Trump Blows Up The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
Trump Blows Up The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
Well, maybe it has blown itself up, but Trump’s supposedly triumphant visit to Saudi Arabia looks to have exacerbated underlying tensions within the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), whose members include Saudi Arabia (KSA), Kuwait,Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman. This was the part of Trump’s overseas trip that most US media has accepted as being a nearly great performance without any goofups (the trip steadily going downhill after that), with him getting over $100 billion in arms sales to the Saudis, and, aside from theatrics like sword dancing and holding glowing globes, getting to lecture 50 Muslim Arab leaders about what to do about terrorism, while also supporting their Sunni animus against Iran, this last part being what has led to the most recent problems. What has happened most recently, is reported by Francis Ghiles of OpenDemocracy as linked to by Juan Cole, with even more serious details reported by Washington Post reporter Kristen Coattes Ulrichesn (this link is to Marginal Revolution Monday assorted links, go to the one called “The cut-off that is Qatar,” sorry original WaPo link not working for me). This is also a followup to my earlier post here about Trump’s Saudi visit.
According to Ghiles, the split has opened up dramatically thanks to Trump siding strongly with the most hawkishly anti-Iran members of the GCC. Those nations happen to be Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both of which are actively involved in the disastrously bogged-down war in Yemen, where evidence is weak that Iran is even providing anything significant to the Houthis who currently control northern Yemen and the capital of Sana’a and are Zaydi Shia. Many reports show a major humanitarian disaster unfolding in that nation, which appears to be in the process of splitting into at least three, if not four, failed pieces, with the UAE apparently supporting South Yemen secessionists who recently took control of the airport in Aden (not clear what Saudis think of that,; this last bit not in any of the linked posts). The key players are Saudi Deputy Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), and the Abu Dhabi Crown Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (Abu Dhabi one of the 7 emirates in the UAE), both of whom have gotten close to Jared Kushner. Another nation more or less in their camp, if not quite as close to Kushner, is Bahrain, home to a US naval base, where the ruling minority Sunni monarchy killed a bunch of peacefully demonstrating Shia a few days after Trump left Riyadh, having promised not to “lecture” them about human rights (although he was prepared to lecture US allies in Europe about all sorts of things).
So the big news that Ulrichsen presents is a bizarre campaign in various social media and regular media, especially in KSA and UAE against Qatar, claiming that its Emir Tammim made a speech on May 23 to a graduating group of military cadets in which he supposedly said that Iran was a “stabilizing presence in the Gulf,” that Hama was the legitimate ruler of Gaza, and complained about “tense” relations with the Trump administration.. Indeed, these claims were apparently made on Qatar TV on May 24, only to be retracted and taken down soon after. The Qataris claim that this report was hacked into Qatar TV, and observers at Tammim’s talk claim that he never said any of this. But this report spread widely in the Arab world, being repeated in Egypt, Libya, and some other locations as well, and apparently both the Saudi and UAE media have continued to pound away with this story even as the Qataris are claiming it never happened and that they were hacked. A serious irony is that to the extent this is all about Qatar being insufficiently anti-Iran, especially in Yemen, Qatar sent 1000 troops to Yemen in 2014 at the special request of Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ), who apparently personally lobbied Tammim hard on this.
In any case, whether or not there is tension between the Trump administration and Tammim, he has not visited Washington, while MbS and MbZ have done so several times, and they clearly have the ears of Kushner and Trump, as well as Trump’s hands on that glowing globe. With his strongly anti-Iran talk in Riyadh, Trump has exacerbated the divisions within the GCC, where, apparently Qatar has been in open disagreement about the seriousness of the Iran threat with KSA, UAE, and Bahran for some time.
What about the other two GCC members not openly caught up in this? Presumably they are somewhere in between these others, and apparently at least somewhat sympathetic to the Qatari view that Iran is not quite the big threat that KSA has been claiming, with the Saudis the big dogs in the GCC, which they have long viewed as their rump puppies who should do as they are told. Indeed, there have been scattered reports that Kuwait in particular has been less keen on all the loud anti-Iran rhetoric, with them having some special credibility as they are the GCC nation second closest to Iran, so that if Iran is in fact contemplating some invasion as MbS has loudly claimed, Kuwait would be a likely target, if nothing else to be on the pathway for an army to get to KSA after briefly passing through Iraq where it borders the Persian Gulf (last time Iran invaded a neighbor was in the 1820s).
