While the new governments in Tunisia and Egypt have been offered help by the G8, Jordan has been given a $400m£250m0m) Saudi grant and (with fellow monarchy Morocco) invited to join the Saudi-led Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) – dubbed the Gulf Counter-revolutionary Club by its critics.
A common joke these days is that the GCC should be renamed the "Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Club".
The success of the Gulf of Aden counter-piracy joint naval drill also provides a foundation for intelligence sharing between the US and China that could extend to counter-terrorism and peacekeeping missions.
In the wake of the Arab spring uprisings, sectarian narratives have also proved a useful tool for Gulf monarchies leading the counter-revolution – characterising protesters as foreign-inspired or at least not representative of the Sunni mainstream.
When skeptics counter that the gulf between antiquity and modernity is unbridgeable, they tell a story about irrecoverable loss.
Three UK cybersecurity experts have been appointed to advise Gulf institutions and training on countering terrorist financing.
Our staffs signed a few initiatives in that regard, including a commitment to conduct joint counter-piracy exercises in the Gulf of Aden this year.
Regional implications: The Saudi arms request signals Riyadh's willingness to reassert its Gulf Cooperation Council military leadership and to recognize and counter growing Iranian military power.
Fearful of popular demands for accountable government, Gulf states have mostly aligned themselves with the counter-revolutionary side.
Since the Falklands, there has been armed intervention in Iraq twice, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Afghanistan, East Africa, and counter-piracy off Somalia and the Gulf of Aden.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief with longstanding ties with Gulf spy agencies, said Saudi intelligence had succeeded in placing a number of double agents within Aqap.
