Washington: The Obama administration is scrambling for reassurances it can present this month at a Camp David summit meeting to persuade Gulf Arab allies that the United States has their backs, despite a pending nuclear deal with Iran.

Officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have been meeting to discuss everything from joint training missions for US and Arab militaries (more likely) to additional weapons sales to a loose defence pact that could signal that the United States would back those allies if they come under attack from Iran.

Over mahi-mahi at a dinner at the Pentagon two weeks ago, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter polled a select group of Middle East experts for advice on how the administration could placate Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, all of which fear the nuclear deal, according to several attendees at the dinner.

Carter wanted to know “how do you make clear to the GCC that America isn’t going to hand the house keys of the [Gulf] over to Iran and then pivot to Asia?” said one Middle East expert at the dinner, using the acronym for the Gulf Cooperation Council. The council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

There is not much time left to come up with something to offer the Gulf states. Kerry is to meet next week with the foreign ministers of the GCC to prepare for the Camp David summit meeting on May 14, and he will be expected to foreshadow what kind of package the administration is willing to offer. If he does not have anything that satisfies the Gulf allies, they may downgrade their attendance at the Camp David meeting. Saudi Arabia, for example, could send its crown prince, Mohammad Bin Nayef, instead of King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud Salman, in what would widely be interpreted as a rebuff of Obama.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has the security designation for a US ally that could help soothe Arab fears, said Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert on Middle East political and military affairs at the Brookings Institution.

‘Very concerned’

“The Gulf states are very concerned about this nuclear deal with Iran,” Pollack said. “Some of them believe this is the start of an Obama administration bid to trade them away.” Administration officials, he said, were “trying to think creatively about how they can assuage those fears.”

Increased weapons sales could help, but there is a major roadblock: maintaining Israel’s military edge. The United States has long put restrictions on the types of weapons that US defence firms can sell to Arab nations, which are meant to ensure that Israel keeps a military advantage against its traditional adversaries in the region. That is why the administration has so far not allowed Lockheed Martin to sell the F-35 fighter jet, considered to be the jewel of America’s future arsenal of weapons, to Arab countries. The plane, the world’s most expensive weapons project, has stealth abilities and has been approved for sale to Israel.

Defence analysts say that with the balance of power in the Middle East in flux, that could change. One possibility would be to wait three years after delivering the F-35 to Israel and then approve it for sale to the UAE — the Arab ally most likely to get the first chance to buy the stealth fighter — which would give Israel a three-year head start.

If the Arab allies “could push a button and have anything, they want a security pact, a Japan-style treaty,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But they’re cognisant of the fact that that’s too big of an ask. So at the very minimum, it’s weapons sales.”

Vali R. Nasr, a former special adviser to Obama who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said that the administration had already made moves to reassure the Arab allies — most notably by supporting Saudi-led air strikes against Iranian-backed Al Houthi militiamen in Yemen and by moving an aircraft carrier group to the Yemeni coast. The warships were meant as a show of force to turn back an Iranian convoy, which US officials said they suspected was trying to deliver weapons to Al Houthis.

“Remember, our dog in the fight in Yemen is Al Qaida, not Al Houthis,” Nasr said. Moving the carrier group to back the Saudis “wasn’t about Yemen. It was about alliance management.”