Representatives of several Gulf states signed an agreement on Tuesday to ease Qatar’s isolation from its Arab neighbors, which have blockaded the country since 2017, a major step toward ending a rift that has left it excluded for years.
The agreement, signed at a regional summit meeting in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, by representatives from that kingdom and the five other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, was announced Tuesday afternoon, though few details were immediately available.
The de facto Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, speaking during the meeting, said the agreement emphasized “solidarity and stability in the Gulf, Arab and Islamic countries, and the strengthening of bonds of friendship and brotherhood between our countries and peoples, in a way that serves their hopes and aspirations,” according to the Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya.
The agreement came one day after Saudi Arabia agreed to reopen its borders and airspace to Qatar for the first time since the blockade began. Qatar has been paying an estimated $100 million annually to route planes through Iranian airspace, money that the United States was eager to see halted as it was seen as propping up Tehran’s faltering economy.
Qatar’s neighbors — including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — cut off the small peninsular country with an air, land and sea embargo after accusing its rulers of supporting terrorism and Islamists in the region and of drawing closer to Iran, a rival to the dominant Saudis. Qatar denied the accusations that it financed terrorism and maintained that it would be unreasonable to cut ties with Tehran, a major trading partner across the Persian Gulf, where the two countries share a critical offshore natural gas field.
The regional divisions had wider implications, fracturing mutually dependent nations and leaving the United States caught between allies that it relies on for oil and military bases, while hindering attempts by the Trump administration to further isolate Iran.
The administration had been working behind the scenes for months to usher in a resolution, and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was at the summit meeting in Al Ula.
When the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, arrived at the meeting Tuesday morning, he was greeted with a carefully choreographed embrace by Prince Mohammed, seen in a video clip shared by the Saudi state broadcaster.
Prince Mohammed hinted at reconciliation in a statement on Monday, saying that the meeting was intended to “close the ranks and unify the stance” of the Gulf countries. On Tuesday, he opened the meeting with a speech that struck a similar tone, noting that Saudi Arabia would put a unified Gulf region at the top of its priorities and strengthen “bonds of friendship and brotherhood between our countries and peoples, in a way that serves their hopes and aspirations,” according to Al Arabiya.
He also thanked the United States for its mediation efforts over the rift in the region, and then took aim at Iran.
“The threats posed by the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program, and its destructive missions that it and its proxies carries out, and all of its terrorist and sectarian activities that are aimed at destabilizing the region,” posed the biggest challenge to the region, he said.
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