For decades, Arab leaders in the Persian Gulf viewed their relationship with the United States as a strategic partnership. Donald Trump often saw it differently.
“King, we are protecting you. You may not be without us for two weeks. We have to pay for the military,” Trump said of the Saudi king in 2018, summarizing a more transactional vision of the relationship that Gulf leaders have long seen as a cornerstone of security.
A year later, Saudi Arabia suffered its biggest attack on its territory in decades, with an attack on a major oil facility that temporarily wiped out about half of Saudi oil production and sent global oil prices soaring. Although the US government blamed Iran and condemned the attack, questions remain in the Gulf about how willing the US is to confront Iran on its behalf.
By President Trump’s second term, Gulf leaders were taking notice. President Trump chose the region for his first overseas trip as Gulf states pledge trillions of dollars in investment into the U.S. economy.
“We are going to protect this country,” the US president declared in Qatar’s capital Doha during a Gulf tour last May.
That pledge faced its biggest test this year. Despite Gulf states’ efforts to avoid regional conflict, the United States has launched a war against Iran alongside Israel, sparking ferocious retaliatory attacks across the Gulf and forcing regional governments to once again confront the question of what American protection actually means.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the region on Tuesday with the unenviable task of convincing Gulf states that Washington’s security commitments remain intact. But for many people in the Gulf, the question is no longer whether Washington remains committed to their national security, but whether a new deal with Iran will leave them better off or worse off than they were before the war.
“From the perspective of the Arab Gulf states, the Iran war is a disastrous turning point for the regional security order,” said Hasan al-Hasan, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who sees the deal as part of a broader U.S. withdrawal from the region. “The US withdrawal from the Gulf and the flow of financial and economic resources to Iran is likely to further embolden Iran.”
“Nevertheless, Arab Gulf states have promoted and supported the Iran-US ceasefire agreement. For them, a worse deal is still preferable to war,” he told CNN.
Mr. Rubio’s itinerary includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, Gulf states that bore the brunt of Iranian attacks during the war and are perhaps among the most skeptical of détente between the United States and Iran.
“Especially in the aftermath of this weekend in Switzerland, I want to hear their thoughts and make sure their opinions are considered in every decision we make, because they are our partners,” Rubio told reporters upon arriving in Abu Dhabi, referring to the agreement.
Gulf states opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, reached under the Obama administration, and cheered when President Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, saying it failed to address Gulf states’ concerns. The newly emerged US-Iran deal is likely to cause even more unrest in Gulf capitals. That’s not only because many of those concerns remain unresolved, but also because they occur in a context of what Alhassan described as “a huge loss of trust in the United States.” A senior Gulf diplomat told CNN that the conflict shows that “Iran had a detailed plan to target Gulf countries.”
The deal gives the Iranian government, along with Oman, a formal role in overseeing commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. This means that much of the Gulf’s maritime trade, and vitally important energy exports, could be conducted under Iranian supervision.
The deal also fails to address Iran’s missile program and its network of proxies. Many Gulf states consider this a more pressing concern than Tehran’s nuclear activities. Rubio said Tuesday in Abu Dhabi that Iran’s missile program “will definitely come up in these conversations.” But President Trump downplayed the issue last week, saying that if Saudi Arabia has missiles, it stands to reason that Iran should have them.
The deal also includes a $300 billion recovery fund for Iran, so it also requires the consent of Gulf states. President Trump has promised funding from Gulf states for this initiative, but there is little evidence that they have done the same. Saudi Arabia says there are “no details” about the proposal, while Qatar has expressed interest without formally signing it.
Rubio said during his visit that he had no intention of asking allies to help fund the $300 billion Iran Recovery Fund, saying it was “a long way off.”
Gulf states recognize that they currently have few alternatives to the United States as their primary security partner. And despite the perceived decline in America’s security role, economic partnerships with individual regional countries remain strong, with countries like the UAE pledging to “double down” on their relationship with the United States.
It remains unclear how relations between the Gulf states and the Trump administration will evolve post-war, a senior Gulf diplomat told CNN before the deal was signed, including whether it will evolve into a more formal security agreement that would require Washington to intervene if Gulf security is threatened.
Still, some Gulf states are already looking to diversify their military procurement, particularly looking to Turkey as an alternative arms supplier, the diplomat said.
The war caused Gulf leaders to think more seriously about long-term accommodation with Iran. Currently, no regional power can replace the United States as a guarantor of security in the Gulf region, but officials are increasingly contemplating a future in which the United States plays a much smaller role in the regional security architecture, the diplomat said. One possible framework could include a regional non-aggression pact with Iran.
How Iran can be persuaded to join such an agreement is another question. With confidence in U.S. security waning, Gulf states have few tools to influence Iran other than trade, investment and economic cooperation.
Analysts warn that diplomacy alone is unlikely to provide the security Gulf states seek.
IISS’s Al-Hassan doubted that Iran would abide by the non-aggression pact “in the absence of a credible Arab Gulf deterrent,” arguing that Gulf states first needed to create “the right strategic conditions to provoke Iran.”
“A non-aggression pact is unlikely to change Iran’s strategic calculations,” he said. “To do so, Arab Gulf states must first redress their strategic imbalances with Iran through credible deterrence, a strengthened and integrated defense, and robust recovery measures.”
Gulf commentators in state media are also increasingly addressing deeper questions about Iran’s role in the region, moving beyond the confrontational rhetoric that once dominated the discourse.
This week, Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper published an article suggesting that the situation in Iran may force it to adopt a regionally confrontational posture, and asking whether it can be tempered through diplomacy.
Even before the war, prominent Saudi commentator Abdulrahman al-Rashid rejected in an article the idea that a weak and isolated Iran was good for the Gulf. He said the aim was not to permanently weaken the Islamic Republic, but rather to change its behavior and incorporate it into a more stable regional order.
If Gulf states are rethinking their relationships with Iran, it is partly because they are rethinking their relationships with the United States.
“The idea that the United States is a reliable strategic ally is now very much in question in the Gulf,” said Firas Maqsad, Eurasia Group’s managing director for the Middle East and North Africa, arguing that the war had resolved years of disappointment that had steadily undermined Gulf states’ confidence in U.S. security.
“The Gulf states…have to compromise with Iran because they don’t fully trust the United States. In the long term, this is not only détente, but also deterrence. They have to maintain their military capabilities.”
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler and Becky Anderson contributed to this report.
