The Protection Division early this morning led two working teams on the invitation of the Gulf Cooperation Council, together with one on air and missile protection and one other on maritime safety. A takeaway from the discussions is that the U.S. and collaborating Gulf nations share most of the similar safety issues for the area.
“There’s a shared evaluation between america and the GCC of the threats that face us … there’s an alignment of the risk notion,” Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of protection for the Center East, mentioned.
The members of the Gulf Cooperation Council are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. The council first met in 1981 to strengthen relations among the many member states.
Chief amongst these threats, she mentioned, are these posed by Iran. Included there’s the proliferation of Iranian unmanned aerial automobiles to non-state actors throughout the area, that are threats to each civilians of Gulf nations and to U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria who’re conducting the counter-ISIS mission.
Iranian aggression at sea additionally stays a severe concern, Stroul mentioned.
“Evidently, the work to convey companions collectively and the elevated fee of maritime interdictions, I believe, speaks each to the intense nature of the threats we face at sea and to how we will successfully deal with these threats by means of elevated cooperation,” she mentioned.
Dialogue inside the working teams additionally turned to army cooperation between Iran and Russia, together with the illicit switch of Iranian weapons to Russia to be used in Ukraine and the implications of that for stability and safety within the Center East, Stroul mentioned.
A giant takeaway from discussions on air and missile protection, Stroul mentioned, was curiosity in elevated integration between completely different techniques at the moment used within the Gulf.
“There was no different second in time during which the prospect for significant integration is extra actual than at this time,” she mentioned. “It is each due to that alignment of threats that I simply went by means of. And additionally it is due to rising expertise and the tradition of innovation that Centcom [U.S. Central Command] is fostering along with its companions.”
Stroul mentioned discussions on the working group centered across the standing of air and missile protection techniques which might be in place, the chance for elevated intelligence sharing and early warning sooner or later, and analysis of companions’ techniques and capabilities to devising a simpler, layered air protection.
“Relating to maritime safety, [U.S. Naval Forces Central Command] is doing unbelievable work at this time, increasing maritime area consciousness and bringing collectively companions by means of its mixed job forces to deal with threats that we hear from our companions are of super concern,” Stroul mentioned.
