Israel and the United States may have launched the war on Iran. But it is the Gulf Arab states that have borne the brunt of Tehran’s response. Since February 28, the Islamic Republic has rained down missiles and drones on Gulf hotels and airports. It has hit their oil and gas infrastructure. National energy companies in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar have declared force majeure because they cannot fulfill their contractual obligations.
For the Gulf countries, this conflict has been a reckoning. Although they are not saying it publicly, the war has caused leaders throughout the region to reassess their relationship with the United States and its president, Donald Trump. Many Gulf monarchs had welcomed the reelection of Trump because they liked his transactional foreign policy style. Unlike other recent presidents, Trump paid little heed to the Gulf’s spotty human rights record and was happy to advance economic deals without concern for conflicts of interest. Some Gulf governments even felt they had sway over Trump: in May 2025, for example, Saudi Arabia persuaded him to lift sanctions on Syria and to back the country’s new president.
But in this round of fighting, the warnings of Gulf leaders have gone unheeded. In the months before, they argued against opening a new round of conflict with Iran and urged Trump to keep negotiating with Iranian leaders. Yet despite personal visits from the Saudi crown prince, Emirati leaders, and other regional officials, Trump went ahead with the attacks. He ultimately gave more weight to the wants of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who long desired a major joint and decisive operation against Iran.
Gulf leaders are increasingly aware that Trump’s unpredictability can be dangerous and that U.S. desires often clash with their own. But pivoting away from the United States won’t be easy. There is no other country that can replace it: Gulf leaders’ cautious outreach toward Iran, for example, failed to stop Tehran’s attacks, and their quiet cooperation with Israel didn’t prevent that state’s officials from upending the entire region. Washington, then, remains the only government that is both willing and able to offer security, at least for the time being.
Yet Gulf countries must try to claw back some autonomy. To do so, the countries’ leaders ought to quickly coalesce around a strategy designed to limit escalation, maintain flexibility, and protect economic growth so they can sustain their domestic agendas. They will have to move beyond their earlier strategy of managed hedging—or relying on the United States while selectively engaging with Iran and Israel—and instead create a new regional equilibrium. They will need to set up new channels for diplomacy between the region’s competitors. And they will have to form better and more durable regional partnerships with countries that are not the United States—and create stronger linkages among themselves.
THE THIRD GULF WAR
There is much about the present Middle East that is alarming to Gulf leaders. But Israel’s growing aggression is of particular concern. In the past, some regional officials—namely, the Emiratis and Bahrainis—saw their Israeli counterparts as useful security and economic partners. But Israel has now thrown all caution to the wind and become a destabilizing actor. Its refusal to engage meaningfully with Palestinian aspirations for self-determination has prompted unrest in the past, and it almost guarantees more violence in the future. Israel also remains continuously committed to weakening Iran, and it does not seem to care whether Arab states are attacked in the process. In fact, it has been willing to strike them to pursue its aims. In September 2025, Israeli forces hit a residential compound in Qatar hosting Hamas negotiators who were in talks with the United States.
A few weeks after the attack, Trump issued an executive order committing the United States to Qatar’s defense, with the goal of reassuring Gulf states that they would not become collateral damage on Washington’s watch. But such a commitment did little to protect Gulf countries when Israel and the United States launched their next war on Iran just a few months later. Washington has helped intercept some of Iran’s attacks against Arab countries, but it has largely prioritized defending Israel. The Gulf states are thus suffering under a barrage of Iran’s drones and missiles. They cannot move their products through the Strait of Hormuz, and they have lost their reputation as a commercial safe haven.
For Gulf countries, this underscores a long-standing problem: they are so dependent on the United States for protection that Washington can do almost whatever it wants with them. Gulf countries depend on U.S. equipment, such as Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, to protect themselves, so they need to appeal to Washington for resupply, command networks, training, intelligence, and logistics. Gulf countries also rely on (and host) multiple major U.S. military bases. The United States thus retains full control over whether, when, and how its security commitments are applied. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have all been designated by U.S. officials as “major non-NATO allies,” which confers privileges, such as the eligibility to borrow U.S. military equipment or buy certain munitions. But Gulf states get little say in the policies that affect their security and economic stability.
Gulf populations have begun to question the value of hosting U.S. bases.
In the near term, Gulf states will have to deepen their operational cooperation with Washington on missile defense, intelligence sharing, and maritime security across the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. No matter the outcome of the current war, the Gulf will be more vulnerable than ever before and therefore in need of U.S. help. But Gulf populations have begun to question the United States’ reliability and the value of hosting American bases. To better protect themselves, Gulf leaders must therefore now try to wrest some autonomy from the United States by strengthening cooperation, foremost among themselves. Gulf states have had plans to do this for years, but political rivalries, overlapping national defense structures, and fears of giving up sovereignty have prevented meaningful integration. The current crisis, however, provides a clear impetus for change. Gulf states should begin by enmeshing air and missile defense systems, expanding intelligence sharing, and establishing shared early warning networks—areas in which coordination is both feasible and urgent.
