Compared with Jebel Ali in Dubai, it feels like a sleepy Mediterranean harbour. The port at Fujairah, on the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates (uae), serves mostly as a refuelling depot for ships plying the Strait of Hormuz. It lacks the cargo capacity and the high-tech wizardry of Jebel Ali, the largest port in the Gulf and the ninth-busiest in the world. But Fujairah is the uae’s only link to the high seas that bypasses the troubled strait, and so it has become a focal point amid worsening tension between Iran and the West.
That tension rose on July 19th when Iran’s navy seized the Stena Impero, a British tanker (pictured), as it sailed west through the strait. The 30,000-tonne ship is now anchored near Bandar Abbas, hostage to a dispute that began on July 4th, when Britain impounded an Iranian tanker (allegedly bound for Syria) as it passed Gibraltar. In one of his final acts as foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt proposed setting up a European task force to protect commercial vessels in the Gulf.
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Britain and its allies worry about the threat to business and energy supplies. For the Gulf Co-operation Council (gcc), though, tensions with Iran border on an existential issue. Despite some hawkish rhetoric, Gulf states are nervous about President Donald Trump’s policy of imposing “maximum pressure” on Iran. Conflict threatens their infrastructure and could hamper the oil and gas shipments that fill their treasuries. “Who’s going to pay the price? It’s us,” says a Qatari diplomat.
For all its threats, Iran cannot close the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and a quarter of its liquefied natural gas. But it has already raised the cost of commercial shipping. Fujairah became a target in May, when four oil tankers anchored offshore had holes blown in their hulls. Iran is the prime suspect, though investigators have not formally assigned blame. The bunkering business in Fujairah has suffered as a result.
Insurance premiums for the strait have climbed by an average of 10%. For the largest oil tankers, they have doubled, with a transit now costing as much as $500,000 to insure. Some shippers may decide not to take the risk (and bear the cost) of sailing through the strait. That is a concern for the Gulf states, which rely on the waterway to import everything from wheat to cars. Three of them—Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar—have no other outlet to the sea.
Infrastructure on land is vulnerable too. The Houthis, a Yemeni Shia militia backed by Iran (and which sometimes acts as its proxy), are fighting a Saudi-led coalition at home. But they have also hit soft targets in the region. In May the Houthis took credit for striking an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia (American officials blamed Shia militias in Iraq). The Houthis claim to have used long-range drones, which could also hit oilfields in the uae. At least three times since May the group has fired missiles at the international airport in Abha, in southern Saudi Arabia. One person has been killed.
In June the militia lobbed a rocket at a major Saudi desalination plant in Al-Shuqaiq. It caused little damage but highlighted another vulnerability: the kingdom gets about one-third of its drinking water, more than 1bn cubic meters a year, from such facilities, which are expensive to build and easy to target. The Qataris even worry about their national air carrier, which has been forced, since its Arab neighbours imposed an embargo in 2017, to route hundreds of daily flights over Iran. At least two drones (one American, one Iranian) have recently been shot down in the area.
Gulf states struggle to counter these threats. Though they have spent tens of billions of dollars on military kit from America and Europe, it is not always the right kit. Tanks and fighter jets have limited value in an asymmetric conflict. Their navies are small and lack combat experience; they train with the Americans and are investing in new ships, but play only a supporting role in regional security. Years of talk about an integrated gcc missile-defence command has led nowhere, and individual defences are spotty. If drones hit Saudi Arabia’s oil pipeline they would have spent hours flying undetected over the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia has long viewed Iran as its chief enemy. It still broadly supports American policy. Officials in the smaller Gulf emirates are unhappy, though, and those in the uae feel particularly stuck. In public they cannot break with Mr Trump or their Saudi allies. But they are subtly distancing themselves. They are withdrawing troops from Yemen partly to lower tensions with the Houthis—and thus avoid being attacked. They have also taken a cautious line on Iran, even suggesting it may not have been responsible for the sabotage in Fujairah. “They could shut this place down with a few missiles,” says an official in Dubai. “We need to protect our own interests.” ■
IT SEEMS that $25bn does not buy you much in the way of loyalty these days. That, give or take a few billion, is how much Saudi Arabia has pumped into Egypt since 2013, when Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, then a general, toppled the country’s first democratically elected—and Islamist—president. The cash helped Egypt avoid an economic collapse. But lately it has shown little devotion to its benefactor. And the kingdom, in turn, has cut off its needy neighbour.
