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With alliances strained, Obama seeks to reassure Gulf states on Iran

19 April 2016 00:10 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA.President Barack Obama travels to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday with a familiar message: the United States will not abandon its Gulf allies in their struggle against Iran, a regional power they fear is seeking to undermine their security, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Tired of what they see as a reduced commitment to old U.S. allies, riled by comments Obama made about them in a magazine interview last month and aware there will be a new president in January, Riyadh and its neighbors may not be ready to just take his word for it.

"We want to receive tangible reassurances from them," said a senior Gulf official briefed on preparations for the meeting.

Short of a formal defense treaty, an idea rejected before a previous summit, Riyadh and its allies hope to come away from their meeting with new missile defense systems. Obama wants to find a way for Gulf states and Iran to arrive at a "cold peace" that douses sectarian tensions around the region and curbs the spread of Islamist militancy.

Neither side is likely to get much more than partial satisfaction.

Differences over how to assess and address what both the Gulf and United States describe as Iran's destabilizing activities in the Middle East have been at the root of the bumpiest period in ties between Washington and the pro-West monarchies for decades.

Sunni Muslim Gulf states fear the nuclear deal Washington and other world powers agreed with Shi'ite power Iran, and Obama's reluctance to get bogged down in the Middle East's complex array of disputes, has freed Tehran to act without inhibition. The exception is Oman, which for historical reasons has tried to maintain good ties with Iran and helped broker talks that led to the deal.

Riyadh in particular regards Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim militias and the Houthi group in Yemen as part of a struggle for the future of the Middle East.

For their part, American officials saw the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the expansion of militant groups such as Islamic State as posing the greatest threat to both Gulf and U.S. interests.

"I don't think that there can be any confusion or ambiguity on who is our partner in the region, and who isn't," said Rob Malley, Obama's adviser on Middle East issues, contrasting the depth of Washington's ties with Gulf states to its efforts to counter Iranian detribalization of the region.