Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s official trip to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has prompted anxiety in Tehran. Erdogan arrived in Riyadh on Monday night after a visit to Bahrain, and he is scheduled to go to Qatar next.
A hardline Iranian site has again engaged in incitement against Bahrain. Tasnim, which is close to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C), the controversial political-military organization that is spearheading Iran’s military interventions in the Middle East, claimed in an article that the overthrow of the Bahraini government is a “public call.”
The introduction of the draft in Gulf monarchies — after decades of sovereign statehood — presents an interesting puzzle. What are the reasons behind the newly implemented conscription? What broader implications does this phenomenon have for the Gulf? This essay addresses these questions.
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Alex Vatanka, Gerald Feierstein, and Charles Lister provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including U.S.-Middle East relations in the new Trump administration, the view of Trump’s inauguration from Tehran, the Gulf’s ‘wait and see’ approach to the new administration, and Russia’s public position on Syria talks at the outset of talks in Astana.
In this week’s briefing, MEI experts Gerald Feierstein, Robert S. Ford, Yousef Munayyer, Eran Etzion, and Ruba Husari provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the ongoing confirmation hearings for key members of the incoming administration’s foreign policy team, the upcoming Syria talks, the recently convened Paris talks on Israel and Palestine, and OPEC’s assessment of its agreement to cap oil output.
The leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is publicly committed to good relations with Bahrain. And yet Tehran’s campaign to undermine the ruling authorities in Manama continues unabated. The latest incendiary reactions from Tehran came in response to the January 15 executions in Bahrain of three men who had been convicted of killing three police officers in 2014.
Salman al-Dossary, Editor-in- Chief of al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, observed that the Iranian response to the January 1 terror attack on a Bahraini police station, killing a police officer and allowing prisoners to escape, proves that there is no basis for a constructive dialogue between the Arab Gulf states and Iran.
In its first official reaction to the fall of Aleppo, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) hailed the seizure of Syria’s second largest city as a “divine gift” to the Iranian regime and a prelude to bigger achievements by Iran and its regional proxies across the Middle East.
A hardline Iranian news site that is controlled by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) continues to seek to incite the Bahraini Shiite population. Quoting a Bahraini activist, the site propagated that the “international posture toward the political situation in Bahrain is merely for show” and aimed to “neutralize the Shiite opposition in the country.”
Comment:
Regional Cooperation Series
This Policy Paper is part of the Middle East Institute’s Regional Cooperation Series. Throughout 2016, MEI will be releasing several policy papers by renowned scholars and experts exploring possibilities to foster regional cooperation across an array of sectors. The purpose is to highlight the myriad benefits and opportunities associated with regional cooperation, and the high costs of the continued business-as-usual model of competition and intense rivalry.
The United States will confront a new and very different set of challenges in its relationship with the G.C.C. states over the coming four years. For the first time since the end of World War II, a new administration will come to power in Washington next January facing a ‘trust deficit’ in its management of relations with its G.C.C. partners. The overwhelming Congressional vote to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the JASTA legislation was interpreted in the region as a lessening of popular support for the U.S.-G.C.C. relationship.
In this special edition of our weekly briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Robert S. Ford, Eran Etzion, Gonul Tol, Alex Vatanka, and Gerald Feierstein provide analysis on the impact of Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. Presidential Election on the future of Middle East policy, its particular effect on the crises in Iraq and Syria, and how the news has been received across the region, including in Turkey, Iran, and the GCC.
A number of Iranian hardline media outlets are presently running articles condemning the Bahraini government for its treatment of the country’s Shiite political leadership. On October 20, the offices of Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, a large Shiite political party, were reportedly raided by the Bahraini authorities. Calling it a “historical and strategic mistake,” the Iranian foreign ministry is urging Manama to reach a political settlement on the issue of Shiite political representation in Bahrain.
In this Weekly Briefing, MEI experts Robert S. Ford, Gonul Tol, and Ruba Husari provide analysis on issues including the UNSC’s inability to administer diplomatic solutions in Syria, the rebuilding of diplomatic ties between Russia and Turkey, and OPEC’s ongoing consideration of how to control member state oil production.
Diplomatic Dead-End on Syria
Robert S. Ford, Senior Fellow
“[Food insecurity has] the potential to amplify destabilization, engender violence, and even accelerate state failure processes in an already geopolitically charged region”
– Andy Spiess in Food Security in the GCC Economies (2012)
I. Introduction