Kuwait- In-depth analysis of the results of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit, which was held in Kuwait this week, indicates that this is the first time since the invasion and occupation of Kuwait that the six countries activate the collective strategy of Gulf security, when discussing aggressions against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the border with Yemen and its battle against the Houthis. This signifies that the “rapid deployment task force” launched from the Kuwait Summit aims at collectively confronting terrorism, not at establishing a common semi-army to intervene in this or that regional conflict between Arab Gulf countries. Close scrutiny also reveals that the main message directed at Iran is not that of the desire of the GCC to engage it in dialogue on its own terms, but rather that of the willingness to engage in dialogue with it under international terms of dialogue and engagement. In other words, the Kuwait Summit has demanded that the Islamic Republic of Iran not rebel against international legitimacy and international terms of agreement, but rather be in keeping with international rules of conduct and remove the fears and doubts of neighboring countries. Holding the GCC summit also coincided with noteworthy calls to broadening the dialogue between the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (5+1) and Iran to include major countries in the region, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. Most curious and noteworthy was the US stance towards such calls, which can be summed up by welcoming the idea of postponing imposing further sanctions on Iran through a Security Council resolution, under the pretext of complying with the demands of countries in the region to widen the 5+1 dialogue, in parallel with increasing talk of granting Iran a one month time extension to change its stances towards international demands regarding its nuclear issue. There were many noteworthy occurrences that took place in Kuwait during the GCC summit, some of them falling under the nature of relations between the six countries – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Sultanate of Oman and the State of Qatar – and others indicating the strategic directions taken by the council. First, there was the issue of the GCC Secretary-General, over which Qatar and Bahrain disagreed and which nearly led to the failure of the Kuwait Summit, had it not been for the insistence of the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on finding a formula that would prevent failure. This is the first time in which the next GCC Secretary-General has not been selected, but rather the country from which the Secretary-General will come has been determined. This is new for the Cooperation Council, as it has traditionally ended its summits by having the leaders select a specific person as Secretary-General of the GCC, knowing that there is a system of turns by which candidates are selected based on their nationality and the country whose turn it is. What took place at the Kuwait Summit, when the summit supported a candidate from Bahrain and not the candidate whose name was put forth by Bahrain, was an innovation on the traditions of the GCC and a new formula introduced into the work method of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Similarly, this is the first time in which a country in the GCC imposes its veto on the candidate for Secretary-General of another country. This is why the Kuwait Summit's recommendations put forward the candidacy of a country, not a person. And that is a precedent. Indeed, it had become customary for countries to put forth their candidates without objection, in keeping with tradition, and what took place was a departure from the usual and the conventional, as Qatar objected to Bahrain's candidate, former Information Minister Mohammed Al-Mutawa, who, in Qatar's opinion, had insulted its Emir, while, in Bahrain's opinion, the King of Bahrain had been insulted by senior officials in Qatar. The outcome of the matter was that Qatar wanted to extend the term of the current GCC Secretary-General, Qatari Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah, who will have completed three terms by March 2010, but failed. As for Bahrain, it was forced, effectively and de facto, to give up Mohammed Al-Mutawa in exchange for securing its place in the Secretariat-General. This had been the least damaging formula and it allowed the Kuwait Summit to avoid failure. Now Bahrain should select someone to fulfill such a task in harmony with the Gulf environment. Second, there was the issue of Iran. Kuwait behaved decisively when it did not provide any opportunity for the possibility of inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the GCC summit, imposing on future conferences the Kuwaiti approach, based on the fact that the Cooperation Council could not accept the president of a neighboring country because the Cooperation Council was for Gulf countries, and that what had taken place in Doha when Ahmadinejad was invited to the GCC summit was the exception and not a tradition to be followed. With regards to the nuclear issue, the Kuwait Summit stressed the commitment to international partnership and to the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It spoke of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and welcomed the efforts of the 5+1 countries to resolve the crisis through diplomatic means and political settlement. However, the summit made it clear that what was required of Iran today was not for it to rebel but rather to comply with international rules of conduct, to contribute and fulfill what they should for the success of peaceful negotiations, and to remove the doubts and fears of neighboring countries. Indeed, the Kuwait Summit defined the responsibilities incumbent upon Iran after making it clear that Iran had the right to use nuclear energy peacefully under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Thus the stances of GCC countries in the summit's closing statement were equivalent to conditions imposed on Iran, which is proof that they continue to doubt Iran. In parallel with the Kuwait Summit, there were noteworthy and perhaps mixed messages from the United States with regard to sanctions against Iran. Indeed, on the one hand, talk of a one month extension for compliance, or else, was prominent. Yet, on the other hand, several sources and indications pointed to the fact that the West is looking for a pretext or an excuse to avoid imposing sanctions on Iran now. Here the stance of Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifah was quite worthy of note. Indeed, in an interview with Al-Hayat on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on the same day the GCC summit began, he said that imposing additional sanctions on Iran was “not a fair measure”, because the basis for strengthening sanctions was an “incomplete” dialogue that had taken place with the 5+1, one that lacked a dimension of the utmost importance. What is important about his statements is just not the necessity of broadening the dialogue to include the countries of the region, but rather tying the failure of the 5+1 dialogue, and what this requires in terms of sanctions, to countries of the region not participating with the 5+1 in the dialogue with Iran. On the same day, Deputy Assistant US Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman was asserting in Manama that “I perfectly agree with the fact that we have to take the interests of the Gulf countries into consideration in these talks (…) and that we will not be able to ignore their interests. Bahrain has good advice for us. They are Iran's neighbors and have diplomatic relations with Iran, unlike us. We will seek to obtain the best advice from Gulf countries for these talks”. He also added “I will take this suggestion with me to Washington to make sure that our policy-makers take it into consideration”. High-ranking diplomatic sources, both Arab and Western, have asserted that there were in the United States and Germany, and perhaps in France and Britain as well, those who seek to make use of doubts over the form of the dialogue established with Iran (5+1) and of demands of major countries in the region participating in this dialogue as an incentive to delay imposing additional sanctions on Iran, feeling that Iran would meet escalation with escalation, instead of pressures leading to a favorable response. And that is what a high-ranking official participating in the Manama Debate has asserted, conveying from Iran's Foreign Minister that strengthened sanctions would lead to a decision to increase uranium enrichment to 20 percent. The Kuwait Summit has sent headline messages to Tehran and has not publicly revealed whether all of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries were heading in the direction of widening the base of dialogue in order to avoid further escalation. The summit has also supported the sovereignty of the United Arab Emirates over the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, calling upon Iran to engage in dialogue over them. Moreover, the Kuwait Summit avoided delving into a comprehensive strategy towards Iraq and also towards Palestine. The Kuwait Summit satisfied the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by inviting it to quickly engage in Iraq's national reconciliation in order to ensure the success of the all-encompassing political process “which should include all of the components of the Iraqi people without exception or discrimination”. It satisfied Kuwait by asserting that Iraq must complete the implementation of Security Council resolutions, knowing that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Kuwait Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah made clear in his interview to Al-Hayat on the eve of the summit that Iraq coming out of the mandate of Chapter VII of the UN Charter is connected to its complete implementation of resolutions. Concerning the Palestinian issue, the GCC summit made sure to strengthen stable principles without talking new initiatives. Furthermore, according to informed sources, US officials notified Gulf officials on the eve of the summit that the US Administration was serious in its resolve to move again to resume Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, however on the basis of starting from the borders of the Palestinian state so as not to leave negotiations frozen in the disagreement over settlement-building. The Kuwait Summit also supported the decision of the special Arab League council to hold a special UN Security Council session to announce the establishment of the State of Palestine on its territory occupied in 1967, however without setting a date, as it welcomed the European Union statement which asserted the right of the Palestinians to Jerusalem as their capital within the framework of establishing their state, and called for “bringing together” the Palestinians and “unifying their stance”. The message of Yemeni President Abdullah Saleh to the Kuwait Summit was that he wants the Gulf Cooperation Council to be a partner for Yemen in its regional, economic and political distress. The response of the Kuwait Summit was that the GCC countries are against the division of Yemen and are willing to provide support to prevent it from taking place, but that partnership with Yemen will not yet reach the level of including it as a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It was also noted that some of the ministers, such as the Foreign Minister of Bahrain for example, made a distinction between the aggression against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by parties in Yemen, and the battle of the Yemeni government against the Houthis, considering the latter to be “an internal matter”. Qatar and Oman also made a distinction between the two and are stringent about the necessity of dialogue to resolve the crisis with the Houthis, at a time when the Yemeni government has completely rejected the regional dialogue – wanted by Qatar and Iran – and asserted, in the words of General Ali Al-Ansi in his interview to Al-Hayat, that there would be no dialogue with the Houthis and no alternative to military victory, which is coming soon, as he said. As for “complete solidarity” and “absolute support for its right to defend its territory”, there was unanimous agreement without reservation from all the leaders of Gulf Cooperation Council countries over the fact that “any infringement on the security and stability of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an infringement on the security, stability and safety of all of the council's member-states”. On the economic aspect, the Kuwait Summit has taken practical steps that are commendable, most prominently setting off the “monetary union”, commissioning a study to establish a project that would connect the GCC countries by railway, taking steps towards equality in treatment between the citizens of the GCC in education, establishing a regional commission for academic accreditation and assessment, strengthening food and water security, and, of course, inaugurating the electrical interconnection.