Oh, which leaves the ever-so quiet sixth GCC member, Oman, which actually has a border with Iran and shares the strategically crucial Strait of Hormuz through which all the oil coming out by sea from the Persian Gulf passes through. They also neighbor Yemen as well as KSA and UAE. They are not reported to have said anything, and almost certainly will not, and they have no troops in Yemen, where they are staying uninvolved. But nobody wants to mess with them for at least two reasons. One is the obvious matter of their sharing the crucial Strait of Hormuz with Iran. The other is that they do not share the Sunni sectarian biaz against Shia Iran. They are the only nation in the world not to be led by a Muslim sect that is either Sunni or Shi’i, the Ibadi sect. As a result, they prefer to stand back from this insane Sunni-Shia war, although, partly to keep the Saudis and UAE off their backs, they are formally in the GCC and regularly approve resolutions approved by its fellow members. But Oman goes its own way, if ever so discretely.
Probably the most important sign of their willingness to act independently although also secretly, is that it was through their auspices that the initial contacts were made by the Obama administration when it began to approach Iran about engaging in the ultimately successful negotiations that led to the nuclear deal, a deal strongly opposed by both KSA and Israel on the surface, but amazingly enough not yet undone by Trump, despite his having denounced it during the campaign as “the worst deal ever made.” On that matter, Putin may have been a good influence, whose foreign minister, the ineffable Sergei Lavrov, played a crucial role in getting that deal done. Paris agreement supported by all nations on the planet except Syria and Nicaragua? Not a problem blowing it off. But somebody has gotten to Trump to convince him to leave alone the Iran nuclear deal, even as he has ramped up anti-Iran rhetoric in a way that has apparently triggered or encouraged this blowup within the GCC, and let us hope that he continues to leave it alone. But Oman is having none of these wild anti-Iran shenanigans, and nobody is going to mess with them about it.
Barkley Rosser
I’m interested in seeing how this falls out.
You have this bloc of Arab countries that are either actually moderate, moderate (from their viewpoint), or moderating over the past twenty years (in this continuum I would count Jordan, the Emirates, Kuwait, and even Saudi which is IMHO the most conservative of the group but which has in real terms been making massive changes internally), and then you have Qatar and Bahrain which are on the border of being international pariahs already. The first group appears to be disentangling itself from the second, and trying to implement a Middle-Eastern Monroe Doctrine/Roosevelt Corollary with regard to their regional bad-actors who can’t seem to even zip up their pants at a party.
I wonder if this leads to a situation where the US and Russia are both willing to back off the region in ten years. It is very unlikely that outside powers will ever leave the Middle East alone as long as it has convenient excuses like international terrorism, nuclear threats, and the Palestine problem that Israel has kept open for 50 years.
Barkley – Is it possible you missed the key point in this story? The following alternative explanation is bizarre. But the confirmation comes from the VERY credible Financial Times of London.
The story is that the Gulf political blow up happened because Oman paid $1b to bad guys in ransom money. $700m went to the Iranian secret police. $300m went to assorted bad guys in Syria, including ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Some Omani family members went on a Falcon training jaunt in Iraq. And they got kidnapped. The family paid $1B in cash (truck loads) to get them back.
Sounds crazy? This is the Middle East. Everything is crazy here.
https://www.ft.com/content/dd033082-49e9-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43
Bkrasting
That story makes no sense. They can’t have been kidnapped by both ISIS and Iran (they are deadly enemies).
Reason – Did you at least read the FT article? How this came about is discussed in detail.
The story is also out at the Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4576212/Ransom-countries-decisions-cut-ties-Qatar.html
J. Goodwin,
Jordan has been “moderate” forever, with its kings first on the payroll of British intelligence and then shifting to Us intelligence after the Brits pulled out. Kuwait and UAE are not “moderating,” pretty much same as they always have been.
The claim that Saudi has been making “massive changes internally” is a total fantasy. Yes, MbS is pushing this line that he is this great young reformer, and a lot of sucker ignorant foreign media go for it. But as near as I can tell the only changes that have happened internally are the following two, both of which happened under the late King Abdullah: 1) limited elections have been allowed in small communities, and 2) men and women have been allowed to study together in the university founded by and named for the late king, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). That is it.
MbS has been talking about letting men and women work together, but so far it has not happened. KSA remains the only nation on earth where women are not allowed to drive, and I do not even hear a whisper from MbS that this might change. People continue to be beheaded and to have their hands chopped off.
Oh, there has been talk of selling off some shares from a few state-owned firms, notably ARAMCO, wow! But even that has not happened so far. If you consider any of the above to be “massive internal changes,” well maybe you consider Donald Trump to have had the most productive first 100 days of any president.
Bkrasting,
Sorry, I go along with reason. There is a lot of lying going on here, such as the Saudis claiming that the Qataris were siding with the Houthis when they had 1000 troops in Yemen siding with the Saudis. The claims by them and the Bahrainis of Qataris aiding local Shia groups have no credibility.
The idea that this ransom, if it was paid and to whom, was the “tipping point” is even more absurd. The payment was supposedly made in April. Why do they wait until now to cut ties? I think they have cut ties because they Trump has their back. Supposedly these guys were kidnapped in territory controlled by Iranian-backed Shia militia, but then, somehow, they end up in Syria under the control of anti-Iranian Sunni fanatic al Qaida splinters. This makes utterly no sense and is almost certainly a massive lie, even more blatant than claiming that the Qataris are supporting the Houthis when they have 1000 troops in Yemen fighting the Houthis.
This is again a sign of how big a bunch of suckers western media are for MbS in Saudi, who has been massively war whooping against Iran and now thinks he has the support of Trump, which he may have.
As for all the claims about Qatar backing al Qaeda groups in Syria, there almost certainly have been people in Qatar doing so. But there have also been people in Saudi and Kuwait doing so, and the last report I saw had the amount of such support coming out of Saudi Arabia way exceeding that from anywhere else, including Qatar.
So, what is behind this move by these six nations to cut ties with Qatar? If you read down through that Daily Mail article you really get to it, that Qatar in the past, oh like back in 2014, supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Egypt has been a main leader of this move along with KSA and UAE. The MB was democratically elected in Egypt, but then overthrown in a coup by the current leader, al-Sissi, whom Trump also thinks is great, even as he arrests and tortures thousands of his citizens. The MB has not been much of a threat to either KSA or UAE, but they have a strong alliance with Egypt. Most importantly, the MB is not a terrorist group, although a major faction of al Qaeda came from a violent splinter group off of the MB or Ikhwan to use their Arabic name. But they are not Ikhwan, and the Ikhwan have been pursuing democratic paths, although that has not worked out so well.
Of course the other complaint is that despite their providing troops in Yemen, Qatar has not been as enthusiastic about joining in with the super anti-Iran group, and that I discussed at length in m post. I note one detail that came out in this morning’s front page WaPo story on all this, which is that Qatar and Iran share an oil field, which may make it easier for them to be somewhat cooperative. Again, this is all about the Saudis, led by the warmongering maniac, Mohammed bin Salman, to whip all the rump puppies of the GCC into line with his militantly anti-Iran platform, but obviously both Kuwait and Oman are not going along with it, as I discussed at length in my post, much less Qatar.
Frankly, this is outrageous, and anybody taking seriously the claims coming out of the Saudis and their allies is just a fool.
Barkely – Thanks for the response.
The FT describes the ransom payments as “triggers”. You say rubbish.
You point to the fact the payments were made in April as the reason why there can be no connection to the blow-up in the Gulf this week. Not so. No-one had any idea that these payments had been made until last weekend. The April date is not relevant.
FT has a quote that the ransom was the straw that broke the back. You say rubbish.
One thing in your favor. Trump has taken credit for this development. He is spinning it just as you do. DT says this is his accomplishment. You say it is another DT slip up.
This is a big story. It is already changing how the Gulf oi/gas biz. More will come up. We shall see if this is brought to you by DT, or by a $600m payment to the dreaded/hated/feared Iranian secret police.
Bkrasting,
I would note that the front page story in WaPo, indeed the top story, about the cutting of ties with Qatar, made no mention of this matter at all. Maybe it happened, but it looks like an excuse, even if it was just learned of this past weekend. Sounds more like somebody pulled it out and threw it in there with the other garbage like how Qatar is siding with the Houthis.
Again, the main story is just totally bizarre. Kidnapped by Shia militias in Iraq but then somehow turned over to their enemies, Sunni militias in Syria??? This is just nuts. It sounds like third rate Saudi propagandists are not even trying hard to put together a credible story, And even if it is partly true, that somebody got paid a big sum of money by the Qataris, this is hardly the same thing as some sort of organized or ongoing financial support for “terrorists” of the sort that the Saudis themselves, or some of them anyway, have been doing for years on a much larger scale. At a minimum, aside from being badly put together propaganda, it is hypocrisy.
No, this is about the Muslim Brotherhood, the alliance with Egypt, and the rivalry with and warmongering against Iran. That this was “the trigger” is clearly bs.
According to CNN, U.S. intel has confirmed the Quatar “news” story was a Russian plant. President Trump, who jumped in to support the Saudis, may have forgotten about our 10,000 troops there and the airbase from which we stage Middle Eastern operations.
