How the Iran War Has Rewritten the Gulf’s Security Calculus*

The war has upended the Gulf’s old security assumptions, forcing states to reconsider their reliance on the US and future ties with Iran.

By Giorgio Cafiero · 28 September 2026

The US-Israeli war on Iran and its chaotic spillover effects across the Middle East and beyond have forced the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members to come to terms with new realities.

Calculations about the Gulf’s security architecture are being reassessed, and Gulf states have been seriously questioning longstanding assumptions about the United States’ commitment to their security in the face of regional threats, chiefly from Iran, which retaliated against US and Israeli attacks by firing missiles and drones at the GCC states since the outset of this conflict on 28 February.

Looking ahead, what will emerge from this conflict is unclear. There will not be imminent reconciliation between Gulf Arab monarchies and Iran. Nor will the Gulf Arab monarchies make a straightforward move away from Washington.

What appears likely is a complicated transition whereby the GCC members reduce their dependence on the United States, bolster their own military capabilities, further diversify defence partnerships with alternative powers, and explore ways to manage tensions with the Islamic Republic diplomatically.

What could emerge is a more fragmented Gulf order whereby GCC states seek greater autonomy from Washington while still counting on the United States to remain an indispensable military force in the sub-region.

Dr Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, does not envision Washington reducing its commitment to GCC members.

“There has been talk that some of the US military bases that dot the region are damaged beyond repair and that the US may not rebuild them after the war is over. Still, it seems doubtful that at least in the short to medium run, the United States would reduce its security commitment to the Persian Gulf states in any significant way,” he told The New Arab.
Any new Gulf security order must include Iran

The Gulf Arab monarchies clearly recognise that Iran is their permanent neighbour, and it is impossible to simply exclude Tehran from the Gulf’s future security architecture, as demonstrated by recent statements from high-ranking officials.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly this month, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani called for a “regional system of collective security” and said that “we remain convinced that the crisis in the Gulf can be resolved through diplomatic means, through reopening the Strait of Hormuz to maritime navigation, in order to avert war”.

Similarly, Anwar Gargash, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed’s Diplomatic Adviser, recently argued that there needs to be direct dialogue between Arab states and Tehran about the region’s future and a “new mindset” in how Arab states approach Iran.

Efforts to pressure Iran have produced limited results, explained Dr Kamrava. Pointing to a “realisation that the effort to marginalise and isolate Iran, not just economically but also in military and security matters, has yielded little success,” he told The New Arab that “the GCC impetus to assume a confrontational posture in relation to Iran, as was the case in the 2010s, has clearly backfired”.

Dr Kamrava stressed that the Islamic Republic has posed much less of a threat to its GCC neighbours when these Arab states engaged Tehran diplomatically compared to the times when they sought Tehran’s isolation.

“Moreover, Iran has long called for the articulation of a regional security arrangement that takes into account all regional actors instead of only a select group of them. If Iran does indeed become part of a broader security arrangement with its GCC neighbours, there is far greater likelihood of stability and reduced tensions than has been the case so far,” he added.

Dr Ghoncheh Tazmini, author of ‘Power Couple: Russian-Iranian Alignment in the Middle East’, explained that statements such as those made by the Emir of Qatar and Gargash do not suggest that a “reset” in GCC-Iran relations is coming soon.

Such statements appear to be acknowledging the basic geopolitical reality that whatever GCC members’ differences are with Tehran, Iran is a major regional actor whose interests and capabilities cannot be wished away.

“What these statements suggest is a recognition that Iran cannot be excluded from any durable security order in the Persian Gulf. Qatar’s emphasis on collective security and Gargash’s call for direct Arab-Iranian dialogue point to greater regional agency: the states of the Persian Gulf cannot leave the terms of their security entirely to negotiations between Tehran and Washington,” she told The New Arab.

More than seven months after the United States and Israel began this war on Iran, GCC states are making different assessments about what can be done to realistically achieve stability, economic diversification, and secure trade routes. Each of these is extremely difficult to achieve without engaging the Iranians diplomatically and relying excessively on external powers.

