As the US has switched its main focus towards Russia and China, it has outsourced the management of regional challenges to its partners in the Middle East. The outcome has been greater instability, amid waves of popular protests and governance challenges.
From the Iraq war to the JCPOA
Relevant to understanding the current climate of tensions and conflict in the Middle East are three critical points: the 2003 Iraq war, the 2011 Arab Spring, and the signing of the JCPOA – the Iran nuclear agreement – in 2015. All of these have dramatically altered regional security dynamics in the Middle East, further unleashing inter-regional competition, the growth of extraterritorially sponsored non-state actors, and regionally led foreign policy initiatives. In 2014, Professor Greg Gause accurately described the regional situation as a ‘cold war’, pitting ideological adversaries against each other. Crucially, in his assessment: ‘Axes of conflict in cold wars are never simply bilateral, and the same is true of the new Middle East cold war.’ The multipolar nature of regional conflicts makes achieving any resolution more challenging.
A further aggravating factor has been a growing US focus and prioritization of geopolitical competition with Russia and China. As the US has increasingly outsourced the management of regional challenges to its partners, the outcome has been more rather than less instability, amid waves of popular protests and governance challenges. During the research for this paper, survey respondents overwhelmingly indicated that addressing regional security challenges in the current climate of regional tensions would be a ‘herculean’ task that would be unlikely to yield promising results. The issue of Middle East security thus needs to be framed in this context of regional insecurity and assertiveness, coupled with uncertainty over US commitments to the region and to its international partnerships.
The Iraq war that brought an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003 gave rise to an increased US regional military presence encircling neighbouring Iran. Arab states, which opposed the war and warned of the consequences of a power vacuum in Iraq, saw Hussein as an effective counterweight to Tehran’s regional ambitions. Indeed, their warnings proved prescient when, as part of its forward-defence policy, Tehran began to actively promote Shia parties in Iraq and through its long-standing support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah saw its standing grow in the 2006 war against Israel. At the time, Arab states framed Iran’s expanding influence, across what they characterized as a Shia crescent, in terms of sectarianism. The reality, however, was that Iran would prove effective at engaging with multiple actors by opportunistically capitalizing on vacuums of power to assert its regional interests.
The Iraq war that brought an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003 gave rise to an increased US regional military presence encircling neighbouring Iran.
Arab state insecurity was made worse by shifts in US posture towards the Middle East, with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and growing American domestic fatigue from ‘forever wars’. The Obama administration came into office seeking to address ‘the excesses of the war on terrorism [that] had left the United States overextended’, and which had left the US struggling to manage the Iraq war amid growing strains of regional competition. This effort sought to rebrand and rebalance the US role in the region. As such, the Obama administration did not actively intervene in the 2011 Arab Spring protests that brought about the overthrow of US’s Egyptian ally Hosni Mubarak. This sparked anxiety among the Gulf Arab states, which interpreted Washington’s muted response as a shift that would foreshadow further fluctuations in US commitments to the region.
With protests also ongoing in Bahrain, the GCC states sent their own Peninsula Shield forces to protect the Al Khalifa monarchy from further unrest and prevent the spread of protests throughout the Gulf. The outbreak of protests in Syria, and Iran’s subsequent military and proxy-based support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2012, resulted in greater regional activism on the part of the Gulf Arab states in supporting non-state actors of their own. The GCC states’ fears of a US realignment were then confirmed when President Obama did not honour his ‘red line’ pledge to protect Syrian civilians from Assad’s chemical weapons attacks. Iran’s military intervention in 2014 against ISIS in Iraq – a group that also posed a challenge for Gulf Arab leadership – further heightened the GCC states’ concerns of unchecked Iranian influence. Paul Salem captured these trends, commenting:
Through this period, the Obama administration began separate discussions through the multilateral P5+1 framework (comprising the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) to arrive at a negotiated settlement over Iran’s nuclear programme. The interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) was signed in 2013; and the final JCPOA was agreed in 2015, resulting in Iranian nuclear concessions in exchange for sanctions relief. The deal was hailed by its proponents as a multilateral achievement that imposed limits and oversight on Iran’s nuclear programme. For their part, however, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were highly critical. Israel took aim at the timelines of the deal, which allowed Iran’s enrichment programme to continue, albeit at a limited level. Collectively, these countries saw the deal as having failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile programme and sponsorship of non-state actors – including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq – as well as Tehran’s backing of the Assad regime in Syria. They perceived the Obama administration to be prioritizing nuclear challenges over regional security imbalances that were empowering Tehran at their expense.