Barkely,
Nicely done and nicely done back-and-forth re: comments. I’ve only half-assed been following this but still remain befuddled with the bottom line, which is “So what?”
The local ME powers (dictators by any real measure) are having a propaganda war and an internal family squabble. Papp Bear is pulling strings to get his baby bears to line-up and do as he says … a couple of the kids are the defiant type offspring and are giving Poppa Bear back-talk and not minding.. Normally this would enrage the Poppa Bear and he’d punish them for their insolence and disrespect in order to show the rest that he’s still Poppa Bear and in absolute charge, That appears to be the point of the propaganda and pulling support from Qatar… putting them in the corner for a long “time-out”.
What else is there? I’m waiting for what this means in a broader sense and what of any real significance to anybody else but the members of the little family.
IF on the other hand, Iran were actually going to or was intent on invading one or more neighbors OR if one of the kids in the family was going to run-away and join Iran’s family, THEN there might be some significance to the family squabble. Neither of these possibilities have been put forth as even remotely suspected… at least not that anybody telling anybody else about.
Help me out .. what’s the real issue here?
Y’know, when I read these type of stories I always remember this Bill Maher joke.
When Christopher Columbus told Queen Isabella he was going to sail west to the the Far East, she asked him why did he not just go through the Middle East. His reply:
“I’d rather sail off the end of the fen earth than talk to those people one more time!”
Lots of gossip here today . . .
Fascinating.
CNN says the Russian Government hacked into Qatar and planted a fake email. The email said the royal family “praised Iran”. CNN says the Russian government did this to stir trouble with US Gulf allies. The goal was to force the closing of the US airbase in Qatar. The Saudi’s went ballistic when the “fake” email went public. CNN called the fake email “the Tipping Point”.
So CNN is saying that the FT, Trump and Barkley all have it wrong. I wonder if we will ever find out.
Should CNN have the facts right, then this is a good example of bare-knuckle fighting by the Russians.
Going backward:
bkrasting,
Why do you say that this report about a possible Russian hack means that I “have it all wrong.” I noted that the Qataris have argued that this was a hack. Now that has been verified. Why would it be being by the Russians make any difference? Obviously they were taking advantage of the situation as it changed after Trump made his stupid visit to Riyadh where he went totally overboard to side with the Saudis against Iran. This is must plain obvious, and it allows them to split Arab opponents of their ally Assad in Syria.
Longtooth,
Bottom line is that Trump has totally messed up with his visit to Riyadh and its followup. He completely supported the wildly misleading argument by his Saudi hosts that Iran is the main supporter of world terrorism, and he made no criticisms or pointed out the support being made by many of the GCC nations, including his hosts. Since then we have had this Russian hack of the Qataris, killing of protesters in Bahrain, the arrest and torture of thousands in Egypt, and now this massive diplomatic attack and boycott of Qatar by a bunch of its neighbors, although not Kuwait or Oman. On top of this we now have the bizarre scene of ISIS making a terror attack on Iran, just to remind everybody who really is the world’s most dangerous terrorist group, but Trump in responding and stating some sympathy for people in Iran, proceeded to lecture them about their supposed support for terrorism. This is just shameful, but perhaps you consider all this to be just a big nothing burger. I do not.
Barkleyy
Thank-you for answering and explaining what this is really all about.
Yes, it’s a big nothing burger as the lady once said “where’s the meat?”
Trump has done what every other US president has done with the Saudi’s… they can’t afford t alienate the major non-Israeli power in the ME that’s the foe of our “enemy” Iran, nor forego arms sales to them for our defense industry’s profit machine. What else is new? I don’t condone our past president’s favors to the Saudi’s, nor Trumps, but I don’t think it’s any more news-worthy than “Yep, US bau with the Saudi’s”. Nobody, and I mean nobody on planet earth expected a business tycoon whose whole empire is based on schmoozing up to the money power to do anything differently than Trump did.
Did you think he might do something different?
I think Trump is an imbicile and your everyday asshole bully type who thinks because he has money he can do whatever he wants… and I’m appalled that ~ half our adult citizens gave such a person the thumbs up… so I don’t blame the asshole for being president or acting like one as president. I blame our voting public… and that’s the real issue.
Trumps behavior, rhetoric, tweets, and grandstanding lies are comedy in real life… a rare opportunity for the U.S. and our allies to see just how fucked up our gov’t can get… or how fucked up our system of selecting leaders by public beliefs in con and liars who “sound” good (as all good cons do… remember Madoff?)..
