The Third Gulf War is radically reshaping the Gulf Kingdoms’ perceptions of American reliability and leading them to consider the need to negotiate a post-war regional security arrangement with Iran.
Andrew Korybko
Reuters
reported that “Behind the scenes, resentment is mounting in Gulf Arab
capitals at being drawn into a war they neither initiated nor endorsed
but are now paying for economically and militarily”. They added that “At
the same time, analysts say the war has left Gulf states reassessing
both their security dependence on Washington and the prospect of
eventually engaging Tehran on new regional security arrangements -- even
as trust in Iran has collapsed.” That would be the best outcome for
everyone.
It was assessed here at the start of the Third Gulf War
after Putin’s calls with regional leaders that one of the goals that
his envisaged mediation aims to achieve is for the Gulf Kingdoms to
rescind the permission that they gave the US to use their territories
and airspaces for attacking Iran. That would force the US into the
dilemma of defying them at the risk of rupturing their relations or
acceding to this new regional military reality and then pursuing what
would likely be a (Russian-mediated?) compromise with Iran.
As surreal as it may seem, Lindsey Graham of all people arrived at a very similar conclusion last week. He wrote on X,
“why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual
interest?... Hopefully Gulf Cooperation Council countries will get more
involved as this fight is in their backyard. If you are not willing to
use your military now, when are you willing to use it? Hopefully this
changes soon. If not, consequences will follow.”
The
US military’s departure from the Gulf would solve three problems at
once: Iran would no longer be threatened by these forces; the Gulf
Kingdoms would be safer
since Iran wouldn’t attack them anymore for hosting them; and the US
wouldn’t have to defend partners that have proven themselves to be
freeloaders. Far from the security vacuum that critics imagine would
follow, the Gulf Kingdoms and Iran could begin work on a three-phased
regional security plan mediated by their shared Russian partner.
The
end goal is for the Gulf Kingdoms and Iran to agree to Russia’s
long-proposed Collective Security Concept for the region that readers
can learn more about in detail here. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also recently referenced
it when articulating Russia’s official position towards the Third Gulf
War and its hopes for the direction in which the region will go
afterwards no matter how unlikely it might now seem to some. Two
preliminary steps are required, however, which will now briefly be
touched upon.
The first is what can be described as a
Gulf Non-Aggression Pact (GNAP), the specifics of which remain to be
negotiated but would reasonably include limits on where certain military
assets can be deployed, codes of conduct, and crisis communication
channels, et al. Once this is agreed to, and it admittedly won’t be an
easy task, then Iran could join the Saudi-Pakistani alliance like it’s reportedly considered doing since late last year. This can then form the core of Russia’s envisaged collective security bloc.
To
review, the military-political sequence that Russia hopes to mediate in
the Gulf is a cessation of hostilities through a series of reasonable
mutual compromises, the departure of the US military from the region,
GNAP, Iran joining the Saudi-Pak alliance, and then a collective
security bloc forming afterwards. Up until the Third Gulf War began,
most would have dismissed this strategic vision as a political fantasy,
but Reuters’ recent report suggests that this is now a realistic
possibility for the region’s post-war future.