The U.S.-Saudi Arabia-Iran Tensions: It Seemed We Were Moving Towards a Conflict More Dramatic Than Anything We Have Already Seen
Key ideas from Daniel Levy’s speech during the “Persian Gulf: War and Peace” session of the
9th Valdai Discussion Club’s Middle East Conference
(Moscow, February 17–18, 2020)....
How to ensure security and freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf?
In recent weeks, the world’s attention has been riveted on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. On May 12, four tankers owned by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were attacked by unknown forces when entering the Strait off the coast of Fujairah. On June 13, this time near the Iranian coast, two more tankers flying the flags of the Marshall Islands and Panama were attacked. The incidents occurred against the backdrop of another exacerbation in U.S.–Iran relations and the United States imposing more sanctions on Tehran.
Nobody ...
... at the Camp David summit the US and the GCC agreed to “cooperate in countering Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region and continue consultations on how... ... security architecture.”
REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Piхstream
Nikolay Soukhov:
One Thousand and One Nights: Barack Obama
on Missile Defence in the Persian Gulf
Оne of the agreements reached at the summit was to jointly develop a region-wide... ... necessary defense components in place already, such as short-range Patriot systems in Saudi Arabia and THAAD systems in Qatar, but the new agreement provides for the installation...
... America do now?
Going forward, here’s what we can expect:
1.) America will try very hard to distance itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support ... ... into being an apartheid-like political pariah within the Western world.
4.) There’s a good chance for a thaw/deal with Iran in the near future.
More than any president since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Obama has shown an energy and a willingness ...