New Gulf streams developing

This week, Donald Trump vowed to hit Kuh-e Kolang (Pickaxe Mountain), Iran's fortified site his regime suspects of harbouring nuclear activities. This threat comes after a 'maximum pressure' campaign that doesn't seem to have succeeded in pushing Tehran into abandoning its nuclear programme. Instead, in resuming attacks on Iran, Trump's painted a bull's-eye on Gulf countries. US bases in the region are 'high risk regional targets', and 'active participants' that have invited retaliatory attacks from Iran. Collateral damage is turning these 'strategic assets' into net burdens.

The changing nature of warfare, with the use of drones, adds to the diminishing faith the Gulf states are having in the US and its air defence systems. Caught in a conflict they did not choose - and cannot escape until it stops - Gulf countries are considering options that include strategic and security diversification for short-term insulation towards long-term autonomy. But that may not be enough. Whether the US likes it or not, GCC needs to work with Iran. Suggestions include replicating the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which led to the formation of European Economic Community, which, in turn, morphed into today's EU. Building institutionalised economic interdependence is challenging, more so given asymmetries in governance and economies in the Gulf region, and absence of an external power to incentivise, fund and enforce like the US did for ECSC.

The way forward could be to create foundational trust through micro-agreements. A 'GCC-plus Iran' arrangement is not about walking away from Washington, as the US-Saudi civil nuclear deal signed on Wednesday makes evident. It is about building an engagement that makes coexistence the default option.