Kuwait, Oman, and the Qatar Crisis

Co-authored with Dr. Theodore Karasik (@Tkarasik), senior advisor at Gulf State Analytics (@GulfStateAnalyt), a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.

The Middle East Institute (@MiddleEastInst) originally published this article on June 22, 2017

The ongoing Qatar crisis poses a major dilemma for Kuwait and Oman. Consistent with their “neutral” foreign policies, these two Arab Gulf states have maintained ties with Doha and seek to resolve the gravest internal Gulf Cooperation Council (G.C.C.) row since the organization’s establishment in 1981. Officials in Kuwait City and Muscat fear that failure to settle the Qatar crisis will break up the council, which would directly undermine vital Kuwaiti and Omani national interests given the potential for such a scenario to dramatically exacerbate regional geopolitical instability.

In an effort to work the rift “within the unified Gulf house,” Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah engaged in shuttle diplomacy, travelling between the Qatari, Saudi and Emirati capitals shortly after the crisis erupted. On June 5, Oman’s foreign minister, Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, went to Doha on a private trip planned prior to the severance of several Arab states’ ties with Qatar. According to U.A.E.-based newspaper The National, the following day officials in Doha looked to their counterparts in Muscat for help in mediating the row, and Oman agreed.

Kuwait and Oman’s positions on the Qatar crisis came as no surprise given these two states’ record of serving as mediators in Yemen, between the Saudi-led military coalition members on one side and the Houthis on the other, as well as between Riyadh and Tehran. Another factor is that Kuwait and Oman have never had the same problems with Doha’s foreign policy that have irritated the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia.

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