In a June 13, 2017, essay posted online at Politico, the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Programme at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Simon Henderson, wrote a critical oped about the leadership of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Henderson looks at the current policies and launches into a pseudo-analysis that pretends to identify what motivates Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. His cautiously written essay wonders whether they “may be the harbingers of a new and better Middle East” — or irresponsible in their actions. Is the widely read commentator correct?
The highly critical essay focuses on the two personalities in what can only be described as denigrating prose, as he delves on what allegedly motivates them: “Twin battles against Iran and Islamic radicalism, but also a deep appreciation for their reliance on the United States.” Both, Henderson advances, have placed their hopes on the new American president and his son-in-law to win over Donald Trump and Jared Kushner in a strategy to defeat Tehran. He even argues that the ongoing Qatar crisis brought the two princes closer to each other.
In Qatar, Henderson orates, the UAE is concerned over “Doha’s sympathy towards elements of the Muslim Brotherhood”, whereas the Saudis is more focused on Iran, “which he regards as a destabilising, malevolent force in the region”. In reality, these two concerns are not mutually exclusive because the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as the Arab League identified the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and blamed Tehran for military intervention in several countries with the similar aim of dividing the Arab nation.
‘Cautious approach’
Our commentator then homes in on how UAE and Saudi Arabia perceive Qatar’s “cautious approach to Iran”, along with Doha’s diplomatic “flirting [with] Israel and Hamas, the US and the Taliban, Russia and anti-Russian Islamists”. These, he affirms, could be the doings of former Qatari emir, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, who took a “mischievous delight” in infuriating his GCC partners.
Be that as it may, our wily commentator implies that the objective of the Saudi/UAE duopoly is to isolate Qatar, which is a trivial point to make since there is no evidence for such an assertion.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are not upset because the Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had uttered sympathetic comments about Iran, but because they deny Doha’s backing of extremists who harbour ill-will against Arabs in general and Gulf citizens in particular. While they, as leading GCC member-states, desire and intend to maintain correct ties with all neighbouring states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others strongly object to Iranian interferences in Arab affairs, which is not too difficult to understand.
Securing an increasingly threatened realm
Lest we forget or dismiss cavalierly, Tehran boasted and continues to brag about its accomplishments in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and especially in Yemen, where Henderson claims the military performance of Saudi Arabia and UAE has been draggy.
The English commentator’s observations on “Yemen military adventure” is puerile prose, even if Riyadh would be very pleased to bring the war to a rapid close.
Henderson posits that Shaikh Tamim knows perfectly well “how to change positions as pressures demand”, even if Henderson acknowledges that success for the UAE and Saudi Arabia could blunt Iranian ambitions as well as defeat Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). He cautions about overconfidence, which “is not a prescription for victory.” On the contrary, no one is looking for confrontation with Iran, though Arabs are determined to deny Iranian meddling in their internal affairs, precisely to secure an increasingly threatened realm.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the just-published The Attempt to Uproot Sunni Arab Influence: A Geo-Strategic Analysis of the Western, Israeli and Iranian Quest for Domination (Sussex: 2017).
