten the Arab regimes’ hold on power.

The Gulf states’ reactions – or overreactions – have got Washington’s attention; that is why Ross and Gates are visiting. But the GCC leaders need to realise that America is not on the verge of selling them out. The Bush administration tried to reorder the region to its liking, an adventure that the Gulf leaders found profoundly destabilising. Obama’s approach to the Gulf is a return to traditional balance-of-power politics, a framework that served the interests of the Gulf states well for decades. It is predicated on preventing Iranian regional hegemony, or anyone else’s regional hegemony, and securing long-held American interests, among which are the security and independence of the Gulf states. The outreach to Iran needs to be seen in that light – as an effort to enmesh the Iranians in a new network of relations that will diminish their incentives to be disruptive.

The GCC states can rest easy. Washington will listen to their worries, but will not give them a veto over American regional policy. The only thing it can do is reassure Gulf leaders, as Ross and Gates have done in the past few weeks. But a look at the map tells us that their fears will never completely disappear. The Gulf leaders, as they have in the past, will have to learn to live with them.


F Gregory Gause, a regular contributor to The Review, is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the American University of Kuwait .