UAE says it hopes for US-Iran breakthrough and braces for war

Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, said on Sunday that the Gulf state is hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and the United States, and is prepared for the alternative.

"We're hoping that there is a diplomatic breakthrough," Gargash told a conference in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, according to the South China Morning Post. "It is not the interest of the region to go through another round."

He said the UAE was "also, as we've shown before, braced for the worst", the paper reported. His remarks came after threats of a resumption of the Middle East war, according to SCMP.

The reports disagree on the state of contacts between Washington and Tehran. Al Jazeera reported that Iran and the United States were exploring diplomacy amid rising threats of war. Middle East Eye, citing no source in its published headline, reported that Iran has "no intention" of engaging in peace talks with the United States as war looms.

Iran International, in live coverage, reported that Iran warned any new war could spread beyond the Middle East.

None of the reports said where or when talks might be held, who would represent either side, or what the threatened war would consist of. SCMP described the threat as a resumption of the Middle East war; the other outlets referred to rising threats of war.

Gargash's remarks placed the UAE, a Gulf Arab state that sits across the Gulf from Iran, among the governments publicly hedging between a negotiated settlement and renewed fighting. Arab News reported his comments under the same framing as SCMP, saying the UAE was hoping for a breakthrough yet "braced for the worst" in an Iran-US war.

The Emirati official gave no timetable for diplomacy and did not say what the UAE would do if talks failed. The conference in Manama brought Gulf officials together at a moment when the region's governments are weighing the cost of another round of conflict against the cost of waiting.

Gargash's statement was the only official comment carried in the reports on Sunday.