President Barack Obama said Thursday the ceasefire in Syria’s five-year civil war was fragile and in danger of collapse, as he concluded talks in Saudi Arabia with Gulf Arab leaders.
In a statement following a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Obama said the US and its Gulf Arab allies had forged a common vision for key issues in the Middle East. He also said they shared a broad vision for prosperity and stability.
Deep differences over how to calm sectarian tensions and respond to Iranian aggression, as well as last year’s nuclear deal with Tehran, have strained relations between Washington and Gulf Arab governments.
Talks between Obama and leaders from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman were to focus on Iran, Syria and the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda. He was scheduled to depart for London later Thursday.
US officials said there was broad consensus among the leaders on key regional issues including defeating Islamic State, restoring stability in Yemen and the path to a political transition in Syria, but that tactical differences remained.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Obama, said Thursday that challenges addressing conflicts in the region would remain even after Obama leaves office.
But with his time winding down, he hoped to leave a political framework in place “so that there’s a basis for the next administration to work to enhance stability in the region,” Rhodes said. “And Saudi Arabia is going to be an important part of that.”
The summit came one year after Obama met Gulf leaders at Camp David to address concerns about the Iran nuclear deal, a meeting that Saudi’s King Salman chose not to attend in what was seen as a show of his government’s displeasure over the pact. Tensions have continued to build since the group last assembled, and expectations remained low for major announcements at the summit’s conclusion.
David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Thursday’s talks were unlikely to resolve gaps in trust between the US and Gulf allies.
“Diplomacy and summitry of this sort typically depends on leaders being able to put on a happy face and say they had a great meeting with their counterparts,” he said. “That’s going to be tough this time around.”
Washington and Riyadh both say they want to contain Iran’s destabilizing regional role, but their approaches are fundamentally different. While the Obama administration has pursued a policy of dialogue, culminating in last year’s nuclear deal, the kingdom has done the opposite, pushing to isolate Tehran.
Riyadh severed diplomatic ties with Tehran after a mob ransacked its diplomatic sites in Iran to protest the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric in the kingdom. Since then, Gulf countries—in particular, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates—have stood firmly by Saudi Arabia, stepping up their war of words against Iran and criticizing Tehran’s interference in Arab affairs.
Obama has warned that the deepening rivalry between Shiite Iran and the Sunni monarchies was fueling the region’s sectarian conflicts—criticism that hasn’t gone down well in the Gulf.
Obama has called on Gulf states and Iran to forge a “cold peace” to de-escalate tensions in the region. Riyadh remains opposed to the Iran nuclear agreement, which Saudi leaders view as a pivot away from Gulf allies toward Tehran.
