Israel’s firm and vocal opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran, and its concern over Iran’s ascent as a regional power, have aligned it with Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In fact, writes Simon Henderson, Israeli ties with the Gulf states date back to the 1970s; however, those ties are kept strictly sub rosa, and only go so far:
[L]inks are extensive, even, in some cases, very good. But they are mostly out of the public gaze. So although shared anxiety about Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s mischievous intent has been a bonding factor, Jerusalem must have been disappointed by the response of the GCC—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman—to this summer’s diplomacy. When the deal was announced in Vienna on July 14, only Israel opposed it. The six Arab countries, although some expressed apparent concern about the details, voiced support for the Obama administration’s solution. They might have been in the same book as Israel but they pointedly did not want to be, at least publicly, on the same page. It was yet another reminder to Jerusalem of the limitations of any links.
The links, [however], are both diplomatic and economic. The political contacts almost certainly go up and down—it’s hard to imagine that the Mossad’s assassination of the Hamas gun-runner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010 was just a minor hiccup. But the business and trade links are growing steadily and, at least in the case of some countries (and I don’t mean Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel has official relations), are significant.
Read more on Washington Institute: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/israel-gcc-ties-twenty-five-years-after-the-first-gulf-war