Even in its lame duck era, the Trump administration has not finished pushing diplomatic deals in the Middle East. In December, Morocco began to normalize relations with Israel, and now Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are ending their three-and-a-half-year blockade of Qatar. If the Biden administration is wise, it will take advantage of the greater unity between America’s allies in the Middle East as a bulwark against Iranian regional disaster.
Qatar, an oil-rich country in the Persian Gulf with a US air base, has been at odds with neighboring monarchies for years. In June 2017, four Arab countries announced a boycott, which halted air travel and disrupted trade. Qatar was hardly a flawless victim in the dispute, as it supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic causes in Libya and elsewhere. As we wrote at the time, the bill may have been necessary to send a warning to Doha.
But in a new agreement signed in Saudi Arabia, and negotiated by Kuwait and Trump Mideast Tsar Jared Kushner, Qatar’s blockade is largely coming to an end. Flights between neighboring Arab states will resume and the countries have shown good will. Trade and investment can also pick up again.
The agreement appears to be designed to close, rather than cure, deeper ideological rifts between Qatar and the conservative Gulf monarchies. Doha agreed to withdraw legal claims against the countries but made no public commitments to curtail its disruptive behavior. Still, the risk of continuing divisions in the Gulf was that Qatar would drift closer to Turkey and especially Iran, with which it shares a sea border.
Some in the Biden administration may be eager to punish Saudi Arabia given its human rights record, but the move shows that Riyadh is making concessions to improve stability in its neighborhood. The Biden team has expressed eagerness to get back into the nuclear deal with Iran, but Tuesday’s agreement shows that the Arab monarchies are partially moving closer to balancing Iran.