Trump Has a New NATO—in the Middle East | Opinion

In December, the United Kingdom joined the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement. More countries will follow. C-SIPA, as the still-small grouping is known, could soon become the NATO of the Middle East.

That region desperately needs stability. The landmark agreement, signed by the Biden administration with the Kingdom of Bahrain in September 2023, can provide it by building on the landmark Abraham Accords of the first Trump term. Bahrain is a party to one of the three ratified accords.

China has its longstanding relationship with the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies. America has something better: the brand new C-SIPA.

"Today, C-SIPA is instrumental in enabling both nations, Bahrain and the U.S., to navigate complex threats and foster resilience," Al Khalafalla of the Bahrain Center for Strategic, International, and Energy Studies told me this month. "The framework promotes coordinated responses to shared challenges, enhancing bilateral cooperation in various vital sectors."

"It should come as no surprise that Bahrain was Washington's first choice when selecting an Arab country for increased cooperation," writes Elizabeth Dent of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The small Shia-majority island ruled by a Sunni royal family has long been a key economic, security, and diplomatic partner in the region."

The landmark agreement contains, in Dent's words, "three core pillars of increased bilateral cooperation," which the agreement itself terms "defense and security," "trade and investment," and "science and technology."

The first pillar is especially significant. "In addition, the security and defense pillar contains an element that many have dubbed Article 4.5, a callback to the collective defense clause in Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty," Dent points out. "Just short of Article 5, but with all the guarantees," said Nasser bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Bahrain's national security advisor, at the Aspen Security Forum last July.

How do we know C-SIPA is important? Just days after the deal was inked, Iran lashed out through a terrorist proxy. A Houthi drone attack killed ten of Bahrain's Defense Force on the Saudi side of the Yemen border. "Because the attack occurred on Saudi soil, it was not viewed as a test case for C-SIPA, but Manama was likely pleased with the strong U.S. statements condemning the attack," Dent wrote in her assessment of the arrangement at the one-year mark.

Not so. The Bahrainis in fact were angered with the Biden response. "The attack devastated the small nation because many had been touched, a cousin, a distant relative, a friend, a child," Argent LNG's Jonathan Bass, who was in Bahrain at the time of the deadly incident, told me. "In fact, Washington prevented Manama from responding and its silence did not inspire confidence in either America's judgment or commitment."

C-SIPA, however, survived in part because it was overshadowed by the October 7 attack on Israel, just three weeks later. The vicious assault emphasized the need for a strong U.S. presence in the region to counterbalance an increasingly aggressive Tehran. Bahrain is only 111 nautical miles across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

Moreover, the Bahrain-U.S. relationship had been growing over time and so the deaths were not enough to derail an important trend.

The question heard around the Gulf, especially since October 7, is "What's next?" C-SIPA helps answer that question because the agreement enhances cooperation and confirms partnership but does not burden its parties with cumbersome structure and procedure that inhibit needed action.

The "postwar global order" is "obsolete," Marco Rubio stated in his written opening remarks at his confirmation hearing for secretary of state on January 15. Rubio established three tests for every State Department policy: "Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?"

C-SIPA's focus on economic ties certainly helps America ensure prosperity. And as it does so, prosperity creates glue for the security relationship. "The foreign ministers haven't been able to find the solution," writes Bass, "so let's let the finance ministers try."

As important as Bahrain, the U.K., and the U.S. are, C-SIPA will not fundamentally change the region unless others join the pact. That will, of course, be up to the Trump administration.

It was good that President Biden convinced Britain to join, but the crucial partners will be in the region. One of the first places to look will be the signatories to the two other ratified Abraham Accords, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, and the unratified one, Sudan.

The big issue, however, involves Saudi Arabia, which announced a China-brokered deal with Iran in March 2023. That pact has not resolved decades-old differences, and Riyadh's natural partners are Bahrain, the other Gulf states, and the United States.

Biden purposefully antagonized Riyadh by making it a pariah over the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Trump, on the other hand, will almost surely move closer to the House of Saud, and now he has a perfect vehicle to entice the kingdom into the American orbit and out of the Chinese one: C-SIPA.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America and The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.