The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East: Between Iran and the “Arab Spring”, by Yoel Guzansky (review)

In spite of its title, this book is less about reform in the Gulf states and more about the recalibration of their security strategy and threat perceptions in response to the Arab Spring and Iran’s continuing ascendance as a regional player. Yoel Guzansky offers a fascinating insight into the balance of power dynamics behind the scenes of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as it struggles to rid itself of internal rivalries while grappling with a growing number of internal and external threats. Ultimately, Guzansky suggests that each Gulf state must put aside its own narrow national interests, especially in the security realm, and push for greater economic, political, and military integration if the GCC is to succeed in riding out longer term threats to regional stability.

Guzansky begins with a useful historical summary of the development of the GCC, which emerged in response to the Iranian Revolution, highlighting the bloc’s failure to deter Saddam Husayn’s invasion of Kuwait and its continued reliance on external actors to guarantee its security. Indeed this book’s analysis of competition between the individual GCC states and their differing threat perceptions is its most original contribution, rather than its examination of the much-discussed geopolitical rivalry with Iran. Guzansky then moves into a country-by-country evaluation of the internal and external security challenges faced by each of the Gulf monarchies, before considering the effectiveness of the GCC response to the Arab Spring. Unlike most other works published on the post–Arab Spring Gulf, Guzansky broadens his analysis to include Gulf-Israel relations, one of the more fascinating sections of this book which is occasionally discussed in the news media, but is curiously absent from much of the academic literature. Guzansky documents the secretive rapprochement largely between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel, marked by high-level government and diplomatic contacts, many of which came to light through Wikileaks’ release of American (and more recently, Saudi) diplomatic cables. He concludes that shared geostrategic interests, particularly surrounding Iran and concerns over United States policy in the region, are behind this unofficial dialogue, however without a resolution to the Palestinian issue full normalization remains off the table.

Guzansky’s analysis of the GCC’s combination of “soft power” strategies and military deterrence to prevent Arab Spring unrest from taking hold in the Gulf monarchies is excellent, particularly his nuanced assessment of the Peninsula Shield force’s involvement in suppressing the uprising in Bahrain. However, his treatment of sectarian demographics in the Gulf as a strategic threat risks oversimplifying what is also a complex socio-economic issue. Guzansky too often falls into the trap of perceiving sectarian tensions as yet another manifestation of the geopolitical rivalry with Iran, in which Gulf Shi‘a are ipso facto presented as a fifth column sympathetic to Iran. This approach tends to gloss over the fact that there is very little evidence of post–Arab Spring Iranian interference in Gulf Shi‘a communities, which have for the most part denied any ideological affinity with Iran, couching their grievances in the language of nationalism rather than revolutionary Shi‘ism.

While the theoretical basis to Guzansky’s analysis of Iran’s strategic threat to the Gulf is solid, he at times draws on unreliable sources, including state-run media, to suggest that Iran is directly interfering in the GCC’s internal affairs. Guzansky’s claims that the Iranian nuclear program increases Iran’s leverage over Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is largely unsubstantiated, although he is of course correct in identifying Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a major geostrategic threat. Similarly, Guzansky overemphasizes the extent of Iran’s historic role in stoking sectarian tensions in Bahrain, linking the failed Iran-backed coup attempt of 1981 with the 1994–99 period of civil unrest sometimes termed the “Bahraini Intifada.” While the former lacked widespread support among...