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Iran, Turkey Divide Saudi-Led Bloc
(Al-Monitor) Giorgio Cafiero - The Anti-Terror Quartet (ATQ) is comprised of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Saudi/Bahraini view is that Iran, which represents the No. 1 threat to stability in the Persian Gulf and greater Middle East, must be countered aggressively, while Turkey is seen as a natural partner in the Sunni Muslim world and a state that the ATQ must cooperate with. However, Egypt sees Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism that the ATQ should seek to isolate until Ankara recognizes Egypt's government and severs Turkey's support for Islamists across the Middle East. If the Saudi and Emirati leaders seek to establish the ATQ as an anchor of a new regional order, the bloc will need to address internal divisions over which Middle Eastern countries and nonstate actors in the Arab world the ATQ should target. The writer is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics.