“The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has proven all skeptics wrong from day one until today,” Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla told Al-Monitor. Forty years after the rulers of the six Gulf Arab states met on May 25, 1981, at the InterContinental Abu Dhabi Hotel to attend the first GCC summit, the political and economic alliance is still alive and well.

Over the span of four decades, the GCC reaffirmed existing social ties and shaped a stronger “Khaleeji identity,” Abdulla said, in reference to a term referring to a person from one of the GCC states. “There are now about 30 million Khaleejis today who say they are Khaleejis.”

This has not been without obstacles. The organization was left for dead when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain imposed a blockade on Qatar in mid-2017, irritated by Doha’s ties with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and its independent foreign policy, viewed as punching above the second-smallest Gulf country's weight.

Gulf states have now buried the hatchet with the Al-Ula Declaration, and the GCC, paralyzed during the rift, has come to life again. “The GCC is alive, sticking and strong,” Abdulla said.