What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in this cycle). Kuwait has oil wealth and is a compact country with lots of social interaction. The high score may reflect Kuwait’s lively labor movement. That sort of movement isn’t allowed in the other Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates came in at 22, and Saudi Arabia at 28.

These countries are all very wealthy and their people are very social and connected to clans and other group identities, including religious congregations.

But everyone else in the Middle East is way down the list.

As usual, Gallup found that the very happiest countries were Scandinavian lands shaped by social democratic policies. It turns out that a government safety net of the sort the Republican Party wants to get rid of actually is key to making people happy.

Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden take the top four spots. Israel, which also has a Labor socialist founding framework, is fifth. The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg fill out the top nine.

The Gallup researchers believe that a few major considerations affect well-being or happiness. They note, “Social interactions of all kinds … add to happiness, in addition to their effects flowing through increases in social support and reductions in loneliness.” My brief experience of being in Australia suggests to me that they are indeed very social and likely not very lonely on the whole. Positive emotions also equate to well-being and are much more important in determining it than negative emotions. The positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and altruism, among others.

Benevolence, doing good to others, also adds to well-being. Interestingly, the Gallup researchers find that benevolence increased in COVID and its aftermath across the board.

They also factor in GDP per capita, that is, how poor or wealthy people are.

Gallup Video: “2024 World Happiness Report; Gallup CEO Jon Clifton”

Bahrain comes in at 62, which shows that oil wealth isn’t everything. It is deeply divided between a Sunni elite and a Shiite majority population, and that sectarian tension likely explains why it isn’t as happy as Kuwait. Kuwait is between a sixth and a third Shiite and also has a Sunni elite, but the Shiites are relatively well treated and the Emir depends on them to offset the power of Sunni fundamentalists. So it isn’t just sectarian difference that affects happiness but the way in which the rulers deal with it.

Libya, which is more or less a failed state after the people rose up to overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi, nevertheless comes in at 66. There is some oil wealth when the militias allow its export, and despite the east-west political divide, people are able to live full lives in cities like Benghazi and Tripoli. Maybe the overhang of getting rid of a hated dictator is still a source of happiness for them.

Algeria, a dictatorship and oil state, is 85. The petroleum wealth is not as great as in the Gulf by any means, and is monopolized by the country’s elite.

Iraq, an oil state, is 92. Like Bahrain, it suffers from ethnic and sectarian divides. It is something of a failed state after the American overthrow of its government.

Iran, another oil state, is 100. Its petroleum sales are interfered with by the US except with regard to China, so its income is much more limited than other Gulf oil states. The government is dictatorial and young people seem impatient with its attempt to regiment their lives, as witnessed in the recent anti-veiling protests.

The State of Palestine is 103, which is actually not bad given that they are deeply unhappy with being occupied by Israel. This ranking certainly plummeted after the current Israeli total war on Gaza began.

Morocco is 107. It is relatively poor, in fact poorer than some countries that rank themselves much lower on the happiness scale.

Tunisia is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and much better off than Morocco, but it comes in at 115. In the past few years all the democratic gains made during and after the Arab Spring have been reversed by horrid dictator Qais Saied. People seem to be pretty unhappy at now living in a seedy police state.

Jordan is both poor and undemocratic, and is ranked 125.

Egypt is desperately poor and its government since 2014 has been a military junta in business suits that brooks not the slightest dissent. It is 127. The hopes of the Arab Spring are now ashes.

Yemen is 133. One of the poorest countries in the world, it suffered from being attacked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from 2015 until 2021. So it is war torn and poverty-stricken.

Lebanon ranks almost at the bottom at 142. Its economy is better than Yemen’s but its government is hopelessly corrupt and its negligence caused the country’s major port to be blown up, plunging the country into economic crisis. It is wracked by sectarianism. If hope is a major positive emotion that leads to feelings of happiness, it is in short supply there.

Some countries are too much of a basket case to be included, like Syria, where I expect people are pretty miserable after the civil war. Likewise Sudan, which is now in civil strife and where hundreds of thousands may starve.

Poverty, dictatorship, disappointment in political setbacks, and sectarianism all seem to play a part in making the Middle East miserable. The role of the United States in supporting the dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere, or in supporting wars, has been sinister and certainly has added significantly to the misery. For no group in the region is this more true than for the Palestinians.

Analysts rushed to comment that the enlargement is anti-democratic and China-centric; however, a close look at the enlargement shows that the enlargement is not only about China but more of a consensus of the five powers, including, more importantly, India and Russia in addition to China. Of course, China is the most potent power in the bloc and might increase its influence over time. However, the current expansion shows that none of these countries are states that India and Russia reject, as they include Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two powers that have warm relations with India and an increasingly close relationship with Russia. Moreover, Brazil was already willing to accept Argentina as a member of BRICS in case it would help the neighbouring country in its quest for foreign reserves.

Indeed, these analysts ignore the warm relations between India and the two Gulf states, underestimate the tension between China and India, and tend to show the current members of BRICS under great Chinese influence, which is not necessarily true as India and China have significant issues, including but not limited to border crises. Otherwise, China President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in South Africa would not present a significant diplomatic incident.. The tension worsened in 2020 and cost the lives of 20 Indian soldiers.

Is BRICS+ the new G7?

In its current form, BRICS represents around 40.72 percent of the world population; if the new members accept the offer, the representation will rise to 45.95 percent, a significant rate as China and India’s share is around 35.48 percent. Similarly, the current GDP share of the BRICS is around 25.77 percent, while the expansion would bring it to around 28.99 percent, another significant increase as 17.86 percent of the current club’s GDP comes from China alone. On the other hand, the G7 represents around 27 percent of the world’s GDP and around 10 percent of the world’s population.

BRICS has long been considered an alternative initiative to the Western system as it includes Russia and China as leading powers, despite its loose institutionalization. One of the BRICS targets is to de-dollarise trade and bypass US sanctions on global trade. Indeed, BRICS created a development bank to encourage trade in local currencies and support developmental projects, an alternative to the Western-centric IMF and World Bank.

While BRICS, in its current form, does not challenge UN-based institutions, it can be considered an alternative to the G20 or G7, if not a rival. The G20, too, is not a very effective platform but a place where world leaders discuss significant issues and attempt to form a global agenda. Indeed, G20 meetings have recently been defined as “empty talks” by analysts.

China and the Gulf

While none of the new members states that China would reject their membership, showing their membership as pure Chinese influence is inherently wrong as they include two members of the GCC with India who already share close ties. The close ties between India and the GCC can be seen from the G20, too, as India invited the UAE and Oman as this year’s G20 guests, in addition to Saudi Arabia, a permanent member of the G20.

While India is particularly close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of the number of expatriates in the Gulf, China is interested in these states for more strategic reasons. China made headlines in May when it brokered a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, inviting Iran and its regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the UAE together to the bloc is interesting as the bloc does not want to include only the “isolated” countries from the Western system, preventing it from being a platform of excluded powers.

Even though the existence of Russia and China and their influence in the bloc signal anti-Americanism, BRICS, even in its 11-member form, is not inherently anti-American. Indeed, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stated, “We do not want to be a counterpoint to the G7, G20, or the United States.” This is an important message for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as they do not want to exclude themselves from the American security umbrella but also want to diversify their security and strategic importance to gain leverage against the US. Thus, by joining this kind of organisation, they hit two birds with one stone.

Not long ago, in 2022, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were granted dialogue partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an even bigger anti-Western organisation than the BRICS. Iran was granted full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council in 2023. Therefore, despite Iran and its Gulf rival Saudi Arabia and the UAE not sharing warm relations and having situated themselves on different poles, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s role is upgraded to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council and Saudi Arabia accepts BRICS offers, these two non-Western organisations would be platforms where they can have dialogue and use it as leverage with the West. As these two clubs will be new platforms where non-Western states have leadership, they can offer more equal negotiations between Iran and its Gulf neighbours, as none would have better privileges over others.

Of course, considering the new members, including the closest US MENA partners such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, one wonders if they are really asking for an alternative to US hegemony. In its 11-state form, the new bloc can benefit the organisation and the new members, including those directly linked to the US security umbrella. While Russia and China attempt to counterbalance the US-based Western system, most of the new members, most importantly in our case, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, attempt to diversify their geopolitical engagements with the rest of the world while still giving greater attention to the US and the West. The greater attention paid to the US and the West can be seen from their reactions to the offer, particularly Saudi Arabia’s. While UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed published a statement showing his appreciation of the offer, Saudi Arabia is yet to accept the offer and stated it will study the deal and give an appropriate decision,” a message to its Western allies that their priorities are still the West and also could be a bit disappointed by the offer to Iran too.

In short, considering the share of China and India’s oil and gas exports from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with India’s warm relations with these states, the invitation of these two states can be considered Indian-influenced as much as Chinese. Moreover, considering South Africa’s relations with Ethiopia and Brazil’s relations with Argentina, one can say BRICS’s enlargement is not solely Chinese dictation but more of a common ground for all members.

China’s top diplomat and current foreign minister Wang Yi arranged an unexpected Saudi-Iran peace agreement in March this year between Riyadh’s mercurial Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and Iran’s aging Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were all invited (and agreed) to join the emerging markets BRICS grouping of non-Western countries, with their membership to come into effect on January 1, 2024. China is overhauling President Xi’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) global infrastructure development programme and Beijing is seeking project funding from rich Muslim countries. Beijing therefore pushed the Iran-Saudi peace deal and supported Saudi Arabia’s application to join the BRICS to help it gain access to Saudi backing for the BRI. Another reason for growing Gulf-China ties is Beijing’s intensifying technological competition with Washington.

Growing US-China technology competition

The US is stepping up its efforts to contain China’s geopolitical and technological development in East Asia and outside it. In October 2022, Washington launched controls intended to prevent China from acquiring certain categories of semiconductor chips made with US equipment anywhere in the world, partially to prevent Beijing from using them to develop advanced new artificial intelligence systems. The US has since escalated these export restrictions on semiconductor chips to unspecified Middle Eastern countries, according to US multinational technology firm Nvidia late last month.

Meanwhile, a source at Nvidia’s commercial rival Advanced Micro Devices  told media it had also received an official letter from the US government containing similar restrictions. The chips concerned were high-powered models used to improve machine-learning tasks for artificial intelligence programmes like ChatGPT.  Gulf Arab states have been increasingly seeking to import advanced versions of these to create their own artificial intelligence models, but their growing technoscientific ties to China are a source of rising US unease.

China-US tensions were recently raised further following US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s recent combative trip to China, during which the Commerce Secretary explicitly said the US would remain hardline in its approach to limiting Chinese access to advanced technologies. Beijing didn’t pull any punches either, with US-blacklisted telecommunications company Huawei releasing its new Mate 60 Pro smartphone during Raimondo’s visit. Huawei’s smartphone business was crushed by US technology export restrictions in 2019 and the new handset showcases the firm’s partial evasion of these as well as its intension to reestablish itself in the sector.

 On China’s tightly controlled internet Chinese citizens posted memes turning Raimondo into a brand ambassador for Huawei; a play on her department’s role in enforcing technology restrictions on Chinese firms like Huawei or Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the partially state-owned Chinese company which allegedly built the semiconductor chip powering Huawei’s homemade phone. In response, US lawmakers have called for investigations to see whether SMIC broke US sanctions and supplied components to Huawei, while South Korean firm SK Hynix started a probe after discovering parts it manufactured were present inside Huawei’s new handsets.

US Fears About China-Middle Eastern Technological Cooperation

President Biden has made containing China’s technological rise — and any subsequent global spread of Chinese technologies, standards and norms about cyberspace — a central part of his administration’s foreign policy. At the same time Saudi Arabia and the UAE have emerged as some of the biggest customers of US chip firms like Intel and Nvidia, the latter of whose high-powered products are much sought-after for their use in artificial intelligence research. The UAE has bought thousands of US semiconductor chips for a homegrown Arabic artificial intelligence model called Falcon, made by Abu Dhabi’s Technological Innovation Institute.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is spending $120 million to buy these to build its own ChatGPT-style large language model at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, despite using Chinese researchers. Gulf state leaders want to own and control artificial intelligence developments within their own countries, while using Chinese and US know-how to create their own local systems. There is also an element of Arab countries’ balancing the two sides to avoid dependency upon either one of them; Riyadh has allowed Huawei’s cloud arm to create a data centre in Saudi Arabia to support government services and artificial intelligence language models in Arabic despite using US-made chips to train them.

Gulf governments’ laxer approach to China likely lies behind August’s US imposition of restrictions on top artificial intelligence chips being exported unnamed Middle Eastern countries; such deliveries are unlikely to be going to already-hostile states like Iran. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud’s decision to rely on Chinese researchers to help Riyadh build its artificial intelligence models is especially likely to have angered President Biden, who personally dislikes the de facto Saudi leader, a sentiment the volatile crown prince reportedly returns.

Beijing will be intensely interested in the chance to send researchers to Saudi Arabia study US chip technologies so it can parallel engineer its own devices when they return home. Saudi Arabia and potentially other Gulf states therefore represent a weak spot in the global technological blockade President Biden is attempting to erect around China’s semiconductor and artificial intelligence sectors. Despite their diplomatic importance to the US, the Gulf states could therefore find their early enthusiasm for artificial intelligence hitting similar curbs to China’s if they continue to weaken US efforts to contain China’s technological rise.

At the end of November 2022, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that the “golden era” between Great Britain and China was over. China may not have been too bothered by this news however, and has been busy making influential friends elsewhere.

In early December, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – a group made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – to discuss trade and investment. Also on the agenda were talks on forging closer political ties and a deeper security relationship.

This summit in Saudi Arabia was the latest step in what our research shows is an increasingly close relationship between China and the Gulf states. Economic ties have been growing consistently for several decades (largely at the expense of trade with the US and the EU) and are specifically suited to their respective needs.

Simply put, China needs oil, while the Gulf needs to import manufactured goods including household items, textiles, electrical products and cars.

China’s pronounced growth in recent decades has been especially significant for the oil rich Gulf state economies. Between 1980 and 2019, their exports to China grew at an annual rate of 17.1%. In 2021, 40% of China’s crude oil imports came from the Gulf – more than any other country or regional group, with 17% from Saudi Arabia alone.

And the oil will likely continue to flow in China’s direction. In 2009, it was predicted that China would require 14 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. In fact, China reached that figure in 2019 and is expected to need at least 17 million barrels per day by 2040. At the same time, the US became a net oil exporter in 2019 and thus achieved a longstanding foreign policy goal: to overcome its dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels.

China has benefited from increasing demand for its manufactured products, with exports to the Gulf growing at an annual rate of 11.7% over the last decade. It overtook the US in 2008 and then the EU in 2020 to become the Gulf’s most important source of imports.

These are good customers for China to have. The Gulf economies are expected to grow by around 5.9% in 2022 (compared with a lacklustre 2.5% predicted growth in the US and EU) and offer attractive opportunities for China’s export-orientated economy. It is likely that the fast-tracking of a free trade agreement was high on the summit’s agenda in early December.

Strong ties

The Gulf’s increased reliance on trade with China has been accompanied by a reduction in its appetite to follow the west’s political and cultural lead.

As a group, it was supportive of the west’s military action in Iraq for example, and the broader fight against Islamic State. But more recently, the Gulf notably refused to support the west in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also threatened Netflix with legal action for “promoting homosexuality”, while Qatar has been actively banning rainbow flags supporting sexual diversity at the Fifa men’s World Cup.

So Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia was well timed to illustrate a strengthening of this important partnership. And to the extent that anything can be forecast, a deepening of the Gulf-China trade relationship seems likely. On the political front, however, developments are less easy to predict.

China is seeking to safeguard its interests in the Middle East in light of the Belt and Road initiative, its ambitious transcontinental infrastructure and investment project.

But how much further might the Gulf states be prepared to sacrifice their longstanding security pacts with western powers (forged in the aftermath of the second world war) in order to seek new ones with the likes of Beijing? Currently, America has military bases (or stations) in all six Gulf countries, but it is well documented that the GCC is seeking ways to diversify its self-perceived over-reliance on the US as its primary guarantor of security (a sentiment within the bloc that was pronounced while Obama was president, less so with Trump, but on the rise again with Biden).

In the coming period, the GCC will need to decide which socioeconomic path to pursue in the post-oil era where AI-augmented, knowledge-based economies will set the pace. In choosing strategic ties beyond trade alone, the Gulf states must ask whether the creativity and innovative potential of their populations will be best served by allegiances to governments which are authoritarian, or accountable.

Emilie Rutledge, Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

President Biden and his team were reportedly worried that high gasoline prices, caused in part by the US sanctions on the entire Russian petroleum industry, would discourage voters in the midterms and cost the Democrats their control of the House and Senate. That development would reduce Biden to virtual powerlessness, except for his ability to issue some executive orders.

So, Biden ate a lot of crow over his one-time pledge to reduce Saudi Arabia to a pariah over the murder in 2018 of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which the CIA assessed was likely authorized by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. He attended a meeting of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, where he fist-bumped with Bin Salman, contributing to the crown prince’s rehabilitation after the murder.

Biden is selling Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over $10 billion in missile defense systems and weapons, though the US categorizes these arms as defensive in nature. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been hit by drones launched by Iran or one of its allies, such as the Houthis or Helpers of God in Yemen.

And yet, despite the fist bump and the anti-missile missiles, OPEC+ snubbed Biden

In June, 99.5 million barrels a day of petroleum were pumped in the whole world. Supplies increased somewhat, with the US and Canada upping production and/or increasing their stockpiles. Further, the international boycott of Russian oil failed to keep it in the ground as Moscow continued to find Asian partners eager to buy its oil at a discount.

As you can see, making that world total 99.6 million barrels a day would not make any difference at all to the price of petroleum at the major indexes.

Prices in any case have been falling because of the increase in US stockpiles , as West Texas Intermediate crude fell to $90.83 on Wednesday.The price was last under $90 a barrel in early February before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression on Ukraine.

Although high gasoline prices were seen by the Biden administration as a liability for Democrats going into the November midterms, those fears appear to have been overblown. The gasoline price hikes turned out to be temporary or at least not consistent. Prices at the pump in the US have fallen for 50 straight consecutive days. Barring a further geopolitical crisis, gasoline should be plentiful and back to less expensive prices this fall going into the midterms.

Saudi Arabia and other major producers plan to expand production over the coming years, but right now they do not have much spare production capacity. Since, I thought, Biden’s Gulf and economic advisers must have known this, I speculated that Biden’s diplomacy with the Saudis was aimed at forestalling an OPEC+ decision to reduce production, something that Russia might want. Russia and some of its allies have part of an expanded OPEC called OPEC+, and for the cartel to affect prices, the Saudis have to maintain correct relations with Moscow.

Expanding production is much harder now than it was even a decade ago. Since we are in the midst of a rapid transition to electric cars and rails, petroleum won’t be worth very much in a decade or two, and it is getting harder for the oil majors to get investment money to find and exploit new fields. Sinking billions into exploration and drilling is, under present circumstances, a bit like playing Russian roulette. You never know when governments and markets are going to announce, “oil is over with,” sort of as they did in the first decade of the twentieth century regarding the horse and buggy.

