Russia’s military intervention into Syria in 2015 marked a significant return of Russian power and influence in the Middle East. This article provides a historical context for understanding Russian interests in the region and the elements of continuity and change from the Soviet and Tsarist Russian periods. It assesses the current state of Russia’s relations with the major regional states and how Russian power and influence compares with other key external actors, such as the United States, Europe and China.

Roland Dannreuther is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster. His research interests include international security studies, energy politics and the regional and foreign policy of Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia.

The article aims to examine US policy towards Egypt after the Arab Spring. It is highlighted that Washington’s policy is characterised by pragmatism, due to Egypt’s strategic importance. Despite some turbulence after the military coup, Egypt under Sisi remains a predictable and stable partner.

Radosław Fiedler is an Associate Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, and head of the Department for Non-European Political Studies at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism.

China’s presence in North Africa is longstanding but has increased significantly since the launch of the New Silk Road in 2013. While Sino-Algerian relations are the most comprehensive, China has also engaged with the other states, albeit predominantly in the economic realm. Pursuing a geo-economic approach, Beijing is also attracted by the North African states’ geostrategic position in the Mediterranean, their proximity to Europe, and as gateways to sub-Saharan Africa. The interconnectivity of networks will serve Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, the hallmark of President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy. Traditionally under the influence of European and US powers, the North African states have decided since the financial crisis of 2008 and the Arab uprisings of 2011 to turn to China and other outside powers for economic cooperation, particularly to revamp their inadequate infrastructure. While China has been rather successful in establishing good rapport with all the states in the region, its soft power has yet to match its economic prowess. Nevertheless,
its health diplomacy under the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in popularity in the region.

Yahia H. Zoubir is Professor of International Studies and International Management and Director of Research in Geopolitics at KEDGE Business School, France. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute (Washington, DC). He is the author and/or editor of several books, such as The Routledge Handbook on China and the Middle East and North Africa (2022), Algerian Politics: Domestic Issues & International Relations (2020), North African Politics (2016), Global Security Watch-The Maghreb (2013), North Africa: Politics, Region and the Limits of Transformation (2008), etc. He has published dozens of articles in academic journals, like the Journal of Contemporary China, Foreign Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Mediterranean Politics, International Affairs, Africa Spectrum, Journal of North African Studies, Democratization, Middle East Journal, Arab Studies Quarterly, Africa Today and Middle East Policy as well as dozens of book chapters and articles in encyclopedias. His research interests focus on the foreign policies of China, Russia and the United States in the Middle East and North Africa as well as issues of international development and governance.

Long considered peripherical and relatively insignificant by China´s leadership the Broader Middle East and particularly the Gulf States have moved into the focus of China´s foreign, foreign economic and security policy. China´s dependence on the region for oil supply has multiplied due to its economic boom. The safety of the shipping routes across the Arab and the Red Seas and the Suez Canal to Europe have become a Chinese concern too and the influence of Islamic fundamentalism from the region on its own Muslims. While China´s interest in the region has grown, the region is no longer a top priority for the US, since it has become self-sufficient in energy. The US has also reduced its military presence in the region. This leads to the impression that China could replace the US in the medium and longer term. This could indeed be the result, if the US is further retrenching form the region, but there are no signs that China intends to replace or even to push the US out of the region. With frequent top-level visits to key partners China pursues a friends-to-all approach to the region which it tries to integrate more and more in its Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Association. It remains open if Beijing can continue with this approach and avoid getting entangled in the conflicts of the region.

Heinrich Kreft is a German career diplomat and academic. Since September 2020 he is the Director of the Center for Diplomacy at Andrássy University in Budapest, Hungary, where he also holds the Chair for Diplomacy. From 2016–2020 he was Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and before that Deputy Chief of Mission of the German Embassy in Madrid. Prior to this he was Ambassador and Director General for International Academic and Educational Relations and Dialogue among Civilizations in the German Foreign Ministry (2011-2014). In this capacity he set up various dialogue projects among others with parliamentarians and politicians from various Arab countries, Germany, France and the UK. Prior to this he served as Senior Foreign and Security Policy Advisor in the German Parliament (2006-2010). As diplomat he was stationed in La Paz (1988-91), in Tokyo (1991-94) and Washington D.C. (2001-04). In the Foreign Ministry he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff (in charge of the Americas, Asia and Economic Issues 1996-2001) and later Senior Strategic Analyst and Deputy Head of Policy Planning Staff (2004-06); He was visiting fellow at The Henry L Stimson Center (July-Dec. 2001), the Heritage Foundation (Jan. – March 2002) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center (April – June 2002) in Washington, D.C.; He has published extensively on major power political and economic relations; on international security; the Arab World; European, American and Asian political and economic affairs. Most recent publications on US-China relations; transatlantic relations; Islam in Germany; geopolitics and culture and on German and European foreign policy. He is a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations and of the Board of Trustees of the German Oriental Institute and The Sheikh Group. Heinrich Kreft has studied in the US, in Paris (“Science Po”) and holds a Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Political Science, History and Sociology from WWU Münster in Germany. He did field research in Ecuador and as a member of the German Development Institute (GDI) in Mali (Timbouctu region).

