Eurasia Press & News
Earlier this year, the Arab Gulf states were riding high. The energy crisis that followed the coronavirus pandemic had filled their coffers and renewed their roles as the stewards of global oil markets—and, in Qatar’s case, a reliable source of liquefied natural gas. Over the past few years, the Gulf countries have tactfully navigated the great-power competition between China, Russia, and the United States and successfully managed their relations with regional rivals, including Iran and Turkey.
For the first major international trip of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These countries seemed to be among the few U.S. partners that had cracked the code for dealing with Trump: striking headline-grabbing trillion-dollar megadeals while quietly catering to his family’s business interests. In return for pledging to invest $2 trillion in the U.S. economy over the next four to ten years, the Arab Gulf states won massive arms deals, assurances of privileged access to advanced U.S. technologies, and promises that the United States would commit to a pragmatic approach to the Middle East that incorporated Gulf interests.
Arab Gulf states appeared well-positioned to use their wealth, energy resources, internal stability, and geographical centrality to transition into post-oil countries. They had already established themselves as financial and logistical hubs and had ambitions to further underpin their transformations with nascent advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence capabilities, the development of which depended on industrial partnerships with foreign companies that were testing what was politically acceptable in an era of great-power competition.
Instead, the Arab Gulf states must now grapple with the immediate and long-term consequences of a cascade of dreaded events against which they had warned their Western partners, especially the United States. In June, an intense 12-day war between Iran and Israel, in which the United States delivered major airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, ended with a barrage of intercepted Iranian ballistic missiles illuminating Qatar’s night sky. The governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had bet big on Trump in part because they hoped that he could end conflict in the region; that wager has clearly flopped, exposing the Gulf states’ political and security vulnerabilities and showing that access to Trump does not always equate to leverage over his policies.
Although U.S. and Israeli strikes have probably degraded Iran’s nuclear facilities, the war will likely only harden Iran’s resolve to acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect against future attacks—setting the stage for further rounds of conflict. Meanwhile, Tehran has demonstrated that it is willing and able to take the fight to its neighbors when attacked, offering a glimpse into the Islamic Republic’s options for escalation should Israel or the United States make good on its threats of striking again. Few in the Gulf share the optimistic views in Tel Aviv and Washington that the war was a stunning and decisive success, that Iran has been durably chastened, and that the limited damage incurred in Qatar proves that Iran is toothless.
Being caught between a belligerent and unrestrained nuclear power (Israel) and a hostile neighbor (Iran) severely undercuts Gulf visions of national development and global interconnectedness. Look past the fragile cease-fire between Iran and Israel and one can see the conditions for enduring uncertainty and future conflict: Iran’s likely decision to start rebuilding its nuclear and missile programs, Israel’s proclivity for preventive military aggression across the region (also shown by Israel’s bombing of Syrian government facilities in Damascus in early July), and unpredictable U.S. leadership.
Although Iran has been bloodied, it remains largely functional and, like Iraq in the 1990s, has grown more steadfast in defeat. With European countries largely sidelined and the great powers at loggerheads, the Arab Gulf states should step in to mediate a lasting deal between Iran and the United States, however slim the chances of success. Failure could result in a perpetually unstable regional order characterized by enduring Iranian hostility, Israeli military dominance, and a United States utterly disinterested in managing the aftereffects of conflict—all of which bodes ill for the Gulf states’ economic and security ambitions.
PRESENT DANGER
The Gulf states once exhorted the United States to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program—to “cut off the head of the snake,” as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia put it in 2008—and rejected nuclear diplomacy with Iran during the Obama and first Trump administrations. But they have also longed for containing Iran’s regional influence. The Arab Gulf states opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, for instance, for being too narrow in scope and for not requiring Iran to curb its aggression in the Middle East in return for normalizing relations with the West.
More recent developments have changed the Gulf states’ calculations. First, they began to doubt the United States’ commitment to upholding the regional security order after Iran attacked Saudi oil installations in 2019. Trump, then in his first term, declined to protect the Saudis or respond with military force. If an administration Riyadh had aggressively courted failed to come to its aid, what did that augur for long-term security alignment between Washington and the Gulf? That the United States offers Israel unlimited military and political cover only compounds regional leaders’ frustrations.
Sensing their physical and economic exposure to Iran and chastened by Washington’s unreliability, Arab Gulf states orchestrated a thaw with Tehran. Riyadh’s engagement efforts culminated in a Chinese-facilitated deal to normalize diplomatic relations in March 2023. Although displays of concord since then have been mostly for show, it is undeniable that Iranian-Saudi relations are better now than at any time in the past 20 years. More recently, this thaw resulted in most of the Arab Gulf states choosing not to participate in a U.S.-led campaign against the Houthis, an Iranian ally, in the Red Sea and Yemen. The Islamic Republic largely upheld its end of the bargain, keeping the Arab Gulf states out of its crosshairs as it exchanged blows with Israel and enabled the Houthis’ campaign of harassment in the Red Sea. This equilibrium was shaken only after the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, after which Tehran attacked U.S. military installations located inside a major Qatari base—an outcome the Gulf states had tried to prevent by continually insisting that the United States not use Gulf bases or airspace for its operations.
