Politico reports:

As the U.S. continues daily strikes on Iran, the Arab states battered by Tehran’s retaliatory attacks are trying to unite to chart a path toward peace. Longstanding tensions are getting in the way.

In recent weeks, top ministers in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have posed for a photo showing their countries are reconciling; Jordan and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council have had meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill; and the GCC has issued a torrent of joint statements condemning Iranian attacks.

But as much as these countries have a common goal of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, their different priorities in getting there are making it tough to make progress, according to interviews with Arab diplomats, current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with regional dynamics.

That includes a series of conflicting interests based on who has alternatives to shipping via the waterway, whose infrastructure is most entangled with Iran’s, and which country’s economy is bleeding the hardest during the crisis.

“They’re working together to visit Congress and the State Department, to coordinate their messages,” said an Iraqi official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “But they are not on the same page.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — was founded in 1981 in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war and already had disputes heading into the current conflict. The Iran war is bringing those to the fore.

“They’ve got a lot to get over and the war has exacerbated extant divisions in the Gulf,” said David Schenker, who handled Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department in the first Trump administration.

One of the most visible signs of internal rifts during the last months came when the UAE pulled out of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel in April, at least in part related to divisions over the Iran war. A diplomat from an Arab country outside the Gulf, granted anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes tensions, argued the UAE’s withdrawal “truly angered other countries, specifically Saudi Arabia. The Gulf will no longer be the same as it was before.”

“The GCC is nonfunctional,” the person said. [Continue reading…]