The way the US meeting unfolded with its regional partners in New York is a reminder that the US is not taking regional security into serious consideration.   The #US took the region into a war without thinking through the consequences, and they've been dealing with the Houthis in an unpredictable manner.   In January 2025, President Trump designated them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and went after them with an aerial campaign between March and May 2025.   Then, all of a sudden, he struck a deal with the Houthis, without taking into account the maritime interests of his partners, including the Saudis. US-Houthi dynamics in the last few weeks have some parallels to 2025 (and it doesn’t preclude further unpredictability down the line). As to the NYC meeting, the optics looked off. It was first marketed as a GCC-US meeting, and then it expanded to include six more states – five Arab and Turkey. These are countries with different interests and assessments of what’s happening. Among the 12 countries in attendance, the Gulf states have been the hardest hit in this war. If this meeting was meant to assuage the concerns of the Gulf, it didn’t look good. It sent a signal concerning the level of attention given to the Gulf and its needs and aspirations. Obviously, the big ask in the region is to get on with the show and arrive at a peaceful resolution. There was nothing transformative coming out from this meeting, nor from the US-Iran meeting even with reports of ongoing #Iran-US talks. The parties to the war are still playing with time. The fear among Gulf states is the normalization of a stalemate, a frozen conflict or, equally damaging, an open ended conflict. Another concern is an Iran-US deal that doesn’t take into account Gulf Arab interests. That’s why pursuing regional solutions should continue unabated. No denial of the US role in it all (war and peace), but we shouldn’t let external actors determine the trajectory of the region.

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