Terrorist Attacks Pour Gas on Saudi- Iranian Rivalry and Gulf Tensions (original) (raw)
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Turkey's Persian Gulf Challenge after the Qatar Crisis
In the morning of 5th June 2017, Turkey was caught by surprise when the Arab Quartet, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties with Qatar and announced multiple sanctions restricting their trade, air and financial relations with Qatar. Many small countries in the region followed them while many still wait and watch advising both sides to find a settlement through dialogue. The big countries, both in the West and the Islamic world stressed on a negotiated resolution with help of mediation efforts immediately initiated by the Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah. The American, British, French, German and Russian leadership reached out to both sides to placate the situation without subscribing to the economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar. It took more than a month to bring out a list of demands the quartet wanted to be met before normalising their relations with Qatar. In the process, they lost much of the support they had anticipated from the Arab and non-Arab public opinion. When the list of thirteen demands was produced, it only complicated the matter and brought the allies of both sides in an uncomfortable position. The list included unrealistic demands like a complete shutdown of Qatar's flagship TV station Al-Jazeera, closing down of Turkey's military base and expulsion of many activists and leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, and downsizing Qatar's diplomatic ties with Iran, as well as expulsion of members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard the quartet believe, are staying in Qatar. 1 The right groups believed closing down Al-Jazeera would be an attack on press freedom and many countries echoed concerns that the boycott is turning into a siege (Hisar in Arabic as used by the Qatari officials). Qatar dismissed the demands and considered it an attack on its sovereignty. 2 The list appeared to have done more harm than good to the strategy of the quartet. International reaction fell short of their expectations and they were forced to bring out a modified version of their demands after the stipulated deadline of ten days lapsed. The message was clear that Qatar is ready for a prolonged diplomatic wrangle with its Gulf neighbours and the international community is not willing to take sides in this " family " quarrel.
Turkey, Iran and the Gulf Crisis
The ongoing crisis in Gulf geopolitics appeared to have targeted Qatar’s independent policies. Yet, in the background, the spoiler was Iran and Turkey’s hegemonic- even if clashing- pretensions due to a series of favorable regional and global developments. Therefore, the re-emergence of Iran and Turkey as rising powers in the broader region has turned the Saudi-led coalition apprehensive about outsider influence. Qatar tilted towards Turkish foreign policy goals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and traditionally sought an appeasing “noconflict” policy against Iran. Against the ever-changing complexity of regional and global developments, largely defined as “the new Middle East Cold War,” Qatar faced a backlash from the Saudi-led Gulf core, eventually settling for minimized options in foreign and security policy. Beyond the current escalatory rhetoric, Qatar has security and economic ties with Turkey and Western powers, which overshadow Iran’s minimal influence in the Gulf sheikhdom. The paper analyses both Turkish and Iranian policies in the Gulf and offers possible policy alternatives for Qatar to ward off against the threats of isolation and containment.
Qatar and Iran: Regional Roles, Risks and Opportunities
Iran’s Interregional Dynamics in the Near East, 2021
Qatar has the most complex yet pragmatic relations with Iran among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), i.e., Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Qatari- Iranian partnership has withstood decades of volatile Gulf policies— a region prone to recurring crises and hostilities— and enabled Qatar to stay stable while sitting as a small state between the two most powerful regional countries in the Persian Gulf, i.e., Saudi Arabia and Iran.1 Having one of the world’s largest arms importers, i.e., Saudi Arabia, and a revolutionary state, i.e., Iran, in its proximity has required Qatar to balance its policies with both neighbors so as to comfortably maintain somewhat equal relations with them. For Qatar, this policy choice is not an option but a question of survival given that as a small state, it is required to seek regional partnerships to protect itself against volatile events.
In 2017, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade on the country. The four countries stated that Qatar was practicing policies in the Middle East that were challenging the internal security of these countries. Moreover, the four countries that were imposing the blockade presented 13 terms that Qatar was to abide by in order for the diplomatic ties to return and for the blocked to end. This blockade on Qatar became commonly labeled as the "Qatari Crisis". Qatar refused these terms and decided to find an alternative to the benefits it shared with these countries. On the other hand, Iran and Turkey found this situation as an opportunity to achieve new interests through strengthening their ties with Qatar. This paper explores the Qatari, Iranian, and Turkish stances regarding the Qatari crisis.
QATAR'S DIPLOMATIC ISOLATION: REAL OR SIMPLY A BATTLE OF NERVES
Journal of Law: Volume 4: Issue IV: : ISSN : 2348-5485, 2017
Blockade of Qatar not only created a rift in the GCC bloc but also polarised the non-Arab countries, especially Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Looking at the allegations on Qatar, the objective appears to cut Doha to its size which was viewed as punching above its "strategic weight". However, Qatar"s growing importance, power dynamics in the region and baseless charges simply shows that sooner or later the boycott seems to die out. Not only the US but also the global energy market which is drifting towards gas/LNG and Qatar being a "pivotal" supplier from Japan to the UK, is bound to re-emerge with more vigour and legitimacy. Moreover, the allegations made on Qatar are commonly practiced by all Gulf countries, including the Axis countries to fulfil their foreign policy objectives.
The Gulf occupies a position of immense geo-strategic importance lying in the friction zone between competing world powers – with Washington’s involvement in the region as part of a wider US security umbrella on one side, and Russia’s renewed engagement in the region on the other. Additionally, the region represents the shatter zone for regional powers hegemonic ambitions with Tehran and a Saudi-led-GCC competing for pre-eminence within the region. This analysis shall begin by employing the ‘Security Dilemma’ concept in order to categorise the deep-seated animosity and geopolitical machinations at play between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Having established the presence of a tense regional security paradox and provided a brief historical overview of the main sources of instability and conflict in the region, this analysis shall explore the dynamics of Doha’s attempt to capitalise upon the power vacuum created by the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the Arab Spring (2011-2012) that threw the existing security architecture in the region into disarray, toppling two of the three main centres of power in the region (Iraq, Egypt) and continue to devastate the third (Syria). Within this rapidly fluctuating regional security environment which has seen the emergence of a number of non-state and trans-state actors pursuing contradictory agendas, the emboldened regional activism emanating from Doha is placing tremendous strain upon the pre-existing Security Dilemma dynamics at play, stoking misperception and instability and accentuating the pre-existing geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Additionally, the widespread anger generated by some of Doha’s Arab Spring policies across the Middle East and North Africa have also had the unintended consequences of alienating the countries traditional Arab allies and leaving the tiny state increasingly isolated in a volatile region.
Qatar and the Crisis in the Middle East
IPP Review, 2017
On June 5, 2017, the Gulf Arab state of Qatar suddenly suffered diplomatic isolation and an economic blockade for what its critics alleged to be its support of terrorism. As of this time of writing, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE — key members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — along with Egypt, Yemen, Mauritius, Mauritania, the Maldives, and the eastern government of Libya, have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. This Saudi-led coalition has also imposed an economic blockade, with Saudi Arabia closing off its land border with Qatar, and the coalition members sealing off Qatar's air and sea connections, including overflight and port access.