WASHINGTON: When Iran expanded the Israeli-American war by striking Persian Gulf Arab states, many observers assumed this new low in Iran-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) relations would endure for years and drive Arab states closer to Israel. Tehran’s escalation seemed to validate Israel’s argument that the Gulf monarchies needed to align with it against their common Persian threat, according an expert analysis published in the Foreign Policy magazine.
Instead, the opposite appears to be unfolding. Regional states have concluded that containing and isolating Iran not only failed but also produced a disastrous war that exposed both the unreliability and the stunning limits of the U.S. security umbrella. Rather than doubling down on Iran’s exclusion, Arab states are writing a new playbook: pursuing economic interdependence with Iran while incorporating Tehran into a new, region-led security architecture.
“Part of what we are doing now, as regional countries, is to create this regional security framework between us and Iran,” Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, told the Financial Times. “That will hopefully have economic cooperation in the future between all of us—to bring the region back to stability.”
Perhaps more importantly, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the driving force behind this shift. While a date has yet to be announced, Riyadh is preparing to host the GCC states and Iran for talks on a regional non-aggression pact, maritime security, and confidence-building measures modeled on Europe’s 1975 Helsinki Accords, with the goal of establishing regular ministerial and leaders’ meetings on regional security. The broader objective is a new Middle East security architecture rooted more in regional cooperation and less in U.S. military guarantees.
These developments further undermine Washington’s long-standing claim that, absent U.S. military primacy, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Instead, they reinforce the restrainers’ argument that regional states will assume greater responsibility for their own security as the United States steps back. Indeed, rather than shielding the region from instability, the United States has often been its principal source. After all, it was the United States and Israel that launched the last two unprovoked wars against Iran—both while negotiations were underway.