The Arab Gulf states should step in to mediate a lasting deal between Iran and the United States.Ironically, the Gulf states’ thaw with Iran was aided by Israel’s decimation of the Islamic Republic’s regional network of allies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria over the past couple years. With Tehran’s regional capabilities severely limited, the Gulf states have further softened their stance, so much so that they are now more willing to accept a deal that limits Iran’s nuclear program but doesn’t necessarily deny it the ability to enrich uranium for the country’s medical research or energy needs.
But Israel’s new regional ambitions and the United States’ apparent facilitation of them—the same forces that have helped neutralize Iran’s regional influence—now represent the main threats to the Gulf states’ chief concerns: the stability they require to export fossil fuels and the regional peace they seek in order to transition their economies to a post-oil future. Any lasting disruption to maritime traffic caused by renewed conflict would make it more difficult to transport oil and gas. A direct Iranian attack on their infrastructure and cities, meanwhile, would tarnish their image of safety and stability, which underpins their appeal to investors, multinational corporations, and tourists. That such an attack would also pose geopolitical downsides for Iran does not diminish the weight of the potential consequences.
All the Arab Gulf states condemned Israel’s assault on Iran—even Bahrain and the UAE, both of which normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Saudi Arabia deemed the attacks “blatant Israeli aggressions against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran” and called them “a clear violation of international laws and norms.” Oman, which was meant to host the sixth round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks two days after Israel’s first attack on Iran, accused Israel of seeking to deliberately “obstruct the diplomatic process and ignite a wider conflict.”
The Arab Gulf states did not want the war. In fact, they actively sought to avert it. Speaking at Davos in January, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan, stated, “A war between Iran and Israel . . . is something we should try to avoid as much as possible.” A few days after the first U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks began in Oman, in April, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman dispatched Khalid bin Salman, his son and the country’s defense minister, to Tehran with an ominous warning for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: sign a deal with Trump or risk war with Israel.
ALL IN ON RED
The Arab Gulf states placed big bets on Trump’s peacemaking credentials after he campaigned on promises of ending U.S. involvement in forever wars and defusing conflicts in Eurasia and the Middle East. “I don’t see the incoming U.S. administration as contributory to the risk of war,” Farhan told a skeptical crowd at Davos. “On the contrary, President Trump has been quite clear he does not favor conflict.” It was a sentiment that senior Arab Gulf officials often repeated in private discussions. Trump, these officials believed, would stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in ways U.S. President Joe Biden did not. If nothing else, they thought, Trump would be swayed by the prospect of lucrative deals with their countries.
Initially, such hopes seemed to pan out. Trump pushed Israel to accept a two-month cease-fire in Gaza and worked with Egypt and Qatar to achieve a lasting peace deal. The Trump administration also facilitated several rounds of nuclear talks with Iran and brokered a cease-fire with the Houthis that does not preclude Houthi strikes against Israel. During his visit to Riyadh in May, Trump—at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—met with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara, and lifted U.S. sanctions on that country. Israel opposed the latter move and has launched hundreds of strikes on Syria since the regime of Bashar al-Assad fell, in December. It has even captured and occupied some Syrian territory “indefinitely,” forestalling peace between the two countries.
But once Israel launched its strikes on Iran and the United States joined in, many illusions were shattered. The Arab Gulf states must contend once again with the harsh reality that the White House is not a reliable partner in either reining Israel in or bringing a lasting end to war in the region. Despite their disappointment, the Gulf states must maintain a delicate balance that requires not antagonizing Trump. As such, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia all issued condemnations of the U.S. attack on Iran, but the criticism was pro forma and muted; Qatar didn’t even mention the United States by name. A harsher denunciation could have jeopardized relations with Washington, the countries’ main security partner, while war raged on in Iran and even caused Trump to lash out.
HARDENED STEEL
Rather than persuade Iran to shift course and abandon its pursuits of regional dominance and nuclear weapons, the 12-day war will only have confirmed the beliefs held by the regime’s hardliners that the West is perfidious and diplomacy is futile. Trump’s use of diplomacy as an instrument of misdirection—Israel attacked two days before a scheduled round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks—likely validated those Iranians who believed all along that the United States could not be trusted. Subsequent endorsements of Israel’s attack by European Union member states, including France and Germany, as well as the United Kingdom will have disqualified such countries, in the Iranian view, as honest and credible intermediaries.
Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials made no secret of their desire to topple the Iranian regime. In remarks after Israel’s first strikes, Netanyahu claimed that his country was “clearing the path” for Iranians’ freedom from “an evil and oppressive regime.” Netanyahu did not rule out assassinating Khamenei, and Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, stated that the supreme leader “cannot continue to exist.” In a social media post following the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump indicated he might support regime change “if the current Iranian regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.”
Having survived Israel’s onslaught, however, the regime is likely to bolster its nuclear program and improve its missile capabilities to deter or retaliate against future attacks. The Islamic Republic may emerge from the war in a state similar to Iraq’s following the Gulf War: led by a paranoid and militarized regime that deals with internal dissent with an iron fist and holds regional de-escalation hostage to a greater struggle with Israel and the United States. Iran may dash for a nuclear bomb in a desperate attempt to build a deterrent or pursue more aggressive nuclear brinkmanship to extract concessions from the international community.
Conditions are still in place for a repeat of direct hostilities between Iran and Israel.Iran also has multiple escalatory options, including launching lethal attacks on U.S. bases and forces in the region, disabling the Arab Gulf states’ energy infrastructure via attacks, and closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which most of the Arab Gulf states’ oil and liquefied natural gas exports flow. Despite having dealt with maritime disruptions during the “tanker war” of the 1980s and Houthi attacks on Saudi energy installations in 2019, the ability of Arab Gulf states and their Western partners to swiftly address the effects of a full-scale war with Iran remain untested. Arab Gulf states would be deeply unnerved by an angry Iran that threatens its neighbors with short-range missiles and drones and disrupts maritime traffic in the Gulf. After all, these countries have watched the United States and the United Kingdom bomb the Houthis for more than a year and a half; although the strikes have degraded the Houthis’ capabilities, they have ultimately failed to deter the group. Arab Gulf states also doubt that in the event of future Iranian attacks on their countries, the United States will provide long-lasting military aid.
After its rapid and stunning military success, Israel may also feel further emboldened to resort to unprovoked military attacks rather than diplomacy. Like Iran, Israel views the region as an open theater of conflict, and it has carried out military operations in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen with little regard for the attacks’ legal merits or their effects on local populations and neighbors. Arab Gulf states are deeply worried about Netanyahu’s stated desire to “redraw” the Middle East, which would almost certainly ignore or downgrade their interests and could well reenergize the kinds of extremist forces that they have spent two decades fighting, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). It conjures an image of Israel thriving as an impenetrable garrison easily managing the military threats of the fractured statelets surrounding it: a state of affairs that almost all countries in the region would regard as a recipe for permanent instability.
The Arab Gulf states’ core strategic interest is denying any power—Iran, Israel, or even a third actor such as Turkey—the ability to dominate the region. They believed that Trump would help advance this vision by tying it to broader economic interests. But ultimately, Netanyahu’s grand project won over the Oval Office. The Gulf states must now put on a brave face and plan for a more unstable Middle East.
A WAY THROUGH
Conditions are still in place for a repeat of direct hostilities between Iran and Israel, despite the former’s weakened state. Iran remains intent on rebuilding its nuclear program and enriching uranium domestically, a position it held on to even at the height of the 12-day war. The status of key elements of the program, including the whereabouts of Tehran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium hexafluoride, the damage Israeli and U.S. bombardment did to its nuclear installations, and the state of any undeclared nuclear facilities, remains unclear.
Like Iraq in the 1990s, Iran may seek to conceal its nuclear program even further. The country has a long history of nuclear deception and has routinely diverted material or failed to declare relevant facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN organization responsible for certifying the “exclusively peaceful nature” of Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian allegations that the IAEA served as an intelligence-gathering platform for Israel and the Iranian parliament’s subsequent approval of a bill suspending cooperation with the agency both suggest that the Islamic Republic is even less likely to abide by transparency measures going forward. The ambiguity surrounding Iran’s nuclear program will remain unsettling for its foes and for its Arab Gulf neighbors, which dread instability. Under Israel’s Begin Doctrine, which prescribes preventive warfare against adversaries capable of developing weapons of mass destruction, further ambiguity over the state of Iran’s nuclear program may serve as casus belli for future hostilities.
The Arab Gulf states must cool the rising temperatures and mitigate the increasing risks. In the absence of other credible intermediaries, they should attempt to facilitate a nuclear deal between Iran and the United States themselves. It’s the only way to break the cycle of conflict and instability that plagues the region. And the Gulf states stand a better chance than most at success. Their principled positions on the U.S.-Israeli strikes lend credibility to their roles as honest brokers. Qatar’s critical role in bringing the war to an end, largely by absorbing Iran’s face-saving attack, will raise its political capital in Tehran. From Iran’s perspective, Oman has established itself as a trusted intermediary, while the influence of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Washington is a valuable asset, even if that influence appears to be diminishing.
Brokering a new U.S.-Iranian deal would be a herculean task. To do so the Arab Gulf states must exercise every lever of influence available to them in Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv to take the region off its war footing. Their futures depend on it.
