Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: Power Politics in Transition.
London, I.B. Tauris 2003. Bibliography, index, pp. 181. Hardback.

The starting point for this book is the decision of Britain to withdraw from the Gulf in 1968 and the actual withdrawal in 1971. The central thesis states that no other superpower was ready to replace Britain in the Gulf at the time. The USA was occupied in Vietnam while the Soviet Union was still maintaining a cautious foreign policy. The author is strongly convinced that when British power was in decline, other superpowers never established unquestionable dominance or control over the region. Against this vacuum, politics in the Gulf went ‘local’, leaving Iran, the strongest and most ambitious and capable regional force to determine and reorder the political landscape. Therefore, the book argues that after British withdrawal, the new Gulf order was achieved by emphasising local concerns, thus giving regional powers (Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states) supremacy over external forces in shaping the politics of the area.

The book consists of six chapters and an epilogue. The first chapter is a very brief historical sketch of the main threads in inter Gulf relations with the main focus on Iran, mainly Iran’s territorial claims which remained dormant under Pax Britannia over the Gulf. The withdrawal of Britain and the shrinking of British influence rekindled these claims.  The second chapter analysis the context of the British decision, under the leadership of labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson to withdraw from the Gulf, Iran’s responses, and the role of the USA, the ally of both Britain and Iran. Iran’s claim over Bahrain Island and Saudi-Iranian maritime disputes dominated the scene, but did not result in military confrontations. Rather the road to diplomatic solutions, suggested by Britain and in the context of the United Nations began to ease off tension between the main players in the Gulf.. The third chapter examines the Nixon doctrine, in which Iran was to play a vital role for US policy in the Gulf, thus leading to an intimate relationship with the superpower who endeavoured to place Britain as the
‘’Guardian’ of the Gulf , through the supply of arms and technology. According to the author, the Shah of Iran wanted to develop his military capabilities and preserve the security of his country without relying on external help, which was obviously not in line with how the situation was perceived in Washington. At this stage dispute over Bahrain resurfaced in Iran’s foreign policy (chapter five). A combination of history and strategy supported Iranian claims, but the author dismisses the fact that close US-Iranian relations during this period facilitated an Iranian uncompromising position. In chapter six, the author examines the year of British withdrawal (1971), when the goal was to leave behind a stable regional structure. Iran was able to take over the islands of Tunb and Abu Musa,, an objective surprisingly achieved with minimal coast. In addition to military power, Iran pursued a diplomatic policy which ‘pacified’ countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who in the author’s opinion would have staged an objection to Iranian occupation of the two Islands. By 1971 Britain moved from being a hegemonic power in the Gulf to being a mediator in territorial disputes, some of which are still awaiting to be resolved. The epilogue in the book confirms the early hypothesis, namely that Pax Britannia gave way to Pax Iranica.  The rapid withdrawal of Britain, according to the author, left the Gulf ‘without a regional security structure or rules for co-existence among regional players’ (pp. 126). In such a climate, territorial disputes dominated the political and international relations of the epoch. This is not surprising giving the arbitrary nature of boundaries, which were fixed according to criteria most irrelevant to the regional players rather than the population that inhabited these territories.

It seems that the central thesis of the book is based on a special understanding of the nature of British presence in the Gulf. The author overlooks the very way Britain exercised its influence and hegemony through local sheikhly families. While the author may have been aware of the specificity of Britain’s role and existence in the Gulf, he was not perhaps willing to expose relationships that all ruling sheikhly families including that of Saudi Arabia were eager to camouflage and even negate. Furthermore, given the fact that ‘Saudi Arabia features in the title of the book, it is most surprising that the author does not give sufficient attention to its role in Gulf regional politics during the critical years of 1968-1971. One would expect that at least a whole chapter would be dedicated to understanding the role of King Faisal, his manoeuvres with the Americans and his serious domestic concerns. What was the announced and unannounced Saudi reaction to Britain’s decision to withdraw from this vital region? While the author outlines Britain’s domestic economic and political problems as the background to the decision to withdraw from the Gulf, he fails to do the same when it comes to discussing the Saudi position vis a vis Iran and its territorial claims. One can argue that King Faisal’s main preoccupation at the time was to face the rising challenge of pan-Arab ideologies and leftist groups not only in the Arabian Peninsula in general (for example Yemen) but also inside Saudi Arabia. King Faisal was not to be bothered with the seizure of two islands in the Gulf while dealing with more urgent issues at home, to mention one, a discovered coup d’etat plotted by a group of the most trusted and close personalities. Furthermore, the ‘loss’ of two almost uninhabited islands may not have been high on the agenda especially after the loss of more significant territories to Israel after the 1967 war, and the political consequences of that defeat for all Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia. The narrow focus of the book prevents the author from placing British withdrawal within the wider regional context, which no doubt should include at least a passing reference to the wider Arab context

The second thesis in the book, namely the alleged power vacuum, which resulted from the sudden British decision to withdraw, is also problematic. The USA, according to the author was not ready to move in, with a subtle expectation that perhaps this should have happened to replace the dismantled British regional security structure. This is a clear reflection of the official thinking in Riyadh, especially among the ruling Al-Saud family which clearly endorses the view that the Gulf region f needs to be secured by a superpower, a position which was so obvious in the 1970s and is still adhered to in the twenty first century, and which has already create the grounds for serious future upheavals in the region. The author does not consider (even as an academic exercise) an era where any of the regional Gulf players, from Kuwait to Oman, passing by his own country, Saudi Arabia, regain their lost sovereignty, when it comes to defending their own territorial integrity, national interests and oil fields.

The idea of a ‘power vacuum’ is also disputed and is very much dependent on the meaning and manifestations of this alleged vacuum. If it is meant to imply ‘absence of foreign troops on the ground’, then the Gulf did experience such vacuum immediately British departure. But one is tempted to ask whether the Saudi-American oil deal of 1933, Ibn Saud’s famous meeting with the American president immediately after the Second World War and the Dhahran Air base in Saudi Arabia were all signs of a vacuum being occupied by the new superpower even before Britain announced its famous decision to draw the curtain on the final phase of its empire.  Put differently, was not the alleged and short lived Pax Iranica under the Shah of Iran nothing but the beginning of the consolidation of a Pax Americana by proxy?

The book should be read as an example of Saudi official ‘scholarship’ in pursuit of scientific and objective credibility to justify foreign policies that are well studied and exposed by serious scholars in international relations and political science. It seems that the author was also under the restrictions of those who controlled access to the data and archival material relating to the period under study. According to the author, declassification rules do not exist for official archives in Iran and other states in the Gulf, , with the exception of those of the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia and the Government of Ras al-Khaymah where he obtained permission to conduct research.

Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed