Afrasianet - The statement of the meeting of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, held in the Bahraini capital Manama on Thursday, called for an end to "all forms of Iranian threats," including nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and Tehran-affiliated militias in the region.
This coincided with a new security emergency in the Strait of Hormuz, represented by the injury of a Taiwanese ship with an "unknown object" off the coast of Oman, which can be considered a warning from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Sultanate after it refused to announce the opening of a "safe passage" for commercial ships, followed by a statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying that Tehran and Muscat will hold talks "to determine the future of the management of the Strait of Hormuz."
Rubio's visit to the region and his statements during this visit appeared to be an expression of the views of the hardline wing of the US administration, as there was a clear contrast between these views and the statements of US Vice President J.D. Vance regarding Iran, Israel and Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have reiterated their repeated declarations not to withdraw from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria and to maintain so-called "safe zones," while Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Friday that "the axis of resistance and Iran have broken the Israeli-American project."
The United States agrees with Iran that a war on Iran will not achieve its goals, but this acknowledgment is strongly opposed by the current Israeli leadership, making it the biggest obstacle to the prospects of withdrawing the tentative agreement on the rest of the battlefields in the region.
The differences in positions between Vance and Rubio, the paradoxes between the Iranian delegation's visit to Oman and the targeting of a ship near its shores, Israel's attempt to reject American orders, and the differences between the Lebanese authority and Hezbollah show that there is a thick and complex conflict between the stakes of diplomacy and politics Between these intertwined equations, Israel does not show clear options away from the logic of force, coercion and incursion, but the end of the "Netanyahu era", if it happens, may open the way for other options, but betting on this is difficult given that his main opponents in the upcoming elections, Gadi Eisenkot and Naftali Bennett, are also right-wingers.
Source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi
