Suffering a sense of Iranian betrayal, will Arabs be forced to take a harder stance?

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HOUSTON – The Gulf Arab nations bombarded by Iran now face a stark set of choices shaped by the latest twists in the war.

US President Donald Trump had issued a Monday night ultimatum – March 24, 7.44am, Singapore time – for Tehran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face a major escalation. 

About 12 hours before that deadline though, Mr Trump announced he would postpone any “obliteration” of Iran’s power plants by five more days to give more time for talks between Washington and Tehran to yield a resolution.

In response to the initial ultimatum, Iran had threatened to “irreversibly” destroy key infrastructure across the Middle East. There was no official reaction from the Iranian government to Mr Trump’s latest comments, but an unnamed senior security official was quoted in Iranian state media as saying there had been “no negotiations” with the US.

Iran seems to have calculated that strikes on the Gulf nations would lead them to press Mr Trump for a ceasefire. But the Gulf capitals could push for measures bolder than a simple de-escalation.

So far, the Gulf states have refrained from launching attacks on Iran even as they intercepted more than 1,500 missiles and drones aimed directly at their airports, ports, hotels, oil facilities and desalination infrastructure.

Their longstanding policy, until the joint US-Israeli war on Iran began on Feb 28, has been to keep their historic rivalries with the theocracy under the lid. The latest example of this approach was the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement brokered by China in March 2023.

Staying in this lane enabled a stable regional environment in which these countries could carry out ambitious economic transformation programmes, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

But in this war, all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Arab states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – as well as Jordan have been targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. It is the first time that Tehran broke a “gentleman’s agreement” by directly attacking every GCC country in a single escalation.

There are indications that the Arab stance is hardening. On March 22, a key public face of the foreign policy establishment in the UAE – which has suffered the most missile and drone attacks in the conflict, even more than Israel – decried the “permanent state of threat”.

Dr Anwar Gargash, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s diplomatic adviser, hit out at Iran’s “bullying” and called for durable security in the region.

“As we confront the brutal Iranian aggression... our thinking does not stop at a ceasefire, but rather turns towards solutions that ensure lasting security in the Arabian Gulf, curbing the nuclear threat, missiles, drones, and the bullying of the straits,” he said on X.

“It is inconceivable that this aggression should turn into a permanent state of threat,” said the former minister of state for foreign affairs, who is widely regarded as one of the UAE’s strategic thinkers, having shaped policy on such issues as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the UAE’s 2020 normalisation of ties with Israel, the Abraham Accords.

Iran’s “brutal aggression” against the Arab Gulf states carries profound geopolitical repercussions and establishes the Iranian threat as a central axis in Gulf strategic thinking, Dr Gargash said.

Since the start of the war, Iran has launched 15 cruise missiles, 345 ballistic missiles and 1,773 drones, UAE’s Defence Ministry said on March 22.

The attacks also seemed to have served to push the country to a closer embrace of the US.

“For the missiles and drones and the aggressive rhetoric are Iranian. And the result is to bolster our national capabilities and the joint Gulf security, as well as to solidify our security partnerships with Washington,” Dr Gargash said, stubbing out the idea that the UAE might seek a reduced US presence.

An end to US military bases in the Gulf is one of Iran’s demands to end the war, which also include reparations and guarantees that the war will not be restarted.

Dr Gargash has also indicated what would cause the UAE to shift from a restrained position.

“I think right now we are doing enough in order not to expand the war also because we have to think: We have capacity. We could do more in terms of what I would call active defence by targeting where these missiles are coming from,” he said during a March 17 event at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He also left open the possibility of more action to open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blocked.

“Right now... one of our goals is not to sort of expand the confrontation here,” he said. “Having said that, I can see us, for example, playing a role with other countries in ensuring the safety and security of the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

Through threats and attacks on ships, the Iranian government has effectively closed the vital waterway, through which some 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil and natural gas typically passes.

Dr Gargash also criticised the key groupings of regional and Muslim-majority states for failing to rally around the Gulf states.

“We in the Arab Gulf states have the right to wonder: Where are the joint Arab and Islamic labour institutions, chief among them the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, while our countries and peoples are subjected to this treacherous Iranian aggression? And where are the ‘major’ Arab and regional countries?” he said in another tweet on March 23.

“In this absence and impotence, it is unacceptable later to speak of the decline of the Arab and Islamic role or to criticise the American and Western presence,” he added.

“The Arab Gulf states were a support and partner to all in times of prosperity... so where are you today in times of hardship?”

Saudi Arabia, too, made its thinking clear after a March 19 meeting in Riyadh attended by foreign ministers and representatives of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Syria, Turkey and the UAE.

Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said the prospect of neighbouring nations entering the war should not be dismissed.

“I think it’s important for the Iranians to understand that the kingdom, but also its partners who have been attacked and beyond, has very significant capabilities and capabilities that they could bring to bear should they choose to do so,” he said.

“The patience that is being exhibited is not unlimited. Do they (the Iranians) have a day, two, a week? I’m not going to telegraph that.”

Iran has launched more than 400 missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia, including its Eastern Province, where many oil refineries are located.

All six GCC nations met on March 19 with members of the US House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, and with senators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in closed-door sessions. In the meetings, they pushed for expedited arms sales and discussed the escalation of the conflict, US TV network NBC News reported, citing two unidentified congressional aides.

A statement posted on X by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Iranian escalation “will have dire consequences for (Iran) first and foremost, and for the security of the region, and will cost it dearly, casting a shadow on its relations with the countries and peoples of the region, who will not stand idly by in the face of threats to their capabilities”.

However, Qatar appeared to depart from the stance at the Riyadh meeting a day later, perhaps in a bid to reprise its established role as a mediator in regional conflicts. 

“This war needs to stop immediately,” Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, said on March 19, alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

“Everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is, and dragging the whole region into this conflict is,” Mr Al-Thani added, in an indirect reference to Israel.

Qatar has suffered some of the worst damage in the war. Its Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility, hit by Iranian missiles on March 18, could take up to five years to repair. Iran launched the attacks hours after Israel targeted its South Pars gas field and facilities.

Oman, too, has condemned the US-Israeli campaign and was the only Arab nation to congratulate Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei upon his appointment. Still, Iran attacked two Omani ports and killed its citizens. 

No matter how aggrieved these nations are by Iran’s attacks on them, it is never an easy task for them to fight alongside the US and Israel. 

“Such a move would carry significant political costs, particularly in the broader Arab and Islamic worlds, where overt alignment with Israel remains unacceptable,” the Arab Center Washington DC, a Qatar-affiliated think-tank, said in a March 19 note.

But the think-tank noted that the widening Iranian attacks add to pressure on some Gulf states to become more directly involved in the conflict.