The Gulf Co-operation Council could be turning itself into the club of Arab monarchies as it considers bringing Jordan and Morocco into its fold, a move that would strengthen the political and economic capacity of the two countries’ leaders to fend off any popular challenge.

In a surprise announcement late on Tuesday, the GCC, which joins six oil-producing Gulf Arab states, said it was considering a request by Morocco and Jordan to join the bloc, even though the two poorer countries have little in common with existing members.

Following a GCC summit in Riyadh, Abdullatif al-Zayani, the secretary-general, said foreign ministers would be holding talks with the two non-Gulf countries to complete the procedures required for membership. It is not yet clear if membership will be granted or in what form.

The GCC was formed in 1981 in the wake of the Iranian revolution as an alliance of oil-producing monarchies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

Efforts at economic integration have been only partly successful, undermined by rivalries and political divisions.

As republics dominated by family rule have proved most vulnerable to popular revolts this year, however, the GCC has been asserting itself, closing ranks to protect its members from the changes sweeping the region. GCC troops were sent to Bahrain to support the ruling Sunni family, helping it crush a Shia uprising. Meanwhile, the organisation pledged $20bn in financial aid to Bahrain and Oman, another Gulf monarchy that was hit by protests.

Saudi Arabia, the heavyweight in the GCC, has also been dismayed by the willingness of the US to abandon long-time allies such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted this year, and to criticise a Bahraini intervention, which Riyadh insists was needed to counter Iranian meddling.

Diplomats say GCC states have been sending the message that no Gulf ruling family will be allowed to fall – nor will Iran, which is seen as the biggest regional threat, be permitted to take advantage of the unrest in the region.

Khalid al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, said on Twitter that Jordan and Morocco were “clear examples of good, wise governance and real political development”. The GCC, he added, had “a vital interest in joining together with them”.

Mustafa Hamarneh, a Jordanian political analyst, said the GCC move was a sign that Jordan belonged to the “conservative monarchy club”. What all the countries had in common, he said, was that “they see eye to eye on all the main issue: on Iran, on Bahrain and on the question of political reforms”.

Membership in the GCC would be a boost for the Jordanian monarchy, if it went ahead, but would prove a setback for groups seeking reform, he added.

Hassan al-Mostafa, a Saudi writer, said the possible integration of the two countries into the GCC was an attempt to “reshape the region” by creating new alliances at a time when a democratically elected Egyptian government was likely to follow a more independent foreign policy, possibly becoming friendlier with Tehran.

“The GCC will also help Jordan and Morocco to avoid pressure or collapse of these regimes,” he said. “But Moroccans and Jordanians are more politically active and won’t accept the GCC dictating foreign policy.”

Dris Ben Ali, a Moroccan economist who has been advocating political reforms, said he was concerned about the political rationale behind a potential membership in the GCC, which might be aimed at halting Morocco’s move towards a “democratic, parliamentary monarchy” that could become a model for others in the region.

The six Gulf monarchies Tuesday responded to Arab uprisings by agreeing to expand their regional grouping to include pro-Western Jordan and Morocco and urged a quick political deal in Yemen.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) welcomed bids by the two Arab kingdoms to join the six-nation grouping of Gulf monarchies, its secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani said.

“Leaders of the GCC welcomed the request of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to join the council and instructed the foreign ministers to enter into negotiations to complete the procedures,” Zayani told reporters.

He said the same procedure would be followed with Morocco.

His remarks came after a summit in Riyadh of the GCC, which groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, discussed relations with Iran, the unrest in Yemen — the Arabian Peninsula’s only republican state — and the tensions sweeping the region.

The heads of state demanded that all sides in Yemen, which has limited observer status in the GCC, sign a transition plan brokered by the bloc.

“The council urged all parties in Yemen to sign the agreement which is the best way out of the crisis and spare the country further political division and deterioration of security,” the GCC leaders said in a joint statement.

It said their transition plan for Yemen was a “comprehensive agreement that would preserve Yemen’s security, stability and unity.”