Progressively, these developments gave rise to more coordinated regional alignment between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as has been most dramatically evident in the war in Yemen since 2015 and the blockade of Qatar between mid-2017 and early 2021. The intervention in Yemen was pursued by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and supported by Washington, to stem Iran’s influence and support for the Houthis, or Ansar al Allah group. During the period of instability that followed the 2011 Arab uprisings, Tehran developed ties, albeit limited ones, with the Houthis, eventually helping the group thwart the Saudi-led intervention with training and military transfers. Six years on from the intervention, despite de-escalatory efforts including a UN-led mediation and an Emirati drawdown from southern Yemen, the war drags on without resolution – and with Tehran’s relationship with the Houthis also deepened.
In 2017, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar, demanding that Doha moderate its regional ambitions and relationships away from Iran, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood. The ‘Arab Quartet’ issued a set of 13 demands, including the removal of Turkish troops, the downgrading of Doha’s relationship with Tehran, and the closure of Al Jazeera. Despite subsequent efforts at resolving the crisis, Doha neither buckled to pressure nor altered its regional posture over the next three-and-a-half years. The impasse was eventually broken in January 2021, when the GCC states came together at Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, to sign an agreement that formally ended the rift. In Syria, stalemate ‘dynamics’ prevail. Bashar al-Assad, with assistance from Tehran and Moscow’s 2015 intervention, has reasserted control over much of the country. Meanwhile, Israel has repeatedly bombed Iranian-linked targets, as part of its efforts to counter Tehran‘s military presence and entrenched military facilities.
The Trump administration and ‘maximum pressure’
The election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016 offered America’s partners in the region a new opportunity to redirect US policy towards addressing Iran’s growing influence. Trump’s consistent disavowal of the JCPOA culminated in his withdrawal of the US from the deal in May 2018, in favour of a graduated, sanctions-based campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ directed towards the administration’s stated goal of obtaining broader concessions not only on Tehran’s nuclear programme, but also pertaining to its ballistic missile programme and regional engagement. This strategy brought no change in Tehran’s calculus, while also causing transatlantic tensions as the European signatories chose to defend the JCPOA rather than bend to pressure from Washington. The E3 – France, Germany and the UK – unsuccessfully lobbied the Trump administration against the withdrawal, warning of instability while promising to shepherd new negotiations with Tehran. For its part, the Trump administration doubled down on its maximum pressure strategy, ultimately sanctioning all Iranian industry, including oil exports, as well as Iran’s leaders, and designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist entity. The economic impact of sanctions in Iran has resulted in multiple currency depreciations, higher inflation and unemployment rates, and a decline in GDP. Iran’s domestic political environment has also hardened, with conservatives discrediting moderate President Hassan Rouhani and capitalizing on the economic and political failures of the JCPOA.
From May 2019, Iran shifted away from its compliance-based strategy in respect of the JCPOA, launching its own ‘maximum resistance’ approach with the aim of transferring the risks and costs of maximum pressure on to the regional and international community. Frustrated by the lack of international response or limited economic assistance, despite its compliance with the nuclear deal, Tehran began a series of breaches. Iran has since increased its stockpiles of enriched uranium, uranium gas and heavy water in excess of JCPOA limits; installed and tested additional advanced centrifuges with natural uranium; activated advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility; and built a new centrifuge manufacturing facility near Natanz. Except for advances in research and development, these breaches, as presented by the Iranian leadership, are all reversible, but they have yet again reduced Iran’s breakout time from one year, in line with the provisions of the JCPOA, to a number of months. Within the region, the frequency of missile attacks via Iranian-backed proxy groups against US interests in Iraq and Saudi stakes in Yemen increased. There were attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, a US drone was downed in June 2019, and in September of that year Saudi oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais were targeted by drone and cruise missiles believed to have come from Iran.
