What Could The UK's Role In Long-Term Middle East Peace Look Like?

The Foreign Office has met with a delegation from Yemen to discuss the UK’s role in peace settlements in the wider Middle East, as diplomats and parliamentarians urge the UK government to set out its long-term strategy for the region.

Negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war appear to have stalled, despite hopes that this week would see a breakthrough. The Iran-backed Houthi movement from Yemen continues to cause disruption to shipping in the Red Sea, with the UK and US launching their fourth round of joint airstrikes against the group last week. 

While much of UK political discourse is focused on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, many parliamentarians and experts on the region are concerned about the conflict’s potential threat to stability across the wider Middle East. The Foreign Office (FCDO) is therefore engaged in diplomacy with representatives from a range of nations, with questions being raised as to what could happen next if a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.

A delegation from the Southern Transition Council (STC), a secessionist organisation in South Yemen which has members in Yemen’s internationally recognised government executive, met with the FCDO and backbench MPs last week in an attempt to urge the UK to set out more of a long-term strategy when it comes to Yemen and the wider Middle East region. While the Houthi rebels control much of the northwest of Yemen, the STC is one of multiple factions which wish to govern the south of the country.

Amr Al-Bidh, the STC’s Special Representative of the President for Foreign Affairs, told PoliticsHome that he believed the UK’s approach was too centred on an assumption that a ceasefire in Gaza would settle conflicts elsewhere in the region.

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