Obama says USA shares Saudi concerns about Yemen instability

Obama will meet with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Friday at the White House to discuss the growing threat posed by the Islamic State, the prospect of increased Iranian aggression, and plans to contain the chaos in Yemen and Syria.

The White House has seized on Salman’s visit to follow up on promises to shore up US-Saudi relations, including big-ticket military sales to the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is happy with USA president Barack Obama’s assurances that the recent nuclear deal with Iran will not imperil the Gulf states and believes the agreement will contribute to security and stability in the Middle East.

The visit pushes the administration to publicly address those concerns before Congress votes.

Administration officials said there are no warplanes included in the agreement and stressed that, at the moment, the only country in the Middle East that will get F-35 fighter jets, considered the jewel of America’s future arsenal, is Israel.

But behind the warm public statements, there are disagreements on Syria and Yemen and lingering Saudi doubts about the Iran deal.

The Saudi foreign minister said the humanitarian situation in Yemen was being exacerbated by the rebels, claiming that supplies were at risk of being diverted from the people who most needed them.

“Our relationship is beneficial not only to our two countries but to the entire world and to our region”, Salman said.

Since then, worldwide negotiators from the P5+1 group of world powers and Iran agreed to remove biting economic sanctions from Tehran in exchange for unprecedented curbs and inspections of its nuclear program.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the six countries which fall under the Gulf Cooperation Council, have accepted very few refugees while more than four million people have fled Syria so far.

“We can now focus more intensely on the nefarious activities that Iran is engaged in in the region”, ABC news reported him as saying.

Rhodes said the meeting would likely not lead to announcements of major weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

“Alliances with Arab states are going to have to adapt to events that none of us can control”, he says, and that includes Iran’s behaviour.

“The kingdom sees the conflict against the Iranian-supported Assad regime as an extension of the wider Persian-Arab rivalry”, said Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“I expect the president will express the concerns that we have about the urgent need to find a resolution to this crisis”, Prescott said during a conference call with reporters previewing the king’s visit.