GCC heads of state discussed the bloc’s mediation efforts which stalled this month in the face of veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s refusal to sign up to proposals which would require him to stand down.

He has been insisting that any transfer of power should be in line with the constitution which would allow him to serve out his term until 2013.

The GCC plan proposes the formation of a government of national unity, Saleh transferring power to his vice president and resigning after 30 days, a day after parliament passes a law granting him and his aides immunity.

GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani travelled to Sanaa last week to invite members of the government and the opposition to sign the transition plan in Riyadh and to obtain the president’s signature but he returned empty-handed.

At Tuesday’s summit, the Gulf monarchies also criticised Iran’s “continued interference” in their internal affairs.

Relations between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours have deteriorated sharply, with the bloc accusing Tehran of seeking to destabilise Arab regimes by stoking the unrest that has rocked the region.

Shiite-dominated Iran strongly criticised Saudi Arabia’s mid-March military intervention in Sunni-ruled Bahrain which was aimed at helping crack down on a Shiite-led uprising.

Iran says it gives “moral support” to Bahrainis but is not involved in the protests. Bahrain and Kuwait have expelled Iranian diplomats, accusing them of espionage.

A lot of people were overjoyed when Saudi Arabia’s military intervened in Bahrain and saved the Al Khalifa regime from collapse. Some even considered the intervention a Saudi victory over its regional rival Iran.

The real reason behind the Saudi intervention (or occupation) was to stop democracy from spreading in the Gulf, especially the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were prepared to intervene with or without the invitation of the Al-Khalifa family. They could not bear the sight of democratic revolutions encircling them from every side.

The Saudis have succeeded in manipulating the Bahraini revolution, which was a conflict between an authoritarian family  and pro-democracy movement, to a regional and sectarian conflict between the persian shiites and the arab sunnis.

The Saudis helped the Al-Khalifa regime militarily, politically, economically, and by raising the issue of sectarianism in their media. Saud al-Faisal travelled to Egypt, Turkey and Moscow in order to get support for repressing the Bahraini democratic movement. An agreement was made between Washington and the West, whereby the West overlooks the events in Bahrain in exchange for unlimited Gulf support in Libya. The Gulf countries provided the political cover for Western military intervention, which was then followed by support from the Arab League and the Security Council. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE must pay the full costs of overthrowing Gaddafi, as well as financing and arming the rebels when necessary. On the media front, both Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya channels neglected the repression in Bahrain and concentrated on Libya. The media coverage in the Gulf had a sectarian stench to it!

On the economic front, the Gulf states announced their readiness to support the government in Bahrain with billions of dollars. The Saudis told the Al Khalifa that they were prepared to compensation Bahrain for all its loses if the international financial institutions decide to leave the country.

The Saudi support provided the Bahraini Government with enough motivation to suppress its people. The consequences of Saudi intervention are as follows:

Firstly, Saudi Arabia perceives democracy in Bahrain as a threat which must be removed immediately. In the mid 1970s Saudi Arabia pressurised the Al Khalifa to annul the Constitution and abolish Parliament, which lead to uprisings that forced Bahraini royal family to undertake reforms in 2000.

The Al-Saud family cannot accept the fact that Bahrain is demographically and politically different from their kingdom. They exerted enormous pressure to slow down and eliminate the reforms process in the past and will continue to do so.

Some members of the Al-Khalifa family support Saudi Arabia’s policies in their Kingdom, especially the Prime Minister. The Al-Khalifa have lost their decision making powers once they accepted Saudi Arabia’s intervention. Bahrain has lost its independence to both Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Secondly, those who supported the suppression of the Shiites will be the next victims to Saudi’s military presence. The Saudi military presence will last for a long time and the House of Saud will not waste this opportunity to impose Saudi’s will on Bahrain’s internal affairs. The Saudis will be little the Al-Khalifa family in the not too distant future.

Moreover, the Saudi forces will cause tension in Bahraini society by supporting the Bahraini salafis against the majority shiites. The Bahraini sunnis will be pressurised by the Wahhabis, who will interfere in their daily lives just as they did in Iraq.

