Gerd Nonneman

Diplomacy marathon underway as Iran delegation keep talking with Qatar mediators in Doha in bid to prevent an existential war. Araghchi says his team has cut the point at which Iran lift Hormuz blockade and can start nuclear talks from 7 to 2 days once US sanctions lifted. In theory the strait could open before the US midterms !! The route through which ships would travel is only the route previously agreed between Iran and Oman. All other routes close. No agreement yet on return of UN nuclear inspectors to look at bombed nuclear sites but significant the issue is in mix. A new protocol to inspect bombed nuclear sites is required Iran says. No need for direct talks with the US at this stage, Araghchi said. Iran’s Supreme Leader - after meeting military leaders - has lifted restrictions on missile range, and broadened the target bank. “Any level or type of threat must be met with an immediate, impactful, and geographically unrestricted response.” Rezaei sect of supreme national security council in Iran TV says US tone in Vance letter to him has completely changed. Welcomes this as positive. Adds no new decision has been made regarding changes to the nuclear doctrine; “of course, the discussion has been raised that if the war resumes, do we want to maintain the previous doctrine or not?” Rezaei is the man that the US had adjudged speaks for those truly in power. Trump “We may witness a major peace agreement at the G20 summit, involving Russia, Ukraine, and Iran”. Rubio “decision to restart war not made”. No one can accuse Qatar of allowing the world to sleepwalk into a war. In essence any return to war will be because the bonds of trust required in an agreement containing stages simply could not be created.

Significant even brave intervention by Oman foreign minister @badralbusaidi at Cambridge calling for the Gulf States to form a non-aggression pact with Iran and Iraq. Says US should no longer be primary provider of security in region, adding external partners have imposed the most damaging of the priorities - "the requirement that Iran be excluded. Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organised." He argues "What holds us back is that issues which ought to be handled at a regional level by the states of the Gulf themselves, are made more complex, more intractable and sometimes simply impossible to resolve because the region's security arrangements are insufficiently developed. "And they are insufficiently developed because they have relied for too long on the involvement of external powers. "The complications which stand in the way of successful resolutions to both the Iranian nuclear issue and the question of free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz are simply the latest effects of an unstable combination of power projection and dependency in the Gulf. "In other words, the nuclear issue and the Hormuz issue are both impossible to resolve because external powers continue to define the terms of engagement, while regional powers are unable to take collective responsibility for making their own security arrangements and reach a consensus on them". Says Iran "has for nearly half a century been systematically excluded from playing any meaningful role in the security arrangements of the region. "An exclusion with profoundly negative consequences, not just for Iran, but for the region as a whole". He says "Instead of a genuine security structure designed to maintain stable relations between the eight states of the Gulf, an unstable regional system has been constructed on the entirely false perception that there is a fundamental regional antagonism between Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf. "There is no such fundamental antagonism. There are problems, yes, of course. But the plain fact is that Arabs and Persians have lived in peace around the Gulf for centuries. It’s not a matter of whether you’re friendly or hostile to Iran. "Today, Persia is a fact, 93 million people and three thousand years of history. Roughly half of the Gulf littoral. "Any Gulf security architecture that doesn’t include them is inherently unstable. It’s structurally unsound. And recent events expose the terrible cost of allowing the false perception of antagonism and exclusion." "It is us, in the Gulf, who ultimately bear the responsibility for devising, developing and implementing a new regional security structure. The time has come when it no longer makes sense just to blame everyone else. We need to begin a new regional dialogue on Gulf security, and we need to do so before other solutions are imposed on the region which would effectively consolidate the pattern of dependency and exclusion for which we urgently need to find an alternative. What is needed, instead, is a new and inclusive framework, involving all eight Gulf littoral states".