US influence in the Gulf fades as Qatar, Oman strike deals with Tehran

>The Gulf states are increasingly angry at the Trump administration which was supposed to be a guarantor of security but instead unleashed the biggest war in the Middle East for decades, without consulting them and without taking their interest into account.

> At the same time, the destruction of key assets is increasing in a tit-for-tat campaign that is being driven by Israel’s decision to target economic, as well as military, targets. Israel has hit power plants and Iran’s three steel plants that are its biggest source of foreign exchange earnings outside of the oil and gas business among other things.
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> As US president Donald Trump runs out of ideas, he has flip-flopped between threatening to bomb Iran into the stone ages and to simply pull out and leave the regional powers and Asia to clean up the mess. The Gulf states are starting to take matters into their own hands but remain undecided on if they should intervene militarily or seek a peace deal that Pakistan is attempting to broker. In the meantime, increasingly some Gulf leaders have begun to negotiate with Tehran to cut their own deals to mitigate the risk of attack.