Iran has since 2019 increased its stockpiles of enriched uranium, uranium gas and heavy water in excess of JCPOA limits; installed and tested additional advanced centrifuges with natural uranium; activated advanced centrifuges at its Natanz facility; and built a new centrifuge manufacturing facility near Natanz.
Throughout this period, the Trump administration equivocated, defending neither its own interests nor those of its Gulf Arab partners. French President Emanuel Macron attempted to bridge the US–Iranian stand-off in September 2019, but differences over trust, timing and optics could not be overcome. When, in December of that year, a US contractor was killed by Iranian-allied Iraqi militias – the only established red line for the Trump administration – the president authorized a response that resulted in the killing of IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani in early January 2020. Tehran responded in an attack on Ayn al Asad airbase in Iraq, but de-escalated by forewarning of the strike. This experience did not alter the Trump team’s calculations, however. Despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s acknowledgment, in July 2020, that while sanctions had ‘clearly had an impact’, they hadn’t ‘achieved the ultimate objective, which is to change the behavior of the Iranian regime’, sanctions-based pressure continued through the year.
Regional uncertainty over the likely outcome of the November 2020 US presidential election was captured in the normalization of ties between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain and the signing of the ‘Abraham Accords’ at a ceremony hosted by President Trump in September. In bringing together US regional allies, the normalization guarantees bipartisan Israeli–Emirati relevance in Washington, but also points to the degree of regional anxiety about the future role of the US in the Middle East.
Through this same period Tehran, also anticipating the US election, calibrated its regional strategy to avoid provocation with Washington. Joe Biden had been clear from early in his campaign that he intended to return the US to the JCPOA on a compliance-for-compliance basis. Moreover, the arms embargo against Iran was set to expire in October 2020. Despite the Trump administration’s considerable efforts, within the UN Security Council, to get the embargo extended and snapback sanctions imposed on Iran, Tehran sought to gain from the failure of this US pressure campaign against the E3, and Washington’s resultant isolation on the issue, while waiting out the results of the November election.
Cross-regional factors
Lack of trust
Although there is no absolute or relative measure of trust among the region’s leaders, almost all of those interviewed as part of the research for this paper cited lack of trust as being a key obstacle to resolving the region’s many conflicts. While conflict resolution practitioners commonly cite lack of trust as a block to progress, it is particularly acute in the Middle East region; furthermore, it is a factor not just between two rival states, but among a whole array of actors. For example, Saudi policymakers, academics and commentators referred in the interviews to the ‘treachery’ they perceived, having reached out to the Iranian leadership under the presidency of Sayyid Mohammad Khatami, when their bold steps were rebuffed after Mahmoud Ahmedinejad came to office in 2005. Levels of trust between the leaders of Qatar and the UAE were at an all-time low, with the latter firmly believing that Doha supports groups within the emirates that intend to challenge and overthrow the ruling family in Abu Dhabi. Qatar’s leadership, like its people, experienced the blockade imposed by the Arab Quartet between 2017 and the beginning of 2021 as painful, and the severity of the embargo will undoubtedly undermine Doha’s trust in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for years to come. With the signing of the US-brokered Abraham Accords in September 2020, Palestinians will likely consider the UAE and Bahrain, in agreeing to normalize relations with Israel, to have betrayed their cause.
It is clear that there is a massive trust deficit across the region, and not just between leaders of the different countries engaged in competition or conflict. Within countries, it is deeply ingrained between communities and national leaders. For instance, Syrians opposed to the Assad regime have no trust in it whatsoever, and view Iran with the deepest suspicion too. The recent period has also seen the irrevocable breakdown of trust in both Iraq and Lebanon between the young populations and their leaders, with sustained protests demanding an end to the system of quotas (muhassassa), as well as the cronyism and the corruption that have long characterized their political and economic systems.
