How Donald Trump’s Iran War Is Destabilizing the Gulf

Yeah. There might have been some sort of last-minute effort to convince the Trump administration that if it was going to attack Iran, it should try to do it right and fight a war that wouldn’t leave the region vulnerable. But I think the fears of the Gulf states turned out to be even worse than they imagined, because, obviously, the Iranians didn’t just hit military installations, with strikes on infrastructure, energy sites and civilian spaces. The diversity of these targets highlighted the weakness of the security architecture of the Gulf States and the reality of their geographical destiny. And the strikes also raised many other problems. For example, the United States actually failed to protect Gulf interests and prioritized protecting Israel’s interests. The war has therefore raised many security issues that cannot be resolved quickly or easily. And I think the worst-case scenario is playing out for the Gulf states, because they see a US-Israeli operation executed very effectively, perhaps at a military level, but without planning for the aftermath, and they recognize that President Trump has a limited attention span and that, as pressure mounts, he could abruptly exit this war, leaving the region both paying the price of the war and also exposed to the version of the Islamic Republic that remains.

Do you think this means that the Gulf States are hoping that the Americans and Israelis will only end the war after regime change in Iran and the end of the Islamic Republic, or do you think they just want the war to end quickly?

I think they want both things, but they are very aware that the first is unachievable. You cannot completely dismantle this diet. This is reality. It is highly institutionalized and bureaucratized. And even if you eliminate chains of command by killing and beheading, there will still be bureaucrats, technocrats and security officials who will be part of this regime. I think they want this war to end as quickly as possible, but they are still very worried about tomorrow. And they believe that a weakened, fragmented and divided Iran will be just as harsh on its neighbors, from a humanitarian, economic and security point of view. And we must also, obviously, say very clearly that the populations of these states have followed the war in Gaza for more than two years, have become highly politicized and are now experiencing this war which has tarnished the image of the Gulf as a refuge for economic interests and as a tourist destination. And they appear vulnerable to Iranian attacks, even though they have very effective defensive operations in place. This defense is a glimmer of hope, but vulnerabilities have still been revealed.

You mentioned that the Gulf states were trying to convince the Bush administration that invading Iraq was a mistake, and I think about how the relationship between the Gulf states and America has changed since then. One factor that seems very different from 2002 or 2003 is that some Gulf state governments paid Trump and his family. THE Wall Street Journal reported that a United Arab Emirates government official invested half a billion dollars in the Trump family’s crypto company. Qatar basically bought Trump a plane. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is involved in business opportunities throughout the Middle East. And yet, all this means very little to the Gulf States. Does this make you question the future relationship?

I think this is a very important point, because the Gulf states were very excited about Trump returning to power. They were obviously deeply frustrated, even angry, with President Biden for his stance on the war in Gaza and for his overly lenient stance toward Netanyahu during the war. So they saw President Trump as more pragmatic, transactional, and they welcomed him very early in his second term in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha, where he gave this famous speech criticizing the idea of regime change and promised that the era of US-funded neoconservative operations in the region would be over and that this would be a new America that, with the Middle East, was going to focus on “trade, not chaos.” and export “technology, not terrorism”. And that was completely celebrated throughout the Gulf, that they would continue to be able to do business with the president and his family, and that the United States respected them and viewed them as stable partners.

And I think, unfortunately, since then, they’ve been deeply disappointed with the Trump administration. They have invested financially in the United States and, I would argue, they are still deeply committed and invested in their security relationship with the United States. Before that, Qatar had doubled down on its relations with the United States. It’s not just Qatar – each Gulf state has its own offering to the United States, if you will, whether it’s technology, regional role, et cetera. Going forward, I don’t think this style of relationship is going to change any time soon, but there are certainly deep frustrations in the Gulf countries that this war has exposed, and concerns that it has left them vulnerable and that America has not supported them. And I think there will be a tail to that.

You said the Gulf states were fed up with Biden over Gaza. Saudi Arabia was also fed up early in Biden’s term, over what it saw as his sanctimony over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. But I always assumed that the reason people like Mohammed bin Salman were angry about Gaza was not the reason many of us were angry about Gaza, but rather because he hoped that after some kind of fig-leaf peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, there could be normalization deals between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that Saudi affairs in the region would go more smoothly, while the Palestinian problem would be put aside, and that is how the Middle East could work. And October 7 and the war in Gaza made it clear that this was a fiction, if it had ever really been possible. And then what the last few years have revealed is not only that these countries can’t align with Israel, because their publics would be very angry about that, but that Israel is also now so aggressive in the region that it has to rethink this whole idea. Is this too cynical?

No. Cynicism prevails. Many Gulf leaders were clearly flirting with the idea that normalization could, through stronger economic ties and security partnerships, lead to greater regional integration, with or without the Palestinians. But two pieces were missing from this vision for the region. One was the very clear circumvention of Palestinian sovereignty, and the second was the Iran issue. And I think those questions were ignored because people were taking too much of a zero-sum approach to the idea of ​​standardization.