Gulf states have been seriously questioning longstanding assumptions about the United States' commitment to their security in the face of regional threats, chiefly from Iran. [Getty] This does not mean that GCC members are anywhere close to trusting Iran or overcoming their grave concerns about Tehran’s regional foreign policy. This is especially so for the Gulf Arab states which have suffered the most from Iranian missile and drone strikes since late February.

This change in GCC states’ assessments about how to deal with Tehran “brings them closer to an idea Iran has promoted for years, namely that the region's security should be managed by regional actors,” said Dr Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa programme at the London-based think tank Chatham House, in an interview with The New Arab.

“Gulf Arab states resisted that proposition in the past because they feared it would legitimise Iranian influence. Increasingly, however, there is a recognition that any durable regional order will have to include Iran and that dialogue may offer a more realistic path to stability than continued reliance on an uncertain external security architecture,” he added.
Pushing for regional mechanisms to prevent the next war

Calls for a “regional system of collective security” and advocacy of direct Arab-Iranian dialogue are understood within the context of GCC states increasingly seeking ways to manage regional security beyond traditional deterrence.

The absence of an inclusive framework in which rivals can address disputes before they escalate has become increasingly problematic.

“The GCC, for all its limitations, managed this well among its members between 1981 and 2017 when various combinations of members defused bilateral tensions and potential clashes through GCC channels,” Dr Rory Miller, a professor of international politics at Georgetown University in Qatar, told The New Arab.

“Of course, such calls for these conflict resolution and management mechanisms are going to be more common now than ever because when you have a security vacuum you have two options: fill it through offensive actions, such as the militarisation of differences, and defensive engagement, such as conflict management through negotiation,” he added.

“In these terms, these calls by [the Emir of Qatar and Gargash] strongly signal that the defensive route is what Gulf countries are considering now.”
Diversifying defence partnerships without replacing Washington

As Gulf Arab states call for more regional diplomacy, there is also a growing recognition of their need for more robust drone and missile capabilities, along with greater interest in domestic defence industries and diversified weapons procurement.

Gulf governments will seek to reduce their exposure to changes in Washington’s foreign policy by enhancing regional defence cooperation, strengthening indigenous military capabilities, and developing relationships with a wider range of international partners to gain greater autonomy from the United States, albeit without attempting to replace Washington.

While this trend is not new and was set in motion by past episodes, including the 2019 Aramco attacks and Israel’s attack on Doha last year, the ongoing regional crisis has served to accelerate it, with events of this year highlighting how exposed the GCC states are to insecurity while so dependent on the United States as a security guarantor.

The Gulf Arab monarchies clearly recognise that Iran is their permanent neighbour, and it is impossible to simply exclude Tehran from any future security architecture. [Getty]
Lessons learned

As a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Gulf Arab governments have been forced to learn important albeit painful lessons about both Iran and the United States.

For starters, as Dr Kamrava explained, GCC states can no longer shrug off Tehran’s threats to attack US military installations in the Gulf.

“Iranian warnings of attacking American assets in the Persian Gulf, of which there were plenty before the war, should not be ignored. This is something that Iranian visitors to the Arab states would often repeat, and they were repeatedly ignored. That can no longer be the case,” he told The New Arab.

Dr Quilliam pointed out the extent of Tehran’s means to hit GCC states hard, particularly in their vulnerable areas.

“Iran has shown that it retains the capacity to inflict considerable economic and security costs on the region despite years of sanctions and attempts to constrain its behaviour,” he said in an interview with The New Arab.

“At the same time, Gulf leaders have been reminded that Washington’s priorities are not always aligned with their own. The US can enter or escalate a conflict and then leave regional states to deal with many of the consequences,” added Quilliam, who sees these dynamics encouraging GCC members to coordinate more closely with each other.
Economic ambitions depend on a more secure region

The Gulf Arab monarchies can no longer treat economic security and national security as separate concerns. Disruptions to maritime trade, energy exports, investment flows, and critical infrastructure can quickly undermine the ambitious and grandiose economic diversification agendas such as Saudi Vision 2030, which have become central to the Gulf’s future.