Heinrich Kreft
Will China become the new dominant actor in the broader Middle East?

Yahia H. Zoubir
China’s foreign policy pragmatism and influence in Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia

Radosław Fiedler
US-Egyptian relations after the Arab Spring

Roland Dannreuther
Russia and the Middle East: The quest for recognition

Chiara Lovotti
Russia in a post-American Middle East: The shaping of a new regional order

Ekaterina Stepanova
Russia’s regional balancing and interests in the Middle East: Benefits, risks and implications for Europe

Debasish Nandy
Revisiting India’s Middle East policy: Diplomacy, politics, strategy and business

This article analyses Iran’s posture in the Persian Gulf and focuses on its role in GCC political dynamics following the seismic shift brought about by the overthrow of the Baath order in Iraq in 2003. It further argues that the Arab uprisings of the 2010s played a defining role in Iran-GCC relations, deepening the fissure between Iran and Saudi Arabia as the dominant Gulf powers. The Iraq war and the Arab uprisings contributed considerably to the securitisation of inter-Gulf relations and the uprisings ultimately caused a rupture in the intra-GCC relations as well. Inter-regional tensions have been compounded by the Trump administration’s efforts to build formal diplomatic and political bridges between its Gulf allies and Israel, resulting in the signing of the Abraham Accords between UAE, Bahrain and Israel in 2020. This peace treaty will encourage Israel’s interactions with its Gulf partners, but is unlikely to further the cause of regional security and stability as not only has it created tensions within the GCC, but has also adversely affected the prospects for collective approaches to Gulf security. While the success of the al-Ulla summit in Saudi Arabia brings new opportunities, it is far from clear that by itself it can improve intra-GCC and inter-Gulf relations.

Anoushiravan Ehteshami is Professor of International Relations and Director of the al-Sabah Programme in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University.

Benjamin Houghton is an al-Sabah Doctoral Fellow School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, where he researches China’s role in the Persian Gulf.

Mirdef Alqashouti is a doctoral student in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, studying GCC-Iran relations.

The article argues that the Saudi-Qatari rivalry, culminating in the severed diplomatic ties in 2017 for three years, does not evolve or emerge out of Qatar’s support for Iran, but rather from competing visions of the role of Islam within the construction of a regional order in what we view as a form of intra-Sunni, or more specifically intra-Wahhabi, sectarianism. Indeed, as Saudi Arabia and Qatar sought to exert influence on regional politics, they enacted their contrasting positions over the role of (political) Islamism(s). The analysis traces differences in diverging paths of state formation and the role of religious scholars and the relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Simon Mabon is Chair in International Politics at Lancaster University where he directs SEPAD, funded by Carnegie Corporation and The Henry Luce Foundation. Mabon is the author of a number of books on the contemporary Middle East including: Houses built on sand: Sectarianism, revolution and violence in the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2020); Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East (IB Tauris, 2013); and The Struggle for Supremacy: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He has published in a range of Middle East and International Relations journals including: Review of International Studies; Middle East Journal; Middle East Policy; British Journal of Middle East Studies; Politics, Religion and Ideology; and Third World Quarterly. He regularly consults with governmental agencies and for international news outlets including the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya, France 24, Deutsche Welle, and others. He tweets @profmabon.

Mustafa Menshawy is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Lancaster University’s SEPAD (Sectarianism, Proxies and De-Sectarianisation). His work focuses on Middle East Studies, politics of authoritarianism, and regime-society relations. He is the author of State, Memory, and Egypt’s Victory in the 1973 War: Ruling by Discourse (2017) and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood: Self, Society and the State (2020). He wrote articles for Politics, Middle Eastern Studies and Religions. He worked for the University of Westminster and the London School of Economics. Menshawy worked as a BBC reporter before moving into academia.

