“Hopefully we are towards the end of the war,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. Days later he was due to put that hope to the Gulf states that have absorbed much of the war’s damage.
Trump is expected to meet Gulf leaders in New York on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, to discuss the next phase of the Iran war. Axios, citing three sources with direct knowledge, reported that leaders or foreign ministers of all six Gulf Cooperation Council states are invited: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. The State Department sent the first invitations on Wednesday. One source said the gathering could grow to include other Arab and Muslim leaders. The White House has not commented.
Planning for the day after
The talks are meant to cover American ideas for what follows the fighting. Axios said Trump and his senior officials are working on a broader “day-after” plan that is expected to be finalised after the November midterm elections.
The Gulf states have a stake in how it is written. Several that host US military facilities were hit by Iran during the conflict, which began on February 28 and is now in its seventh month, and disrupted oil and gas exports have carried wider costs. Iran has answered US and Israeli attacks with strikes across the region, and trouble around the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up global energy prices.
No ceasefire or final agreement has been announced, and major differences remain between Washington and Tehran. Trump has said Iran wants a deal and that Washington heard from Tehran directly. Asked whether intermediaries were involved, he said the contact was “direct”.
Back channels and precedent
Quiet diplomacy is under way elsewhere. Reuters reported that US officials held undisclosed talks over the weekend with senior Houthi representatives in Oman. One source said the meeting took place on Sunday at the US Embassy in Muscat, with Oman facilitating. Two sources told Reuters the Houthis assured the Americans they would not attack US vessels and remained committed to their 2025 ceasefire with Washington. A Yemeni source said the group also promised not to target Israeli ships or other commercial vessels, except Saudi ones. The State Department did not confirm the meeting, saying only that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and stopping the export of terrorism from the Middle East remained core US interests.
Trump has used this setting before. Last year he showed leaders from eight Arab and Muslim countries a draft of his Gaza peace plan at a similar gathering on the UN sidelines. The plan went public a week later and an agreement to end that war followed soon after.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also seeking a meeting with Trump while in New York, according to Axios. None has been scheduled.