The principal cause of the rift is the war in Syria, which has upset a regional order that tends to divide along sectarian lines. Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia, have backed rebels trying to oust Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s blood-soaked dictator. Shia powers, such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbullah militia, back Mr Assad, who is Alawite (an offshoot of Shiism). So far, so predictable. But Egypt, which is mostly Sunni, has also quietly sided with the dictator.
That much was evident in October, when Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, lobbied to have Egypt join international talks over Syria in order to bolster the pro-Assad contingent. Days later Egypt voted for a UN Security Council resolution on the war offered by Russia, which also backs Mr Assad. The measure, criticised for failing to address Russian airstrikes in support of the dictator, did not pass. But Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN described Egypt’s vote as “painful”.
Saudi Arabia’s priority is to curb the influence of Iran, which it sees as a destabilising force. The kingdom has enlisted the help of Islamist rebels in Syria and Yemen, where it is fighting against the Iranian-backed Houthi clan. It has also allied with Turkey and Qatar, which are sympathetic to Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. But those same Islamist groups are the top concern of Mr Sisi, now Egypt’s president, who deems them terrorist organisations. He booted the Brotherhood from office and sees Mr Assad as another bulwark against extremism and the disintegration of the state.
The quarrel between Egypt and Saudi Arabia comes as both countries face big economic challenges. Despite suffering from low oil prices, the kingdom sent $2bn to Egypt in September, helping it secure a loan from the IMF. But the Saudis also cut off shipments of cheap oil the following month, leaving Egypt scrambling to cover the shortfall. Whether it was a rebuke or mere frugality, the Saudis did not say. But Egyptian media figures slammed the kingdom for trying to put pressure on their government. “Egypt bows to no one but God,” said Mr Sisi, in response to the outcry.
There is a sense of wounded pride in Egypt, which once led the Arab world but is now beholden to the Gulf states. Many Egyptians think the rest of the region is still made up of “tribes with flags”, as an Egyptian diplomat once put it. A decision by Mr Sisi in April, later blocked by an Egyptian court, to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia was the cause of rare protests. The resentment is fuelled by the Egyptian media, which blames the kingdom for inspiring radical Islamists (including the Brotherhood). Most Saudis practice Wahhabism, an austere strand of Islam.
The disdain runs the other way, too. Many Gulf Arabs view Egypt’s leaders as hacks and wonder how they frittered away billions of dollars in aid. In October the head of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, Iyad bin Amin Madani, a Saudi, mocked Mr Sisi for claiming to have spent much of his life with only water in his refrigerator (an attempt to empathise with suffering Egyptians). After Egyptian complaints, Mr Madani resigned, citing health issues.
Saudi Arabia’s actions may be pushing Egypt into the hands of the kingdom’s rivals. After the fuel shipments were stopped, Egypt agreed to import oil from Iraq, which now has close ties to Iran. This is in keeping with Mr Sisi’s effort to diversify his country’s alliances after support from America, its most important backer, wavered following his coup. Donald Trump, America’s president-elect, now seems inclined to back Mr Sisi regardless of his dreadful human-rights record. Egypt has also moved closer to Russia, with which it held joint military exercises last month.
