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Wellcome to GGC
About GGC
The Global Gulf Council (GGC) is dedicated to study of the nations and cultures of Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Syria and Turkey, recognizing that the Tigris and Euphrates, and Karun rivers ultimately terminate in the Gulf. Finally, Yemen has become more integrated with the Gulf, a process one could trace back centuries ago to the collapse of the dam of Marib, sending many of its tribes towards this water war in pre-Islamic times.
Founded by Ibrahim Al-Marashi, a scholar of Iraqi heritage, and Mohammed Eslami, a scholar of Iranian heritage, ours is the first interdisciplinary institution that recognizes that the Gulf is global. Indeed during the summer of 2025, a war with global significance unfolded over 12 days, involving the US and with the potential of disrupting global oil supplies.
Mission and Vision
It is the first interdisciplinary institution in San Diego, California and on the Pacific that recognizes that the Gulf extends influence into the Indo-Pacific region, and leverages expertise on this area to bring the seas and oceans together, particularly China’s relations with the Gulf through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The San Diego area is home to some of the world’s most renowned medical facilities, and schools of public health and medical schools, providing a space to study the future of health in the Gulf. San Diego is also the site of technological innovations, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), key to the Gulf as it seeks to be an AI hub. Second, the San Diego area is the site of the advancement of satellite (Viasat) and drone (General Atomics) technology, and third, a maritime hub for trade and the projection of naval and air power.
The emergence of some of the world’s oldest settled habitats are in the Gulf, with the historica Garden of Eden corresponding to archaeological sites either in Bahrain or Iraq. Ur in today’s Iraq, used to border the Gulf, when sea levels were higher, and is the supposed home of Abraham, perhaps one of the earliest recorded climate refugees, setting a research agenda for the Center to critically study the Abraham Accords and the conflicts in the Levant. Near Ur, is Uruk, where a vase was found millenia ago that is the world’s first artefact of narrative pictorial art. Today the Gulf hosts museums from the Guggenheim and Louvre, to the structures of Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, all the way to Baghdad’s Central Bank. Finally, the globe will come to the Gulf in 2030, as the World Expo will be hosted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The Gulf states extend their influence in Africa, from Oman’s former capital in Zanzibar, to its large population originally from Shiraz, to the UAE’s influence in the Horn of Africa.
From antiquity and history our work also focuses on the future, the potential of nuclear proliferation but also technological innovation. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are pioneers in artificial intelligence (AI), as the Gulf emerges as an AI hub. Countries like Iran and the UAE are developing space programs, the latter in cooperation with Italy. The Gulf is not just global, but interplanetary.
The GGC seeks to further the education of the Global Gulf to the numerous students who study in the San Diego area from the GGC, by developing new courses on the region at the university-level.
Furthermore, it will serve as a node for analysts, academics, and politicians from the Gulf, the region, and Washington to study the topic in a Pacific setting.
Its first event will be a seminar series and conference to commemorate the 35-year anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War, which recognizes that conflict as the first global conflict of the post-Cold War, setting up the 21st century system of international relations, from the rise of 24 hours CNN news cycles, satellites using GPS to guide cruise missiles, environmental warfare and ecocide, and also leading to the rise of terrorist groups like Al-Qaida, as a means of situating the current conflict in Iran with this conflict.