This too helps explain why Europe remains inert, in every sense, once again.
The Middle East is too nuanced, too granular for any meaningful joint EU foreign policy engagement.
We are now in an era of multiplying “Donbass-type” scenarios. Let us examine one that, by its synchronicity with Ukraine, is particularly telling: Bahrain. It helps illuminate the frictions with Iran beyond the question of Israeli expansion.
Bahrain is a small state which is home to a major American base, which since 2011 has been placed under pressure by the Saudis, who sought to defend it against democratic infiltration — framed by Riyadh as Persian manoeuvring to agitate the streets. Bahrain was then militarily occupied by five thousand mixed Saudi-Emirati forces, and within a decade had joined the UAE in the process of “normalising” diplomatic relations with Israel. This course of events was disrupted in the past six months by what American political scientists call a power rift between the UAE and the House of Saud.
Machiavelli would have put it more simply: the Saudi monarchy is like the Sultan’s empire — hard to decapitate, but once done, you govern over subjects who remain loyal to the new order. The Emirates, by contrast, are structured like the Kingdom of France during the Renaissance (they are, after all, a British legacy): easy to stir the anarchic instincts of the various local lords and topple the sovereign — but once that easy regime change is achieved, the lords who remain no longer obey you. Consider that the Emirates side with Moscow while simultaneously seeking F-35s.
But let us return to Bahrain with its American bases. This small state bears analogies to the Donbass, understood as a contested fault line.
In the meantime, China’s relations with Saudi Arabia have deepened, as Beijing must stockpile ever more fuel — and since last year, the House of Saud is no longer obligated to sell oil in dollars, the Kissinger-era agreements that bound it to do so having expired.
Throughout all of this, European policy has remained divided, and on the energy front Qatar has scored a point by acquiring a share of the German liquefied gas market. Iran has not only blockaded Hormuz but opened hostilities by attacking Qatar.
Europe, dreaming of green energy policies, fantasises about buying Qatari liquefied gas. All of this may prove to be exactly what it is: a dangerous option.
One need only consider that the offshore company that has been supplying Germany for two years from the Texas coast is a joint venture, 70% Qatari-owned and 30% owned by Exxon Mobil, all concealed behind the Russophobic rhetoric that demands the abandonment of Russian supplies.
A similar scenario, it should be noted in passing, would emerge for Hungary should the (pro-European) opposition win next month’s elections and make good on its promise to buy from Qatar rather than from the established Russian partnership.
Meanwhile Iran has also attacked its principal opponent in the strategic quadrant, beyond Israel — namely the House of Saud.
Over the past six years, Bin Salman has confronted the spectacular failure of his influence operation in Lebanon and a bloody, costly Pyrrhic victory in Yemen, while his institutional profile has been overshadowed by the Khashoggi affair of 2018 — who, it should not be forgotten, was not a peaceful journalist but the nephew of the arms dealer at the centre of the Iran-Contra affair.
In Israel, the impulse of solidarity with the Jewish community of Ukraine never prevailed. Over the long term, Jerusalem has settled on a narrower policy focused on the Syrian arc, which it intends to continue controlling with Moscow’s support.
The recent attack on Iran was therefore entirely predictable by diagnostic means. Since late 2022, joint air force exercises between Israel and the United States had resumed, simulating attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.
For Europe, however, it is as though none of this exists. Perhaps its political class lacks the intellectual tools to grasp the interlocking dynamics of the Middle East. There are many nuances — for instance, Chinese support for Iran is not unconditional. Consider that for three years, Gulf Cooperation Council representatives (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE) have been briefed on the question of three small islands in the Strait of Hormuz. Today they belong to Iran but are claimed by the Gulf plenipotentiaries.
These are the Lesser and Greater Tunb and Abu Musa — and they are critical to Chinese energy supply, now severely tested by the Hormuz blockade.
Yet the news of Xi’s backing for Arab rather than Iranian claims over these islands went largely unreported at the European level. Subjects too difficult for a Europe that has left history behind. These three small islands have belonged to Persia since 1971, when it occupied them after the British withdrawal, and were retained by the Islamic Republic after 1979. Curiously, today the opponents of the Tehran regime favour their return to the Arab world.
But why does China lend support to the Arab side? Since 2013, when the Obama administration returned to office, China pressed to strengthen its alliance with Iran and its nuclear programme, known as the JCPOA. In 2016 it formalised a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Tehran — the iron axis for the Belt and Road all the way to Piraeus and Trieste, while awaiting the opportunity to pressure Europe’s southeastern flank.
Beyond China, India will suffer from the Hormuz blockade. And the push to fill the momentary strategic vacuum left by the United States in Saudi Arabia — notwithstanding the Abraham Accords — does not augur well.
China can frame Iran’s response today as the mere defence of Chinese national interests abroad. Indeed, half of all Chinese expatriates across the Middle East (200,000 out of 550,000), according to Jacopo Scita’s analysis for RUSI).
Once again, on these matters, what one can expect from Europe is little or nothing — perhaps the odd declamatory statement of “firm condemnation.”
As the Italian proverb goes: European foreign policy is like the morning temperature in a provincial town — nowhere to be found on the gauges.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
Please visit the firm link to site
