Growing unease over the United States\u2019 inability to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East is prompting some of Washington\u2019s closest Arab allies to significantly increase engagement with its primary regional adversary: Iran. <\/p>\n
Over the past few months, Arab nations have been leveraging their revived relations with the Islamic Republic to ward off a wider regional war as the US fails to contain an impending regional escalation. <\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken landed in Israel for his eleventh trip to the region in a year on Tuesday in an apparent effort to take advantage of the killing of Hamas leader and October 7 architect Yahya Sinwar to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. US officials, however, are tempering expectations as Washington\u2019s calls for calm fall on deaf ears and Israel vows to push ahead with its wars in Gaza and Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Blinken\u2019s visit also comes as Israel prepares a response to Tehran\u2019s October 1 firing of hundreds of missiles in one of the biggest ever attacks on the Jewish state. The strike was in response to Israel\u2019s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month and its suspected killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July. <\/p>\n
Arab nations have long been suspicious of Shiite Iran\u2019s role in a region that is dominated by US-allied Sunni states, and share Israel\u2019s concerns about its support for non-state Islamist groups. <\/p>\n
For the past month, Tehran has tried to gauge their position on its conflict with Israel, dispatching its top officials and diplomats for an intensive campaign of diplomacy with its neighbors, many of whom host US military personnel and bases. Arab nations that had spent decades brawling with Iran for regional influence are now opting to engage with it again. <\/p>\n
In a rare meeting this month, Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, who once called Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the \u201cnew Hitler of the Middle East,\u201d sat down with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Riyadh. It was the third meeting between Iranian and Saudi officials in one month. Tehran\u2019s top diplomat also met Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah II in Amman and made a rare trip to Egypt for a meeting with President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in Cairo. He has also met Qatar\u2019s prime minister in Doha, the Omani foreign minister in Muscat and the Bahraini king in Manama. <\/p>\n
Those efforts appeared to have borne fruit. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll our friends gave us assurances that their land and airspace will not be used to attack Iran\u2026 We are expecting this from all countries in the region,\u201d Araghchi said after meeting Kuwait\u2019s Crown Prince Sabah Al-Sabah in Kuwait City. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gulf (Arab) monarchies\u2019 priority is not to be directly involved in a proper regional conflagration. They fear they would be targeted and would end up being directly hit in the crossfire,\u201d said Cinzia Bianco, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cThey think the best way to avoid such a scenario is to make themselves very useful interlocutors for both sides and especially Iran, which is the most likely party to attempt hitting them.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s actions in Lebanon and Gaza have significantly degraded Hezbollah and Hamas, groups that some Arab states and their media outlets have described as \u201cterrorists.\u201d While some Gulf Arab states may privately welcome the development, experts say they are very concerned about the potential of significant escalation in regional violence should Israel not be contained. <\/p>\n
The Biden administration\u2019s yearlong effort to mediate a ceasefire deal in Gaza and contain the violence in Lebanon has failed. The US has also struggled to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to de-escalate. <\/p>\n
Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two of the world\u2019s top oil producers, have in recent years steered their foreign policies away from conflict to serve their economic interests, which has seen them repair ties with former adversaries like Iran. But they fear that an uncontained regional war could throw a wrench into their economic ambitions. <\/p>\n
Gulf Arab nations that have come under attack several times from Iran-allied groups have grown skeptical of the US\u2019 willingness to protect them if Iran strikes. Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil facilities were hit in 2019 in an attack Washington blamed on Tehran, and the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen struck Abu Dhabi in 2022. The US did not intervene. <\/p>\n
The UAE was disappointed by President Joe Biden\u2019s de-designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization soon after he took office, and the US failure to re-designate it in the wake of the Abu Dhabi attacks. The US only reinstated the terror designation this year after group started attacking shipping in the Red Sea to punish Israel after October 7. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe sentiment in the Gulf has certainly shifted,\u201d Bianco said, adding that \u201cthe Gulf monarchies have lost faith in their primary security guarantor, the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
The shift in sentiment is the result of what Gulf states see as a yearslong effort by the US to step back from the Middle East as it moves its focus to China. Still, regional states rely heavily on their military relationship with the US. Saudi Arabia is seeking a formalized security agreement with Washington and the UAE, which hosts some 5,000 US military personnel, is expected to become a major US defense partner. <\/p>\n
Just a week before Hamas\u2019 October 7 attack last year, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a discussion at the Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C. that the Middle East \u201cis quieter today than it has been in two decades.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of time I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9\/11 is significantly reduced,\u201d he said, adding that the US\u2019 efforts were focused on regional integration and normalization with Israel which \u201ccould create a greater and more stable foundation as we go forward.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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