Gulf countries cannot accept being a “secondary detail in negotiations” between the United States and Iran, says Maan Al-Bayari, chief editor of the Qatari website Al-Araby Al-Jadid. After being “the theater of war in the confrontation between Iran and the United States,” they must now be “present at the negotiating table to assert their vision of regional stability” that needs to be established to avoid a repetition of such a scenario.
A similar sentiment is echoed by Khairallah Khairallah, a prominent figure in Saudi media, in an article published by the Saudi news channel Al-Arabiya, who questions whether the US president “really has a strategic vision, or if he simply wants to reopen the Strait of Hormuz” while “leaving Gulf countries vulnerable to Iran’s hatred.”
Front and Center but Absent from Negotiations
For now, the ceasefire appears to have been concluded without consulting the six Gulf petromonarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, according to political analyst Jasim Ghuloom, quoted by The New York Times. The American newspaper says, “the royal families of the region must”