Periodic crises have afflicted the Egyptian-Saudi relationship for decades, so analysts warn not to make too much of the current spat. “Egypt needs Saudi Arabia’s largesse and Saudi Arabia—surrounded by enemies and unfriendly regimes in Iran, Syria, Iraq and Yemen—needs Egypt’s regional weight,” says Nael Shama, a Cairo-based political analyst. It is good, then, that neither seems to need the other’s affection.
SINCE the small Gulf states became independent from Britain in the latter half of the 20th century, their ruling families have sought fresh methods for keeping their subjects in check. They might close a newspaper, confiscate passports, or lock up the most troublesome. Now, increasingly, they are stripping dissidents—and their families—of citizenship, leaving many of them stateless.
Bahrain is an energetic stripper. Its Sunni royals have dangled the threat of statelessness over its Shia majority to suppress an uprising launched in 2011, during the Arab spring. In 2014 it stripped 21 people of their nationality. A year later the number was up tenfold. “Gulf rulers have turned people from citizens into subservient subjects,” says Abdulhadi Khalaf, a former Bahraini parliamentarian whose citizenship was revoked in 2012 and now lives safely in Sweden. “Our passports are not a birthright. They are part of the ruler’s prerogative.”
Neighbouring states are following suit. Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family have deprived 120 of their people of their nationality in the past two years, says Nawaf al-Hendal, who runs Kuwait Watch, a local monitor. Whereas, in Bahrain, most of those targeted are Shia, Kuwait’s unwanted are largely Sunni. Ahmed al-Shammari, a newspaper publisher, lost his citizenship in 2014.
In 2015 a Saudi jihadist blew himself during Friday prayers in Kuwait, killing 27 Shias. A crackdown followed, targetting the many Saudi Salafists suspected of obtaining Kuwaiti nationality in the chaos that followed the ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. “We’re looking for frauds,” says General Mazen al-Jarrah, a member of the ruling Al-Sabah family responsible for the emirate’s Citizenship and Residency Affairs.
The socially more liberal United Arab Emirates does it, too. Fearful of unrest orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the UAE has revoked the citizenship of some 200 of its people since 2011, says Ahmed Mansoor, a human-rights activist now under a travel ban.
The most enthusiastic stripper of all is Qatar. It revoked the citizenship of an entire clan—the Ghafrans—after ten clan leaders were accused of plotting a coup together with Saudi Arabia in 1996. Over 5,000 Ghafrans have lost their nationality since 2004. Many have since won a reprieve, but thousands remain in limbo, says Misfer al-Marri, a Ghafran who is now exiled in Scotland.
The consequences can be severe. Summoned to hand over their ID cards and driving licences, individuals lose not just the perks that come with citizenship of an oil-rich state, such as cushy jobs, but the ability to own a house, a car, a phone or a bank account. Those abroad are barred from returning. Those inside the country cannot leave. The stateless cannot register the birth of a child or legally get married. They might find a sponsor and apply for residents’ permits as foreigners, but if refused they are liable to be arrested for overstaying. “It’s a legal execution,” says one Bahraini, who still has his citizenship. “They’re left without rights.”
Rulers say they are waging war on terror. Among the 72 who lost their Bahraini citizenship in January 2015 were 22 alleged members of Islamic State. But by blurring the boundary between peaceful and violent dissidents, the authorities risk turning the former into the latter. Laws which once permitted the removal of citizenship only for treason (or if people acquired a second nationality) are now much broader. Defaming a brotherly country can cost you your passport in Bahrain. There too the penalty applies to “anyone whose acts contravene his duty of loyalty to the kingdom” or who travels abroad for five years or more without the interior ministry’s consent. Victims include academics, lawyers, former MPs, their wives and young children.
Westerners are in no position to lecture, retort Gulf autocrats. Most EU states revoke citizenship for reasons other than fraudulent applications, in particular for involvement in terrorism. Britain, for instance, allows it if it is conducive to the “public good”. Before becoming prime minister, the then-home secretary, Theresa May, did it 33 times. “Everyone has the right to a nationality,” says Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sadly, not everywhere.
