The United Arab Emirates is hoping for a breakthrough in negotiations between Iran and the United States while being prepared for the worst, a senior Emirati official said on Sunday, following threats of a resumption of the Middle East war, AFP reported from Manama.
Source: AFP via Malay Mail
"We're hoping that there is a diplomatic breakthrough," Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, said during a conference in Manama. "It is not the interest of the region to go through another round… But I think we're also, as we've shown before, braced for the worst."
Gargash made a similar case in fuller remarks at the Manama Dialogue reported by Clash Report, which said it checked his quotes against video of the session: he described a "fog of war", said the Iranian and American positions are "far apart", and called a return to the pre-war status quo in the Strait of Hormuz "important and non-negotiable".
Source: Clash Report
The diplomacy track is moving through Doha. Following a visit to Tehran this week by a Qatari delegation, Iran has dispatched envoys to the Gulf country to continue consultations as part of indirect negotiations with the US to end the war, AFP reported.
Washington's message in Manama carried both tracks at once. "We just can't allow Iran to take this region and the global economy hostage," US Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Donald Blome said at the conference on Sunday. "The hand of negotiation has been extended, and those channels have continued to be open and active at the same time," he said. "We've been also prepared to go in another direction."
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump has not made a decision about fresh strikes on Iran and that the US would be open to a diplomatic solution, AFP reported. Trump himself reiterated his threats on Saturday, saying the United States still has to "take care of" one or two targets in Iran.
Tehran's public line, as reported separately by Middle East Eye, was harder: Iran said it has "no intention" of engaging in talks with the United States, as the war of words between the two countries intensified — a claim that sits alongside the reported Doha consultations and has not been reconciled by either side.
Source: Middle East Eye via Hatha Alyoum
The war began on February 28 with joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which retaliated by targeting, among others, Gulf countries allied with Washington, AFP reported. That is why a Gulf state that hosts large numbers of foreign workers — including lakhs of Punjabis and Indians — is publicly arguing for diplomacy while preparing for escalation.
Gargash also said the crisis has broken confidence between Iran and its Gulf neighbours and that rebuilding it will take an extremely long time, according to the Clash Report account of his remarks. He said Iran is a neighbour and economic ties will resume at some stage, with relations already running through mediators.
What happens next turns on the Doha consultations and on Washington's post-midterm decisions: Rubio's statement leaves a diplomatic solution open, Trump's Saturday remarks leave strikes open, and the Gulf states around the table in Manama have now said plainly which of the two they want.