MER Article Arms Supplies and Military Spending in the Gulf While not as great as it had been in the recent past, the role of arms and military spending in the societies and economies of the Gulf states is still much larger than in any other area of the world. It was not until after the Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf war that these states felt that they cou F. Gregory Gause • 6 min read
MER Article Oil, Gas and the Future of Arab Gulf Countries The political and economic structures of the Arab Gulf countries have been surprisingly resistant to change. The resilience of the “old political deal” between royal families and traditional elites -- the ‘ulama’, tribal leaders, urban merchants and technocrats -- can be attributed to three main factors. First, the institutional, tribal Fareed Mohamedi • 11 min read
MER Article OPEC Since the Gulf War Since August 1990, OPEC has been living in a dream world. For the last year and a half, 6 million barrels per day (bpd) of production capacity have been off the market: Iraqi output has been embargoed, Kuwait’s oil facilities were destroyed and the largest non-OPEC producer, the former Fareed Mohamedi • 7 min read
MER Article Al-Naqeeb, State and Society in the Gulf Khaldoun Hasan Al-Naqeeb, State and Society in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (trans. L. M. Kenny and amended Ibrahim Hayani) (Routledge, 1990). Roger Owen • 5 min read
MER Article Iranian Populism and Political Change in the Gulf From the political perspective, the main consequence of the Persian Gulf War has been the restoration of the status quo ante. In Iraq and Kuwait, dissidents who had expected the military defeat of Saddam Hussein to usher in a new era of freedom and democracy have been sorely disillusioned. In the sh Eric Hooglund • 7 min read
MER Article The US in the Persian Gulf The scale of the US military deployment in the Persian Gulf -- half of all US combat forces worldwide -- is something of a shock, even to the Pentagon. “Nobody ever thought they’d be free to commit all those forces,” one military official said. Martha Wenger, Joe Stork • 8 min read
MER Article Continuity and Change in Soviet Policy The day after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker announced what they termed “an unusual step.” They issued a communique “jointly urging the international community to join them and suspend all supplies of arms to Iraq on an in Alain Gresh • 18 min read
MER Article Iran and the Gulf Arabs Within weeks of Iran’s surprise acceptance of a ceasefire in its war with Iraq last July, perceptions of the regime in Tehran on the Arab side of the Gulf underwent a radical transformation. Governments in Kuwait, Riyadh and Bahrain pledged to forget past clashes, restore full diplomatic ties and la MERIP's Special Correspondent in Iran • 3 min read
MER Article US-Arab Economic Trends in the Reagan Period US economic relations with the Arab states have entered a new phase in the last two years, one that reproduces many of the features that characterized the end of the Carter administration. US exports to the region rose by about 13 percent from 1986 to 1987 with shipments to Iraq, Egypt and the Unite Fred H. Lawson • 7 min read
MER Article NATO Goes to the Persian Gulf In the last half of 1987, some 75 US, French, British, Italian, Belgian and Dutch warships steamed into the Persian Gulf in what became the largest peacetime naval operation since World War II. Six NATO countries had joined efforts specifically to police the Gulf, considerably increasing the longsta Jochen Hippler • 10 min read
MER Article Saudi Arabia and the Reagan Doctrine President Reagan came to office with a bold commitment to roll back Soviet gains in the Third World without risking the trauma or cost of another Vietnam-style intervention. The “Reagan Doctrine,” as his policy came to be known, ironically took its cue from Soviet support in the 1970s for leftist in Jonathan Marshall • 18 min read
