Which of the following countries is/are NOT a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council ? 1. Bahrain 2. Iran 3. Iraq 4. Qatar Select the correct answer from the code given below : Code :
- (a)2 and 3
- (b)Only 3
- (c)3 and 4
- (d)Only 1
Correct — A, 2 and 3. Read the printed option text before you mark anything on this paper: the code here is not the layout most candidates have drilled, and 'Only 1' sits at (d) rather than at (a). The substance is a straight roster check. The Gulf Cooperation Council — formally the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf — has exactly six members and has had the same six since its charter was signed at Abu Dhabi on 25 May 1981: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Note what that list has in common. Every member is an Arab state, every one is a hereditary monarchy, and every one sits on the Arabian Peninsula side of the Gulf. Iran fails all three tests — it is Persian rather than Arab, it is a republic, and it lies on the opposite shore — and in fact the Council was created partly in reaction to it, the founding meeting following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War in 1980. Iraq fails two of the three: it is unmistakably an Arab state, but it is a republic, and it lies at the head of the Gulf outside the peninsular monarchies. It has never been admitted. So numbers 2 and 3 are the countries that are NOT members, while Bahrain (1) and Qatar (4) are both founding members. The question asks which are NOT members, so the answer is the pair Iran and Iraq — option (a).
- (b)Only 3 — This picks out Iraq alone and quietly readmits Iran. Iraq is indeed not a member, so the option is half right, which is exactly what makes it dangerous. But Iran is not a member either, and it is the more clear-cut exclusion of the two: the GCC is a grouping of Arab monarchies, and the Council's own founding communiqué in 1981 came at a moment when its members were reacting to precisely the revolutionary Iran across the water. A candidate who confuses the GCC with OPEC lands here, because Iran is an OPEC founding member and so feels like it belongs in any Gulf oil grouping.
- (c)3 and 4 — Iraq is correctly identified, but Qatar is not. Qatar is a founding member of the GCC and has remained one continuously. The trap is a live memory of the diplomatic rupture of June 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, along with Egypt, severed relations with Doha and closed their borders to it — a crisis that ran until the Al-Ula summit in Saudi Arabia in January 2021. Throughout that period Qatar's GCC membership was never suspended; it was a quarrel inside the bloc, not an expulsion from it. Do not confuse it with Qatar's genuine exit from a different organisation: Qatar did leave OPEC, with effect from January 2019, to concentrate on liquefied natural gas.
- (d)Only 1 — Bahrain is a founding member of the GCC, so naming it as the non-member is simply wrong. Bahrain is the smallest of the six, an island state joined to Saudi Arabia by the King Fahd Causeway, and it has been inside the Council since 1981. This option also carries the paper's structural trap: on a conventional UPSC code (a) would be the 'Only 1' slot, and a candidate who works out the substance correctly but then reaches for the remembered position can end up here or somewhere equally wrong. On this booklet 'Only 1' has been moved to (d).
The Gulf Cooperation Council is a regional political and economic bloc of the six Arab monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula that face the Persian Gulf. Its charter was signed at Abu Dhabi on 25 May 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and its Secretariat-General is at Riyadh. The membership has never changed. Because three overlapping labels are attached to this part of the world — Gulf, Arab and oil-producing — the standard examination trick is to slip in a country that satisfies one label but not the one being asked about, and Iran and Iraq are the two countries built for that job.
The reliable way to work an item like this is to fix the defining test of the grouping first and then apply it, rather than trying to recall a list. For the GCC the test has three parts, and the six members satisfy all three: Arab, monarchy, and on the Arabian Peninsula. Iran is not Arab and not a monarchy; Iraq is Arab but is a republic and is not one of the peninsular monarchies. Everything else follows. Then keep three separate rosters apart in your head. OPEC, founded at Baghdad in 1960, counts both Iran and Iraq among its five founding members, so oil membership proves nothing about GCC membership. The Arab League, founded in 1945, includes Iraq but not Iran, so being Arab proves nothing either. Only the GCC test excludes both. Finally, read the code. On this booklet 'Only 1' has been shifted to option (d) and the answer here is a two-country pair at (a) — a student who reasons correctly and then marks the position habit suggests will lose the mark.
- The GCC has six members — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and the list has been unchanged since the charter was signed at Abu Dhabi on 25 May 1981
- Its full name is the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf and its Secretariat-General is at Riyadh; the Council was founded against the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War that began in 1980
- Iran is neither Arab nor a monarchy and lies on the far shore of the Gulf; Iraq is an Arab state but a republic outside the peninsular monarchies — neither has ever been a GCC member
- Both Iran and Iraq were founding members of OPEC at the Baghdad conference of 1960, which is why an oil-based mental shortcut misfires on this question; Qatar, by contrast, is a GCC member that left OPEC with effect from January 2019
- Qatar's membership survived the 2017–2021 rupture with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, which ended at the Al-Ula summit of January 2021 — it was a quarrel within the bloc, never an expulsion
- Yemen lies on the Arabian Peninsula and has long sought entry, taking part in a few GCC bodies, but it is not a member of the Council
- India signed a Framework Agreement on Economic Cooperation with the GCC in 2004; the six states together host the largest concentration of overseas Indians and are a major source of India's crude oil imports and inward remittances
The three-part test for GCC membership — Arab, monarchy, Arabian Peninsula. Iran fails all three, Iraq fails two. Both Iran and Iraq are, however, founding members of OPEC, which is the confusion the question is built on.
- Confusing the GCC with OPEC. Iran and Iraq are OPEC founding members but have never been in the GCC, while Qatar is a GCC member that left OPEC in January 2019
- Assuming Qatar was expelled during the 2017–2021 blockade. It never lost its GCC membership; the dispute was settled at the Al-Ula summit in January 2021
- Missing the NOT in the stem. The question asks which countries are outside the Council, so the correct answer names the exceptions, not the members
- Applying the remembered option layout. On this booklet 'Only 1' is at (d), not (a)
UPPSC and UPSC both favour the roster question — name the grouping, list four or five countries, and ask which belong or which do not. UPSC put the identical GCC stem in 2016 and used the same device for the Organization of Turkic States in 2022 and for the G20 in 2020. The safeguard is always the same: know the defining criterion of the bloc rather than trying to recall a bare list.
Which of the following is not a member of 'Gulf Cooperation Council'?
- (a) Iran
- (b) Saudi Arabia
- (c) Oman
- (d) Kuwait
Answer(a) Iran
The same question in its single-option form, and the same intended victim. UPSC placed Iran among three genuine GCC members and asked which one is the odd country out; UPPSC has simply promoted that idea into a multi-statement code by adding Iraq. If you can answer the 2016 item you already hold everything the 2025 item needs.
Consider the following countries: 1. Armenia 2. Azerbaijan 3. Croatia 4. Romania 5. Uzbekistan Which of the above are members of the Organization of Turkic States?
- (a) 1, 2 and 4
- (b) 1 and 3
- (c) 2 and 5
- (d) 3, 4 and 5
Answer(c) 2 and 5
The same skill applied to a different bloc. Here too the wrong options are countries that are geographically or historically near the grouping without belonging to it, and the way through is to fix the defining criterion — a Turkic-speaking state in one case, an Arab monarchy of the Arabian Peninsula in the other — rather than to grope for a memorised roster.
With reference to Socotra Island, which of the following statement/s is/are correct ? 1. It is an Island of Oman, situated in the Arabian Sea. 2. It was designated as a world natural heritage site by UNESCO in 2008. Select the correct answer using the codes given below. Codes :
- (a) Only 1
- (b) Only 2
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(b) Only 2
The link is the political map of the Arabian Peninsula rather than the bloc itself, and it is the same failure mode. UPPSC's 2021 item is sunk by attaching Socotra to Oman when it belongs to Yemen; the 2025 item is sunk by attaching Iraq or Iran to a council of peninsular monarchies. In both cases the candidate who has a clear picture of which state is which in this region marks the right option and the one working from a vague sense of 'somewhere in the Gulf' does not.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The headquarters (Secretariat-General) of the Gulf Cooperation Council is located at
- (a)Abu Dhabi
- (b)Doha
- (c)Riyadh
- (d)Manama
Answer(c) Riyadh — the GCC charter was signed at Abu Dhabi in May 1981, but the Secretariat-General has been based in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following countries : 1. Iraq 2. Kuwait 3. Yemen 4. Oman Which of the above are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council ?
- (a)1 and 3 only
- (b)2 and 4 only
- (c)1, 2 and 4 only
- (d)2, 3 and 4 only
Answer(b) 2 and 4 only — Kuwait and Oman are among the six founding members. Iraq has never been admitted, and Yemen, although on the Arabian Peninsula and a long-standing applicant, is not a member.