The Middle East Directions Programme’s Regional Security Initiative endeavors to rethink security system in the Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Iran are experiencing significant shifts at societal, state, and international levels, while systemic dysfunctionalities in the Gulf security systems continue to feed perceptions of insecurity and create fault lines. US-Iran tensions, Saudi-Iranian rivalry, and the intra-GCC rifts are all examples of tensions, which, if left unchecked, carry risks of wide-reaching repercussions within the region and beyond. 

In the current environment, regional and global actors’ privilege risk-taking behavior that can be seen as potentially more rewarding. Previous approaches in addressing this pattern in the Persian Gulf sub-complex, including ambitious comprehensive approaches to rebuild regional security architecture, seem to have had limited success or have failed. Current dynamics make it very difficult for international actors to convene, incentivize, or forcefully push all the competing players to cooperate. 

Rethinking regional security in the Persian Gulf requires a more in-depth analysis of the systemic causes of insecurity. Researches on the trends and dynamics that produce and perpetuate inter-state tensions need to be performed. These findings have to be better incorporated in policy options to build a compelling political rationale for reconciliation and rethinking the role the EU and other key international and regional actors. 

New ideas are required to design tailor-made incremental steps to promote de-escalation and address the security dilemmas of all stakeholders. It requires lessons be learned from both failures and successes, including thorough comparative study of other regions.

Activities

Against this background, the Regional Security Initiative has the ambition to become a platform for research and a laboratory of ideas on fostering engagement between stakeholders and promoting gradual de-escalation and regional cooperation. 

The Regional Security Initiative will use non-traditional security (NTS) factors and non-conventional diplomacy (NCD) tools – both short-term and long-term – to promote cooperation between state and non-state stakeholders. It will focus on the role of international and regional players from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq, EU, Russia, the United States, and China to influence regional security architecture.

Research objectives

1.  Advance knowledge on International relations of the Gulf region. That includes identifying the role of complex threat perceptions and non-traditional security factors in a regional security building. 

2. Promote and broaden research and analysis of the systemic causes of insecurity in the Persian Gulf security system. 

3. Produce policy-relevant studies on de-escalation and regional cooperation. 

4. Organize workshops and support discussion among actors.

5. Support EU’s policies in the region through critical and innovative policy analysis

The Regional Security Initiative publishes policy briefs, research papers, and ebooks and contributes to the MEDirections blog. It also organizes monthly roundtables and closed-door meetings.

The Team

The initiative is headed by Luigi Narbone and Abdolrasool Divsallar, with both having extensive experience in diplomacy and military-security dynamics of the region. Clément Therme and Cyril Widdershoven are  Associates to the initiative. 

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