Can US reassure Arabs, Israel on Iran deal?
The United States can provide more weapons and intelligence to Persian Gulf states to deter Iranian aggression but cannot prop them up against internal threats.
Sometime this spring, the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will come to Camp David, the woodsy presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains north of Washington that has been the scene of historic peace agreements.
There, President Barack Obama will attempt to reassure anxious Sunni Arab monarchs that an emerging nuclear agreement with Shiite Persian Iran will not fuel that country’s aspirations for regional hegemony.
In interviews since the Iran framework was announced April 2, Obama has suggested that the United States will provide some kind of formal security guarantees to key Persian Gulf allies.
"We're going to be there for our [Persian Gulf] friends," Obama told Thomas Friedman of The New York Times on April 4. "I want to see how we can formalize that a little bit more than we currently have, and also help build their capacity so that they feel more confident about their ability to protect themselves from external aggression."
