At still another level, it is impossible to attend a academic Arab conference on the security situation in the Gulf without encountering a wide range of voices that really believe the United States is engaged in a secret dialogue, if not plot, to create an alliance with Iran, betray its Arab allies, and back Shi'ite instead of Sunnis. The "conspiracy theory school" of Arab Gulf opinion reflects the critical limits to strategic studies and the media in the Arab Gulf; a failure to ever examine numbers, facts, and trends; the details of the regional military balance; and the details of U.S., British, and French military cooperation and exercises with Arab forces. Like their Iranian counterparts, these Arab voices choose a conspiracy theory, push it to extremes, and never seek to verify the underlying facts.
At the same time, Iranian fears and ambitions are the mirror image of Arab views as well. They are built on some thirty years of war and tension with Arab states. Iran sees Saudi Arabia as a nation that supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, the United States in liberating Kuwait, and as an enemy backing Sunni jihadist forces in Syria. Iran is reacting to de facto Arab military alliances with the United States - as well as Britain and France. Iran has its own religious and revolutionary ambitions, and ties to Shi'ites and other sects outside Iran.
Iranian fears of the U.S. alliance with the Arab Gulf states emerge out of a history of confrontation with U.S. forces in the Gulf that took the form of active combat during the "tanker war" in 1987-1988. They respond to the times the United States seemed to present the threat of invasion of Iran after the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, when Iranians feared that might launch a major intervention to force regime change on Iran.
If one talks to Iranians in the Gulf and Europe today, some Iranians have real hope that the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 over the nuclear issue will put an end to sanctions and open up Iran to a more moderate and progressive regime.
At the same time, many Iranians who want a more moderate regime still deeply distrust the United States and the West, and see Iran as under threat when it should be the leading power in the Gulf. They see the sectarian struggle in Islam as a growing struggle between Shi'ites and Sunni extremists, see Iran as facing encirclement by hostile states, and see Iran as the victim of a massive military build up by the Gulf states and the United States. They often fear U.S. ties to the Arab states as much as the Arab states fear U.S. actions that would align the United States with Iran.
Other more hardline Iranians feel the United States and Europe will accept nothing less than a weakened and vulnerable Iran, drastic regime change, and U.S. and Arab dominance. This kind of thinking is particularly common among the most hardline clerics and officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), but even quiet personal conversations with moderate Iranians in Europe and the Gulf make it clear that most Iranians see a threat to their nation and culture, question U.S. motives and goals, and worry about Sunni extremism.
"Arab Spring" versus National Survival
These tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states cannot be separated from the political upheavals in other parts of the Arab world, tensions with the United States, and the other factors driving the full mix of security issues in the region. They are part of a game of three dimensional chess where there are no rules and the piece often seem to move on their own, but every regional power has to play.
For what should be obvious reasons - but which seem to be obvious to few in the West - Saudi and other Gulf officials and officers - and key members of royal families -- do not see the upheavals in the Arab world as some kind of "Spring" or prelude to political reform, democracy, and development. Like Iranian leaders, officials, and officers, they put national stability and security first.
This is not simply a matter of regime survival - although no leader or regime in world wants to "go gentle into that great night." Most see the faults in their country and political system, but they also see the cost of every upheaval to date in terms of massive political instability, failed new political systems and governance, economic crisis, refugees, and human suffering.
They look across the region and they see chaos in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, and Yemen. With a considerable Sunni bias, they see instability in Bahrain and see a U.S. and European emphasis on "human rights" and "democracy" that so far has done little more than devastate the nations most affected and directly threaten their country and their political system.
The more sophisticated and informed Saudi and Gulf leaders and officials do not share conspiracy theories about U.S. plots with Iran or U.S. and European efforts to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. They do, however, see U.S. and allied efforts in Iraq as having led to the creation of a de facto Shi'ite dictatorship in there, as well as the destruction of the Iraqi forces that served as a military counterbalance to Iran until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
They see U.S. and European efforts at reform as being just as ineffective and destabilizing in Afghanistan, and as having been a key factor in Mubarak's fall and the creation of political and economic chaos in an Egypt - a chaos where many Arab officials and analysts privately question how long the Egyptian military can bring some degree of order and stability. Arab leaders see a lack of any concerted or useful U.S. and European effort in Libya or Tunisia. They see a focus on Shi'ite rights in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that ignores the risk of violence and instability, and the role Iran has played in supporting such Shi'ite actions - a role they sometimes exaggerate but which U.S. and European intelligence experts and diplomats do feel is real to some degree.
Western experts may argue with some justification that the upheavals in the Arab world since 2011 have been the product of decades of authoritarian repression, weak and ineffective governance, failed social policies, poor economic development and growing inequality of income distribution, corruption, and crony capitalism - points made equally clear by Arab experts in the series of Arab Development Reports issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The fact remains, however, that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies have valid reasons to see these upheavals as direct threats on or near their borders, and to the two other remaining monarchies in Morocco and Jordan, and can argue that they were far better at meeting popular needs with their oil wealth than any of the Arab states with titular presidents and pseudo democracies. It is also interesting to note how many Russian and Chinese diplomats and scholars have the same impression of the results of the upheavals in the Arab world and the Western response - views that strike an immediate chord with Arab experts at conferences and meetings in the region.
It is hard to argue why most citizens of any Arab Gulf state or Arab monarchy would envy or want to emulate any citizen of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, or Yemen. Whatever hopes outsiders may have in the eventual triumph of modernization, democracy, and development, it is far from clear why anyone in their right minds would want to live through any of the examples of such transitions to date. At present, the best any outside power can do is to try to find the least bad course of action. There are no good sides, merely ones that offer less risk and less potential for future damage.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states view the Arab spring in different terms from Iran. The political upheavals in the Arab world have so far benefited Iran. It may face a greater threat from Sunni extremism, but it has had new opportunities in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. It no longer faces a stable and largely hostile Egypt, and it has new opportunities to try to make use of the Shi'ites in the Arab Gulf states and Yemen.
The Arab-Israeli Peace Process and Preventive Strikes
The tensions between Iran one the one side and Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states on the other are further complicated by the role of Israel and its relations with the United States. For Iran, Israel has been as much a convenient political tool as a serious threat. While some Iranian leaders really do oppose Israel's right to exist - and see its mature thermonuclear-armed missile forces as a serious threat - many others have seen demonizing Israel as a way to justify Iran's military build-up, nuclear programs, role in Lebanon and Syria, and Islamic legitimacy in spite of its Shi'ite character.
