The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Iran Threat, 1981-2021

Abstract

The GCC is a regional alliance formed in 1981 to deliver closer cooperation between the six Arab Gulf monarchies (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). In turn, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a revolutionary regime which, since its founding in 1979, has sought to expand its influence by fermenting unrest in the Gulf monarchies. The objective of this study is therefore to understand how the Iran threat has influenced the GCC from its founding in 1981, through to the Al-‘Ula Declaration of 2021, which brought to an end the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and several other GCC countries, in which different perceptions about the scale and severity of the Iran threat played an important role. After the identification of a literature gap in chapter one, chapters two and three then analyse the GCC’s founding, the threat perceptions of its six members and what influences them, alongside several key episodes in GCC history and how they have shaped how the Iran threat is perceived. The research finds that, though the GCC should not be exclusively conceptualised as a defensive alliance to contain Iran, this is one of the main threads in the GCC’s history. From 1981 to 2021, perceptions of the Iran threat may have waxed and waned in conjunction with an evolving regional context, however they have remained a central preoccupation of the GCC, particularly its three Iran hawks (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE).