doha —
On Wednesday night, even as President Donald Trump took to the White House podium to tout the war’s military successes, Iranian drones and missiles rained down on areas bearing the brunt of the Islamic Republic’s relentless retaliation.
The United Arab Emirates, whose image as a glamorous vault had already been tarnished by a month-long barrage of nearly 500 Iranian missiles and more than 2,000 drones, is once again within Tehran’s range.
Minutes before President Trump touted a “swift and overwhelming” victory that he plausibly claimed had reduced Iran’s military capabilities, Gulf defense officials reported that Iranian air defenses were once again defeating multiple missile and drone threats.
Despite more than a month of intensive attacks by the United States and Israel, it is clear that Iran’s tattered regime is still capable of effectively attacking both Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors, which are facing waves of Iranian attacks.
Trump’s insistence that “core strategic objectives” are “nearing completion” and that the Iran war could end within the next few weeks did not bring much relief to the energy-rich Gulf region, which is suffering hundreds of millions of dollars a day in losses due to blocked oil and gas exports.
The vision for an end to the war, which is slowly emerging in the Gulf and elsewhere, is likely to leave a belligerent Iranian regime with ballistic missile and drone capabilities, and even the possibility of nuclear weapons, which will continue to threaten, if not target, the region’s fragile energy infrastructure.
Trump’s call for other countries to “take the lead” in securing the narrow Strait of Hormuz – a vital energy transit route that Iran has effectively blocked since the US and Israeli offensive began in late February – is a tacit acknowledgment that Iran will maintain control of the waterway once the US war ends.
Such a scenario would represent a major strategic victory for the Islamic Republic and would be a potentially lucrative scenario.
Already, the Iranian regime (which President Trump has claimed is “less extreme and much more rational” than before) has approved a controversial plan to restrict and impose tolls on certain ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
If carried out, the plan would strengthen Tehran’s control and open up a vast and much-needed source of revenue for the Islamic Republic, which costs millions of dollars per tanker and was unavailable to Iran before the U.S.-Israel war began.
Although many Gulf Arab states have warned the US government of the consequences of pursuing a war against Iran, there are differing views on how US and Israeli operations should proceed going forward.
Officials in Saudi Arabia, Iran’s longtime regional rival, have called for Iran’s missile and drone capabilities to be reduced as much as possible before the U.S. withdraws to eliminate future Iranian threats. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates believes it is “difficult” for the region to continue coexisting with Iran’s missile and drone programs, an official earlier told CNN.
Meanwhile, wealthy monarchy Qatar, which has some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves and maintains a vast and fragile infrastructure for extracting it, has taken a more conciliatory position, calling for an immediate detente and an early return to business.
Discussions between the U.S. Gulf allies are unlikely to yield the results either side wants so far.
President Trump said in a speech at the White House that bombing attacks on Iran will continue for the time being in order to further weaken Iran’s military capabilities. But it is hard to imagine how a few more weeks of attacks could completely deprive a resilient Islamic Republic of its missile and drone inventory and production capacity.
Similarly, the weeks-long extension of the Iran war, which President Trump claims could “bomb Iran into the Stone Age,” means that Iran’s growing damage to Gulf states and the threat of retaliation looms over the region.
Meanwhile, facing growing disapproval from the American public and pressure from volatile financial markets, a defensive Trump with no clear exit strategy appears to be looking for ways to save face from his Iranian adventure, even if it means leaving regional chaos behind for other countries to clean up.