In any case, Mr. Biden got almost nothing tangible out of his Middle East visit. It may have reminded the Gulf oil states that the US was a major power in the region, giving them pause lest they turn to China or Russia as their patron. But the Gulf oil states are already deeply tied to an American security umbrella and have no reason to trust Russia or China to protect them. Biden could have reminded them of his commitment to the region without appearing to give his imprimatur to Mohammed Bin Salman and without sending more high tech weaponry to a region already floating in the stuff.

Biden wouldn’t be the first president to be taken for a ride by Middle Eastern “partners,” and he likely won’t be the last, though his successor ten or fifteen years from now may have little interest in a region that no longer will supply energy to the US. We’ll have our own, green, energy.

So if it isn’t all about oil, what is driving the president’s Middle East trip? On the one hand, I think he is trying to pressure Iran into coming back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear deal. If Biden could close that deal Iran would put 2 million barrels a day on the market immediately, which would likely begin bringing down prices at the pump in short order.

On the other hand, I wonder if Biden is playing defense, trying to keep long-time US partners from switching to China and Russia.

Biden’s central foreign policy initiative as of last February is to defeat Russia in Ukraine or at least to make it pay an enormous price for its invasion of Ukraine. Biden has orchestrated a widespread boycott of the Russian economy by America’s European allies, and the provision of military and other aid to Ukraine.

While Biden has had some success in overcoming German skittishness about getting involved in that effort, and has gotten all of the EU except for Hungary on board with ending imports of petroleum from Russia, his efforts have fallen on fallow ground in the Middle East.

No diplomatic partner of the US in the latter region has shown any interest in joining Biden’s crusade against the Russian Federation.

Even the one actual U.S. ally in the region, Turkey, despite being part of NATO, is declining to boycott Russia, though it does sell drones to Ukraine. The most Turkey is willing to do is to negotiate with Russia to allow Ukrainian grain exports, from which Turkey would benefit.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel has pledged to defend the US, and so they are not allies, unlike Turkey, which fought alongside US troops as part of NATO in Korea and again in Afghanistan

Israel has been careful not to offend Russia, only yielding to US pressure on a few minor votes at the U.N. Egypt is cozying up to Russia and China, and desperately needs Russian wheat if it is to avoid another revolution.

Saudi Arabia is actually importing discounted Russian oil at a third off for its own citizens’ use and then exporting more of its own petroleum at world market prices, making a pretty penny on the transaction. The Russian oil is so deeply discounted because of US sanctions on both the petroleum and on Russian bank transactions, making it difficult to move.

Not only are US partners not stepping up to boycott Russia, some are actively swinging to Russia and China for security and trade relations because they have developed doubts about the US commitment to them. President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran deal shook the Arab Gulf states to their core. They liked Trump better, but were aware that he could not exactly be depended on in a crunch, seeing how he threw Qatar under the bus in 2017 and was willing to break up NATO.

Russia is part of OPEC+, the extended Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and coordinates on pricing efforts. What if Russia could prevail upon OPEC to tighten oil exports, bringing higher prices and more revenues both to Moscow and to the central OPEC states?

By meeting with the Saudi royal family and, on Saturday, with the Gulf Cooperation Council, Biden is attempting to forestall a stampede of these countries to China, with which most of them already do a great deal of business, and which never bothers them about not having free and fair elections. How security-linked the trip was is obvious from the agreements the White House signed in Saudi Arabia.

Reuters quotes Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, as saying of Biden, “He’s intent on ensuring that there is not a vacuum in the Middle East for China and Russia to fill.”

Of course, Biden is also striving for further Israeli integration into the Middle East. Saudi Arabia announced Thursday evening that it was granting all countries overflight rights, which benefits Israel’s El Al, which can now save fuel by not having to skirt the kingdom.

He also wants to cement the ceasefire in Yemen, and finally end the Saudi/ UAE war on Yemen, about which Congress has been upset.

Finally, Biden is trying to establish security ties between Israel and the Gulf oil monarchies so as to make a united front against Iran. Some Washington hawks dream of a Middle Eastern NATO against Iran.

This hope is forlorn. The United Arab Emirates just announced an upgrade in diplomatic relations with Iran and said it is not interested in making a common front against Iran. Dubai is said to be a major money launderer for Iranian funds. Qatar has and will keep correct relations with Iran. The Arab states can’t coordinate too closely with Israel without giving away their own military secrets, and they are too suspicious to do that, even with each other. Being too close to Israel is also a security risk for the Arab states, whose peoples are deeply interested in the fate of the Palestinians, unlike Biden and many of the royal families.

