When the war involving Iran erupted in late February, one of the central questions facing Gulf states was whether they could remain outside the boundaries of a wider regional conflict. Forty days of airstrikes across six countries eventually provided the answer: they could not. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates carried out offensive operations against Iranian targets and allied militias, marking a step neither government had taken in decades.
That shift permanently altered the conditions under which either state could claim neutrality in future conflicts. What remains under debate is what comes next. The issue is no longer whether Gulf states should take responsibility for their own security, but how they should do so, and whether the proposals currently circulating in Western capitals would genuinely strengthen Gulf security or merely reproduce a different version of the same structural problem.
One argument gaining traction suggests that Gulf states should use the prospect of an American military withdrawal to negotiate a broader understanding with Iran. The proposal includes a gradual reduction of the American presence at Al Udeid Air Base, the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, and Al Dhafra Air Base in exchange for nuclear restrictions, limits on missiles and proxy groups, and a non aggression agreement.
Supporters of this approach argue that American forces have become both a deterrent and a direct target, while Gulf governments remain excluded from the negotiations that will ultimately define their security environment. Yet even if those observations are accurate, the conclusions built upon them remain deeply questionable.
The Limits of External Guarantees
Foreign powers have historically pursued their own interests in the Gulf before those of regional states. Britain ceded Kuwaiti territory to Saudi Arabia in 1922, withdrew from Yemen in 1967, and later failed to intervene when Iran seized three Emirati islands in 1971. The United States did not stop the Iranian Revolution in 1979, failed to respond militarily after the Iranian attack on Saudi Aramco facilities in Abqaiq in 2019, and left Qatar exposed to Israeli strikes in 2025 despite the American military presence there.
External guarantors have repeatedly failed to provide sustainable security for Gulf states. Yet despite their limitations, they have remained the least risky option available. Abandoning the only external commitment currently in place, even an imperfect one, could leave the region more vulnerable rather than more secure.
A recent proposal published in Foreign Affairs argued that the American military presence encourages Iranian expansionism and that ending it could eventually restrain Tehran’s regional ambitions. However, the years following the 2015 nuclear agreement challenge that assumption. After sanctions relief and moves towards normalisation, Iran expanded its influence in Syria, intensified Houthi operations in Yemen, and strengthened its political networks in Iraq. Iranian expansion accelerated not after external pressure disappeared entirely, but during the process of reducing it.
The common response has been that the nuclear agreement itself was incomplete and failed to fully address Iran’s conventional military threats and proxy networks. Yet this effectively amounts to demanding a complete and permanent American withdrawal without any mechanism for re entry until Iran fundamentally changes its behaviour. Even if Gulf states accepted such a framework, Tehran would have little incentive to comply once the pressure mechanisms had disappeared. Iran’s history of restraint without military pressure offers little basis for building a long term security doctrine.
The Timing Problem
The more difficult issue is timing. Advocates of withdrawal argue that Gulf states would be forced to build substantial military capabilities once American forces depart, and that the pressure of self reliance would achieve what years without that pressure failed to produce.
This logic succeeded elsewhere, but its effectiveness in the Gulf remains unproven.
Following the Cold War, the United States reduced troop levels in Europe while NATO retained unified command structures and binding collective defence commitments. Gulf states possess no comparable level of military integration. Although Gulf Cooperation Council defence agreements date back to the 1990s, they were never designed to address drone warfare or the possibility of the Strait of Hormuz being shut down.
There is no unified interception system, no joint mechanism for monitoring the Strait, and no integrated operational structure capable of responding rapidly to emerging threats. Attempting to construct these systems after an American withdrawal while Tehran simultaneously tests the limits of the new arrangement would not represent strategic independence, but rather the construction of a building without foundations.
The strongest argument in favour of withdrawal has long been that Gulf states failed to invest seriously in their own defence because Washington was always available to compensate for shortcomings. According to this view, genuine investment would only occur if the American option disappeared.
Before March 2026, that position was defensible. Since then, however, evidence has emerged pointing in the opposite direction.
