On Sunday night, the sky above Sitra turned orange. A suspected Iranian drone had struck BAPCO, Bahrain’s main oil processing facility, on an island southeast of Manama. The projectile set the refinery ablaze and sent fires into residential neighborhoods near the plant. Thirty-two Bahrainis were wounded, some critically. By morning, BAPCO had declared force majeure, forcing Bahrain to join Qatar and Kuwait in suspending oil shipments, and further pushing the price of crude oil toward record highs. At Bahrain International Airport, the only flights in operation were chartered services, carrying foreign nationals out, and stranded Bahrainis back in.
This is precisely the scenario the Gulf states have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to avert. Collectively, the GCC states account for a fifth of all global arms imports. Five of eight permanent US military bases are stationed in the Gulf, where they host between 40,000 and 50,000 troops. Their presence is intended to secure a bargain that has helped drive the global economy: the free flow of oil, in exchange for US security assurances against a range of threats, including from Iran but also from regional rivals, internal instability, and the disorder that tends to follow US wars in the region.
The Gulf states have increasingly avoided relying on Washington’s deterrence alone. Instead, they developed a strategy built on three interlocking elements: cultivating deeper security guarantees from the United States; pursuing de-escalation with Iran; and, for some states, engaging Israel. The premise was that these three tracks, operating together, would allow the Gulf states to do what small and medium powers in volatile neighborhoods have always sought to do: remain protected without being consumed by the conflicts of others. Not every Gulf state pursued all three tracks equally, but the underlying logic was widely shared. Today, each of the three actors at the center of this strategy, Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv, have, in different ways, deepened the insecurity they were meant to manage.
Iran and Its Neighbors
The fires over Sitra were not the first time Iran had reached into the Gulf. Iran has been a defining source of anxiety for most of the Gulf states since its 1979 revolution, never fully accepting the regional order it was born into, and consistently backing the movements capable of unsettling the region. For its part, Iran has long viewed US military presence on its doorstep—which has only increased in response to its revolution—with deep suspicion, seeing it as a forward position for eventual regime change. Iran has, as a result, largely dismissed the Gulf monarchies as US client states, seeing them as useful targets of pressure precisely because of their dependence on Washington, and unlikely to act independently of it.
The relationship was not always hostile. Under Rafsanjani in the 1990s, there was a period of relative pragmatism: embassies reopened and trade expanded. But the 2011 Arab uprisings brought the two sides into heightened regional competition and transformed states like Yemen into the site of proxy conflicts between the two sides. Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran had publicly acknowledged pursuing since 2006, added a further dimension of alarm, as did its expanding missile program. The 2015 JCPOA, welcomed across much of the world as a diplomatic achievement, paradoxically deepened Gulf anxieties, as several states feared an empowered Iran as much as they resented a United States that appeared to be acting as Tehran’s interlocutor rather than their protector, and whose broader strategic attention was already drifting toward the Pacific. By 2016, a diplomatic incidentprompted Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain to either shutter or downgrade their embassies in Tehran.
Anxieties towards Iran sharpened further in 2019. That year, four tankers stationed off the coast of the UAE were hit by limpet mines, in an attack widely attributed to Iran. In September, drones and missiles hit Saudi Aramco’s facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, temporarily wiping out roughly half of the Kingdom’s oil production. The attack was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi movement but attributed by the United States and Saudi Arabia to Iran. Taken together, the incidents suggested that Gulf states would pay the price for US pressure on Tehran, and that the extensive US military presence in the region had not prevented it. The targeted states drew an obvious conclusion: If Iran could not be deterred, it had to be engaged. A series of public and backchannel engagements followed, culminating in the Saudi-Iranian normalization agreement brokered by China in 2023. The UAE followed shortly afterwards. De-escalation with Tehran became the second pillar of Gulf security: an acknowledgment, not stated publicly, that the US umbrella was not sufficient.
Not all Gulf states operated from the same baseline. Oman and Qatar had maintained stable relationships with Tehran. Kuwait operated somewhere in between. Bahrain was the slowest and least enthusiastic about restoring ties. Yet the broader turn towards de-escalation reflected a shared acknowledgment that the Iran question had to be managed locally and could not be left entirely to Washington.
Israel’s Role
Long before the Abraham Accords, several Gulf states had been cultivating discreet ties with Israel, driven by a perception that alignment with Israel could deepen their influence in Washington, including on the Iran question. In 2008, Qatar hosted Israel's foreign minister at its flagship diplomatic conference. In 2009, the UAE entered an agreement with an Israeli satellite operator to receive imagery of Iran’s aerial facilities. A second agreement provided updated coverage of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Oman would eventually host Netanyahu for a visit. Only Kuwait remained outside the fray. WikiLeaks cables from 2009 captured the extent of the quiet convergence, with one cable stating that Gulf Arab officials believed Israel could “work magic” in Washington, and another describing the relationship between two states as “real and practical” and having “gone far beyond intelligence sharing.”
The Abraham Accords brought the UAE and Bahrain’s relationships with Israel into public view, and facilitated cooperation across trade, technology, and security. The UAE consistently rejected the framing that normalization was directed against Iran, even as Israeli officials appeared eager to present it in precisely those terms. Abu Dhabi’s position was that the relationship with Israel was meant to run alongside the Iran track, not displace it, and formed part of a broader effort to de-escalate all its regional relationships, which included rapprochements with Turkey and Syria. Some Emirati officials went further, arguing that the relationship could give Abu Dhabi a degree of influence over Israeli decision-making, including on Palestinian statehood, regional security architecture, and other matters.
In January 2022, Houthi drones and missiles struck Abu Dhabi and Dubai, killing three people and hitting an oil storage facility, the first such attacks on UAE soil. The strikes marked a significant escalation in the Yemen conflict, bringing the war directly onto Emirati territory. The material used appeared to rely on Iranian-supplied capability. The United States was slow to respond, and it was not until weeks later that a US official travelled to Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile, Israel reportedly dispatched Mossad officials to Abu Dhabi almost immediately, where they offered to carry out forensic investigations. Emirati officials were, by several accounts, struck by the contrast. The UAE moved to acquire Israeli air defense and anti-drone systems: SPYDER, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, and a Barak air defense system produced by Israel Aerospace Industries, with transfers beginning in spring and autumn 2022.
The Gaza war tested but did not fundamentally alter the UAE's posture toward Israel. Abu Dhabi was privately critical of Israeli conduct, but it did not move to suspend ties. Instead, trade and security cooperation continued, more quietly. Saudi normalization was a different matter. Riyadh had always attached heavier political conditions to any deal, and the scale of the destruction in Gaza made it impossible to sustain a process that Arab publics viewed as rewarding Israeli behavior. When Iran and Israel exchanged direct strikes in April 2024—the first time either had directly struck the other's territory—the Gulf states managed, despite hosting US forces, to largely stay out of it. That would not remain the case.
War Comes to the Gulf
When the current conflict broke out, every Gulf state made the same calculation: stay out, say so publicly, and try to preserve relations with Tehran. In January, multiple Gulf states, including Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE urged the United States not to attack Iran. All formally requested that the United States not use facilities on their territory to launch such strikes. The logic was identical to the one that had governed the Iran track from the beginning: that public distance from the confrontation would provide a measure of protection.
That calculation was complicated almost immediately by events outside their control. The 12-day war of June 2025, in which the United States and Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities, had consumed roughly a quarter of the entire American THAAD interceptor inventory and left Patriot stockpiles at around a quarter of the levels the Pentagon considers necessary. With those reserves already depleted and the current conflict more intensive than the previous round, the Gulf states find themselves exposed at precisely the moment they need coverage most, burning through expensive interceptors against waves of Iranian drones that cost a fraction of the price, in what analysts have described as an attrition trap with no easy exit. By some accounts, the Gulf states were not even given advance warning of the US-Israeli attacks that kickstarted the war, on February 28. The expectation had always been that the United States, whatever its other preoccupations, would treat the security of its Gulf hosts as a baseline commitment and that it would not launch a war it could not defend them from. Gulf governments have largely avoided saying this publicly. Yet the sense across multiple capitals is that they are paying the price for Israel's war, one that serves Israeli strategic objectives and which they are now unable to escape.
The Iranian strikes have caused massive complications, and targeted US military bases as well as airports and energy infrastructure, causing collateral damage that has killed civilians. Condemnations followed immediately. Saudi Arabia described the attacks on multiple states as a “blatant violation of sovereignty” that “cannot be justified under any pretext or in any way.” Qatar’s Prime Minister described them as a “big sense of betrayal.” Yet, as of this writing, no Gulf states has expelled its Iran ambassador or closed the Iranian embassy on its own soil. This reflects a broader acknowledgement that however painful the current situation may be, escalation is liable to make it even worse. An Emirati official summarized his country’s position, stating: “De-escalation, then de-escalation, then de-escalation. This remains our consistent position, and we will continue to advocate for it.”
