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- How a Single Strike Rattled the Gulf's Illusion of Stability</p>
<p>Dina EsfandiaryJuly 1, 2025 at 10:31 PM</p>
<p>U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar. Credit - Win McNamee—Getty Images</p>
<p>The oil and gas monarchies of the Gulf throw riyals and dirhams at almost everything money can buy: artificial intelligence companies and hedge funds, football clubs and futuristic cities, golf and grand prix, think tanks and universities, pop stars and American politicians.</p>
<p>Yet all the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf Arabs can't wash away their primal fear of being caught in the middle between their security guarantor and their regional rival: the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.</p>
<p>The very thing they feared most finally happened: On June 23, Iran fired ballistic missiles at the sprawling Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation against the U.S. joining Israel's war against Tehran and bombing three Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranian strike was carefully calibrated but it was unprecedented: it targeted an American military base in a Gulf Arab state.</p>
<p>Between a rock and a hard place</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic of Iran, partly out of its isolation after the 1979 revolution, invested in building a multi-layered security state and resumed the Shah's nuclear program after the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The Gulf Arabs, to overcome their human capacity constraints, did the opposite: they externalized their security and relied on an American security umbrella.</p>
<p>The Iranian strike on the American base in Qatar demonstrated how beholden the Gulf Arabs are to the United States despite their efforts to diversify their partnerships. Qatar, which has good relations with Iran and shares with it the ownership of the largest gas field beneath the Persian Gulf, had to rely on American Patriot anti-missile batteries to defend itself, in an operation jointly-run with the United States.</p>
<p>The powerlessness of the Gulf Arabs was starkly illustrated as Iran didn't even inform Qatar, the United Emirates, and Saudi Arabia about the attack or include them in any discussions and planning. Iran shared the timing, the target, and the nature of its retaliation with the United States. Qatar was only notified of the Iranian strike at the same time as American citizens and personnel were—and it wasn't even the intended target.</p>
<p>The Gulf Arabs position and pride themselves on being havens of stability and engines of commerce and finance in an unstable region. The health of their economies and their ambitious plans to diversify beyond oil depend on a sense of security. The brief American war with Iran and the Iranian retaliation against a Gulf state under American protection demonstrated that irrespective of their nascent engagement with Iran, they can't escape the perils of geography in times of conflict. The airspace over the Gulf was temporarily closed, affecting their status as travel hubs. Despite putting on a brave front, businesses looked on nervously and hoped the ceasefire would stick. The risk of a resumption of hostilities endures.</p>
<p>Qatar and its Gulf Arab partners couldn't do much to respond to the Iranian attack beyond responding with words of condemnation from the G.C.C. and Qatar claiming that it was "reserving the right to defend" itself. A military response from the Gulf Arabs against Iran would have led to further escalation with greater costs or a strong rebuke by President Donald Trump simply ordering them to back down.</p>
<p>A modern rivalry</p>
<p>Although Iran and the Gulf Arabs were in the American camp during the Cold War and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran were co-founders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960, Iran and the Gulf Arabs had a complex rivalry spanning the political, religious, territorial, and economic factors even before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.</p>
<p>After establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini called for exporting the revolution, which raised the fear of Islamist mass mobilizations in the Gulf monarchies, frightening their rulers. The Gulf Cooperation Council was formed in 1981 as an alliance of the Gulf Arab monarchies in response to growing regional instability, including revolutionary Iran and the Iran-Iraq War. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supported Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran in 1980s, which exacerbated their animosity with Iran. The Gulf Arabs and Iran maintained a cold peace throughout the 1990s.</p>
<p>After the failure of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the tumultuous Arab Spring, Iran emerged ascendant with greater regional influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. The Gulf Arabs financed the counter-revolution against the popular Arab uprisings and worked to counter the influence of a stronger Iran.</p>
<p>Over time, Iran realized that engaging the Gulf Arabs together wouldn't work and began to pick them apart and build better ties with Oman and Qatar, while its relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which vigorously embraced Washington's containment of Iran, remained hostile.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supported US efforts to contain Iran. President Barack Obama sought to defuse the Iranian nuclear challenge through diplomacy, which culminated in Iran, the United States, and five European countries signing an accord in July 2015 to substantially limit Tehran's nuclear ability for 15 years in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.</p>
<p>The Saudis and the Emiratis were livid with the democrats for their pursuit of the Iran nuclear deal, which they argued left them unsafe. Others, like Qatar and Oman praised it but remained unsure about its implications for their security given Iran's reliance on the so-called Axis of Resistance, a coalition of regional forced allied to Tehran.</p>
<p>Around three years later, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi supported President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018 and his campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran, which Trump described as "the most biting sanctions ever imposed." They feared Iranian retaliation to Trump's new policies, after all, it was easier and less risky for Tehran to target neighbouring countries than the United States. They expected Trump to protect them from blowback if it came.</p>
<p>At that time, Saudi Arabia had started pursuing an economic diversification plan aimed at moving from being completely dependent on oil into a hub for tourism, sports, technology and business. The other Gulf Arabs also aimed to diversify their economies, with bids to host sporting events, boost tourism and build other indigenous industries to capture investment.</p>
<p>And then came the blowback: Saudi oil production fell by half in Sept. 2019 when drones and missiles fired by the Houthis hit Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in the Kingdom. The Saudis blamed Iran, as did President Trump, who spoke about avoiding war.</p>
<p>President Joe Biden was in office when an industrial facility in the UAE, along with Abu Dhabi airport was attacked by the Houthis in 2022. And days before the Formula One Grand Prix in Jeddah in March 2022, the Houthi rebels fired a missile at an oil storage facility in the Saudi city and an inferno of fire and smoke filled the skyline. The attacks on the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia were intercepted using American equipment and President Biden sent an aircraft carrier to the region. But this wasn't enough for the Gulf Arabs.</p>
<p>An unreliable security guarantor</p>
<p>It didn't matter what the U.S. did, the Gulf Arab states didn't see it as enough. Biden tried and failed to revive the Iran nuclear deal, all while pressuring the Gulf Arabs to cut ties with China and pump more oil. To the Gulf Arabs, it looked like the U.S. still harbored the same vision for its relationship with them: bark orders and expect them to be followed, but without the commitment to their security. The trust the Gulf Arabs had placed in their primary security guarantor—the United States—was at its lowest point. This only hardened their desire to diversify their partnerships, including by building closer ties with Russia and China, and pursue their own interests irrespective of American asks.</p>
<p>When Trump returned to office in January, Israel's war of retribution against Gaza had been roiling the Middle East for 16 months and had halted the Arab-Israeli normalization.</p>
<p>In May, Trump visited the Gulf on his first serious foreign trip. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were riding high on the success of the trip marked by ostentatious welcome ceremonies, big headlines, and serious economic deals. The Gulf Arabs fearing Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and the risk of a wider, catastrophic war, emphasized avoiding escalation between Iran and Israel and supported the renewed nuclear talks between Iran and the United States. They were back in Trump's good graces, but less confident that Trump would listen to them on the region.</p>
<p>On June 13, Israel started its war on Iran. And after Trump joined the war and bombed Iranian nuclear sites, Iran struck a Gulf Arab state. In its aftermath, a long running debate within the Gulf Arab states about the value of housing American bases on their soil has been ignited. Between them the Gulf Arabs host the greatest portion of US troops in the region: 10,000 troops at CENTCOM's forward headquarters at Al Udeid in Qatar and the Fifth Fleet's regional headquarters in Bahrain housing 9,000 servicemen.</p>
<p>The Gulf countries still rely heavily on American security umbrella and can't afford to ask the Americans to leave but witnessing the debate and the anger is uncomfortable. They thrived on positioning themselves as stable islands of commerce immune from the troubles of the Middle East but being surrounded by a sea of instability was bound to cast a shadow on their glass palaces.</p>
<p>Contact us at [email protected].</p>
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<p>- How a Single Strike Rattled the Gulf's Illusion of Stability</p> <p>Dina EsfandiaryJuly 1...
