by Dr. James M. Dorsey
If there is one lesson the Gulf States have learned from the reduced commitment of the US to the region and the strains in US-Saudi relations, it is that putting one’s eggs in one basket is risky business.
CIA map, US Library of Congress, via picryl
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,613, June 23, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel is proving to
the Gulf States that it is a more reliable partner in some respects than
big powers like the US, China, or Russia. But the limits of cooperation
with Israel could come to the forefront at a time of economic crisis in
which the Gulf States are likely to have to renegotiate longstanding
social contracts.
The Firefly,
an Israeli-built loitering kamikaze drone, part of the Spike family of
missiles that the Jewish state has sold to various European nations, may
be one reason why Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, have cozied
up to Israel in a seeming reversal of their past support for Palestinian
rights.
If there is one lesson the Gulf States have
learned from the reduced commitment of the US to the region and the
strains in US-Saudi relations, it is that putting one’s eggs in one
basket is risky business.
That has not prevented the US from continuing to secure its place as the region’s foremost arms supplier, as recent arms and related commercial deals prove.
The US Defense Department announced
a $2.6 billion Saudi deal to acquire 1,000 air-to-surface and anti-ship
missiles from Boeing. Within days, Saudi Arabia’s Al Tadrea Manufacturing Company tweeted
that it had reached an agreement with Oshkosh Defense to establish a
joint venture to manufacture armed vehicles in the kingdom.
The Public Investment Fund,
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, disclosed separately that it had
recently taken a $713.7 million stake in Boeing at a time when the
company, already suffering major setbacks because of its 737-Max fiasco,
took a significant hit as a result of the collapse of the civilian
aviation industry in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
The continued Saudi arms focus on the US has not
deprived China of opportunities. China stepped in to help Saudi Arabia
produce unmanned military vehicles after the US refused to sell its MQ-9
Reaper killer drone to the kingdom. Riyadh expects production to start
next year.
Like China, Russia has been urging Saudi Arabia to
purchase its acclaimed S-400 anti-missile defense system. So far, the
kingdom, having watched the US cancel NATO-member Turkey’s purchase of
US F-35 fighter jets and its co-production agreement of some of the
plane’s components after it acquired the Russian system, has been
reluctant to take the Russians up on their offer.
The limitations of Saudi-Russian cooperation have
since become obvious with April’s price war between the two major oil
producers, which sent oil markets into a tailspin from which they are
unlikely to recover any time soon.
Israel, like China and Russia and unlike the US,
puts no problematic human rights or weapons use restrictions on arms
sales in accordance with international law.
But Israel has a leg up on its Chinese and Russian
competitors, who maintain close ties to Iran. Israel shares with Saudi
Arabia and the UAE a perception of Iran as an existential threat and a
destabilizing force in the Middle East that at the very least needs to
be contained.
To be sure, that is a perception that Saudi Arabia
and the UAE see reflected in the US’s maximum pressure policy toward
Iran, which aims to force the Islamic Republic to change its behavior if
not its regime.
The problem is that maximum pressure two years into the imposition of harsh US economic sanctions has produced little result.
Add to that the fact that the US has proven to be
an unreliable ally when the chips are down. This has persuaded the UAE
and other smaller Gulf states to reach out to Iran to ensure that their
critical national infrastructure does not become a target in any future
major US-Iranian military conflagration.
The watershed moment for the Gulf States was when
the US failed to respond forcefully last spring and summer to alleged
Iranian attacks on key Saudi oil facilities as well as oil tankers off
the coast of the UAE.
Weeks later, the Trump administration, in a bid to
reassure the Gulf States, sent troops and Patriot anti-missile defense
systems to Saudi Arabia to help it protect its oil installations,
although the US has since withdrawn two of those systems.
It took the killing of a US military contractor in
December 2019 for the US to respond to dozens of Iranian-backed attacks
on American targets in Iraq. When it did, with the killing in January
of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the Gulf States privately
celebrated the demise of their nemesis but also feared that it was
overkill that might bring the Middle East to the brink of all-out war.
The Gulf States are likely to find that
cooperation with Israel has its limits too. Israel may be eager to sell
weaponry and have the capability to push back at Iran in Syria. If need
be, Israel can also severely damage, if not take out, Iranian nuclear
and missile facilities in military strikes that the Gulf States would be
unable to carry out.
But ties to Israel remain a sensitive issue in the
Gulf and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world. And Israel has so far
restricted sales to non-lethal equipment and technology. That could
change with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the
establishment of formal diplomatic relations.
Public opinion, however, may be one reason why the
Gulf States have refused to turn unofficial relations into diplomatic
recognition, suggesting that there may be greater public empathy for
Palestinians than Gulf rulers wish to admit.
That could count for more with Gulf rulers who are
finding it increasingly difficult to provide either jobs or public
goods and services as a result of the global economic crisis and the
collapse of oil prices.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-gulf-states-weapons/
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