Gulf countries talk like Iran, act like Israel

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) held its annual summit in Kuwait on Sunday and issued a statement that sounded like Iran in thrashing Israel, but that aligned with the Jewish state in opposing the Islamic Republic’s troublemaking behavior. However, for the Gulf “wish list” to come true, Gulf countries need to end the discrepancy between their rhetoric and policy. If the Gulf wants Iran reined in, they’d be well advised to openly side with Israel.

The dichotomy might have resulted from the GCC incorporating the contradictory policies of its six member states. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is closest to Israel. Qatar is the closest to Iran. Saudi Arabia is more naturally allied with the UAE. Oman is with Qatar. Kuwait, indebted to America for liberating it from Saddam Hussein’s army but now under the spell of a surging Islamist wave, is in the middle.

As a result, the GCC’s final statement endorsed every denunciation of the Jewish state, accusing it of committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza, expressing support for the arrest warrants against Israeli officials from the International Criminal Court and decisions of the International Court of Justice. Gulf countries also called on world capitals to stop arms sales to Israel and defended UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, known for his anti-Israeli bias, and UNRWA.

And while calling for “brotherly relations” with Iran, Gulf countries did not shy away from emphasizing their fault lines with the Islamic Republic, denouncing Tehran for “building settlements” on three islands that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) claim to be its own. The GCC also reasserted its ownership over the Durra energy field, in Saudi and Kuwaiti territorial waters, disputed with Iran.

The disagreement between Gulf countries and Iran was even more profound over regional matters.

The GCC called on Lebanon to accept the 2022 Kuwaiti Initiative, a generous GCC financial bailout tied to Lebanon’s disarmament of Hezbollah and Beirut distancing itself from Tehran. Whatever domestic differences the Lebanese have, the GCC said, they should sort them out through “politics only,” code for “Hezbollah should transform itself from an armed militia into a political party.”

With the World Bank assessing Lebanon’s war losses at $8.4 billion, Beirut will be in desperate need of Gulf money. It remains to be seen whether the Lebanese state will manage to disarm Hezbollah and win its GCC reward.

Gulf countries struck a similar anti-Iran note on Syria, calling for the restoration of the sovereignty of the Syrian government over all its land, in other words calling on Iranian proxies to disarm and hand over territory they control to the Assad regime.

Reconstruction money and financial aid that Syrian President Bashar Assad desperately needs would also be conditioned on him abandoning Iran. Such policy suffered a setback when Turkey-backed Islamist Sunni militias took on Assad and Iran-backed Islamist Shia militias in Aleppo. As Assad scrambles to defend his territory, his renewed reliance on Iran might mean that peeling him away from Tehran will become even harder.

Events in Syria prompted Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman to cut short a visit to Kuwait and go to Abu Dhabi for the first time in three years to meet with Emirati President Muhammad Bin Zayed. While the readout of the meeting said the two men focused on the stability of the region in Lebanon and Gaza, media reports tied their talks to the urgency of rescuing Assad, lest the window of opportunity to distance him from Tehran closes.

Saudi pundits doubled down on turning Assad. “An Iranian Syria has become impossible, and so has a Turkish Syria, while a Russian Syria has dropped down on the list of Moscow’s priorities,” wrote Ghassan Charbel, the editor-in-chief of the London-based Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

The GCC toed a similar line against pro-Iran militias in Iraq, promising Baghdad support to overcome and disarm both “terrorist groups,” code for ISIS and radical Sunni Islamists, and “armed militias,” the ones that pledge allegiance to Islamist Iran.

Israel might read the GCC statement and take offense, seeing that Saudi Arabia remains adamant on an impossible two-state solution as its only pathway to normalization with Israel.

Iran might also read the statement as Saudi Arabia staying away from Israel, and therefore remaining defensively more vulnerable to Tehran and its regional proxies.

But a closer look suggests that while the GCC rhetoric sounds pro-Iran, Gulf policies are against the Islamic Republic. And while the GCC bashes Israel, Gulf policies align perfectly with everything that Israel has been pushing for – both militarily and diplomatically.

Perhaps it is time for Gulf countries to reconcile what they say with what they want to see happen.

Israel has been trying to change the region to serve its interests, and these happen to overlap with Gulf interests. It’s only fair that the Gulf give Israel a hand, not only implicitly and behind closed doors, but also openly. Should the GCC do that, the momentum resulting from its shift in rhetoric would go much further than tying money rewards to what they want to see happen.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-partisan organization focused on national security and foreign policy.