GCC won’t get written defense guarantees at Camp David
Former Pentagon official says formal defense treaty with GCC is “not in the cards” at next week’s summit.
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ambassador Yousef al Otaiba said May 7 that the UAE and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) “need something in writing” from the United States to better guarantee their security in the wake of an anticipated nuclear agreement with Iran.
But GCC members, whose leaders are scheduled to attend a summit with President Barack Obama at Camp David on May 14, will not get NATO-like assurances of automatic US aid, said Derek Chollet, who was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs until the end of 2014.
The comments, made at an event at the Atlantic Council, suggest that US Arab allies may be left wanting despite US attempts to reassure them that an impending nuclear deal with Iran is not coming at their expense.
Chollet, who dealt extensively with Persian Gulf issues when he was at the Pentagon, said that the outcome of the summit would not be “any sort of NATO Article 5-like arrangement,” referring to that treaty’s pledge that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all. “I don’t think a legal defense treaty is in the cards,” he told Al-Monitor in response to a question.
