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Marco Rubio in Gulf to reassure allies hit hard by Mideast war --- AFP. Includes my thoughts: france24.com/en/live-news/20… “To be quite frank, any kind of drop in Washington’s standing in the region, especially in the Gulf, is I would say, a bit erratic. None of these countries are interested in replacing their relationship with the United States. On the contrary, my assessment is that they will deepen as much as possible their relationship with the United States, but at the same time I think what they will do is diversify their security relationships across the board, because they simply don't view the United States as being dependable and predictable” “I think that Rubio is probably going in order to try to reassure all of these Gulf partners…we're here and we stand by you. I don't know how much of it will change the equation because again none of them are looking to push the US out or anything like that, so it's not as though anything he's going to do is going to impact that. The key variable that he can’t shift them about is the actual reliability of the United States.” “In terms of assuaging them about overall American predictability and centering of Gulf security in the Gulf, I don't think he will succeed in this regard at all, because the United States, at the end of the day, went to war in the Gulf against the wishes of the Gulf with the single, the single worst partner that it could have gone to war in league with, which is the state of Israel” “They're not looking to replace the US or to downgrade the relationship with the US, that's not the point. They simply will diversify on top of it. In fact, they will deepen, I think, their relationship with the US” “The UAE thought that they had an understanding with Iran before this war began. Within a few hours of the US and Israel striking Iran at the beginning of the war, the UAE took, I think, more missiles and attacks than Israel did which took them by surprise. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if he was, he was trying to put distance (…) This deal is quite controversial within the Republican party” Dr H.A. Hellyer, senior associate fellow, Royal United Services Institute and Center for American Progress