If Biden wants to get a deal with Iran, he should take off some of Trump’s maximum sanctions, which have nothing to do with the country’s civilian nuclear enrichment program, especially the sanctions on the central bank, which hurt civilians. Tehran is not afraid of the Gulf postage stamp countries, even if they do have better relations than before with Israel.

As for defending US interests in the Middle East against Russia and China, it is too soon to say whether Biden’s personal diplomacy has done much to stop these countries from diversifying their security bets.

Over the decades, the Middle East has been an arena of contention over influence and interests between the US and Russia in various conflicts.

This continued until the end of former US President Donald Trump’s presidency. The involvement of the US in the region’s conflicts has declined since Joe Biden took office in the White House in January 2021, since he adopted the strategy of pivoting towards Asia to confront the potential Chinese or Russian threats in that area.

America’s need for energy sources in the Gulf and in the Middle East, in general, has also decreased, while the American administration has adopted the policy of reducing tensions with Iran and distancing itself from the Gulf-Iranian conflicts.

The US seeks to provide some concessions to convince Iran to return to the 2015 version of the nuclear agreement in order to guarantee Tehran does not possess nuclear weapons.

American-Gulf relations witnessed tensions due to human rights issues, the war in Yemen and the imposition of additional restrictions on the importance of some types of weapons and ammunition and banning others. This prompted Saudi Arabia, mainly, and the UAE to some extent, to turn to China and Russia for more military cooperation in various fields.

Moreover, Iran, Egypt, Iraq and other countries turned to strengthening economic cooperation and trade with Russia and China.

Some American decision-making centres view the development of security and economic relations between both Russia and China and a number of Middle Eastern countries as a challenge to US interests in the region.

Over the decades, many Middle Eastern countries endured the consequences of the rivalry over interests by the major countries, especially between the US, the former Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation.

Some of the region’s countries fear the expansion of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the possible outbreak of a war between the two countries that will lead to instability in the world and in the Middle East, if the US becomes involved in some form.

Meanwhile, other countries in the region, especially the gas and oil-exporting Gulf countries may view the war as an opportunity to improve their relations with Washington, which wants some of these countries to be willing to compensate the lack of Russian gas supply to the European countries, if the Biden administration decides to impose sanctions on Russia or to stop the global energy supply for reasons related to the potential war.

The possibility of stopping gas and oil supply to the European countries is a source of concern for the EU and US, which is trying to take pre-emptive measures to reinforce the European energy security and prevent a major disruption of gas and oil supplies and a disturbance in the prices in the global market because of potential sanctions imposed by the Biden administration.

Such sanctions would prevent these countries from purchasing Russian gas and oil, or the war could lead to stopping the energy flow due to the dangers of transporting it through Ukrainian territories or through the Black Sea to Europe.

Official figures suggest that the EU countries rely on Russia for about 40 per cent of their natural gas needs and that finding alternatives to the Russian gas will not be easy.

During the visit to Washington in late January of the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, the two parties discussed options for supplying EU countries with Qatari liquefied natural gas shipments in the event that Russia wages a war on Ukraine.

However, observers believe that switching Qatari gas exports to the EU countries will need more time because of its commitments to gas-importing countries in Asia and Africa.

Other gas-producing countries along with Qatar, such as Algeria and Egypt, could contribute to reduce the Europeans’ dependence on Russian gas and provide part of their needs.

Also, oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE can contribute to reducing the Europeans’ dependence on Russian oil.

Beyond energy, the Middle East and North African countries could be affected by the impact of the war, in the field of agricultural materials, trade and grains production in the Black Sea countries.

This is in addition to the effects of refugees migrating from war zones to EU countries, and the potential pressures this can put on the world aid programmes for refugees that refugees from the Middle East and North Africa benefit from.

Many Arab countries, such as Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria rely on importing first class Russian or Ukrainian wheat to meet local needs. These are countries that generally suffer from living standard crises, and the potential increase in wheat prices due to a decreased supply in world markets will increase their people’s suffering.

The wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine represent about 30 per cent of the supply in world markets, as well as other basic food goods, such as corn and vegetable oils.

Ukraine is considered the fifth largest wheat exporter in the world.

The GCC countries rely on the import of wheat and most other food goods to meet the needs of their people. Meanwhile, countries like Iran and Algeria are in the top ten countries importing wheat in the world.

Egypt imports about 60 per cent of its wheat needs from Russia and 30 per cent from Ukraine.

The Russian intervention in Syria and Libya led to complicating the conflict in both countries, and the Arab countries concerned with the two crises fear that the tensions between Moscow and the European countries and the US will disrupt the international efforts to resolve the conflict politically in both countries.

Most of the Arab governments are trying not to declare political positions towards the crisis between Russia and Ukraine in order to maintain balanced relations with the two countries.

Given the continued tensions between Washington and Moscow regarding the Ukrainian crisis, some Arab governments may find themselves forced to declare a political position, choosing between Russia and the US and EU.

But Arab countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Algeria and others, as well as regional countries such as Iran are seeking to preserve their relations with Moscow, given their need for Russian military manufactures and their partnership with Russia regarding maintaining the price of oil in the world market to serve the countries producing it. Syria and Iran are also seeking to do so to enhance their diplomatic influence in their confrontation with the US.

Ihsan Al-Faqih is an Anadolu Agency correspondent.

[Lightly copy-edited for conformity to IC editorial standards.]

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

( Middle East Monitor) – The Arabian Gulf has turned into an arena for confrontation and possible conflict between Iran and Israel now that it has become certain that Iranian elements attacked the MV Helios Ray. The suspicious vehicle-carrier belongs to Israeli businessman Rami Ungar, known for his strong relationship with Mossad Director Yossi Cohen.

According to Iranian newspaper Kayhan, which is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the ship is likely to be affiliated with the Israeli spy agency and is involved in suspicious activities in the Arabian Gulf near Iran’s territorial waters. This makes it a big target that was probably spotted a while ago, despite its cover as a British cargo ship.

Kayhan celebrated the attack and its high level of professionalism as a response to Israel’s attacks on Iranian soil, the most recent of which was the killing of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November. However, the more dangerous matter is that the newspaper linked the wave of normalisation in the Gulf countries and the higher level of Israeli intelligence and security activity targeting Iran to justify the attack on the Helios Ray and warn against similar attacks likely to be launched by elements affiliated with the resistance. It did not give any names or details.

Israel did not deny its involvement in attacks within Iranian territory, both those that targeted nuclear facilities and ports such as Bandar Abbas. This opens the door to conflict between Israel and Iran, not least because Israel announced a month ago that it had sent one of its submarines through the Red Sea, bound for the Arabian Sea, without revealing its mission or the reason for its presence there.

The cold war between Israel and Iran in the Arabian Gulf has become more visible, and it is feared that the repercussions will extend to the Gulf States, turning it into a proxy war whose flame ignites the Gulf ports and oil facilities. This could cause great damage to the economies in the region.

According to the website Marine Traffic and Dryad Global group, concerned with maritime security, MV Helios Ray was heading from the Saudi port of Dammam towards Singapore. However, Israel has launched its own investigation by sending a security delegation to the UAE. This means that the potential fireball is rolling towards the Arab countries and their ports, far from Israel and its direct interests.

The Arab countries are expected to pay the price for the war between Israel and Iran, as the latter will not take into account the interests of its Arab neighbourhood. Moreover, Israel does not care about the security, well-being, and interests of the Arabs. Hence, the attack on the Israeli ship on Thursday was just one episode in the long series of confrontations between Iran and Israel that will not end without causing great damage to the Gulf economies. This makes Israel and its “security” activity in Gulf waters a threat that is no less harmful than the policy pursued by Iran in the Gulf and the Red Sea.

Israel has mostly exacerbated the crisis in the Gulf region, fuelling conflicts therein and opening the door to more political and security complications. Indeed, it has opened the door for new players concerned about Israeli moves, such as Pakistan, which is suspicious about Israeli influence getting closer to the Arabian Sea…

This article first appeared in Arabic in the New Khaleej on 2 March 2021

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

WION: “Iran: Country ‘strongly rejects’ Israeli accusation of mysterious blast”

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt announced their boycott on the small peninsula on June 5, 2017.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo has pushed for an end to the isolation of Qatar because it has destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance of six Sunni Gulf oil monarchies formed in 1982 to block Iran. The Trump administration has attempted to craft an alliance of Israel and the GCC states against Iran.

With the diplomatic efforts of Jared Kushner, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel last summer. This step has made it easier for Israeli submarines to ply the oil Gulf, and opened the way for closer Israeli technological and presumably signals-intelligence cooperation with Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates — all with an eye to deterring Iran.

h/t Wikimedia.

Qatar has been paying Iran $122 million a year for use of its air space, since Qatar Airways could not fly north over Bahrain or west over Saudi Arabia. Having to fly east before turning for Europe has also hurt Qatar Airways profits. Qatar also imported food from Iran during the first year of the blockade. The dependence of Doha on Iran meant that the Gulf Cooperation Council could not take a united hard line against the ayatollahs in Iran.

Likewise, even if it wanted to, Qatar was not in a position to normalize relations with Israel (though it has correct relations with that country anyway).

Although Jared Kushner is claiming credit for the breakthrough, behind the scenes the Saudis are saying that they took the step because they did not want the Qatar situation to be ongoing as the Biden administration took power. Barak Ravid reports at Axios that the Saudis wanted to “clean the table” in advance of Biden’s inauguration.

