Trust between the United Arab Emirates and Iran will take years to rebuild, UAE president's diplomatic adviser Dr Anwar Gargash said on Thursday. Speaking at the Arab Media Summit in Dubai, he said relations with Tehran had to continue because the two countries were neighbours, but that confidence was a separate question after the attacks on the Gulf states. Gargash said the UAE was managing the crisis while also assessing the future of the relationship.
We have very complex relations with Iran, and certainly there is a collapse in the security regiment in the region. Thus, we have to find some new channels of understanding,” he said. He set out the UAE approach in three parts.
First, to defend our sovereignty, and then to be flexible,” he said. The third was continuity of economic development through the crisis, he said, citing the president's visit to Germany. To maintain our development, our economic uproar, and the visit of our president to Germany was successful because we don't want to stop our economy in the midst of this crisis,” he said.
Asked about his 7 September statement that UAE confidence in Iran was broken, Gargash said he had drawn a deliberate distinction. We need years to rebuild this trust.” “The Iranian president said that the aggression from Iran on the GCC countries was a big mistake,” he said. Asked whether the UAE had taken any measures of its own against Iran, financial or political, he said it had not.
Gargash said Iran was made of different circles and that decision-making there was no longer held in one place, as it had been under the previous Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since 1989, and that the voices arguing against confrontation with the Gulf needed to be louder. On the meeting between Sheikh Khalid bin Mohamed and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at BRICS, Gargash said the two sides had agreed on the direction if not on everything. But there was an agreement on the fact that we should start a new page and look to the future,” he said.
It is not in the interest of Iran nor the GCC countries.” He said President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed had set the balance between flexibility and strength from the beginning of the war. The region had suffered from militias, Gargash said, naming Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, and that “any arms outside the state are harmful for the countries and the region”. And as you are aware, and strategically speaking, the safety, security, and prosperity of Saudi Arabia is in our interest,” he said, asked whether relations with Riyadh remained open.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