Despite blockading fellow Gulf state Qatar for nearly three and a half years, primarily on the basis of its links to organisations of political Islam, the willingness of Saudi Arabia to end the dispute in January 2021 was not entirely unexpected. After all, together with its “Anti-Terror Quartet” allies – the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt – little progress had been made on bringing Qatar to heel, with none of the original thirteen “demands” of July 2017 having ever been met. Moreover, with then US president-elect Joe Biden preparing to take office, and with a number of senior White House appointees known to be highly critical of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (a.k.a. “MBS”), the annual GCC summit undoubtedly presented Riyadh with a timely opportunity to present itself as a more cooperative US security partner. Beyond such policy prospects, however, the apparent speed and smoothness of MBS’ Qatar U-turn has also helped underscore the fundamentally non-ideological nature of his emerging, more autocratic-authoritarian regime. As this article will demonstrate, MBS’ new Saudi politics strongly indicate that he and his inner circle have little time for the dominant ideologies of the region, including political Islam. Indeed, compared to earlier Saudi administrations with more complex approaches to Islamist organisations, MBS’ decisions seem to have been driven primarily by more realist, counter-ideological rationales. At the time he became crown prince in June 2017, he undoubtedly still saw potentially popular, post-Arab Spring Islamism as the greatest threat to his nascent rule, and unsurprisingly began to take a much harder line on domestic Islamist elements than any of his predecessors. More recently, however, with much of the immediate danger having seemingly subsided, he has not only softened his stance on Qatar but appears to have entered into strategic compromises with a number of Islamist groups and actors elsewhere in the region.

Christopher M. Davidson is a former reader in Middle East politics at Durham University in the UK and a former assistant professor at Zayed University in the UAE. His books on the comparative politics of the Gulf states include From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

The GCC monarchies have been split on Iran. While Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE tried to curtail Tehran’s regional action, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar took a more balanced posture to hedge the risks of regional instability. A mix of international, regional and domestic factors shaped the two approaches. Among them, the US retrenchment from the Middle East, the Arab Spring and the perception of Iran as an existential or a non-existential threat played a decisive role.

Cinzia Bianco is the Gulf Research Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Berlin, where she is working on political, security and economic developments in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and relations with Europe. Previously, Bianco was a research fellow for the European Commission’s project on EU-GCC relations ‘Sharaka’ between 2013 and 2014. She holds a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, where she worked on threat perceptions in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) after the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Tobias Borck is an Associate Fellow at RUSI, an independent researcher and analyst specialising in Middle East politics and security, and a PhD candidate at the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter. His doctoral research focuses on stability and regional order in the Middle East from the perspective of the Arab Gulf states. His other research interests include European – specifically German and British – foreign policy towards the Middle East.

The article examines how Saudi regional policy has been profoundly shaken under King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman into an assertive one, stemming from the radical shift to a vertical and repressive domestic policy. It stresses how much the generational gap between both leaders, who do not share the same world vision, has created confusion and downgraded the Saudi leadership externally. The article also emphasises how Mohammed bin Salman is amending Saudi regional policy, as marked by the Covid-19 pandemic moment and the election of President Biden. This resolute, changing regional policy may help to restore Saudi Arabia’s regional voice due to its central positioning.

Fatiha Dazi-Héni is a researcher in Political science on Arab monarchies at IRSEM in Paris and Associated professor on Contemporary History in the Arabian Peninsula at the Political Institute of Lille. Her publications include Monarchie et Sociétés d’Arabie. Le temps des confrontations. (Presses de Sciences PO, 2006 and L’Arabie Saoudite en 100 questions, edited 3 times (Editions Tallendier: 2017, and Texto : 2018 and 2020). She has also published many articles on GCC states and societies, on sub-regional dynamics.

The rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council has caused significant consequences among its member states, both in the region and globally. When simmering differences surfaced in 2017, borders were closed, contacts severed, and the future of the GCC seemed in doubt. Now, first steps have been taken to re-establish relations, build back trust and engage in an honest rapprochement. A significant transition was also seen in the policies of the regional states during the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. This article attempts to identify the future trajectories for the GCC and whether it will continue to function according to the pre-crisis status quo.

Mahjoob Zweiri is Director of the Gulf Studies Center and Associate Professor in Contemporary Politics of Iran and the Gulf at Qatar University. From March 2003 to December 2006, he was a research fellow and then director of the Centre for Iranian Studies in the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University. Dr. Zweiri has more than 70 publications in the areas of Iran and Contemporary Middle East History and Politics. In addition to Arabic, Dr Zweiri is fluent in Farsi and English.

Thomas Bonnie James is a PhD candidate in Gulf Studies in the Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University.

For more than three years, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed an economic blockade and diplomatic sanctions on Qatar. In January 2021 the Emir of Qatar attended a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit and signed a reconciliation agreement in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia. I argue that this agreement should be seen more as a truce and less as a permanent peace. The roots of the rift have yet to be adequately addressed.

Gawdat Bahgat is a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is the author of 12 books on the Middle East. The opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of the U.S. government or the policies of the Department of Defense.