DUBAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) – The Middle East does not need another confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, and Tehran needs to reach a nuclear deal with Washington, the diplomatic adviser to the president of regional power United Arab Emirates said at a World Governments Summit panel in Dubai.
Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday. U.S. President Donald Trump warned that with big U.S. warships heading to Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
The UAE, a highly influential Gulf Arab power, said a long-term solution was needed.
“I think that the region has gone through various calamitous confrontations. I don’t think we need another one, but I would like to see direct Iranian-American negotiations leading to understandings so that we don’t have these issues every other day,” the UAE president’s advisor Anwar Gargash said.
“They need to rebuild their relationship with the United States. I think through reaching a deal, a political deal, a wider geo strategic deal that will actually be beneficial to the area, the Iranians are also helping themselves in ultimately, what they need, which is to rebuild their economy.”
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will meet in Istanbul in an effort to revive diplomacy over a long-running dispute about Iran’s nuclear programme and dispel fears of a new regional war. A regional diplomat said representatives from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt would also participate.
The U.S. naval buildup near Iran follows a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest domestic unrest in Iran since its 1979 revolution.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking”, while Tehran’s top security official Ali Larijani said arrangements for negotiations were under way.
The UAE, a regional trade and business hub, has been in the spotlight since December when tensions rose with Saudi Arabia over developments in Yemen.
The withdrawal of Emirati forces from Yemen following a Saudi airstrike did not defuse tensions between two Gulf oil powers with long-running differences.
Since then the UAE has faced withering criticism on social media over its support for separatists in Yemen and alleged backing for a paramilitary group accused of atrocities in the devastating war against Sudan’s military.
Gargash dismissed the criticism, saying the noise should be separated from reality.
“I was reading a message that said we were getting 45,000 hate tweets every day on the Sudan issue and on our position in Sudan. And suddenly Yemen was an issue, and suddenly the Sudan bots were reduced from 45,000 to 3,000 a day, so the whole group moved on to another fight,” he said.
(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah, Maha El Dahan,Jana Choukeir, Federico Maccioni; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sonali Paul, Jacqueline Wong, Philippa Fletcher)
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