In a highly unstable region, the latest talks between King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President, Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, are of great significance to both countries and beyond. The fact that both countries are pillars of any meaningful future stability in the Arab world is abundantly clear. Under the current circumstances, both leaders must realise the urgent need to support one another.
Both men’s backs are dangerously uncovered and both feel that their responsibility towards the region’s stability is paramount, whether against the decades-old Israeli occupation and expansion policy or the most recent regional threat by Iran.
The semi-official newspaper Al Ahram, rightly called the meeting a “summit of coordination and challenges”, while a presidential statement said the visit would “coincide with big challenges facing the area”, emphasising the importance of “ongoing intense cooperation and coordination between the two countries on different regional files”.
Egypt is a partner to a Saudi-led military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against Iranian-backed Al Houthi rebels. Cairo has also joined an anti-terror Islamic coalition unveiled by Saudi Arabia late last year.
The visit would most certainly further cement the already strong relationship between the Arab Gulf countries and Egypt. With about 2.5 million Egyptians working in Saudi Arabia — who transfer home an annual amount of $6 billion — billions in bilateral agreements have been signed during the visit. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf countries have pumped billions of dollars into Egypt’s ailing economy since toppling the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013. King Salman ordered, last December, an increase in investment in the much-needed business sector of Egypt to $8 billion.
Despite attempts by John Kerry the United States Secretary of State, during his recent visit to Bahrain, to reassure his country’s Arab partners in the Gulf and allay their fears after signing the nuclear deal with Iran, the Gulf States feel that their once historic and long-time ally may let them down when, and if, the decisive moment to choose arrives. On the one hand, the Arabs have unfortunately experienced negative practices in the past half a century on the part of the US when it comes to Israel. The two-state solution for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has long become non-existent. Even western officials have more or less stopped mentioning this internationally-recognised solution or raised their voices in protest against continuous creeping colonial policy over Arab land.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have made Washington aware of their serious concern over Iran’s behaviour in the region at large, whether in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain or Iraq, on several occasions. This issue will top the agenda of the forthcoming summit later this month with Kerry and the Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers, but the discussion is not expected to change the US’ precarious position.
The track of the US foreign policy in the region in recent months and years does not necessarily carry much comfort to the Arab Gulf States nor to Egypt. These countries have struggled very hard to convince the US that getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt was a positive development for the region. Therefore, it should be understandable why these countries occasionally sound paranoid by not only Iran’s regional behaviour, but also the US and other Western countries’ suspicious inaction.
Riyadh and other Gulf capitals, as well as Cairo, have subsequently grown a joint sense of insecurity as a result of that episode.
King Salman and Al Sissi have both seen with horror the ease with which Washington received the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The suspicion began long before the nuclear deal with Iran, as many Gulf officials believe that the US administration has freely handed most of Iraq to Iran.
Despite the fact that the American withdrawal plan from Iraq was announced in the early part of Obama’s first term in office, none of Iraq’s neighbouring countries — apart from Iran — were consulted on how best to shape its demographic and political future. Instead, Iran alone was invited to share and plan how Iraq would end up. The Gulf countries also made their feelings clear once the nuclear deal was signed, as the Washington-Tehran rapprochement was clearly making matters worse.
At no time has Saudi Arabia or any other Gulf state nor Egypt objected to the nuclear deal. On the contrary, the deal is collectively considered a major achievement for peace and stability in the region. But what the Arab countries have been expecting to see is for the US administration to openly call on Tehran to stop meddling in the Arab Gulf’s back yard. Iran’s intervention, whether directly or by Hezbollah and Al Houthi militias, from the shores of Mediterranean to the warm waters of the Red Sea, should be curtailed. This interference is blatantly breaking international laws and Iran must be forced to respect the wishes and long-term interests of the region.
The Obama administration’s inability to provide the region with a comprehensive and clear policy, is giving the Gulf countries and Egypt unlimited reasons to suspect Washington’s motives and long-term intensions in the Middle East as a whole.
So far, the Saudi-led coalition has been doing well in facing up to Iran’s threats and it is reasonably possible that the US finds it difficult to structure the right policy in view of the continuous turmoil in the region. But as the world’s only superpower it is expected to provide its local partners with the required security provisions.
Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mustaphatache.
