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The boom reverberated so loudly over Dubai marina that the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers and exclusive hotels gave a loud, disconcerting rattle.
“That sounded close, do you think a missile has hit something?” said a young man to his friend as they sipped coffees. Moments earlier, all mobile phones in the vicinity had sounded off with a shrill alarm, the new normal for those living in the Gulf, warning of missile and drone strikes in the area. Customers barely looked up.
Another alert came moments later. The United Arab Emirates air defence systems and fighter jets had successfully intercepted “ballistic missiles … drones and loitering munitions” and all was safe in Dubai – for now. Footage from the previous night captured these systems in action, shooting down a drone in a fiery ball over Dubai’s convention centre, debris raining down like fireworks.
For 20 days, since the US and Israel began their bombing of Iran, the Gulf states have faced a relentless barrage of thousands of Iranian drones and missiles fired at their airports, hotels, ports, military bases, financial districts, datacentres and apartment blocks. Though it has represented an unfathomable attack on their sovereignty, security and economy – in Dubai, shattering an economically crucial illusion of safety and glamour – Gulf countries have so far only responded defensively, spending billions on interceptors that have managed to shoot down about 90% of Iran’s ballistics.
The overarching priority among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the political grouping of the Gulf countries – has been to avoid getting dragged into a war that is not theirs and they had tried furiously to stop.
But the past few days have been marked by growing fear that the Middle East war is entering a new, even more dangerous frontier; one that poses an existential threat to the Gulf countries – and pressure is mounting for them to retaliate. After Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gasfield, the first targeted attacks on its fossil fuel production since the war began, the Iranian regime vowed to show “zero restraint” in hitting back at energy infrastructure in the Gulf, its closest and easiest target.
Iran has been true to their word. In Qatar, almost a fifth of its liquefied natural gas export capacity was knocked out in a strike on its Ras Laffan gas complex. Authorities in Abu Dhabi in the UAE were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling the attacks a “dangerous escalation”. Kuwait’s state oil firm, KPC, said its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, and Saudi Arabia said two of its oil refineries were targeted.
Meanwhile, Iran has continued to blockade the strait of Hormuz, through which most of the oil and gas produced in the Gulf is exported to the rest of the world.
“From the GCC perspective, this war has exposed a deeply troubling reality: all three parties involved are becoming increasingly irrational and detached from reality, each pursuing agendas that threaten to drag the region and the world into a very dark place,” said Ali Bakir, assistant professor of international affairs, security, and defence at Qatar University.
Though small, the petrostates of the Gulf are largely very rich and armed up to the hilt with advanced weapons and aircraft bought from the US. As a collective of six states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, the GCC countries collectively have about 2,000 F-15 and F-18 military aircraft, while other western powers are queueing up to sell them more weapons. However, only Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent the UAE, have experience in large-scale air warfare.
Bakir said Iran was “playing with fire” as it escalated its attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf. “The pressure will mount for the GCC states to switch from a defensive to an offensive posture – especially as interceptor stocks run low,” he said.
Since Donald Trump began bombing Iran, Washington has been pressuring the GCC states to join “his side”. Yet, as Bakir and others emphasised, the long-term consequences of military intervention could still prove too costly for the Gulf states to justify, and risked becoming a dangerous geopolitical trap.
Not only would it legitimise a war the GCC had vehemently opposed, say analysts, but mistrust of Trump now runs deep among the Gulf leadership and there is a palpable fear that GCC striking back against Iran would be used by the US as a foil to withdraw and declare victory. “The GCC would be left with a bloody, open-ended war with Iran that would scar generations,” said Bakir.
Saudi Arabia has been among the most bullish in its response to Iran. Speaking on Thursday, the foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said Saudi Arabia “reserved the right to take military actions if deemed necessary”.
Yet the comments were perceived by analysts more as an effort by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, still sore after attacks by the Houthis in Yemen, to project strength domestically. Few believe that Saudi Arabia would act alone in joining the war due to the risks to itself and of blowing the conflict open even wider. Meanwhile, a GCC agreement on any collective intervention appears elusive.
Gulf states also remain suspicious that the US is acting as a proxy for Israel, and its perceived attempts to gain hegemony over the Middle East. Writing in the Economist this week, the Omani minister Badr Albusaidi said the US had “lost control of its foreign policy”. One Gulf leader privately described Trump as Benjamin Netanyahu’s “poodle”.
“I doubt very much whether any Arab Gulf state would ever join the American-Israeli war because, as they have all said repeatedly: this is not our war,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “They believe it’s not even America’s war.”
Nonetheless, as Gerges emphasised, the Gulf found itself “in an impossible situation, between a rock and a very hard place”, balancing the need to defend their sovereignty while also protecting their regional security in the future.
The reality now facing Gulf leaders is that Iran’s regime remains entrenched, and the US and Israel’s assassination of the supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the head of the supreme national security council, Ali Larijani, and intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, as well as dozens of other defence and security officials, have so far all failed to bring about a surrender.
“Iran has crossed every red line,” he said. “But Arab Gulf states have to think about the future and what a postwar Iran might look like. An injured, enraged and a bleeding Iran could really threaten Gulf security and economic interest for the foreseeable future. A military offensive only risks antagonising them further.”
He also cast doubt on the likelihood of the Gulf states joining Trump’s call for warships to secure the strait of Hormuz, which geographically favours Iran and is notoriously hard to secure. “I doubt it very much, because they don’t have the naval resources, and sending navies into the strait of Hormuz is a trap for getting engaged in warfare,” said Gerges.
But as the hopes for an imminent diplomatic solution have faded, there has also been a hardening of opinion among Gulf leaders and thinkers on Iran, and a growing push for the US to continue with a total decimation of Iran’s military capabilities.
“The GCC countries understand that this regime is now extremely dangerous, even unhinged – we don’t even know who is really running the country,” said Muhanad Seloom, assistant professor of international politics and security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and a former Qatari diplomat.
“The US decapitating the Iranian regime for good is definitely the only option we have now. Otherwise, any time Iran is under pressure, they know they can hit the Gulf, they know they can blockade the strait of Hormuz, and that will be effective. That’s an existential threat for the GCC.”
Seloom was echoed by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, associate professor of political science at the United Arab Emirates University. “America wanted this,” he said. “So let them finish it.”
