Everyone remembers the Camp David summit where former US President Barack Obama hosted GCC leaders in May 2015, after a final agreement was reached on the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1 group and the Iranian regime. A month before the official signing of the agreement, Barack Obama had pledged that the US would use force to support its Gulf allies.
He also pledged to increase military support to these countries. Yet the Gulf states had good reasons to be concerned. They worried that the agreement would strengthen the position of the mullahs, reinforcing their destabilizing influence in the Middle East.
The nuclear deal opened the door wide for the mullahs to pursue unprecedented expansionist subversion in many countries in the region. Everyone saw how the mullahs pursued their military expansion directly or indirectly through arming sectarian militias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and through their interventions in other countries’ domestic affairs. Everyone also remembers that none of President Obama’s promises at the summit were honoured.
The USA has not helped the GCC countries to develop a large-scale missile defence system, as promised. It hasn’t helped develop the Gulf’s military capabilities to deal with threats. And it hasn’t worked alongside the Gulf allies to counter Iran’s attempts to destabilize the region.
These outcomes were very much in line with the assessments of regional countries, most of which reduced their representation at the Camp David summit to express their anger and dismay at the Obama administration’s disregard for Gulf allies’ views. Remarkably, the nuclear deal that Obama called “verifiable” was not.
Uncertainty about the fate of Iran’s nuclear program has only increased. The deal only pushed back the mullahs’ nuclear ambition to 10 years instead of two months.
The GCC countries’ disgruntlement with the former Obama administration was not limited to the provisions of the flawed nuclear deal. It is also about the very philosophy of the agreement.
In their view, Obama deliberately ignored the requirements of the US-GCC strategic partnership and turned a blind eye to the Iranian mullahs’ interventions and aggressive policies in the region to end his two-term tenure with a nuclear accord, albeit a flawed one that harms US interests more than its allies’.
Iran’s expansion into Syria, Iraq and Yemen was obvious at the time. Yet it was deliberately ignored, lest addressing those issues ruin the nuclear deal.
Moreover, Obama himself had a very narrow view of the nature of the partnership with the GCC countries. He described these countries as the biggest “free riders,” as Atlantic magazine then noted in a report. He sought to bring the mullahs’ regime into the regional security equation, openly challenging the GCC countries’ view of the Iranian threat. The use of US military force to support Gulf allies against Iran is not in the US interest, he argued.
Obama’s four visits to the Gulf region during his two terms have failed to dispel partners’ doubts. Regional countries came to think that the US strategic interest in the Gulf had waned.
In the light of these transformations came the reactions of the GCC states, which sought self-reliance to protect their security and gains. The Arab coalition came in, countering Iran’s dangerous expansion in Yemen to envelop the GCC countries from the south.
Although former President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has seemingly brought things back to where they were, the implications of Iran’s regional strategic expansion in the three years since the deal was signed have become a fait accompli.
It is no secret that the new geostrategic reality shaped by these Iranian interventions has strengthened the mullahs’ position vis-à-vis not only the US, but also its ally Israel. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been stationed in Syria, close to Israel’s borders, ready to launch missile strikes. The mullahs have put themselves in a good position to use the “long arm” strategy and proxy warfare, their ultimate tool for spreading regional chaos and unrest.
Today, President Biden’s administration is recreating the same atmosphere, despite different parameters, and despite a weaker US negotiating position than in 2015, especially after failing to capitalize on Trump’s harsh sanctions against Iran, instead trying so bad to return to the nuclear deal.
Because of the Biden administration’s uncalculated rush to negotiate, the mullahs have found themselves in a stronger position. President Biden’s team has yet to bring the GCC countries into any negotiation on the nuclear deal. For now, the reality is that the mullahs have a long arm and have imposed their conditions. They did not even agree to hold a direct dialogue or sit down directly with US representatives at the Vienna negotiations.
So it looks like history is repeating itself. The Biden administration is simply updating its partners in the Gulf and Israel on the progress of these negotiations, or “putting them in the picture,” as Washington described it. There is nothing new under the sun.
