“A simple ceasefire isn’t enough,” Otaiba wrote in a column for the Wall Street Journal. “We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, terror proxies and blockades of international sea lanes.”
A deal that only shelves missiles, drones and proxy warfare, he wrote, would simply defer the next crisis.
Gulf economies, highly reliant on energy exports and travel, have been hit hard by the war, which has sent shockwaves through the global economy, with disruptions in the strait driving up energy prices, rattling supply chains and fuelling inflation.
The United States can determine with certainty only that it has destroyed about a third of Iran’s vast missile arsenal, according to five people familiar with the U.S. intelligence.
Gulf officials say their scepticism is rooted in experience.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment – part of the process of making nuclear weapons although Tehran denies seeking them – was capped under a deal reached in 2015, but Tehran retained the ability to menace the region with missiles, drones, proxy warfare and threats to maritime security. The Gulf states say that possibility must now be removed if the region is to be stable.
In 2018, Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, calling the agreement a “defective” and “one-sided” agreement that did not serve U.S. interests.
Iran’s strikes push UAE closer to Washington
The Gulf states of Qatar, Oman and Kuwait are pushing behind closed doors for a swift end to the war, fearing the economic fallout and reprisals, the sources said.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain say they are ready to absorb an escalation of the war and will not accept a post-war Iran that is still able to use the Strait of Hormuz as a bargaining chip of for what they see as blackmail.
Trump has not only said he will extend his deadline for Tehran to open the strait until 0000 GMT on April 7, but has also said talks with Iran are going “very well”.
An Iranian official has described a U.S. proposal for ending the war was “one-sided and unfair,” and Tehran has demanded the closure of U.S. bases in the Gulf as a condition for any settlement.
But UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said Iran’s attacks on Gulf states had had “profound geopolitical repercussions,” cementing Tehran as the central threat shaping Gulf strategic thinking. The result, he said, would be deeper security alignment by the UAE with Washington.
“This is the cost of Iran’s misguided calculations,” he said.
