US Floats USD10B Gulf Fund to Rebuild War-Torn Energy Sites
Under the emerging plan, the US would push eight Middle Eastern partners — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Jordan — to match its $5 billion stake, pushing the fund's total size to $10 billion. The initiative has been dubbed the Partnership for Allied Trust and Construction, or Pact.
Oversight of the fund would fall to the US Development Finance Corporation, according to the report — a notable shift for an agency whose portfolio has traditionally leaned toward developing economies rather than wealthy Gulf monarchies.
US officials cautioned that negotiations remain fluid: terms could still shift, and no country has committed to signing on.
Skepticism is already surfacing among regional officials, who told the Journal the plan looks designed to downplay the Strait of Hormuz's strategic importance and project unified resolve against Tehran. Some also warned that bankrolling reconstruction ahead of any peace agreement risks putting fresh targets in Iran's crosshairs.
"This strategy has risk written all over it," said Bilal Saab of consulting firm TRENDS US.
The stakes are steep. Over seven months of war, Iranian missile and drone strikes have battered dozens of refineries, oil fields and gas export terminals, the report noted. Just this month, a drone strike disabled Saudi Arabia's bypass pipeline entirely, forcing a surge of crude back through the Hormuz chokepoint and driving tanker rates to record levels.
Umer Karim, a Gulf security researcher at the University of Birmingham, cautioned that the arrangement could leave some participants dependent on others — a dynamic that risks straining bilateral ties across the region.
Reconstruction costs alone are projected to run into the tens of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal added.
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