Clearly, too, there is lack of trust between communities. For example, Yazidi communities mistrust Sunni communities in Iraq after years of marginalization and, from 2014, persecution under ISIS. Furthermore, there has long been a culture of mistrust between state and citizens, wherein states, especially security states, believe that citizens are malcontents and thus plotting to overthrow their regimes; or where citizens believe that the state is inherently predatory, and exists only to preserve the interests of a ruling elite at the expense of the people.
This lack of trust runs deep, and has in many cases since 2011 mobilized populations to protest against their political leaders. Of course, mass protests are not new across the region, and the issues dividing states and citizens has long been termed a legitimacy deficit. In practice, this legitimacy deficit means that agreements reached between governments, such as the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, exist in law but are not subscribed to by the population. For example, that Jordan is now able to import gas from Israel remains deeply unpopular among Jordanians, notwithstanding the clear economic benefits this offers. Therefore, any agreements fostered and reached between governments in the region, or between rival parties in civil conflicts, will need buy-in from local constituencies. This can only be achieved if the social contract between the state and its citizens is rebuilt on more solid ground.
Protests
The mass, sustained protests that have been seen across the region in the recent period – including in Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Iraq – confirm that the factors that gave rise to the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 onwards are still present. Although each case differs, one factor that is certainly common in the current wave of demonstrations is that young protesters, who comprise the majority of those taking to the streets, are still dissatisfied with their life chances, prospects and ability to shape their future. In Iraq and Lebanon, as already touched on, the protests since 2019 have in large part been driven by growing dissatisfaction with political systems that are perceived to be closed, corrupt, bankrupt, and serving only the interests of the elite or of external powers. What is evident in all cases is that the protesters’ grievances cut across subnational divisions, and therefore hold the potential to create groupings or alliances based on core political, social, economic or environmental concerns, rather than identity politics.
Any regional security framework needs to take account of the growing gulf between those who govern and those who are governed.
Whether or not the current round of protests can be characterized as the ‘Arab uprisings 2.0’, one point is clear: unless and until the fundamental political and economic issues that are driving the current unrest are addressed, mass protests and discontent will be a persistent feature of the region for decades to come. Even in those countries, such as Egypt and Bahrain, where protests were brutally put down during the Arab uprisings, discontent will bubble beneath the surface and eventually break out once again. The shadow of the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen might not be enough to dissuade public anger, elsewhere in the region, at state intransigence and brutality. Thus, what might be called a governance deficit may well hinder efforts at resolving conflicts in the region. This means that any regional security framework needs to take account of the growing gulf between those who govern and those who are governed. Unless the governance deficit is addressed, the likelihood will grow that states such as Iran will find space to intervene and capitalize on discontent to undermine sovereignty, especially in states where there are deep ethnic, social and economic cleavages to be exploited. Of course, this is not to suggest that Iran does not itself suffer from a legitimacy deficit, or that Saudi Arabia and the UAE do not equally seek to build on feelings of discontent there. However, Tehran has proved itself to be particularly adept at leveraging vulnerabilities in neighbouring states.
Economic challenges
Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, together with the ramping up of tensions between the US and China, have given rise to even greater insecurity in the Middle East, leaving it vulnerable to increased cycles of instability.
All the region’s states are facing significant economic challenges, given the multiple pressures arising from persistent low oil prices; the broad impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; demographic change; inadequate education and training programmes; dependence on expatriate workforces; high unemployment; overdependence on rent – either as a hydrocarbon exporter or as a recipient of aid; vested business interests surviving on state contracts; and poor investment environments. The remedies to address these economic challenges, as long prescribed by institutions such as the IMF, are well known. But although some moves have been made to apply them, local conditions have made many leaders reluctant to do so, concerned that this will foster discontent and, in some cases, lead to protests that call into question the very basis of the social contract between the state and the citizens.
At the regional level, the COVID-19 pandemic has motivated states to cooperate and lend one another critical medical support, know-how and aid.
