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It has been an eventful year in the Gulf. Against a backdrop of wider regional turmoil – the civil war in Syria and the overthrow of Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi (GSN 951/1) – the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states have been broadly stable, their political currents stirred but not redirected by events elsewhere. In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz seemed keen to get his house in order, promoting several younger members of the Al-Saud, and delivering on a promise made in 2011 to appoint women to the Majlis Al-Shura (GSN 948/5, 946/6, 942/1, 941/1, 940/1, 939/20).

The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) summit ended on 11 December with a communiqué which welcomed the “new stand of the Iranian leadership towards the GCC states” and the preliminary agreement signed by the P5+1 and Iran (GSN 959/1), and “stressed the importance of closer co-operation between GCC countries and Iran”, according to UAE state news agency Wam. The communiqué follows 1-4 December visits to Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE by Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said the trip was “to open a new page in relations with the Gulf”.

President Hassan Rouhani’s adept international diplomacy secured a quick win on the nuclear front, with the interim agreement signed by Tehran and the P5+1 on 24 November (GSN 959/1) paving the way for a scaling back of the crippling sanctions regime, and potentially an end to Iran’s years of isolation. But now he faces the arguably more onerous task of ensuring Iran’s opening to the West is not frustrated by domestic interests, headed by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In the darkest hours of Sunday, 24 November, after four days of intense negotiations, the announcement finally came. “We have reached an agreement,” Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted on Twitter at 2:03am, and other foreign ministers, emerging from the conference room in a Geneva hotel where the deal was signed, confirmed. “Now the really hard part begins,” US secretary of state John Kerry told reporters. “We know this.” The interim agreement between Iran and the world powers of the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, shepherded by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton) is intended to last six months, while the two sides seek a more permanent solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Despite some excitement about the seniority of participants in the latest round of international talks on the Iranian nuclear deal, no agreement was reached. Following the talks between the P5+1 and Tehran which began in Geneva on 7 November, the two sides batted blame, with Iran blaming French objections for the lack of agreement, and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) blaming Iran. The big hitters flew to Switzerland for the talks, with the foreign ministers of Iran and all but one of the P5+1 nations – China, which sent deputy foreign minister Li Baodong – taking part. 


Oman has been governed since 1970 by Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al-Said, the 14th ruler of the Al-Busaidi dynasty, founded in 1750. Oman’s sultan, who deposed his father in a bloodless coup, relies on a variety of allies typically drawn from the merchant elite to rule, rather than his relatively small family. Qaboos was briefly married but has no children or heir apparent; his successor is expected to emerge from a small pool of family members.

The mid-October meeting of Iran and the P5+1 (GSN 956/6) ended on 16 October with a joint statement by Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union high representative Catherine Ashton. The negotiations on nuclear proliferation in Iran, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus Germany, were described as “substantive and forward looking”, building on the positive atmosphere that developed in New York during the UN General Assembly (GSN 955/1).

It is still far too soon to talk about a peace dividend in Iran, but there are signs the political optimism sparked by renewed efforts to resolve the nuclear problem has begun to spill into the economy. The stock market has been hitting record levels and the currency is stabilising as people sense that the latest round of international negotiations might add up to more than just idle talk (see page 5). Allied to that, President Hassan Rouhani’s new cabinet has been taking a far more professional approach to managing the country’s domestic problems.

British foreign secretary William Hague told parliament on 8 October that improvements in the new Iranian government’s attitude had led to an agreement that London would appoint a non-resident chargé d’affaires to Tehran.“It is clear that the new president and ministers in Iran are presenting themselves and their country in a much more positive way than in the recent past,” Hague told the House of Commons.

In part founded as a reaction to the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war, divisions and power imbalances within the council have led to the GCC being largely unproductive over the first three decades of its existence, despite high hopes and rhetoric.

In 2009, massive protests about alleged vote rigging in a presidential election that saw the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a brutal crackdown on reformists; two reformist leaders,Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, have been under house arrest since 2011. The June 2013 election of cleric Hassan Rouhani, who is seen as more moderate than Ahmadinejad, has raised hopes that some degree of political freedom may return.

With events in the Middle East – especially Iran and Syria – centre stage, delegations from the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states were very busy at the United Nations General Assembly. None more so than Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, who led the Qatari delegation for the first time as emir. Sheikh Tamim used his address to the assembly to appeal for UN reform, and – amid much speculation over whether or not he will pursue the vigorous pace of diplomacy initiated during his father’s rule – to state Qatar’s desire to remain a “hub for dialogue”.

When the much anticipated handshake between US President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani failed to take place at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, there was a widespread sense of disappointment that, for all the conciliatory noises, Tehran had shown itself unwilling to take concrete steps towards resolving the nuclear issue. But just a few days later, that all changed. A ground-breaking telephone conversation between the two leaders – the first between Iranian and US heads of state in more than 30 years – opened a realm of possibility that just a few months ago seemed out of reach.

Lawyer and human rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh was released from prison on 18 September, along with a number of other political prisoners. The release of some of Iran’s most prominent detainees was timed just ahead of President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to the United States for the UN General Assembly, and was seen as another sign he intends his presidency to be more conciliatory than that of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sotoudeh was viewed by many as Iran’s highest profile political detainee. A lawyer who had represented opposition activists, juveniles facing the death penalty, women and prisoners of conscience, she was arrested in September 2010 on charges of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security.