Another problem came from Israeli media. Israel has a clear interest in portraying its Gulf partners as co-belligerents against Tehran, consistent with longstanding efforts to present the entire region as united against its main enemy. On 3 March, Channel 12 reported, citing unnamed Western sources, that Qatar had carried out offensive strikes inside Iran. Qatar's Foreign Ministry issued a swift denial, with its spokesman stating that Doha had not been part of the campaign targeting Iran, and urged media outlets to use “credible Qatari sources” when reporting on Qatar. On March 8, multiple Israeli outlets, including the Jerusalem Post, reported that the UAE had struck a desalination facility on Iran's Qeshm Island. A senior Emirati official responded directly and stated that Abu Dhabi was "struggling to understand Israeli conduct" and that it was "not appropriate for what is described as a 'senior Israeli source' to speak on our behalf or spread rumours about the actions of another sovereign state." Another added: “Our goal is to stop this ongoing aggression against the UAE and the Arab Gulf states, not to be dragged into escalation.” Some US outlets followed the same pattern. The Washington Post, citing four unnamed sources, had previously reported that Saudi Arabia had lobbied President Trump to launch military strikes against Iran, contradicting most other sources that described multiple Gulf states as urging Trump not to intervene. The Saudi Embassy issued a direct correction, stating that the Kingdom had “at no point” advocated a military approach. Although the Gulf states issued multiple denials of these reports, they had at least partially fulfilled their intended goal of muddying the waters.
There is one further dimension that the conflict has brought into view. All Gulf states have publicly requested that the United States not use facilities on their territory to conduct strikes against Iran and have denied that any such use is occurring. Iran has dismissed those assurances and maintained both that the bases are actively being used to conduct strikes against it, and that their presence alone is sufficient to make Gulf states parties to the conflict. Both claims rest on a question that public audiences are poorly positioned to resolve. The legal frameworks governing base use are complex, and the terms of these agreements are not publicly known. For Iran, keeping that ambiguity alive serves a strategic purpose that long predates the current conflict: sustaining the argument that the US presence makes Gulf populations less safe, not more. Iran is using the present crisis to advance the outcome it has consistently sought, and that is the removal of that presence altogether.
What Comes Next
The three-track strategy was never a permanent settlement of the region’s tensions. It was a way of keeping options open, of managing relationships with parties whose interests conflicted without being forced to choose between them. What the current conflict has made visible is the point at which that approach runs out of road.
What comes next is far from clear. There is no shortage of resentment toward Tehran in Gulf capitals. But acute vulnerability remains, and the logic that drove the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement of 2023, that Iran could not be deterred and therefore had to be engaged, has been reinforced by the current war. Attempts to repair the rift will be made, precisely because the alternative is worse.
Nor will the US presence dissolve easily. The basing arrangements, arms procurement relationships, and security assurances around which Gulf states have built their security reflect decisions taken across generations, embedded in the institutional fabric of states that have known no other model. The United States, for its part, has no interest in withdrawing from a region whose energy and capital flows and strategic geography remain central to its global posture. The entanglement runs in both directions.
Of the three tracks, the Israeli relationship is in some respects the easiest to reconsider, but it is also not likely to be entirely abandoned. The UAE and Bahrain have shown, across several tests including Israel's conduct in Gaza, that their commitment to normalization is not conditional on Israeli behavior. Saudi Arabia is a different case. The Gaza war and Israel's refusal to make any meaningful concession on Palestinian statehood have rendered normalization politically impossible and have confirmed that Riyadh's conditions were never merely rhetorical.
The war has exposed the fragility of the existing model before any alternative has taken shape. The three tracks that once allowed Gulf states to balance competing pressures have each proven insufficient. The clearest lesson is also an uncomfortable one: that external powers cannot be counted on to prioritize Gulf security, and that the states of the region will need to rely on each other to a degree they have not previously been willing to accept. Whether their security arrangements can be reconfigured towards something more optimal, or whether the region will continue relying on a model that has been shown not to work, is a question the region will be living with for the coming years.