COVID-19 has presented a major challenge to the region. It has opened up new opportunities, too. At a global level, the pandemic has fuelled debate about the ‘end’ of globalization and the emergence instead of economic ‘decoupling’. At the regional level, however, it has motivated states to cooperate and lend one another critical medical support, know-how and aid. The fact that the pandemic has made all regional economies vulnerable, and has tested the medical services in each country, serves as a form of leveller, and provides foundations on which new confidence-building measures can be built. These measures must be an essential component of any process towards establishing a regional security framework, as levels of trust in the region are at a critical low.
Although some of the region’s states are strategically well positioned to leverage investment in major infrastructure projects, and have been able to draw Chinese interest into diversification efforts, foreign direct investment (FDI) flows predominantly favour the smaller, less populous states, at the expense of their larger and more populous neighbours. Saudi Arabia, for example, has performed badly in attracting FDI, whereas the UAE has secured significant FDI and has itself invested heavily in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Of course, conflict has had a major impact on the fortunes of states that are either hit by war or otherwise engaging in conflict beyond their own borders. For instance, Libya bears the overall price of its war, but the costs to the UAE, Russia and Turkey are also high. Total losses in the Syria war have been estimated at some $442 billion over the period to 2018; and for Saudi Arabia, the cost of the Yemen war was reported in 2017 to be at least $5–6 billion per month.
Furthermore, there are very few signs that the economies in the Middle East region will recover quickly from the pandemic and the impact of low oil prices. The likely exception is Qatar, whose tremendous hydrocarbon endowment will serve it well as a transition vehicle, and which has a very small population. Without an end to its multiple conflicts, the Middle East will remain trapped in a region-wide cycle of deadly violence, consigning it to decades of impoverishment and instability. There may be peace and prosperity for some countries, but the region’s civil conflicts are unlikely to be contained within state borders, and the prospect of interstate war is fast growing. So now is the time to push for a regional security framework.
Entrenched regimes
The political systems in the Gulf and across most of the Middle East have so far weathered the storm of the Arab uprisings, although the factors that gave rise to widespread protests a decade ago are still prevalent. Some efforts have been made to diversify economies, which has opened up some room for private enterprise, but state-led and state-dominated growth is still the model that drives forward economic change. In almost every case across the region, the space afforded to the business class has been carefully managed, ensuring that there is no prospect of linkage between economic liberalization and political reform.
In reality, there has been little sign of political reform in Middle East states, except perhaps in Tunisia and in some small steps undertaken by Morocco. Overwhelmingly, regimes have dug in deeper, and – with support from allies in Asia, such as China, India and Singapore, and in the neighbourhood, such as Israel – have intensified their efforts not only to limit room for political expression or manoeuvre, but also to root it out. The security formula that has guided most Middle East states since independence prevails, and is the one that all domestic decisions must fit. Obama’s wavering at the time of the Arab uprisings, when he came to favour stability over rights after the fall of Mubarak and the descent into chaos in Syria, shored up old allies, and was then turbo-charged by the Trump administration. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy drained what was left of democracy promotion and human rights dialogue, and effectively gave a green light to the region’s security states to ramp up their disregard for the interests of citizens in their own and neighbouring countries. It served to further entrench regimes that had at one time at least paid lip service to reform.
A new US policy approach?
The outcome of the 2020 US presidential election is seen as consequential for America’s global engagement, especially with the EU and the UK, to address regional security challenges and contain geopolitical competition in the Middle East. It is hoped by the US’s transatlantic partners that a Biden White House will result in a return to multilateralism, the promotion of shared democratic values and a commitment to human rights, a restoration of the transatlantic alliance, a re-entry into the JCPOA, and the ambition to bring equilibrium to regional relations.
The Biden administration has made it clear that it will reorient US foreign policy and put firmly back in place the values that have characterized its external dealings in the past. This will set down a real challenge for the security states across the Middle East. Indeed, the US Congress may be divided on how the Iran nuclear file should be approached, but it seems united on the need to tackle security states such as Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey. A change in US policy, therefore, could represent a moment to press all states in the region – which now, through a combination of factors, find themselves in a position of weakness – to work to enable a regional security framework, built on stronger foundations at home. These steps – identified as a set of interrelated tracks – will be set out in the chapters that follow.