Gulf governments should also make security arrangements with other countries. The UAE has already strengthened defense ties with India, and last year, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have signed defense agreements with Ukraine following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent visit to the Gulf. Jordan and Saudi Arabia could work with Egypt to jointly patrol the Red Sea, coordinate port security, and share intelligence to protect commercial shipping. Gulf countries could also coordinate with Turkey on drone and air defense capabilities or cautiously expand their existing cooperation with China.
Such new arrangements would probably be “minilateral”—that is, involving a handful of countries focused on a task, such as securing a waterway, coordinating missile defense, or working on systems that can counter drones. Flexible issue-specific groups of this type are usually easier to establish than comprehensive regional security frameworks, and they are not as rigid as formal alliances. The United States won’t be replaced as the Gulf’s main security partner. But having other countries to turn to can give Gulf states more ballast and leverage in dealing with Washington.
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
To protect themselves, Gulf states will have to go beyond forming defensive partnerships. They must also be at the center of diplomacy between the region’s main players. For the Gulf, this should be a familiar role; for over more than a decade, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE have acted as regional mediators. And although they failed to prevent this latest round of fighting, Gulf countries still see diplomacy as a way to influence regional outcomes without relying solely on military power.
Such an approach dovetails well with the Gulf’s desire for a region where geopolitical competition is managed rather than decisively resolved. To achieve this objective, Gulf governments might try to establish security mechanisms designed to prevent escalation between rival powers. A comprehensive regional security architecture, such as the Helsinki Accords—a landmark 1975 agreement that reduced tensions between the Soviet bloc and the West—remains unlikely in the near term given the deep political divisions between Iran, Israel, and several Arab states. But more modest arrangements, including maritime coordination frameworks, communication mechanisms, and regional early warning systems across Gulf countries, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey are possible and would help reduce the risk of miscalculation and escalation. Secure military-to-military hotlines or crisis communication channels would help states quickly clarify their intentions with one another during tense moments, such as missile launches, airspace violations, or naval encounters.
Israel, of course, has a different objective. It hopes to defeat—not constrain—its Iranian enemy. But geography alone ensures that Iran will remain relevant to the Gulf’s security regardless of how the current war ends, and so its leaders recognize that long-term stability for them will ultimately require renewed management if not diplomatic engagement aimed at preventing competition from escalating into repeated military confrontation. The rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in recent years reflected a broader recognition in the Gulf that dialogue with Tehran is necessary to regulate tensions. That doesn’t mean they will abandon their rivalry; recent reporting has suggested that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman supports a more forceful U.S. approach toward Iran, now that Washington and Tehran are already at war. But this stance is better understood as part of a dual-track strategy that pairs deterrence with continued engagement rather than a full abandonment of diplomacy. In fact, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan’s participation in diplomatic meetings alongside counterparts from Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey confirms this approach. Gulf leaders recognize that they must deal with the Iranian regime they have, not the one the one they want.
The Gulf also does not want Israel to be the region’s dominant player. Gulf states are disturbed by Israel’s growing willingness to wage war, which has spillover effects. The country’s war in Gaza, accelerating annexation of the West Bank, and ongoing ground offensive into Lebanon—in which Israel has taken 30 percent of Lebanese territory and displaced one million people—have all put Gulf governments under considerable domestic political pressure to denounce Israel. For Gulf leaders, managing relations with Israel thus requires a careful balance of maintaining channels of communication while discouraging behaviors that risk continuously destabilizing the wider region.
A balanced region is essential to helping Gulf states achieve their main objective: weaning their economies off oil. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, the UAE’s economic diversification strategy, and similar programs across the region all depend on sustained stability, predictable trade routes, and continued foreign investment. The Gulf states thus favor a regional order in which geopolitical competition is contained, and economic integration can deepen and include Iran and Israel alike. Strong business and trade ties to both states will ensure all parties benefit from the Middle Eastern stability, and thus have a stake in maintaining it. Yet all of this will be hard to achieve with conflict abound.
The era in which Gulf states could rely on external powers to manage regional security is coming to an end. To protect their interests, they will need to build collective capacity, manage rivalries, and shape the balance of power themselves. Such measures may not stop the current war, which is being dictated almost entirely by Iran, Israel, and the United States. But Gulf states can shape the environment in which the conflict’s consequences unfold, and they can help prevent the next conflagration.
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