Ruling out scenarios of military confrontation threatening the region in the recent years, some researchers and analysts have considered that the agreement signed by Tehran and the P5+1 on the nuclear program establishes a new era of regional and international stability. However, the deal spared Iran the risk of a military preemptive strike. In the same time, it gave Iran the green light to get rid of its surplus power, which was exported to promote the ideological regional project which Iranian politicians had believed could gain additional momentum following the signing of the nuclear agreement.
So it was not surprising when leaders of Iran boasted having occupied the Arab capitals of Beirut, Sana’a, Damascus and Baghdad, and Gen. Rahim Safavi, the military adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed the impact of the Iranian revolution expanded and Muslim nations are looking with ‘admiration’ to the ‘theocratic-democratic model’ of Iran.
Naturally, the GCC was concerned about the ‘aftershocks’ of Iran’s nuclear agreement. As the new regional scene has been under geopolitical shifts since major regional players like Iraq and Syria left it (or were forced to do so), Iran seized the opportunity to grab a new role within the new regional order. It is important when studying the relations between the two shores of the Gulf to note that they were instable since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Degrees of tension and détente varied over time. The Iranian revolutionary ideologues attacked their Arab neighbors, seeking to ‘export their revolution’ raising deep concerns and ultimately producing a joint work system that survived until today i.e. the GCC.
Establishing the cooperation council came as a political response to the security risk behind the trans-Gulf ideological expansion. About eight months after the outbreak of the Iraq war, the council was established as its member States were aware of the outburst of revolutionary slogans and growing tensions regionally and internationally (the USSR invasion of Afghanistan). All these factors prompted the creation of the six-State comprehensive security group, although the founding document issued in the Abu Dhabi summit of May 1981 and the GCC Statute did not specifically mention the security issue.
In terms of the strategic concern of Gulf Arab States about Iran, the mullahs’ revolution only replaced the Shah’s regional policing regime. But the rise of the revolutionary theocracy was even more of concern, as it sought to export its ideology through a Shiite expansionist policy, threatening neighboring Sunni states and raising fears that politico-sectarian divide would emerge again. What rose even more fears in the Gulf Arab countries was the outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran, then the two biggest regional powers.
The security environment of the Gulf Arab states was even threatened as these conditions coincided with a period of deterioration in the history of the Arab League, in the aftermath of disintegration of collective joint action apparatus after the signing of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and the consequent transfer of the Arab League headquarters to Tunis. The Gulf States sensed threats to their national security in light of these complex regional and international circumstances.
In short, the Gulf security equation has always been affected by the plans of Iran and its regional ambitions. As a consequence, it was not strange that the GCC countries sensed the threat posed by the nuclear ambitions of Iran on their security. The reasons for growing fear were manifold. There were environmental factors, regarding the standards of security and safety of Iran’s nuclear facilities, some of which lie close to certain Arab capitals than to Tehran. There is also the risk of environmental pollution given the obsolescence of the technology used by Iran in the construction of nuclear installations dating back to now extinct, Chernobyl-type first generation. Another reason is the idea of possession by the theocratic regime of a nuclear bomb, which would constitute an imminent threat to regional and international security and stability.
The Iranian threat to the security of the GCC countries increased following the signing of the nuclear deal. Iran is appreciating the surplus power it stored over the past years and decades to face the prospect of a military attack. A political realist would even say that Iran has breached the agreement with a sense of nationalistic pride. The Iranian ‘moment of victory’ coincided with an unprecedented wave of decline among the Arabs as well as the fall of Iraq which has always been the counterpoise to the Iranian expansionist plans. According to the ABCs of strategic sciences, the surplus power tempts regimes to convert it into a political and possibly military act.
It is difficult for most regimes to inhibit the surplus within their borders or just utilize it politically and diplomatically. It gets harder with ideological regimes that easily resort to foreign military adventures to distract attention from inside problems. The risk increases as the regime condescends to its neighbors, driven by a historical nationalistic vision nourishing the idea of geopolitical expansion. One of the problems faced by the GCC countries in dealing with Iran is in the supremacist attitude occasionally manifested by the Iranian political discourse that reflects the lack of good intentions and confirms the continuing Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of some GCC states, such as the Kingdom of Bahrain and Kuwait, as well as the recent threats to bomb and occupy Saudi cities. If we add to that the intransigence and rejection of any settlement to the issue of occupation of the three UAE islands (Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa), it turns clear that the good neighborliness that Iran repeatedly claims is nothing but a slogan that cannot hide its expansionist intentions.
In the face of Iran’s strategic threat, one of the most important alternatives is to activate the GCC ‘security link’, as one of the most important Arab security links. That means a strong contribution by Arab regional powers, namely Egypt, in the security of the GCC countries as an integral part of the Egyptian national security, as expressed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who stressed more than once that the security of the GCC is for Egypt a red line. This would help reassure these countries, and make them more resilient in the face of the strategic threats and challenges produced by regional trans-border interactions and conflicts.
