U.S. Commitments to the Gulf Arab States: Are They Adequate?

The following is an unedited transcript of the seventy-sixth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on April 23, 2014, at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, with Ford M. Fraker moderating and Thomas R. Mattair as the discussant. The video can be accessed at www.mepc.org.

COLIN KAHL, Associate Professor, Georgetown University; Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Security Program, Center for a New American Security; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East

So my remarks, or at least the outline of them, are written on my iPad, so don’t think I’m checking my email or Twitter account while I – (laughter) – I mean, I may do that, too, but mostly I’ll be referencing my remarks.

Well, thank you for inviting me to speak to you all. Thanks to you all for showing up. I know that there’s a lot of competing events on these types of topics, and so I think we all appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us.  

I thought that I would focus my remarks on Gulf anxieties as it relates to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but specifically focus on Gulf anxieties as it relates to U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, which is very much a hot topic.