Marc Lynch writes:

Iran’s bombardment of its Gulf neighbors has inexorably dragged them into a war that they had desperately hoped to avoid. The potential entry of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia into direct war alongside Israel and the United States represents the first full-scale manifestation of America’s ambitions for the Middle Eastern order it has overseen for decades. Washington has always dreamed of Arab-Israeli cooperation against Iran without resolving the Palestinian issue. Here it is. It would be no small irony if America’s Middle East reached its apotheosis just as the entire region collapsed into the abyss. But that day may be coming. The Gulf states can no longer believe that the United States can or will protect them from existential threats. And even as they are forced to openly cooperate with Israel in its war, they will increasingly view it as a threat rather than a potential ally.

Iran’s targeting of the Gulf states in the face of the U.S.-Israeli attack shattered the hard-won regional rapprochement that had taken hold over the last three years. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had long been aligned with Israel on the need for a confrontational strategy toward Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, early in his de facto reign, had fulminated against the Islamic Republic and signaled a readiness for military action. Gulf leaders were reliable voices for more aggressive policies toward Iran and vocal skeptics of nuclear diplomacy, as their allies and proxies did battle with Iran across a broad swath of the Levant, Iraq, and Yemen.

But those days have long passed. Gulf leaders were stunned by the ability of Iran and its allies to target Saudi oil refineries in 2019 without any effective defensive capability or meaningful U.S. response. A subsequent round of drones over Abu Dhabi reinforced the lesson of a real vulnerability for which the alliance with the United States could not or would not compensate. In 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations and established a broader detente under ostensible Chinese auspices, a key part of the broader regional trend toward the de-escalation of proxy wars and intramural conflicts. The detente held firm during last summer’s 12-day war, as the Gulf states stayed on the sidelines and Iran refrained from targeting them.

But a different strategic logic applied this time. With Israel and the United States clearly poised to launch a massive, coordinated regime-change war, Iran understood that there could be no going back to the status quo. The benefits offered by the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia were already gone. The Gulf states, for the most part, preferred to avoid war, but they recognized that it was inevitable as the U.S. armada assembled and Omani mediators saw the Trump administration was barely bothering to pretend to negotiate in good faith. With war inevitable, the Gulf states hoped to at least shape the campaign’s geography and strategy in ways that would minimize their exposure to its fallout. They hoped for a short war that would replace top Iranian leaders with more pragmatic autocrats, presumably from the military, without shattering the state in ways that would spread instability, refugees, and uncertainty. And they hoped the conflict would remain confined to Israel and Iran, leaving the Gulf states and oil shipping relatively unaffected.

Iran rejected that script, responding to the U.S.-Israeli attack with a massive and escalating bombardment of every Gulf neighbor. While Iran’s drones and missiles concentrated on the UAE and Bahrain in particular, it has also attacked Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even friendly Qatar and Oman. Its targeting patterns suggest a clear strategy that is far from the random spasms of atavistic violence portrayed in much of the media. Iran has targeted civilian centers at the heart of the Gulf states, signaling their unprecedented vulnerability to their people and leaders. Highly publicized visits by Gulf leaders to local shopping malls and public places show how seriously they take public shock and fear. [Continue reading…]