As Washington and Tehran move towards a long-term ceasefire agreement, Gulf states will likely look for new long-term security solutions when a war in their region – which they did not start – finally ends.
It comes as United States President Donald Trump cancelled new strikes on Iran saying that a deal with Tehran was imminent, and that a “time” and “place” for signing would soon be announced.
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In Tehran, officials appeared more cautious with one senior Iranian official telling Al Jazeera that the government was still reviewing a proposed Memorandum of Understanding with Washington.
Subsequent comments by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif point to a deal being made, and what follows in the coming days could have important implications for collective regional security.
Attacks on the Gulf
The United States operates military facilities in at least 19 locations across the MENA region, including permanent bases in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Between 40,000 and 50,000 US troops were stationed across the region before the war on Iran started.
This US-Gulf nexus appeared to insulate states from conflicts engulfing other parts of the region, but over the past four months, Gulf states hosting US military facilities have been targeted by Iran.
“If there is a way to describe the prevailing security model in the region since the 1980s, the concept of security partnerships best encapsulates it,” said Mahjoub Al-Zuwairi, an academic and expert on Middle East politics.
“The countries of the region have chosen to align their security with broad international alliances. For decades, this model has provided a reasonable deterrent and logistical and intelligence depth that is difficult to replace.”
A security umbrella with holes
The war on Iran has exposed a paradox – while Iranian officials have repeatedly referred to their Gulf neighbours as “brothers”, they have also repeatedly targeted them during the war.
Despite the protestations of Gulf states that no attacks on Iran were launched from their soil, they have been repeatedly targeted.
At least 28 people have been killed across the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in suspected Iranian drone and rocket attacks, since the US and Israel launched their offensive on Iran on 28 February. This has led to questions about the US-Gulf security arrangement.
“Just the war itself has pierced that sense of security, the US security umbrella is moribund at worst, or ineffective at best,” Simon Mabon, professor of international relations at Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera.
“They’ve long relied on it for their own security. Yet the presence of US forces on their territory directly meant they became targets. They can’t escape their geography [and] despite the tensions, despite the hostilities, despite the attacks, Iran isn’t going away. They have to find a way of dealing with this reality.”
The economic cost of war
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has proven be a setback for some Gulf states working to diversify their energy-reliant economies towards tourism, services and finance, but not all have been affected equally.
Saudi Arabia was able to redirect some oil exports through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, while Oman – whose main ports are outside the Strait of Hormuz – has also benefited from rising energy prices.
The UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have been more heavily affected due to their dependence on the waterway for their energy exports, but the war has encouraged new thinking on long-standing security and economic arrangements.
“There are new pipelines being set up, but the capacity of these alternatives is infinitely smaller than the Strait itself,” said Mabon. “It will take enormous investment and years of development before they can come close to replacing it.”
Moving closer to Iran?
One possible lesson from the conflict is that Gulf states may seek engagement with Iran rather than confrontation, something that Gulf states had already made some groundwork on before the US-Israel war began.
The UAE restored diplomatic ties with Tehran in 2022, and a year later, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to normalise relations in a deal brokered by China.
Al-Zuwairi says that the conflict could revive plans for MENA-led regional security arrangements, as envisioned in the 2019 Hormuz Peace Initiative, which proposed a Gulf security framework involving Iran, Iraq and the six GCC states.
But the distrust fostered since then – notably Tehran’s strikes on its Gulf neighbours – would make such a formation unlikely in the near future.
“The recent war has opened the door wide to reconsidering the Gulf security system with its neighbours,” Al-Zuwairi said.
“How can Tehran propose a non-aggression pact while raining missiles on neighbouring cities? The initiative appears theoretically sound but practically bankrupt unless Iranian behaviour changes.”
Looking beyond Washington?
The solution for the Gulf could be a hybrid arrangement where ties with Washington are maintained, but other regional and domestic options are explored, including greater investment in local defence industries.
A possible blueprint for this could be the mutual defence agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last September, stating that an attack on one country would be considered an attack on both.
Yet previous instances when Gulf states felt abandoned by the US have led to divergent responses, with the UAE and Bahrain deepening ties with Israel, but a new paradigm means that a more collective action to the issue of security might be considered.
“The war has demonstrated that every guarantor, no matter how many banners it flies, primarily protects its own interests,” said Al-Zuwairi.
“The region ends up paying the price for a war it did not choose … The security of the Gulf will not be created in Washington … It will be created when Gulf countries recognise that they must build it themselves, because when fires start, it is always those closest to the flames who pay the price.”
