While US President Donald Trump has indulged in his usual hyperbole to describe the US-Iran deal as achieving "everything we set out to accomplish,” Gulf leaders are far more circumspect about the likely implications, especially what it means for freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
There is a widely held view among Gulf Arab leaders that the deal broadly favours Iran, and there are concerns that excessive concessions Trump made to secure the deal will ultimately help strengthen Tehran and reshape the region's security balance and oil flows. As one senior Gulf leader remarked to me earlier this week, following the signing of the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding between Washington and Tehran, “Iran is the winner. Now we have to live with the consequences.”
The most immediate concern for Gulf leaders is the future status of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump insisted that, as part of the deal negotiated with Iran, the vital supply route would be fully reopened after both Iran and the US agreed to lift their respective blockades. But Iran has said it retains the right to charge fees for commercial shipping passing through the strait, to recuperate the cost to rebuild what the US and other involved players destroyed during their war on the country.
In an attempt to reassure Washington’s Gulf allies, Trump said tolls on ships sailing in the Strait of Hormuz would be a red line issue for the US in upcoming negotiations with Iran, which are due to take place while the current 60-day ceasefire remains in place. And in the first visit by an American cabinet member to the Gulf since the US launched the war against Iran in February, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to assure Gulf officials that the proposed deal was not overly favourable to Iran while visiting the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
"We're not going to do anything that undermines the security of our allies, our longstanding allies in the region," he told reporters in Kuwait. Speaking in Kuwait City, Rubio insisted the agreement was "going to be completely aligned with our partners in the Gulf...If Iran wants to make a good, real deal, the United States is open to it. If they're not, then of course the president has options," Rubio told reporters, adding that negotiators were likely to meet again in Switzerland before the end of the month.
Separately, there are plans for regional reconciliation talks to be held in Saudi Arabia between Iran, Gulf Arab states and possibly other regional countries, a diplomat told Reuters.