Biden and his prospective team have been deeply critical of Saudi Arabia over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, over the kingdom’s horrible human rights record domestically, and over the war that Riyadh is pursuing against Yemen, which has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

King Salman seems intent on mollifying the Biden team, and ending the boycott of Qatar is a relatively painless step. Now, when Biden officials meet with the Qatari ambassador, they won’t hear a litany of complaints against the Saudis. It is a relatively small thing, but Saudi Arabia is in big trouble with Washington and the king may think any little bit will help.

King Salman personally sent a letter of invitation to Sheikh Tamim of Qatar to attend Tuesday’s summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It will be the first time in 3 years that the emir has attended.

This thaw may also suggest a diminution of the power of crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who helped engineer the blockade in the first place. Likewise, it suggests that Saudi Arabia is now overruling the United Arab Emirates, where crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed Bin Zayed had been even more committed to isolating Qatar than Bin Salman.

The attack on Qatar was the last battle of the Arab Spring. In 2011-13, the youth revolts in the Arab world were supported by Qatar, and as the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood rose to prominence (taking the presidency in Egypt in 2012), Qatar, long a backer of the Brotherhood, provided them aid.

Saudi Arabia and especially Bin Zayed deeply oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing the fundamentalist, populist party as inherently revolutionary and republican with a small ‘r,’ i.e., they are like the Baptists in the southern colonies who joined George Washington to fight the British crown. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have given billions to the military junta of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt to root out the Brotherhood, after al-Sisi overthrew its elected government in 2013. The UAE has also backed military strong man Khalifa Hiftar in Libya against the more fundamentalist government in Tripoli.

Since Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan is also a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, there has been a cold war for the past nearly a decade between the UAE-Saudi Arabia axis, which supports enlightened secular dictatorship as the model for the region, and the Turkey-Qatar entente, which supports a democratic sort of government in which Muslim fundamentalists can compete for power, just as the Christian Democrats compete for seats in the German parliament. The Middle East is basically Frederick the Great versus the Berlin Republic.

Since the Iranian government is basically the Shiite version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the UAE and Saudi Arabia want to isolate and roll it back, too. It isn’t part of the Turkey-Qatar entente, but they are considered “soft” on Iran by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

One of the Quartet’s demands was the shuttering of the Al Jazeera satellite news channel, which is funded by the Qatari government but has substantial editorial independence. Al Jazeera is pro-democracy and is willing to interview Muslim Brotherhood figures and not simply demonize them. This editorial line, of presenting “all sides of a story,” drives the UAE and Saudi Arabia crazy.

One of the sad things that has happened to Arab culture in the past decade is that the Saudis and the UAE have bought up many the newspapers/ news sites in the region, and the junta in Egypt has ramped up censorship, so that independent news reporting is very rare. Al Jazeera is thus one of the last independent voices, and the 2017 boycott was intended in part to close it down so as to give the Saudis and UAE full spectrum dominance in the region’s media.

The agreement to end the blockade on Qatar will not heal the rift entirely. The Gulf Cooperation Council was in part a security pact. How can the Qataris ever trust the Saudis and the UAE to have their backs? Some proposed a unified electrical grid throughout the Arab littoral of the Gulf. But any such system would open Qatar to being left in the dark if the campaign was renewed. That is, cooperation and vulnerability go together, and Qatar can’t cooperate too closely with people that tried once to destroy it lest it become highly vulnerable.

I also don’t expect Qatar’s correct relations with Iran to change, whatever hopes Mr. Kushner may have in that regard.

The boycott was imposed in June, 2017, with the active encouragement of Donald Trump. Only in the fall of 2017 did Trump back off and begin making up with Qatar. The blockading Quartet countries nevertheless kept the pressure on, preventing Qatar from importing food through Saudi Arabia or from using their air space. They also plotted to destabilize the Qatari currency and trumped up charges against the country of backing terrorism (which is ridiculous).

Back in 2017, the blockading Quartet may have plotted the overthrow and death of the reigning Emir, Sheikh Tamim b. Hamad Al Thani. Ironically, Kushner may have been in on the plot. The Turkish parliament halted any such plans by voting to send hundreds of Troops to Qatar as a signal that the powerful Turkish military would not put up with such a regime change.

Likewise, the US secretary of defense, James Mattis, and the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, worked behind the scenes to protect Qatar. The small state hosts the al-Udeid US Air Force Base, with some 12,000 military personnel, from which US sorties are flown against ISIL in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Qatar is also a major natural gas exporter, in which ExxonMobil, of which Tillerson was the CEO before joining the Trump administration, was well aware and he hoped for an increased share for his old company of this valuable resource.

It should be remembered that Kushner has only partially helped fix what he and Trump broke.

Qatar survived, and has now had a victory of sorts. The major credit likely goes to the incoming Biden administration. We’re seeing signs that Biden’s determination to fix some of the dysfunctions of US Middle East policy is already having an effect, two weeks before he even takes office.

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Bonus video:

Al Jazeera English: “Saudi Arabia, Qatar ‘agree to open airspace, land and sea border’”