Congress can get rid of him in two shakes of a lambs tale if they want to .. but he serves the conservative right wing’s purpose so until he doesn’t or until he seriously fucks up something the GOP prioritizes they woin’t. But they can if they want to. Blame the conservative voters.. don’t blame a dumb-fuck imbicile bully asshole… he didn’t pull the wool over voter’s eyes during the election campaign that’s for sure… they chose to believe his obvious lies or live in denial of reality… sort of a badge of the far right.
So if Trump hadn’t visited the Saudi’s then you would say the rest is a big nothing burger as well, I presume. It’s fun and interesting to watch but so are good mystery who-done-it movies…. great entertainment and I sincerely do appreciate your explanations of and conjectures on the intrigue Looking forward to the next scene unfolding.
Barkley,
BTW isn’t Trump’s playing in the sandbox with the Saudi’s just another example of “the enemy of our enemy is our friend” ? Trump is on record as hating Iran and the deal struck with them by the US and allies. He can’t really undo that deal without serious adverse consequence (though knowing Trump’s penchant for pulling dumb stunts, I can’t put it past him to do so).
Bahrain has been killing it’s opponents openly and defiantly for years.. that’s not news at all. We need the Bahrain sheiks favor because we need the major ME US Navy base there…. remember there’s that Iranian “enemy” who could easily block the Straits and cut off Saudi and the little Sheikdom’s oil exports overnight.. setting off a global financial crises and no doubt war like we haven’t seen since WWII… with powers that be lining up to take as much of it as they can in the chaos that ensues.
So our Navel power in Bahrain is a critical military power hub to dissuade Iran for doing something stupid in desperation. It’s a necessary (unfortunately… but that’s real life on globe Earth) balance of powers to keep things on an even keel.. Does anybody really think the US can afford to jeopardize our presence there by calling out the Bahraini sheiks for their blatant human rights abuses in their dictatorship to maintain their dictatorship? Get real.
Russia under Putin has an interest and stake in shifting the balance of power and creating chaos in the ME, but almost nobody else does.. not even China.
Even if the US didn’t need any oil from the ME our entire economic system and GDP relies on foreign trade and imports from all the other nations that do rely on ME oil output.. The U.S. and globe go into serious and devastating economic depression if ME oil ceases to flow or is curtailed in any significant amount.
It’s in nobody’s interest to jeopardize the balance of powers in the ME …except perhaps only Russia’s. Nobody in the ME, nobody in Asia, nobody in the South or North American hemispheres… nobody’s.
The US Navel base in Bahrain and our Qatar military operations hub are part of keeping the balance of powers in the ME in reasonable balance, sufficient balance as it were.
You can complain that the US doesn’t do something about Bahrain’s and Saudi’s abuses of human rights (by our standards and values) but its not going to change how the ME powers and oil wealth conduct themselves. I guess you might have forgotten how the US kept the dictators that the US depended on maintaining power in South America in power there, huh? Their human rights abuses were even more prevalent in spades.
Real life is real life… it changes with time and circumstances but mostly with changes in power leverage.
Longtooth,
I seriously disagree with you on this. This is a big deal and very far from “normal.” Bahrain killed a bunch of protesters back in 2011 at tthe time of the Arab Spring when Shias engaged in major protests, but they had not done so since then until right after Trump’s visit. Al-Sissi in Egypt had already arrested lots of people, but went ahead and arrested thousands more after Trump’s visit. We have not seen anything like this effort to isolate Qatar before in the Gulf ever. Given that the US has a major airfield there that is used for our planes to take off to attack ISIS, this is a big deal, and we had Trump bragging about how he was responsible for this.
Traditionally the US has tried to stay out of the Saudi=-Iran conflict, which has long been there, dating back to the days of the Shah. Back then we often were more pro-Iran than pro-Saudi, helping then start their nuclear weapons program, something we have never done for the Saudis. Iran has never blocked the Strait of Hormuz and has not threatened to do so, although the Saudis back in 73 imposed an oil export embargo on the US for backing Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Probably the only time we have seen such a strong anti-Iran tilt was during the hostage crisis under Carter soon after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
BTW, I do not think that ISIS’s attack on Tehran was due to Trump, but he certainly flubbed the response to it, sending an outrageous message to Iran. And, no, they are not the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Fully 94% of terrorism in the Middle East has been by Sunnis, not Shia who live in Iran.
Of course his tweeting has all kinds of people upset around the world. It is not out of the question that his ridiculous tweets attacking London mayor Sadiq Khan may have been the final straw tiltling the election there to have the Tories fail to maintain their majority, with May so tightly tied to him and him so unpopular.