The most accurate portrayal of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is perhaps the 2017 Kuwait summit, which was held at the height of the Saudi-UAE-Bahraini blockade of Qatar and was attended by none of the quarrelling states’ leaders — except for Qatar’s Emir, Tamim bin Hamad. Kuwait’s late Emir, Sabah Al-Ahmad, found himself effectively addressing a single guest at what was supposed to be a ‘Gulf’ summit.

This unintentionally declared that the GCC shines socially, but fractures politically.

This fracture is not new. The GCC was formed in 1981 as an urgent security response, one year after the Iran–Iraq War erupted, rather than as a mature political project. Iraq was excluded on the pretext of its republican system, despite being a Gulf state both geographically and historically. From its inauspicious beginnings, the GCC has remained a structure overtaken by events, much like the short-lived Arab Cooperation Council and the moribund Arab Maghreb Union.

At the 2021 Al-Ula summit, Saudi Arabia and Qatar announced that their dispute had been ‘resolved’. An elegant turn of phrase, but one that is detached from reality. Neither Doha nor Riyadh conducted a serious political review.

Conflicts that are linguistically folded without being resolved always return in more complicated forms. This is precisely what is happening today, with the Saudi–UAE rivalry intensifying and Gulf positions diverging over the war with Iran.

Conflicts that are linguistically folded without being resolved always return in more complicated forms. This is precisely what is happening today, with the Saudi–UAE rivalry intensifying and Gulf positions diverging over the war with Iran.

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To understand why the GCC keeps shooting itself in the foot, one must start with a simple question:

Have its member........

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