US President Donald Trump said his “biggest surprise” since unleashing a war in the Middle East has been Iran’s attacks on the Arab Gulf states, which the US counts as some of its closest and richest partners.
“Unbelievable,” a former US intelligence official told Middle East Eye in response to Trump’s comment.
“It’s as if the US was operating and planning in a bubble for the last year. This is what Trump was warned of in conversations with Gulf rulers, and presumably his own intelligence briefings,” the person added.
Not even a year has passed since Trump gave a speech in Riyadh praising the “gleaming marvels” of the oil and gas-rich region’s cities, and now Iranian drones and ballistic missiles are slamming into those very towers and the energy infrastructure that made them possible.
In his May speech, Trump also trashed “interventionists”. His remarks were welcomed not only by ordinary people in the Gulf but also by its wealthy rulers, who are increasingly seeking to manage the region on their own – sometimes through violent means, as in Sudan, and at other times through negotiation.
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Now, the US’s willingness to engage in an all-out war on the Islamic Republic as its Gulf allies take the retaliatory blows is shaking the foundations of their security partnership in the first place, analysts and officials in the Gulf say.
“To my knowledge, the US has not spelt out to leadership what our gain is if we join a full-scale war on Iran,” a Gulf official told MEE. “But the cost is obvious.”
It’s not that the Gulf states are questioning the US’s military edge. They are effectively using the expensive air defence systems they purchased from the US to defend their cities.
Some, like UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, have made public appearances amid the war as a vote of confidence in their armed forces operating US military hardware. The irony is that they purchased the gear to defend against Iran, but are using it to defend against strikes caused by a war the US launched.
“Of course, Iran is the one attacking the Gulf states. It is exposing their vulnerabilities, but also the unreliability of their strategic ally, the US, which is not helping them,” Abdullah Baabood, a nonresident senior scholar at the Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, told MEE.
“I don’t think the Gulf, not only Oman but other Gulf leaderships, are happy about how the US is conducting itself in the region,” Baabood, who hails from Oman, added.
‘Hit left and right’
The Gulf’s doubts about the US’s security commitments to them were crystallised as early as 2019, when the Trump administration failed to respond to an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations that emanated from Iran. A similar episode occurred when the Biden administration did not respond to Houthi attacks on the UAE.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE then moved to patch up their acrimonious ties with Iran.
The Arab monarchs’ hopes that fostering better diplomatic ties with Iran would earn them goodwill in the event of an Israeli or US war with their neighbour have gone up in smoke, literally, because of Iranian attacks.
‘I don’t feel much sympathy [from the US] for the Gulf which is being hit left and right’
– Cinzia Bianco, European Council on Foreign Relations
But the Gulf states were also unable to use their investments in the US, or business links to Trump’s family, to prevent the war or earn extra protection.
Gulf countries running low on interceptors are being “stonewalled” by the US, which is facing a global shortage of interceptors, MEE reported previously.
Trump’s statement that he was “surprised” by attacks on the Gulf landed with a thud in the region, analysts and Arab officials told MEE.
The public remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have also been scant on praise for Gulf states facing down hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.
“I don’t feel much sympathy [from the US] for the Gulf, which is being hit left and right,” Cinzia Bianco, at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told MEE. “They certainly had higher expectations for the US.”
The Gulf states are not in an enviable position, experts say.
To reestablish deterrence against Iran and draw their own red lines, they may need to join the US in its offensive, potentially being sucked into a regime-change war they do not want, and that leaves them exposed if the US pulls out.
MEE revealed that Saudi Arabia acquiesced to the US attack on Iran after lobbying from the Trump administration. Saudi Arabia has yet to join the US’s offensive operations despite its capital, Riyadh, and its energy infrastructure being attacked by Iran.
But US and Arab officials tell MEE that it is inching closer.
‘Equations’
“This war doesn’t change the questions we had about the reliability of the US’s security partnership. Episodes in the past decade have put the security guarantee parameters into question. But you are talking about the number one military power in the world, and the Gulf states have not achieved strategic autonomy yet,” Bader al-Saif, an expert at Kuwait University, told MEE.
“[The Gulf] needs to work with what we have at the moment, including the US and this administration’s contradictions until [we] develop a solid independent path,” al-Saif added.
Al-Saif said that this may actually lie in what Iran has achieved with its domestic arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones.
This bid for defence autonomy was already a festering sore point between Saudi Arabia and the US before the war, and is why people close to decision makers in Saudi Arabia said the kingdom was discussing coproduction of warplanes with Turkey.
Baabood, at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said Gulf states are likely reassessing how valuable the security links with the US are now that countries like Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have found themselves in Iran’s crosshairs.
All these countries are home to US military bases, which mushroomed in the region after the first Gulf war.
“Iran is making sure the Gulf states start to think that the US military bases in the region are not a strategic asset but a liability,” Baabood said.
Al-Saif told MEE that the Gulf still saw value in US bases.
“The Gulf states entered into defence agreements with the US after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. They were not in response to Iran. The bases serve various functions, including shared knowledge and capacity building. There is value in what those bases offer, and they do not undermine the Gulf’s sovereignty,” he said.