After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (32 page)

The reaction from Abu Dhabi appears originally to have been more hesitant—perhaps because the more moderate policies of its former ruler still prevailed. In a leaked cable from 2006 the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi claimed that the UAE believed ‘the threat from al-Qaeda would be minor compared to if Iran had nukes… but that it was reluctant to take any action that might provoke its neighbour’. The cable also explained that UAE officials had asked US officials to ‘…only seek their help as a very last resort’ and had stated that ‘if you can solve something without involving the UAE, please do so’.
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Nevertheless, as Abu Dhabi’s forceful crown prince, Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and his five full brothers gained control over most aspects of foreign policy and the security establishment, the emirate’s views quickly began to fall into line with those of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Since 2007 Western embassy officials have been repeatedly encouraged by the crown prince’s circle to get more troops on the ground in an effort to counter Iranian hegemony. And in summer 2009, as recorded in another leaked US diplomatic cable, the crown prince had warned the US of appeasing Iran and had stated that ‘Ahmedinejad is Hitler’.
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A few months later, the Qatar-based commander of US CENTCOM appeared to express his agreement with the UAE’s new stance, stating on the record at a major security conference in Bahrain that ‘the Emirati Air Force itself could take out the entire Iranian Air Force, I believe, given that it’s got… somewhere around 70 Block 60 F-16 fighters, which are better than the US’ F-16 fighters’.
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Even more belligerently, in a summer 2010 interview with the American magazine
The Atlantic
, the UAE’s ambassador to the US (an Abu Dhabi national)
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openly stated his country’s preference for war. When asked ‘Do you want the US to stop the Iranian nuclear program by force?’ he replied on the record with ‘Absolutely, absolutely. I think we are at risk of an Iranian nuclear program far more than you [the US] are at risk… I am suggesting that I think out of every country in the region, the UAE is most vulnerable to Iran. Our military, who has existed for the past forty years, wake up, dream, breathe, eat, sleep the Iranian threat. It’s the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for, that’s it, there’s no other threat, there’s no country in the region that is a threat to the UAE, it’s only Iran’.
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More broadly, the apparent nuclearisation of the UAE and other Gulf monarchies can also be interpreted as part of the strengthening anti-Iran front. This began in late 2009 with Abu Dhabi’s awarding of a $20 billion contract to a South Korea-led consortium
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to build four nuclear plants by 2020,
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and has since gathered pace with Kuwait
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and Saudi Arabia
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also in discussion with foreign nuclear companies. Although the UAE programme is strictly civilian and rational in terms of diversifying its energy supplies, given declining hydrocarbon reserves and rising domestic energy consumption, the manner in which the programme was initiated was nonetheless also intended to signal a warning to Iran. There was a keenness to seek approval for the programme not only from the International Atomic Energy Agency, but also from the world’s major nuclear powers. The UAE did not move ahead with its contract until it received approval from the US Congress, even though its intention was likely never to award it to the bidding US-Japan consortium.
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This is in sharp contrast to Iran’s efforts to press ahead with an indigenous programme that has not sought approval from the US or other nuclear powers.

Qatar, although much more careful with its public statements on Iran since its emergence as the region’s most energetic peace-broker, has also been caught out by leaked cables. Notably, in one from 2009 the Qatari prime minister characterised the emirate’s relationship with Iran as being one in which ‘they lie to us and we lie to them’.
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Nevertheless, Qatar seems to have avoided falling into the front line role now occupied by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE. This is likely due to its particularly precarious situation: hosting major US military facilities while at the same time having to share its largest gas resource—the offshore North Field—with Iran. Similarly Oman has been more cautious in opposing Iran despite the presence of western bases on its soil and its very high spending on western armaments. Speaking in 2008 in a private conversation with a senior US Navy official, Oman’s Sultan came across as more pragmatic than his neighbouring rulers, while his public statements have been similarly realistic. This is unsurprising given that he is by far the longest serving ruler in the region and has had considerable experience of dealing with pre-and post-revolutionary Iran. Moreover, with Oman’s Musandam Peninsula stretching into the strategic Strait of Hormuz, his is the Gulf monarchy closest to Iran, and—perhaps most importantly—as with Qatar, Oman shares a major offshore gas field with the Islamic
Republic. Indeed, 80 per cent of the Henjam field lies in Iranian waters, and the National Iranian Oil Company has earmarked $800 million for the field’s development
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—an investment Oman is unlikely to be able to match. Tellingly, in his 2008 conversation Qaboos bin Said Al-Said commented to the US official that the ‘Iranians are not fools’ and claimed that ‘Tehran realised there are certain lines it cannot cross [i.e. direct confrontation with the US]’. Most significantly, on the subject of the Gulf monarchies and Iran he stated ‘Iran is a big country with muscles and we must deal with it’ but that ‘as long as the US is on the horizon, we have nothing to fear’.
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Another interesting stance on Iran, although now having little bearing on the region’s security situation, is that of the Sharjah and Dubai ruling families. As one of the Persian Gulf’s most established ports Sharjah has long been home to a substantial Iranian-origin community and, despite having lost one of its outlying islands to Iran in 1971, relations have remained fairly warm. The Sharjah-based Crescent Petroleum has always maintained an office in Tehran and in 2001 the company signed a $1 billion 25 year agreement with the National Iranian Oil Company to pipe some 500 million cubic feet per day of Iranian natural gas to the emirate.
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Similarly, as the region’s biggest port, with a long history of laissez-faire policies, Dubai has been home to substantial Iranian-origin communities for over a century, and has a well documented track record of supporting, or at least remaining neutral with regards to Iran. Even when Abu Dhabi and most other Gulf monarchies openly backed Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Dubai’s ruler remained famously impartial, with the city’s port facilities remaining open to Iranian vessels and its radio station continuing to broadcast the Iranian version of the news. As the relevance of Dubai’s foreign policies have declined following the integration of its armed forces into the Abu Dhabi-led UAE Armed Forces in the 1990s and—as many have speculated—following the bailouts of its economy by Abu Dhabi in recent years, it had been assumed that the emirate’s stance on Iran would eventually fall into line with that of Abu Dhabi. To some extent this has been true, with Dubai’s ruling family having had little choice but to accede to Abu Dhabi’s desire to make the UAE conform to US-led sanctions on Iranian trade. Since about 2008 it has become much harder for Iranian businessmen to transfer money in and out of Dubai, or in some cases even to open bank accounts. Nevertheless such restrictions are viewed
as harmful to Dubai’s livelihood, and the emirate’s ruler has publicly stepped out of line on Iran, arguing in a December 2011 CNN interview that Iran is not trying to acquire nuclear weapons ‘despite Western suspicions that it is trying to develop them’ and asking, rhetorically, ‘What can Iran do with a nuclear weapon?’
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Israel: the unholy alliance

