The Future of the Gulf’s Security Order

Editor’s Note: The United States and Israel’s war with Iran is leading governments around the world to rethink their security situation and how they will engage with the United States. Abdullah Alhenaki, who recently received his doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Service, argues this is especially the case with U.S. partners in the Persian Gulf who are angry at the U.S. and Israeli approach to the war and exposed to Iranian retaliation.

Daniel Byman

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When the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, the Gulf states found themselves entangled in a war they had not sought and actively tried to prevent. In the weeks before the attack, Oman had been mediating back-channel talks between Washington and Tehran, and Gulf capitals were cautiously optimistic about a diplomatic outcome. It did not matter. Within hours of the first strikes, Iran unleashed an unprecedented barrage across the region—the first time in history it had struck all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members simultaneously. With shaky ceasefire talks ongoing, the Gulf states are already planning for a postwar strategic posture while trying to push for favorable outcomes from the negotiations.

The War’s Toll

The scale of Iran’s campaign was staggering, and its targeting was deliberately indiscriminate. Combined, the Gulf states have absorbed more than 4,300 Iranian missiles and drones. Iran struck international airports, oil facilities, financial centers, embassies, and residential buildings across every Gulf capital. Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province oilfields and Riyadh itself were targeted, Kuwait’s airport and power grid were struck, Bahrain’s refinery took direct hits, Qatar’s early warning radar and its U.S. air base were attacked repeatedly, and Abu Dhabi’s industrial zones and luxury districts were hit. Iran targeted not just U.S. military assets in those countries but also their civilian and economic infrastructure.

The energy consequences were immediate and historic. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed from March 4 onward and now under a U.S. blockade, the International Energy Agency described the disruption as “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Gulf producers collectively cut output by at least 10 million barrels per day. The closure removed roughly 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption from the market, with QatarEnergy declaring force majeure on all liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, stripping the world of 20 percent of its traded LNG supply. Brent crude is projected to average around $96 per barrel this year, sustaining elevated energy costs for consumers across every major importing economy.

The immediate response to the crisis required dusting off infrastructure designed for a previous era of Gulf security hedging. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline—a 750-mile system built during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s that connects the Eastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu—has become the kingdom’s primary export lifeline. Aramco pushed the pipeline to its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day.  The pipeline did not solve the crisis—its bypass capacity covers barely a third of prewar Hormuz throughput—but it has prevented total collapse. It also revealed a structural lesson the Gulf cannot afford to ignore: The region’s export architecture is dangerously concentrated, and only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) possess meaningful bypass capacity, leaving Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iraq entirely captive to a chokepoint that Iran controls.

Revisiting the Strategic Rupture

Iran’s calculus was recognizable: Its goal was to use the Gulf as a secondary theater to raise the cost of the U.S. campaign. Although Iran may deter the Gulf states from joining the United States and Israel should they conduct additional attacks on Iran, Iran is likely to suffer in the long term. The Gulf states will work to weaken and isolate Iran while urgently augmenting their own power.

The war is accelerating long-deferred conversations about intra-GCC connectivity. Pipelines, road corridors, and freight links that languished as diplomatic aspirations for years are suddenly urgent infrastructure priorities. The states’ shared vulnerability is creating a sense of common purpose in a bloc that has struggled to convert institutional solidarity into operational integration. Notably, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—despite persistent differences over some aspects of regional politics—have moved to connect their coastal cities in a direct bypass of the Strait of Hormuz, a step that would have been inconceivable before the war.

The emerging consensus across the Gulf is that national and collective defense capabilities must be upgraded quickly. In the first three days of the war alone, Gulf states expended more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles than Ukraine had fired in four years of conflict. To fill the gaps in their defenses, the Gulf states have cast a wide net, looking to a range of producers. European defense tech startups are actively pursuing Gulf procurement deals, and the Gulf states are increasingly interested in technology transfer and domestic co-production over arms purchases. Some experts, such as Zain Hussain and Pieter Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, expect the Iran war to drive a further surge in demand for air defense systems globally; this will place European manufacturers—already strained by Ukraine—under pressure to expand capacity.

The recent diplomatic visits to the Gulf since the start of the war crystallize the new terrain. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has traveled to the region twice already. He first made an unannounced tour of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in late March, during which he signed long-term security agreements with Riyadh and Doha and deployed 201 anti-drone experts. On April 24, Zelenskyy made a short second trip to the kingdom, discussing a broader “drone deal” that includes joint production. Also, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Jeddah, Doha, and Abu Dhabi in early April—the first EU and NATO leader to visit the Gulf since the war began. While there, she offered to help rehabilitate damaged energy infrastructure and deepen defense and investment ties. Rome has already deployed aerial defenses to the region.

Should a Washington-Tehran deal materialize, the Gulf states will approach it with deep skepticism and quiet determination to shape its terms from the outside. Saudi Arabia’s primary issue will not be Iran’s rehabilitation per se, but the conditions that will be placed on Tehran going forward. Specifically, the Gulf states would like a deal that would cripple Iran’s ability to build offensive capabilities—mainly a nuclear weapon and missiles—and foreclose the strategic gains Iran made through proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon. Additionally, they are concerned that the war will leave Israeli influence in the region unchecked. Riyadh will signal that any durable regional settlement must account for Arab security interests and will refrain from supporting U.S. short-term approaches, including the naval blockade. The Saudi leadership sees these policies as indirectly facilitating Israel’s freedom of action, especially in Lebanon, and prolonging the war.

Across the GCC, the shared red line will be this: a deal that restores Iranian economic capacity without dismantling its coercive military architecture. Such an agreement would be regarded not as peace, but as a threat deferred. But the Gulf states will hedge regardless of the terms of a settlement, accelerating domestic defense industrialization and diversifying security partnerships.

Beyond the War

The deeper transformation will be strategic. The Gulf states are emerging from this conflict with an altered conception of alliances and deterrence. The war will not produce a unified GCC security posture—the internal divergences run too deep. But it will produce two overlapping-but-distinct strategic trajectories, differentiated above all by each state’s relationship with Israel and its vision of what durable security requires.

As a signatory to the Abraham Accords, the UAE has adopted a policy of decoupling the Palestinian issue from closer economic and security ties with Israel. Iran’s strikes on the UAE—the largest in number directed at any non-Israeli target—have hardened that disposition. According to Anwar Gargash, a senior adviser to UAE President Mohammad bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi now supports completing the U.S. campaign and deepening its integration with the U.S.-Israel security architecture, as it perceives “growing Israeli influence in the Gulf.” Early signs of growing UAE-Israeli security cooperation include the UAE receiving Israel’s Iron Dome defense system during the war.

Saudi Arabia’s calculus is more complex and more consequential. Riyadh seeks deterrence against Iran but simultaneously desires strategic insulation against uninvited U.S. military adventurism and deepening Israeli influence. The kingdom will sustain and deepen its strategic partnership with Washington—but it will do so while cultivating closer military ties with Turkey and Pakistan and anchoring a broader geopolitical coalition with Jordan, Egypt, and Qatar. This architecture of dual hedging serves a precise purpose: to counterbalance Israel’s accumulated strategic gains since 2023 and to press for a two-state solution in the medium to long term. As evidence of its commitment, Riyadh co-chaired the ninth meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution on April 20.hape.

The Gulf states entered this war as bystanders. They will not exit it that way. The war has forced a reckoning—with infrastructure, the limits of alliances, and strategic choices that can no longer be deferred. What emerges will be a more assertive and more diversified Gulf security order.