A moment after declaring America was united with Persian Gulf countries against the Iranian missile tests, Kerry said the USA and its partners were telling Iran that they were “prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues”.
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The meeting also reviewed the issues on the agenda of the joint meeting of the GCC foreign ministers and the US Secretary of State.
“But the case will continue”, Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa told reporters.
“If Iran wants to have normal relations”, al-Jubeir said through an interpreter, “it has to change its policies”.
Kerry’s visit to Bahrain marks the first by a secretary of state to since the tiny Sunni-led Gulf monarchy crushed a Shiite-led uprising in 2011.
Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Shiite Houthi rebels, who have been backed by army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On April 4, the Department of Navy said in a statement that a United States ship intercepted and seized a shipment of weapons that was reportedly being transported on an Iranian vessel, and “was likely bound for Houthi insurgents in Yemen”.
Minister of Industry and Commerce, Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani, who participated in the meeting, pointed to the necessity of cementing the economic and trade relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the United States, taking into account the common desire and potential opportunities in light of the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries, which constitute an important framework and a strong momentum fueling forward the relations between the two sides. The exercise, created to keep sea lanes open for safe passage, runs until April 26. Since then, hundreds of Shiites and opposition leaders have been arrested and sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
The setting of the meeting in Bahrain underscored Arab concerns.
In the past, the top US official dealing with human rights, Tom Malinowski, was ordered to leave the country for trying to meet with political activists.
Iran’s “interventions through proxies in several parts of our region (are) continuing unabated”, the Bahraini foreign minister said.
He is praising Bahrain’s king for pushing human rights, while saying more needed to be done to ensure inclusivity.
The top USA diplomat however made no specific mention of the repression or discrimination against the country’s Shia-majority and instead accused the opposition of “polarizing” the situation by boycotting the previous elections in 2014.
On Tuesday, Kerry disputed that Iran was “as risky as ever” but said that Iran must offer “clear decisions about the role it intends to play in the region and the world”.
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Setting the stage for President Barack Obama’s summit with regional leaders in Saudi Arabia later this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to advance a series of proposals aimed at easing Arabs’ concerns about last year’s Iran nuclear deal and the warming of ties between the U.S. and Iran.
