The Persian Gulf

In recent years, Persian Gulf cities have become symbols of the most spectacular forms of the ‘globalization of urbanization’. Current scholarship has sought to situate these cities in transnational processes and linkages with conceptualizations of ‘the global city’ and the mechanisms of ‘worlding’. This article builds on but moves beyond this line of analysis by turning to the histories of this region and its built environment to explore the longue‐durée influence of capital and empire operating across multiple scales. From this perspective, the glittering high‐rises and manmade islands are contemporary manifestations of a century of urban forms and logics of social control emanating from company towns, the struggles of state building, and the circulation and fixing of capital. To grasp how the Persian Gulf region has been remade as a frontier for accumulation, the analysis in this article blurs the boundaries between metropole and periphery, reconceptualizing the region not as an eclectic sideshow, but as a central site for global shifts in urbanism, capitalism and architecture in the twentieth century.

See early view of essay at: http://www.ijurr.org/article/the-forever-frontier-of-urbanism-historicizing-persian-gulf-cities/

The geopolitical rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is fueling much of the present conflict raging across the Middle East, including bloody proxy wars in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Identity-based conflict has also gained fresh vitality as the region’s proxy wars have pitted Sunnis against Shi’a. This article analyses the geopolitics of sectarianism in the Persian Gulf since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran with a focus on the role of sectarian issues. The authors argue that the elevated level of sectarian conflict that has swept the Middle East since the fall of Saddam Hussein is rooted in the unstable balance of power in the Persian Gulf sub-region and the conflict between the two Gulf heavyweights, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In that context, sectarian issues are like a vessel containing theological differences, social and political grievances, historical ‘memories’, and deep-seated fears, which can be stirred together and heated up in pursuit of geo-strategic ambitions that would otherwise be hard for the Gulf’s authoritarian regimes to invigorate support for.

Gathering the proceedings from the 2019 Annual Conference of the Institute of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Durham University (UK), this volume explores the policies and priorities of Gulf Cooperation Council states, the tensions within and across the organisation, and behavioural traits of its key actors. My chapter ("United We Stand? Measuring Threat Perceptions of Iran within the Riyadh-Abu Dhabi Axis") dissects similarities and divergences in how the "Irani threat" is perceived in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Despite the importance of biosphere reserves in Iran's livelihood and welfare, the economic significance of Hara Biosphere Reserve has never been comprehensively studied. This study examines the current importance of Hara Biosphere Reserve (HBR) in local livelihood and welfare. Using a household survey, data were collected through a questionnaire, key informant interviews and direct observations. Two hundred and forty-four households were randomly selected from 10 villages through proportional sampling. Results showed that non-environmental income was the first driver of the total income, poverty alleviation and narrowing income inequality gap. Park income was the second. The results also showed that excluding park income from total income would significantly increase headcount poverty, widen the poverty gap, and raise the Gini coefficient. Wealthier households had the greatest absolute income from the environment, including forest, fishing and fodder. However, the poorest group had smallest absolute income from these sources. Thus, the study demonstrated that wealthier households are responsible for the overharvesting of environmental resources. Interestingly, the study showed that wealthier households are more dependent on profitable environmental incomes sources while the poorest are more dependent on non-profitable ones.

Coral reefs of the Persian/Arabian Gulf were the last to succumb to the effects of the global-scale mass coral bleaching event that began in 2015. This study examines the causes and consequences of the 2017 bleaching event on eight reefs located across > 350 km of the southern basin of the Gulf. Using a combination of 5 yr (2013–2017) of reef-based temperature observations, local meteorological data and water column modeling, we show that 2017 was characterized by an extended period of mid-summer calm when winds rarely exceeded breeze conditions, reducing evaporative heat loss and inducing dramatic warming compared with non-bleaching years (2013–2016). Reef-bottom temperatures in the Gulf in 2017 were among the hottest on record, with mean daily maxima averaging 35.9 ± 0.1 °C across sites, with hourly temperatures reaching as high as 37.7 °C. Across the southern Gulf, corals spent nearly 2 months (mean 55.1 ± 3.9 d above bleaching temperatures and nearly 2 weeks above lethal temperatures (11.8 ± 2.4 d), substantially longer than in the non-bleaching years (2013–2016) and equating with 5.5 °C-weeks of thermal stress as degree heating weeks. As a result, 94.3% of corals bleached, and two-thirds of corals were lost to mortality between April and September 2017. Mortality continued after peak bleaching, and by April 2018 coral cover averaged just 7.5% across the southern basin, representing an overall loss of nearly three-quarters of coral (73%) in 1 yr. This mass mortality did not cause dramatic shifts in community composition as earlier bleaching events had removed most sensitive taxa. An exception was the already rare Acropora which were locally extirpated in summer 2017. Given the increasing frequency of mass bleaching in the Gulf and the above global rates of regional warming, the capacity for recovery and the prognosis for the future of Gulf reefs are not optimistic.

This book looks at four dynamics in the Persian Gulf that have contributed to making the region one of the most volatile and tension-filled spots in the world. Mehran Kamrava identifies the four dynamics as: the neglect of human dimensions of security; the inherent instability involved in reliance on the United States and the exclusion of Iraq and Iran; the international and security policies pursued by inside and outside actors; and a suite of overlapping security dilemmas. These four factors combine and interact to generate long-term volatility and ongoing tensions within the Persian Gulf. Through insights from Kamrava’s interviews with Gulf elites into policy decisions, the consequences of security dilemmas, the priorities of local players, and the neglect of identity and religion, Troubled Waters examines the root causes of conflicts and crises that are currently unfolding in the region. As Kamrava demonstrates, each state in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Qatar, has embarked on vigorous security-producing efforts as part of foreign policy, flooding the area with more munitions—thereby increasing insecurity and causing more mistrust in a part of the world that needs no more tension.

The Persian Gulf state of Qatar has fewer than 2 million inhabitants, virtually no potable water, and has been an independent nation only since 1971. Yet its enormous oil and gas wealth has permitted the ruling Al Thani family to exert a disproportionately large influence on regional and even international politics. Qatar is, as Mehran Kamrava explains in this knowledgeable and incisive account of the emirate, a "tiny giant."