The Gulf States, encouraged by Donald Trump, are on the verge of ending their neutrality in the war against Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s repeated “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” on their territory and infrastructure.
The calls, led by the United Arab Emirates from within the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, are for Arab states to act in self-defense against Iran, but it would be a big step for Gulf leaders to side with Israel in a war that will determine the future shape of the Middle East, likely to Israel’s benefit.
A video meeting of GCC foreign ministers on Sunday made no explicit reference to such a plan, but stated that the “option of responding to Iranian attacks” to protect regional security and stability remained on the table.
Iran had made enormous diplomatic efforts over the past two years trying to convince Gulf states that Israel, not Iran, is the main destabilizing force in the region, but much of that painstaking work in speeches, conferences and diplomatic visits appears to have unraveled in a matter of days.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, has justified Iran’s tactics as an attack on US forces based in the Gulf states. “We do not intend to attack them. But when their country’s bases are used against us and the United States operates in the region with its own forces, we attack them,” he said.
But Tehran’s justification has lost steam as hotels, apartment blocks and oil refineries have been attacked in what is seen as a disproportionate bombing. For some Arab leaders, Iran’s tactics reveal the latent arrogance with which it has always viewed other countries in the region.
Iran’s strategic goal in what it sees as a battle of wills appears to be to maximize economic disruption in the Gulf states so that they will beg Trump to end a war that began without their support.
In addition to an Iranian drone attack on the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia, Oman reported an attack on an oil tanker 50 miles off the coast of Muscat, and Qatar’s Defense Ministry reported that two drones attacked energy facilities in the industrial city of Ras Laffan.
Majed al-Ansari, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, one of the countries most disposed toward Iran, said: “This cannot go unanswered; a price must be paid for this attack on our people.”
Former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani warned that Iran had “lost with this action the sympathy of the Gulf which was pressing every possible effort towards reducing tension” and “sowed doubts that will be difficult to erase” in its future relations with the GCC states.
Yasmine Fariouk, Gulf and Arabian Peninsula project director at the International Crisis Group, said: “The Gulf countries are now at a point where there is a lot of anger against Iran. Many of them have invested a lot in de-escalation with Iran and in mediating and trying to find solutions only to find that Iran still sees them as a platform for its larger war with the United States and with Israel.”
There is also some consternation in the United States. A Saudi Arabian official complained to Al Jazeera about US priorities. “The United States abandoned the Gulf states and redirected its air defense to protect Israel. They left all Gulf states hosting US military bases at the mercy of Iranian attacks,” the official said.
However, the overwhelming focus of Gulf States’ resentment is directed toward Iran. They point out that they had made commitments to Iran (which they had fulfilled) to prohibit the United States from using its bases or airspace to attack Iran.
It was widely expected, and followed by Iran, that the Iranian military would respond to a US attack by attacking US bases, as it also did when it staged a near-symbolic attack on the US air base in Qatar at the end of the 12-day war in June.
But the scale, speed and breadth of the Iranian attacks have taken Arab leaders by surprise. The United Arab Emirates has recalled its ambassador from Tehran in protest, saying Iran has launched more attacks against its territory than against Israel. It reported 165 ballistic missiles launched, of which 152 were destroyed, while 13 fell into the sea; two cruise missiles detected and destroyed; and 541 Iranian drones were detected, of which 506 were intercepted and destroyed, while 35 fell within the country’s territory.
Kelly Grieco of the Stimson Center has estimated the financial cost to the UAE at around $2 billion (£1.5 billion), as the cost of intercepting a drone is five times greater than sending it.
In a joint statement on Monday, Bahrain, Iraq (including the Kurdistan Region), Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates warned that “attacking civilians and countries not participating in hostilities is reckless and destabilizing.”
The attacks appear to have even led to a suspension of the growing rift between the two rival Gulf monarchies, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. They had clashed after taking opposing sides in Sudan and Yemen, a rivalry that spanned business and political interests. But in a sign of rapprochement, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates spoke for the first time in months.
Saudi officials also rejected a Washington Post report that they had covertly encouraged the United States and Israel to stage an attack on Iran in the week before the attack. The damaging accusation, if sustained, would leave the Saudi royal family in trouble domestically as it has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The public and private position of the Gulf states had been to urge the United States to show restraint and stick to the diplomatic path of negotiating a deal with Iran over its nuclear program.
Such is the anger directed at Tehran that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi came close to apologizing for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attack on a US facility in Oman, the country that has acted as a mediator in the nuclear talks, and argued that Iran had made unprecedented commitments by offering zero storage of highly enriched uranium. Araghchi claimed that Iran’s military command had been transferred as part of an effort to ensure that command and control would not collapse if the military headquarters were destroyed.
So far there has been little sign of a public debate within Iran’s hierarchy about whether the desired economic chaos is worth alienating the Gulf states or whether there is a risk of military retaliation from the Gulf, which would make the regime’s survival even more dangerous.
Rob Geist Pinfold, professor of defense studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Iran “knows exactly what it is doing” by attacking Gulf countries.
“He is choosing the Gulf countries because he sees them as an easy target. They are easier to attack than Israel,” he said. “These countries have less desire to fight because, at the end of the day, this is not their war.”
