Perceived threat from Iran prompts new approaches
Arms purchases on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf used to follow a predictable pattern: for governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, they seemed as much about acquiring trophies as about strengthening national security. The prestige of owning the newest technology that the United States, the United Kingdom or France was willing to sell often seemed as important as any actual threat assessment. However, this pattern is changing as some Gulf states perceive a growing threat from Iran.
Long among the world’s biggest buyers of high-tech weapons, the Gulf states have dramatically increased their military purchases over the last year. According to a US Congressional Research Service report, of all developing nations in 2008 the UAE and Saudi Arabia spent the most on arms-transfer agreements, committing $9.7 billion and $8.7bn respectively. Investments in new weapons are being driven by a more focused, strategically driven approach. Some Gulf rulers are placing a new focus on weapons and alliances that are clearly directed against Iran, in an effort to signal that cross-Gulf adventurism will not be tolerated.
The Gulf states’ fears of a nuclear Iran are less about potential obliteration than regional hegemony. These fears are not new. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed in 1981, in response to the Iranian Revolution two years earlier. The idea that Iran might react to any US or Israeli attack by lashing out at its neighbours across the Gulf has long been discussed. The notion has on occasion been reinforced by intemperate comments by Iranian officials, most notably in June 2007 when a former defence minister, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, told an interviewer from Defense News that Tehran would respond to any US attack by directing a ‘missile blitz’ against the Arab Gulf states.
This prompted Washington to announce a $20bn military aid package for the six GCC countries. European suppliers have also been active in the region. In 2009 Saudi Arabia took delivery of the first of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft in a $9bn deal. In 2008 the Saudi air force increased an order of Airbus A-330 transport aircraft from two to six. Meanwhile, the UAE, having just taken delivery of the last of 80 American-built F-16 aircraft, is reported to be in talks with France to purchase 60 Rafale fighters. In February 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed talks were under way to sell the Rafale to Kuwait. AgustaWestland announced in July that it had signed a deal to sell 18 AW139 helicopters to the Qatar air force.
Missile defence
Nowhere is the new trend clearer than in the area of missile defence. In 2008 the UAE agreed to spend $6.5bn on a Patriot air-defence system, a significant investment that makes sense only as a deterrent against Iran. More recently, media reports from both Saudi Arabia and Russia during October indicated that Riyadh had offered to purchase the S-400, Russia’s most advanced anti-missile shield. This would be an important broadening of its pool of arms suppliers. Saudi Arabia’s purchase is reportedly conditional on Moscow’s dropping plans to sell an earlier generation of the same technology (the S-300 and the Tor-M1) to Iran.
Though Russia has never exported the S-400, the Saudi offer has obvious appeal, as it would provide a long sought-after toehold in the lucrative Saudi arms market. The price being discussed is $4–7bn. This is significantly larger than the $800 million commonly cited as the value of Iran’s S-300 deal, which was signed in 2005 but never moved forward and has since been formally frozen by Russia, after strong criticism from the US and Israel.
This relatively new interest on the part of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in missile defence indicates a new focus on Iran as a potential enemy that needs to be deterred. In a speech in Jordan in April 2009, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington, referred to Iran as ‘a paper tiger with claws of steel’. Accusing Washington of handing control of Iraq over to Tehran, he warned that ‘Iran is emerging stronger at the expense of Arab interests’, and denounced Arab disunity, which furthered this process, he said.
Long-standing tensions
Cross-Gulf tensions are not new. Iran maintained a territorial claim to Bahrain into the 1970s, and remarks by Iranian leaders hinting at a revival of that claim sparked protests in Bahrain as recently as February 2009. The UAE and Iran have disputed control over three strategically placed Gulf islands – Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs – for three decades, despite the UAE’s emergence as Iran’s main external trading partner. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have also had problematic relations with Iran. Saudi–Iranian tensions led to protests at the 1987 Hajj in Mecca that left more than 400 people dead – many of them Iranians. Iran is generally believed to have been responsible for the bombing of a major Saudi desalination plant on the Gulf coast in 1988, and to have had a hand in the Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 American servicemen and one Saudi in 1996. Kuwait has long blamed the Iranians for terrorist attacks on its soil during the Iran–Iraq War.
Demographics and geography are not in the Gulf states’ favour. At 29.8m, the combined native population of the six Arab Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) is well below Iran’s 66.4m. Iran controls the entire northern side of the Gulf. Iran is a majority Shia country, while all of the Arab Gulf states are Sunni-ruled but contain significant Shia minorities (except Bahrain, which has a Shia majority). This adds to Arab fears that Iran seeks the role of regional hegemon.
The last year has seen a series of moves designed to signal Gulf Arab resolve in the face of a growing Iranian threat. There have been efforts to build new military relationships with outside powers. Saudi Arabia’s proposed missile-defence deal with Russia is one example of this. Another is Oman’s initiation of joint air-defence exercises with India in October 2009 (though Oman generally has a good relationship with Iran). An Indian government statement said that the week-long Exercise Eastern Bridge would involve six Indian Darin-I Jaguar fighters, along with refuelling aircraft and the participation of around 135 officers and enlisted personnel. While Oman and India have cooperated on defence matters since 2006, the level of joint activity ‘has increased substantially in the current year’, it said, expressing the hope that this joint exercise would serve as a building block for greater military cooperation with the other GCC countries.
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