Today Saudi Arabia, its religious clerics and sectarian satellite channels serve the Al Khalifa regime. All of them want something in return for their efforts and the al-Saud in particular believe that in order to have a strong political influence in Bahrain, they most proliferate their Wahhabi ideology. Wahhabi thought and discourse was never accepted by the majority of Bahrainis.

In summery: Saudi intervention may have been viewed as a blessing by the Al-Khalifa family in the beginning. But those who think that they’ve won today will soon realise that they were never the winners, and that the loss is huge for all Bahrainis, shiites, sunnis and the Royal Family.

In an attempt to regain some of Al Jazeera’s lost credibility, a dispute broke out between Qatar and Bahrain. Bahrain is angry that Qatar received Iran’s Foreign Minister Salehi and Iraq’s influential shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, as well as Al Jazeera’s latest coverage of the events in Bahrain, which included the possible trial of the King of Bahrain in the Hague.

The Government of Bahrain has recently taken oppressive measures against its citizens by arresting of doctors and nurses, detaining MPs from Al Wefaq society, passing death sentences on some youths, destroying mosques and expelling citizens from government jobs.

It is worth noting that these repressive measures have continued since Saudi Arabia sent its troops to Bahrain. The internal political affairs of Bahrain are currently managed by Saudi Arabia, specifically the Minister of Interior Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, a known hard liner who shows sever hostility towards Shiites in general.

On the other hand, Al Jazeera’s coverage of  the events in Bahrain have shifted slightly. The channel is desperately trying to regain some of its lost credibility, especially after it supported the foreign military intervention in Libya.

Generally speaking, Saudi Arabia opposes any radical political change in any part of the world. Not only did it show hostility to the revolutions in the Arab world, but it also fought revolutions in Latin America (e.g. supporting the Contra rebels). Furthermore, the saudi royal family has continually funded the election campaigns of right wing conservatives in France and Italy, against their socialist rivals.

We already know from history that Saudi Arabia stood against the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and the coups and revolutions that followed in Iraq and Syria. They were also hostile to the 1962 Yemeni Revolution, and the revolutionary regime in Southern Yemen and the radical political transformations in Libya, Sudan and Iran. Saudi Arabia perceives all forms of change to be dangerous, which must be stopped at all costs.

In the broader context Saudi Arabia has never supported any revolution or liberation movement, even those that were carried out by muslim minorities in the Philippines and Thailand, whose political leaders studied in Medina’s Islamic University in Medina!

One needs to differentiate between supporting a revolution and conspiring against a regime.In the late 1950s King Saud of  Saudi Arabia paid huge sums of money in order to get Gamal Abdel Nasser assassinated and hence divide the United Arab Republic. In recent years Saudi Arabia has sought to overthrow the regimes in Qatar and Oman who reject Saudi domination.

The Saudi royal family strives to give its anti-revolutionary policies religious legitimacy. Demonstrations and revolutions are forbidden, haram, whilst obedience to the rulers is obligatory! Their philosophy does not need much explanation: Every Saudi policy takes into consideration the local political situation into account, so that dissent is quietened.

Recently this religious anti-revolutionary principle was violated. The state prohibited demonstrations during the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, and threatened to crush the skulls of Saudi demonstrators (Sheikh Borake on Saudi State T.V). Half a million copies of fatwas, which prohibited “evil” demonstrations in the kingdom were handed out.

Today there’s a new classification to revolutions: Halal (permissible)  revolutions  which are desirable in Syria, Libya, Iraq,  Iran, Sudan and Algeria. And Haram (forbidden) revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia! This clearly shows that the religious justifications that prohibit demonstrations is ill founded and relies on the whims of those in power (i.e. the Saudi princes).

The halal revolutions are useful in removing any regime that the Saudi royal family dislikes or doesn’t serve their interests, as is the case in Syria and Libya. On the other hand, the haram revolutions are detrimental to the rulers of Riyadh and to their Wahhabi doctrine, as is the case with Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.

There is no religious basis for classifying revolutions as either halal or haram, harmful or beneficial. These classifications are there to serve the interests of the Saudi ruling family.

