The Iran War Is Testing Gulf Unity

Iran’s calculated decision to disproportionately and indiscriminately bombard Gulf infrastructure, despite the fact that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are not direct parties to the regional war, has forced Gulf leaders to reassess their strategies toward the Islamic Republic. Iran’s leadership authorized the attacks on the Gulf states in an effort to pressure U.S. President Donald Trump to end U.S. attacks and punish GCC states for their sovereign alliance with the United States. Instead, the strikes shattered a years-long effort by Gulf leaders to moderate Iranian behavior through diplomacy and engagement. That approach was most clearly demonstrated by the March 2023 China-brokered Saudi-Iran rapprochement, which led to the reopening of Saudi and Iranian embassies in Riyadh and Tehran. Iran’s wartime attacks have now revived longstanding Gulf perceptions of the Islamic Republic as an enduring threat, exposing divisions among GCC states over how Tehran should be engaged.

Iranian Escalation and the Gulf Response

Iran has targeted the United Arab Emirates (UAE) more intensively than any other Gulf state, launching nearly 3,000 missiles and drones at civilian targets across the country. It did not stop there. Tehran also attacked the other Gulf states, striking not only U.S. military bases but also refineries, pipelines, energy processing plants, tankers, storage tanks, and other facilities, causing significant damage. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has also directed its Iraqi militia allies, which are embedded within the Iraqi state, to carry out attacks on Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan throughout the war.  On top of that, Kuwait recently announced that it had apprehended four IRGC operatives attempting to infiltrate its offshore Bubiyan Island.

In response, the GCC has insisted that Iran not only refrain from further attacks on their facilities, but also restore maritime security through the Strait of Hormuz. While restoring the free flow of exports through the Strait of Hormuz is crucial for global economies, and the Gulf in particular, the economic disruption will likely persist well beyond any reopening. Extensive damage to energy infrastructure, long-term suspension of shipping activity, and the halting of many production lines due to lack of storage capacity are expected to delay a return to normal operations for several months, even if the Strait were to open immediately.

Further, with the exception of the Sultanate of Oman, the Gulf states have issued joint statements condemning Iran’s strikes and have advocated a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Tehran stand down.

Riyadh at the Center of Gulf Calculations

The Gulf states tend to look to the largest among them, Saudi Arabia, to broker a regional consensus. But the Kingdom is unique. As the birthplace of Islam and the guardian of its two holiest sites, as well as the leader of the Arab world, Saudi leaders want to avoid any perception that they are operationally partnered with Israel against Iran. Riyadh also assesses that kinetic retaliation against Tehran might draw the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen more directly into the conflict, threatening Saudi Arabia’s alternative oil export route to the Red Sea, which has enabled the kingdom to export roughly 7 million barrels per day throughout the war.

The other Gulf states, although not under the historic constraints that bind Saudi de facto leader Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), have tended to follow a Saudi foreign policy lead. These states, for the most part, echo Riyadh’s call for de-escalation in the current war. For Bahrain, as well as for the UAE, there are no inherent impediments to working with Israel. Both have signed onto the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, under which the two Gulf states, along with Morocco and Sudan, have normalized relations with Israel. Even Bahrain, which faces pro-Iranian elements of its own population, has publicly accepted the Saudi preference for a diplomatic settlement.

Kuwait remains closely aligned with Saudi Arabia and rarely, if ever, deviates from a Gulf consensus backed by the kingdom. Like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait rejects open ties to Israel until there is concrete and irreversible movement toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Qatar, which has tended to pursue a more independent foreign policy, has joined most of the other Gulf states in refraining from retaliatory strikes against Iran, instead advocating mediation and de-escalation. Earlier this month, the prime ministers of Qatar and Kuwait jointly reiterated their call for continued diplomacy, highlighting “efforts aimed at de-escalation in a way that contributes to strengthening security and stability in the region.”

The Emirati Exception

One Gulf state in particular stands well outside the Gulf consensus. The UAE is aligned with the United States and Israel in arguing that the Islamic Republic constitutes an existential threat to the Gulf that needs to be confronted and, when possible, removed from power. Abu Dhabi believes that direct confrontation with aggressive regional leaders and factions is necessary to produce transformative and permanent regional stability. Emirati leaders view Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as like-minded allies. Reflecting this deepening alignment, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz confirmed that the UAE had received the Israeli-made Iron Dome missile interceptor system during the conflict and used it to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles.

Additionally, the New York Times reported that the UAE conducted direct retaliatory strikes on Iran, including an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf in early April, as Trump was putting in place the current ceasefire. However, Saudi Arabia is also reported to have carried out strikes on Iran in late March. The Emirates have also championed the resumption of the U.S.-led Project Freedom operation to fully reopen the Strait to Gulf and Iraqi exports, which contrasts with Saudi and Kuwaiti concerns that such a mission is escalatory and would trigger Iranian retaliation.

The UAE’s approach to the war has further aggravated the schism between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on strategy across multiple arenas, including Yemen, Sudan, Gaza, energy export policy, and responses to regional Islamist movements. The UAE’s May exit from OPEC further underscored this divergence. The timing of the withdrawal came as a surprise and constituted a blow to Saudi Arabia, leaving the kingdom and Kuwait as the only remaining Gulf members of the organization, as Qatar left OPEC in 2019 to focus on its exports of Liquefied Natural Gas.

In concert with its exit from OPEC, the UAE government announced it would accelerate the development of an additional oil export pipeline from its Habshan processing plant to Fujairah, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline, which is reported to be 50 percent complete, will double the UAE’s export capacity along that route, increasing it from 1.8 million barrels per day to 3.6 million. The decision represents a clear intent by Abu Dhabi to pursue what it perceives as its own interests, even if its policy runs afoul of Saudi preferences and a Gulf state consensus.

The Gulf’s fractured response to Iran’s wartime aggression reflects a region at an inflection point. The Iran-Saudi rapprochement of 2023 now looks like a relic of a more optimistic era, and the divergence between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi has hardened into a structural rift with consequences well beyond the current conflict. Whether the GCC can forge a coherent post-war posture toward Iran will depend less on diplomatic niceties than on whether its two most powerful members can reconcile fundamentally different visions of regional order. For now, the Gulf remains semi-united on the surface while sharply divided underneath—a fragile consensus that Tehran, if it survives this war in any functional form, will not hesitate to exploit.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Gulf International Forum.