The decisions taken during the conflict imposed unprecedented constraints on Gulf sovereignty. These included the UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC, direct dollar swap arrangements with the US Treasury, deployment of Iron Dome batteries on Emirati territory, and the closure of embassies in Tehran or expulsion of diplomats. Governments that avoided such confrontations for decades suddenly found themselves forced into strategic choices carrying direct political and security consequences.
Iranian missiles struck residential areas in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, making the argument for self reliance no longer theoretical but immediate and tangible.
The Drone Threat and the Strait of Hormuz
Gulf missile defence systems largely held during the conflict. Iranian drones, however, proved far more difficult to intercept. Cheap, slow moving, and launched in large numbers, they exposed critical vulnerabilities in regional defence infrastructure.
If the 2019 Abqaiq attack first revealed this weakness, the forty days of strikes during the 2026 war confirmed and expanded it. Closing this gap requires shared sensor systems, unified interception protocols, and legal authority enabling rapid action without requiring ministerial approval at every stage of the engagement process.
The Strait of Hormuz represents the other structural challenge. No ceasefire agreement can alter Iran’s geographical position there. Establishing a joint monitoring system with clear response thresholds and compensation mechanisms would significantly increase the cost of weaponising the Strait.
Gulf governments possess the financial resources necessary to develop such systems. The real obstacle is not capability, but reluctance to treat legal and operational integration as a military necessity rather than a sovereignty issue. Granting a joint authority the power to act without unanimous political approval remains politically sensitive despite its strategic necessity.
Why a Unified Gulf Treaty May Fail
A Gulf wide treaty is unlikely to provide an effective solution because the six monarchies do not perceive the Iranian threat in the same way.
Saudi Arabia’s primary concern centres on Iranian missiles and Houthi pressure along its southern border. The UAE focuses heavily on maritime security, the Strait of Hormuz, the Barakah nuclear plant, and the port infrastructure underpinning its economic model. Qatar’s calculations are shaped by gas exports, the American military base on its territory, and its backchannel relations with Tehran.
Kuwait and Bahrain face security risks that make escalation existentially dangerous, while Oman has once again maintained its traditional distance from the crisis.
Any framework requiring unanimous GCC approval would likely become paralysed through endless negotiation until it effectively ceased to bind any government. What has actually emerged instead is a growing network of bilateral and operational partnerships between states willing to absorb the real costs of meaningful integration.
The key question is whether those partnerships can be institutionalised before the political urgency created by the conflict fades away.
Building a Real Gulf Security Architecture
Such an institutional framework would require an authority capable of evaluating what member militaries can genuinely accomplish under real operational conditions. This would involve assessing actual battlefield readiness rather than procurement records or training exercises, and publishing those findings regardless of political sensitivities.
NATO spent a decade building comparable institutions before facing a serious strategic test, relying on nuclear deterrence and Article Five commitments to solidify its foundations.
The Gulf possesses the financial means to create a similar structure, but it has yet to agree on establishing an institution capable of producing conclusions its members may not want to hear. Whether Gulf governments are prepared to accept that level of institutional accountability will determine whether strategic independence becomes genuine policy or remains little more than rhetorical ambition.
Pre positioned equipment, rotating forces, and bilateral agreements defining deployment thresholds enabled the United States to preserve deterrence in Eastern Europe for three decades without requiring permanent bases. The Gulf could pursue a similar model, but only after creating the institutional architecture necessary to sustain it.
None of this rules out a future settlement with Iran. Such a settlement remains necessary and will eventually emerge in one form or another. The real question is what position Gulf states will occupy when those terms are negotiated. States involved in shaping the conditions of a settlement possess fundamentally different leverage from those that join the process later.
The priority now is building capability first, then negotiating from a position shaped by tangible results.
There should be no illusions about how many previous plans for Gulf strategic independence were quietly proposed and later abandoned, nor about how quickly the political urgency generated by war can disappear once immediate danger fades. What distinguishes the current moment is that the costs of the previous arrangement have already been paid through damage Gulf governments are still calculating.
The region no longer needs theoretical arguments proving the necessity of change. It needs an institutional structure capable of matching the conclusions already reached through war itself.
