President Obama pledged to stand by Arab Gulf allies against attacks and promised that the summit at Camp David Thursday would be more than a photo op by following up with a concrete series of steps.
Obama met with top officials and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries Thursday in an effort to rebuild trust with the key U.S. allies. The goal was to reassure them that the talks with Iran over its nuclear program will not prevent the U.S. from defending its allies in the face of Iranian aggression.
The significance of the summit took a beating earlier this week after the both the Saudi and Bahraini kings decided to skip the meeting with Obama, which was widely viewed as a snub amid ongoing tensions over U.S. negotiations with Iran to roll back its nuclear and other U.S. policies in the Middle East.
Obama tried to reassure the leaders of U.S. support in the face of a threat from Iran and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.
He thanked the leaders for attending, said it had been an “excellent summit,” and called the discussions “candid” and “extensive.”
“I was very explicit that the United States will stand by our GCC partners against external attacks,” he said. “We want to make sure that this is not just a photo op but a concrete series of steps.”
He noted that he had accepted an invitation from the Gulf council to attend a follow-up meeting next year.
The leaders discussed the Iran nuclear deal and that country’s “destabilizing activities in the region,” Obama said, as well as Yemen and “additional work we need to do with respect to Daesh,” the Arabic term for the Islamic State.
He tried to end on a positive note.
“We hope we can achieve the kind of peace and good neighborliness with Iran” that everyone wants, he concluded.
The emir of Qatar and the GCC secretary general, Sheikh Tameem Bin Hamad Al Thani, gave his own brief statement, thanking Obama for the invitation to the summit, which he called “useful” and “productive.”
He also said that the GCC welcome a nuclear agreement with Iran and hopes it can be a “key factor for stability in the region.”
In addition, he said they talked about “non-interference by non-Arab countries in the affairs of the region and the Arab countries,” about the crisis in Syria, Iraq, as well as the dangers of extremism and terrorism.