“For governments focused on economic transformation, the protection of supply chains, maritime routes, critical infrastructure and investor confidence is now as important as conventional defence,” Dr Quilliam told The New Arab.

The Strait of Hormuz clearly highlights this vulnerability, bringing us to the fact that geography itself can become a strategic instrument.

Although the GCC states possess vast financial resources and increasingly advanced military capabilities, these countries lack the means to eliminate the strategic importance of a narrow maritime passage through which a substantial share of global energy trade transits. This comes with significant implications.

The future Gulf security architecture will have to protect the infrastructure, trade routes and economic relationships on which the region’s prosperity depends.

“The overriding lesson is vulnerability. The war has demonstrated how quickly the states of the Persian Gulf, their infrastructure and their economies can become exposed to a conflict involving Iran and external powers. It has also demonstrated the continuing importance of Hormuz: geography itself can become a strategic instrument, and military superiority cannot entirely remove that reality,” Dr Tazmini told The New Arab.

“Hormuz has for centuries been a space in which Iran, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and external maritime powers have encountered one another. What has changed strikingly is Iran’s position within that geography: a Strait that once exposed the limits of Iranian maritime power has today become an important instrument of Iranian strategic influence. That historical reversal will form part of the context in which any post-war regional order takes shape,” she added.

Analysts tell The New Arab that a new balance will be struck whereby US power remains important, but the Gulf states are increasingly focused on self-reliance, diversification of defence partnerships, and diplomacy with Iran. [Getty]
Between Washington, Tehran, and greater autonomy

Looking at the bigger picture, what seems to be emerging is a Gulf that has lost its willingness to remain so dependent on the United States for security.

Nonetheless, throughout the foreseeable future, Washington is set to continue serving as the dominant external military actor in the Gulf even as GCC states pursue their efforts to diversify their defence relationships beyond the United States by turning to states such as China, France, Pakistan, Turkey, and Russia.

Not lost in the equation is the fact that the experience of being attacked by Iran has likely strengthened the case for GCC states to directly engage Tehran and seek to establish regional mechanisms capable of preventing disputes from escalating into wider conflicts.

“I think the dilemma for these Gulf states is on the one hand there is a desire for dialogue, for reaching some sort of an accommodation with Iran to explore possibly a new security architecture with Iran that includes Iran’s concerns in terms of security for the entire Middle East,” Dr Nader Hashemi, the director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, told The New Arab.

“But, on the other hand, all of these countries are still deeply dependent in terms of their military relationship, their intelligence cooperation, their political relationship with the United States,” he explained.

“So, it’s not easy for these Gulf states to move in the direction of a new relationship with Iran when they will be pressed by the United States to maintain the status quo.”

Ultimately, the order that emerges following the current US-Iran crisis will probably not be a return to the pre-28 February model, nor a total break from it.

In all likelihood, a new balance will be struck whereby Washington’s power remains important, but the Gulf Arab states are increasingly serious about greater self-reliance, diversification of defence partnerships, and diplomacy with Iran.

A key question for the post-war Gulf will be whether the GCC members can successfully establish durable institutions that permit them to mitigate, manage, and contain their tensions with Iran while maintaining their close partnerships with the United States.

“My own view is that nothing is going to change as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. The next president might create more space and room for these Gulf states to renegotiate a new relationship with Iran in terms of the region’s security architecture while at the same time maintaining a close alliance with the United States,” said Dr Hashemi.

“One thing is clear is that long-standing assumptions within these Gulf states regarding their national security strategy have completely unravelled and come undone. We’re in the process of transformation and it’s unclear what’s going to happen next.”

First published in The New Arab on 28 September 2026.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and may not necessarily align with The New Arab’s editorial line.