particular … already mov[ing] to improve ties with Russia, which is a strong ally of Iran.”109
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In the Middle East, the New York Times has written, “many major players are closely allied with or supported by either Shiite Iran or Sunni Saudi Arabia, and any gain by one is often seen as a loss by the other.”110 This dynamic explains why the July 2015 Iran deal leads almost immediately to discussion of a “regional arms race,” with the Saudis and their Emirati allies beginning to consider how they might match what they presume will be increased Iranian uranium enrichment activity in the years ahead—despite the explicit terms of the nuclear deal Iran has signed.111 The first step in this new nuclear standoff would be Saudi Arabia and its Sunni peers in the Gulf gaining the agreement of their Western allies to let them enrich uranium ore, and to do so at a higher level than previously thought appropriate for a country with no interest in weaponizing nuclear material. With this aim in mind, soon after the Iran deal is signed a “Saudi diplomat [says] his nation will look at embarking on a nuclear energy program so it can be closer to having nuclear weapons if Iran breaks the deal and weaponizes its [nuclear] program.”112
Outside Saudi Arabia, attitudes toward the deal are mixed. The Washington Post will note that Qatar and Oman “have moved toward improved relations with Tehran” and therefore choose to register no public disapproval of the deal’s terms; Turkey stands to “boost its oil imports from Iran” post-deal; and Iran’s ally Syria calls the deal “a great victory” in a statement from President Bashar al-Assad.113 All four of these nations will be left out of the historic geopolitical reorganization in the Middle East plotted by Saudi Arabia in late 2015. More unsettling to the Saudis, surely, is the ruler of its closest ally, the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, publicly congratulating Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the deal and saying that he hopes it will “contribute to strengthening regional security and stability.”114 Al-Nahyan’s statement gives Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman additional grounds to seek an even closer alliance with MBZ, who occupies a separate and distinct matrix of power in the UAE.
As CBS News will note, none of the Sunni Arab nations in the Gulf are privately very enthusiastic about the deal, “worry[ing] that a deal gives Iran the means—through an economic windfall—and an implicit green light to push influence in the region.”115 Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University, tells CBS, “Deal or no deal, tension in the region is not going to go away. If Iran is bent on acting as a hegemon, as a regional power, I think we are in for some difficult times.”116 This lingering doubt over the repercussions of the Iran deal explains in part why, despite Sheikh Khalifa’s words of congratulation to President Rouhani following the deal’s signing, his younger brother, MBZ, will take a very different view of the accord in 2015 than the UAE’s president. That by 2015 the UAE is enmeshed in another proxy war with Iran—this time fighting an army of allegedly Iran-sponsored Houthi rebels in Yemen—does far more to explain why the Emiratis’ view of the Iran deal will soon change, however.
Though former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had left the U.S. State Department more than two years before the signing of the Iran nuclear deal, CNN will report in 2015 that “supporters, critics and experts agree: Clinton’s fingerprints are all over the nuclear agreement.”117 It is all but certain that this fact is on the minds of MBS, MBZ, and el-Sisi as they meet on a yacht in the Red Sea in fall 2015 and make a decision about whom to support in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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In June 2014, six months after Trump tells GOP officials in New York that he will be running for president, and seven months after discussing American foreign policy and presidential politics with his Russian business partners, the Agalarovs, in Moscow, the Trump Organization announces that it will purchase the Turnberry golf resort in Scotland from Leisurecorp—a unit of the Emirati government—for $48.5 million, an astounding $44.2 million less than the Emiratis had paid for the property just seventy-two months earlier.118 Several weeks later, Trump travels to Turnberry to announce that he will pour approximately $130 million into the resort, just under three times its total purchase price.119