Sectarian rhetoric was used during the Bahraini revolution in order to justify the Al Khalifa’s tyranny and reduce public sympathy for the revolution. Saudi Arabia’s military intervention succeeded in dividing political opinion in the Arab World.

The Bahraini protesters did not need to use sectarianism to unify their position because they represent the majority of the population. The Bahraini Government wanted to provoke sectarianism in order to lower its  political concession, and they have temporarily succeeded with the help of Saudi’s military intervention.

On the other hand Saudi’s sectarian sheikhs and media army killed the embryonic protest movement in Syria by emphasising the sectarian identity of the protest movement. The saudi media gave the impression that the conflict was between the suuni majority on the one hand and a minority Alawi government on the other hand. The aim of this sectarian incitement was to rally the sunnis against the Alawis, but this pathetic sectarian rhetoric scared all the other minorities, including the Christians and Ismailis against the protesters. The Saudi princes were late in realising the damage that their sectarian discourse had on the protest movement, it was too late.

Sectarian language was used widely in the Arabian Peninsula  and the source is almost always Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Iraq is a good example. The protests in Iraq were not designed to overthrow the government who was democratically elected, but the Al Jazeera channel placed these protests in the context of the Arab Spring. Al Jazeera lost alot of sympathy, especially when it chose to ignore the situation in Bahrain.

Sectarianism delegitimises revolutions  and ultimately leads to their collapse. The Bahraini protests were non-sectarian in nature, but were encircled by sectarianism. In Syria, sectarianism killed the revolution. In Saudi Arabia, the protestors were classified as shiite and belonging to Iran, and those who oppose the protests are proper muslims. Saudi Arabia has sought to play the sectarian card over and over again in Yemen, where the majority of the population belongs to both the Shafi’i and Zaidi sects. Their legendary wisdom has foiled Saudi Arabia’s plans in killing the revolution.

The revolutions in both Egypt and Tunisia were inspired by nationalist sentiment, which succeeded in bridging religious and regional gaps between their citizens. On the other hand, sectarianism is the most important driving factor in the Arabian Peninsula and its people are blinded by it. With it, Saudi Arabia has succeeded in suppressing the revolution in Bahrain by using Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Saudi Arabia’s goal is to bring the curtain down on democracy in the Gulf.

On November 25, 2007, a Saudi man was beheaded by sword for committing homicide. His execution brought the country’s official number of beheadings to 151. This number was a new record, standing in stark contrast to the 2006 total of 38 and far exceeding the previous record of 113 beheadings in 2000. Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, and drug trafficking are among the many crimes punishable by beheading in the oil-rich kingdom. Saudis point out that theirs is far from being the only country that maintains capital punishment. Yet, while it would be hypocritical as well as unreasonable to demand the kingdom to eliminate executions altogether, public beheadings are nonetheless cruel and unusual on a global scale. The discussion on this matter has shifted toward one on human rights-namely the right to die with dignity.

One of the primary reasons for the recent increase may lie in the psychological implications of beheadings. Some human rights experts argue that the kingdom’s powerful official clerics fear that they are losing their influence over the Saudi population. In order to achieve the fullest impact on the general populace, beheadings are often performed outside mosques in major cities after prayer services on Friday, the Muslim holy day. Much like the French use of the guillotine in the eighteenth century, a desensitized Saudi citizenry may have grown accustomed to and even expect beheadings. Repeated exposure to public beheadings has decreased their shock value and increased the public’s overall tolerance to them.

Social conditions also render the country particularly vulnerable to abrupt increases in fervor. Justification for capital punishment derives from the country’s conservative Wahhabi interpretation of Shariah, the set of Islamic religious laws. Yet these interpretations are by no means universally accepted in the Muslim world. Many clerics and scholars insist that the Quran makes no mention of the practice whatsoever. Of the roughly 57 Muslim-majority countries worldwide, only in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, and Qatar do national laws permit beheading. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is the only country that actually continues to behead its offenders, although both Iran and Saudi Arabia uphold the tradition of stoning adulterers to death.

Even with religious rationalization, significant ambiguity still surrounds the legal precedent for these execution practices. Although many of those beheaded are tried and convicted first, evidence suggests that many are neither explained their rights nor provided legal counsel. Most notable among this latter group are foreigners, typically migrant workers from South Asia, Africa, and the poorer areas of the Arab world. In November 2007 alone, those beheaded included citizens of Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, and Ghana.

The imminent beheading of a 19 year-old Sri Lankan girl, Rizana Nafeek, received considerable international attention in 2007. Nafeek had left Sri Lanka to work as a maid in Saudi Arabia and was accused of murdering her employer’s infant child. She was tried without an attorney, apparently confessing to strangling the child under duress. Eventually, as the result of the efforts of international advocacy groups’ efforts, Nafeek received a lawyer in May, and the Sri Lankan foreign ministry attempted to intervene on her behalf. As of December 8, 2007, the country’s Appellate Court began hearing her case. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, Saudi police allegedly tortured a confession out of Nafeek, an accusation the Saudi judicial system has been forced to take seriously in light of international attention.

Despite this recent development, few outside Sri Lanka have maintained interest in the woman’s fate, and international attention to the case has waned. This is peculiarly indicative of Saudi beheadings as a whole. Since August 2007, there have been dozens of beheadings reported, but none have drawn any particular international outcry. The level of domestic criticism for beheadings, though not entirely negligible, is hard to assess given the kingdom’s tight control on media censorship. And while external human rights advocacy groups continue to demand an end to the practice, no one is encouraging Saudi Arabia to adopt a more structured, pragmatic approach-e.g., exercising greater discretion in choosing those to execute publicly or, better yet, transitioning toward a system of predominantly private, discreet capital punishment. With no end to beheadings in sight and with Saudi accusations of foreign critics’ moral relativism, promoting moderation is the only chance the international community has at swaying Saudi Arabia diplomatically.

By Jon Weinberg

One of the less-discussed facts about the wave of uprisings in the Middle East is that the Arab monarchies are still relatively unscathed. The regimes most seriously challenged by popular protests – in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria – have all been republics. This may seem odd to Europeans whose revolutions over the centuries have been mainly about overthrowing kings.

To some extent, the apparent resilience of Arab monarchies may be a matter of luck. Most of them are in the Gulf and they have oil, which means they can (and do) use their money to buy off discontent. That does not apply to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, however, and oil wealth has not saved the Gaddafi regime from trouble in the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Another possible explanation is that Arab monarchs, in the eyes of many of their citizens, have a stronger claim to legitimacy than republican leaders who came to power – or clung on to it – in dubious circumstances.

The monarchies base their legitimacy on religious or tribal roots. The rulers of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the Emirates all came from old and prominent tribes and the “right” to rule was derived from their families’ status.

The Sabah family, for instance, was a clan of the Anizah tribe which migrated from Nejd – the central plateau of Saudi Arabia – to Kuwait in the 18th century and has ruled locally ever since. The Khalifa family was another clan from the same tribe that had arrived in Bahrain about the same time. The Thani family that rules Qatar is a branch of the Bani Tameem tribe and also arrived from Nejd in the 18th century.

The Saudi royal family has tribal roots too, though its main claim to legitimacy today is religious – so much so that the king’s religious title, Guardian of the Two Holy Shrines (Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam) takes precedence over his royal title.

Similarly, the king of Jordan is official guardian of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, regarded as Islam’s third holiest site. Jordan’s current monarch, Abdullah II, also boasts of being a “43rd generation direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad”. Meanwhile the king of Morocco embodies both “spiritual and temporal authority” and is known as Amir al-Mu’mineen – the prince (or commander) of the believers.

Although rule by birthright might seem an inherently objectionable form of government, the tribal and religious background makes it difficult to challenge in what are often highly traditional and patriarchal societies. In the monarchies where there have been significant protests, such as Morocco, Oman and Jordan, demonstrators have been demanding reform but without questioning the ruler’s right to govern – which is still very much a taboo. (Bahrain is a special case, where a Sunni Muslim minority rules over a Shia majority, making the legitimacy question much more obvious.)

While the legitimacy claims of Arab monarchs might not seem particularly convincing, especially to outsiders, those of the republics are even less so.

A number of revolutionary Arab regimes emerged in the 20th century whose credentials were based primarily on nationalism: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, the separate states of North and South Yemen – plus the Palestinian liberation movement, which fitted a similar mould.

Typically, these revolutionary regimes pursued populist or socialist strategies – nationalisation, land reform and so on – which held out the promise of a better future for the masses. At the same time, they presented themselves as defenders of the nation’s independence, resisting the corrupting, exploitative effects of western imperialism and in particular generating unfulfillable popular expectations regarding the conflict with Israel.

In the wake of successive defeats by Israel, and amid high unemployment, poverty and rampant corruption, it became all too obvious that they were failing to deliver.

Some of the republican regimes further undermined their credibility by starting to resemble monarchies. It began in 2000, when Bashar al-Assad inherited the Syrian presidency from his father. The dictators of Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Tunisia and Yemen also showed signs of intending to hand over power, eventually, to sons or other relatives.

Arabs mockingly combined the words for “republic” and “monarchy” to coin a new term for this type of state: jumlukiyya.

The republics – and especially the jumlukiyyas – thus found themselves scrabbling around for reasons to justify their existence. The problem was apparent even in 2004 when the UN’s Arab Human Development report spoke of a “crisis of legitimacy”:

“Most regimes, nowadays, bolster their legitimacy by adopting a simplified and efficient formula to justify their continuation in power. They style themselves as the lesser of two evils, or the last line of defence against fundamentalist tyranny or, even more dramatically, against chaos and the collapse of the state … ”
“Sometimes,” the report said, “the mere preservation of the state entity in the face of external threats was considered an achievement sufficient to confer legitimacy.”

Strangely, it does not seem to have occurred to them that there was one way they might have re-established their legitimacy: by governing the country justly and well.

So it’s not very surprising that the regimes already toppled or currently under threat are republics of the family-run jumlukiyya variety. This does not mean the others are immune – and it’s worth recalling monarchs were overthrown in Egypt, Yemen and Libya during the 1950s and 1960s.

For now, though, the remaining monarchs are sitting on their thrones fairly comfortably. After a rocky moment, even the king of Bahrain seems to have won more time in power, thanks to support from the royals in neighbouring countries.

This gives them a breathing space in which to reform – if they choose to do so. Whether they will seize the opportunity is another matter. At present, Morocco and Kuwait are the only two that look as if they might, possibly, turn into constitutional monarchies with accountable government. But if they don’t change, their turn will surely come.

By Brian Whitaker

The political landscape in the Gulf has quickly changed since the outbreak of the Arab revolutions. These developments have lead to the collapse of old alliances and  changes in the geopolitical map. Friendships are no longer the same. Yesterday’s friend is now a bitter enemy, and yesterday’s enemy is now a friend.

The conditions today will lead to dramatic changes in the future, and will result in a new political alignment. There is an obvious psychological rift growing between the people and their governments.

In the past few weeks, there were signs of a political alliance between Qatar and Saudi Arabia with regards to the revolutions in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and protests in Syria. The Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, was given power to influence the Libyan revolution on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on the other hand was given power to influence the Yemeni revolution, for some unknown reason.

The Gulf dictators are playing a central role in countering revolutions with the help and support of both the United States and Europe. The Abu Dhabi conference had participants from the UN Security Council and the Gulf Cooperation Council in order to discuss a post-Saleh Yemen. There were also extensive discussions regarding techniques that could be used to counter any possible revolution in the Gulf States.

Fear of change has lead to an alliance between Doha, Riyadh, and all the other GCC countries. The hostility between Doha and Damascus is a feature of this new geopolitical landscape.

The high level co-ordination between Riyadh and Doha aims to kill the Arab revolutions. This alliance should be countered by setting up a “democracy club”, which would isolate these Gulf dictatorships.