Introduction

GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE) produce 28% of the world's oil supply. The region is of strategic importance to global economic stability and the U.S. has an important stake in its political stability. The destabilization of any Gulf country would have negative consequences for U.S. interests. The political upheavals and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East in the wake of the “Arab Spring,” 2010-2011, have left GCC countries feeling increasingly vulnerable. Unprecedented level of sectarian strife and the regional ambitions of an increasingly powerful and assertive Iran are causes of deep concern in Gulf capitals. The former poses serious risks to the internal stability of GCC nations while the latter challenges their status in the region and their own sense of security.

Many factors shaped the formation of the modern Gulf states, especially western colonization and oil wealth. The emerging political tensions in the region are not new to an area that has been historically defined by tribalism and allegiance to religion, families and clans. What is new, however, is the growing Sunni-Shia divide that is dominating the political debate in the Gulf and in the Middle East in general. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent emergence of a Shia-led government for the first time since the country was created by the British following War World I (perpetuating the historical Sunni dominance since the Ottoman period) has shifted the balance of political power. Sunni-led Iraq, a historical strategic counterweight to Shia Iran, is now gone.

The current tension between Iran and GCC is not new: pre-revolutionary Iran viewed itself as the pre-eminent Gulf power based on its long historical, economic and military role in the region.

This view of Iranian power expanded during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 energized by an aggressive religious fervor with the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Iran's new revolutionary Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, stated famously that he wanted to export the Iranian theocratic governance model to other Arab Muslim countries—an aspiration that was quashed by the decimation caused by the Iran-Iraq war. Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran resumed a more expansionist foreign policy in the region. Moving beyond its longstanding territorial disputes with UAE and Kuwait, Tehran took a more aggressive stance in the ongoing sectarian conflicts in the Middle East. It is a fact that Iran exploits opportunities to enhance its regional profile at the expense of its Arab neighbors.