27 Bianco: Gulf Security after 2011 © 2018, The Author Middle East Policy © 2018, Middle East Policy Council Gulf Security after 2011: a threat analySiS Cinzia Bianco Ms. Bianco is a PhD candidate in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom); previously the GCC-based research fellow for the European Commission’s project on EU-GCC relations, “Sharaka”. T he year 2011 arguably signaled the beginning of a transforma- tive period for the geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), simultaneously pos- ing new and daunting threats to all the countries of the region. 1 The fact that in less than a year protesters toppled the decades-old regimes of Zine al-Abbedin Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Qadhaf in Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen demon- strated the power of popular revolts. In the Arabian Peninsula, the events inspired signifcant opposition rallies in Oman, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and, above all, Bahrain. Moreover, the power vacuum caused by the revolts allowed for the rise, in North Africa, of Islamist factions affliated to the Muslim Brother- hood, propped up by Qatar and vigorously opposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Similar protests in Syria descended into a full-fedged civil war, in which Russia and Iran would fght alongside the regime of Bashar al-Assad, creating conditions for the spread of Ira- nian infuence to an even greater degree than in post-2003 Iraq. In Yemen, a rebel group known as Houthis, inimical to Riyadh and alleg- edly supported by Tehran, engaged in a campaign leading them to take the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. In February 2015, the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mo- hammad bin Salman Al Saud, launched a military campaign against the rebels, with the UAE as his main ally. This perceived Iranian momentum was cemented by the decision of the United States in 2015 to sign the Iran-P5+1 2 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 3 In exchange for restrains on Tehran’s nuclear program, the agreement paves the way for the normal- ization of Iran’s position in the internation- al community for the frst time since 1979. The agreement was reached due to the key mediation of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member, Oman. In the same period, the power vacuum in Syria and Iraq al- lowed the rise between 2014 and 2015 of a new jihadist group, Daesh. 4 Over a few months, it managed to proclaim a “caliph- ate” in large swaths of territory between the two countries, publicly declaring the annulment of the borders between them as drawn in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Daesh’s rhetoric soon exposed its plans to destabilize the leaders of the Ara- bian Peninsula, evinced by a string of ter- rorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait between 2015 and 2016.