British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond hailed historic his country's relations with the Gulf countries.
"The 175,000 British citizens living in this region help to sustain the UK’s strong historic links to the Gulf," he told the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain.
"The Royal Air Force has had a base in Manama for over eighty years and our Navy was sailing these seas for several hundred years before that," he said.
"The UK, Bahrain, and indeed, other GCC states share an intuitive understanding as sea-faring nations, that in a globalised world our domestic security and prosperity depend on developments beyond our shores."
"We must never lose sight of this simple truth. We must never allow the isolationists to convince our people of the superficially attractive proposition that distance, or oceans can insulate."
He concluded "to our partners in the Gulf my message is this: Your security concerns are our security concerns."