Perhaps even more controversial and risky than hawkishness towards Iran has been the discreet strengthening of political and economic relations between some of the Gulf monarchies and Israel. Seemingly a function of reinforcing relations with their Western security guarantors and hardening the anti-Iran front, but also a consequence of building lucrative trade links with one of the region’s most advanced economies, some Gulf rulers appear willing to cooperate and collaborate secretly with Israel. This is an especially dangerous policy, given the Gulf monarchies’ long history of boycotting Israel, their public alignment with the Arab ‘Refusal Front’,
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and—as discussed—their provision of substantial development aid to Palestine. Moreover, their national populations are for the most part anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, with the topics of Israel and Zionism often stirring strong emotions. Certainly, many Gulf nationals grew up watching the Palestinian Intifada on television
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and the liberation of Palestine definitely remains a shared ideal among the region’s youth. It is likely too that most of the expatriate populations in the Gulf monarchies share similar views. And there are of course substantial, long-serving communities of Palestinians in every Gulf monarchy. In some cases there are even naturalised Palestinian-origin Gulf nationals who were born in refugee camps serving as senior advisors to rulers’ courts and occupying other powerful positions.

Since their independence and the drafting of constitutions or, in Saudi Arabia’s case, the promulgation of its Basic Law, there have been legal articles and clauses in the Gulf monarchies which have required government personnel, businesses, and even individual residents to boycott all connections with Israel. In the UAE’s case for example there has always been an Israel Boycott Office squirreled away somewhere in the federal government, and since 1971 federal law number 15 has stipulated that ‘…any natural or legal person shall be prohibited from directly or indirectly concluding an agreement with organisations or persons either resident
in Israel, connected therewith by virtue of their nationality or working on its behalf’.
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For many years, however, the boycott office’s work has extended far beyond a straightforward embargo on trade between UAE-based companies and Israel. Notably, telephone calls to Israel have been barred, websites with an Israeli suffix have been blocked by the state-owned telecommunications company,
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and Israeli nationals have not been permitted to enter the UAE, nor—in theory—have any visitors been allowed to enter the UAE that possessed Israeli visa stamps in their passports.
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Up until 2003 Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up was frequently publishing anti-Semitic material and hosting internationally condemned anti-Semitic speakers.
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According to the US Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the UAE authorities also reportedly fail to prevent anti-Semitic cartoons from being published in the two bestselling state-backed Arabic newspapers—
Al-Ittihad
and
Al-Bayan
.
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The cartoons often depict Israeli leaders being compared to Hitler, and Jews being portrayed as demons. In January 2009, at the height of the Gaza conflict, the UAE’s bestselling English language newspaper,
Gulf News
, not only featured such a cartoon (featuring an Israeli soldier with a forked red tongue),
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but also published a Holocaust revisionist piece which claimed ‘…it is evident that the Holocaust was a conspiracy hatched by the Zionists and the Nazis, and many innocent people gave their lives as a result of this inhuman plot… the Holocaust was a major crime in history and the Israeli culprit is at it again today’.
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After joining the World Trade Organisation in 1996, the UAE authorities were clearly under pressure to drop or at least relax their boycott of Israel. When Dubai agreed to host the 2003 annual general meeting of the WTO, delegations from all member states had to be invited, and there was no way to prevent the arrival of an Israeli delegation and the flying of an Israeli flag on top of the Dubai World Trade Centre tower.
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The UAE’s newfound leadership role in renewable energies has had similar results: after winning the bid to host the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency, in early 2010 the Abu Dhabi immigration services had little choice but to allow an Israeli delegation—including a minister—to arrive in the emirate for IRENA meetings. Explaining that ‘…although Israel and the UAE have no diplomatic ties’ an IRENA spokesperson confirmed that ‘Israel was accommodated in
accordance with specific UAE agreements’.
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In addition to international organisations, there has also been increasing pressure directly from the US, with the US Department of Commerce’s Office of Anti-boycott Compliance dutifully recording all examples of the UAE’s boycott requests. These are normally clauses inserted into contracts issued by UAE companies, most often with the following wording: ‘the seller shall not supply goods or materials which have been manufactured or processed in Israel nor shall the services of any Israeli organisation be used in handling or transporting the goods or materials’.
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