The GCC Will Not Trust Iran Again

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have long viewed the Islamic Republic of Iran through different threat perceptions, and these perceptions have shaped their foreign policies towards Tehran and their broader regional alignment. Some adopted a combination of deterrence, cautious engagement, and periodic de-escalation. Others viewed diplomacy as the only way to neutralize the Iranian threat. It is now evident that both approaches failed. Iran’s targeting of infrastructure, civilian sites, and energy facilities have fundamentally eroded whatever residual trust remained between Iran and its Arab neighbors.

Perhaps the most significant casualty of this crisis is the idea that engagement with Iran could produce stability. In reality, this idea was always largely unrealistic, considering Iran’s key role in destabilizing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. It may also have reinforced perceptions in Tehran that Gulf states are incapable of responding to Iranian proxies across the region. Over the past decade, several Gulf states have nevertheless sought de-escalation with Iran or positioned themselves as mediators between Tehran and Washington. For Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular, this engagement reflected efforts to mitigate risks on ambitious economic plans and critical energy infrastructure. Qatar’s involvement was shaped in part by shared energy fields and their status as a preferred mediator for successive U.S. administrations, while Oman’s engagement with Iran was grounded in historic ties and co-management of the Strait of Hormuz.

As Tehran’s actions throughout the war have proven, specifically its targeting of civilian areas and energy infrastructure, as well as its closing of the Strait of Hormuz, these motives have failed miserably. The perception that Iran as a difficult but manageable actor, whose willingness to spread chaos could be constrained to the Levant and Yemen, is gone. It is now increasingly viewed, for good reason, as a hostile state willing to indiscriminately escalate violence across the GCC for its own ends.

This rupture did not begin with the recent attacks, but rather reflects the accumulated limits of years of Gulf policies that sought to situate the Iranian threat within a broader regional order. At least three of the Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, which maintained a hardline posture before cautiously reopening channels in 2023 under Chinese mediation; the United Arab Emirates, long intertwined with Iran’s economic lifelines; and Qatar, which preferred dialogue with Iran—have now reached the conclusion that coexistence with the Islamic Republic has become untenable. From their perspective, the Islamic Republic has demonstrated a willingness to export the same patterns of instability, coercion, and destruction seen in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen on them, checked only by the presence of U.S. military power and advanced defense systems.

This belief was already widely held in the Gulf prior to the war. However, the past weeks have stripped away any remaining ambiguity. Gulf skepticism has hardened into strategic consensus: the Islamic Republic is no longer a rival to be managed, but a systemic threat to be contained, and, if possible, eliminated.

The Gulf States’ Shift in Threat Perception

The most immediate trigger for this shift has been Iran’s behavior following the outbreak of war with the United States and Israel. Within hours of American strikes, Iran launched attacks across the Gulf, targeting all GCC states simultaneously. Within days, it expanded its attacks to three other Arab states outside the GCC: Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. In 40 days, Iran fired more than 6,400 projectiles on the GCC states, Jordan, and northern Iraq. For Gulf leaders, this confirmed a long-standing belief: in moments of crisis, Iran sees its neighbors as adversaries and legitimate targets.

More consequentially, Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz have crossed a clear red line for the GCC. While Tehran has framed its moves as defensive, the hydrocarbon-reliant Gulf states see them as offensive and collective punishment. The targeting of maritime traffic extending beyond the Strait into the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea has disrupted not only global energy flows, but also essential goods, including food and medicine, bound for the Gulf states. 

From the GCC perspective, this is not simply a strategic maneuver against America. It is a direct assault on the economic lifelines of Gulf states and the prosperity-driven model, all of which depend on maritime trade for both energy exports and basic imports. The message, as interpreted in Gulf capitals, is clear: Iran is waging a war on its neighbors in its confrontation with Washington, and is more than ready to continue targeting them in an effort to win concessions at the negotiating table.

The Proxies and Direct Security Threats

Of course, the distrust predates the current crisis. At its core is the Islamic Republic’s long-standing support of proxy networks across the Arab world, violating states’ sovereignty and creating chaos and extreme security concerns. This strategy has been central to Tehran’s regional approach. Iranian officials have openly boasted of influence in multiple Arab capitals, reinforcing Gulf perceptions that Iran seeks complete dominance rather than coexistence.

In Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah was thought to maintain an arsenal exceeding 150,000 missiles before the 2023 war—surpassing the power of the Lebanese army. In Yemen, Gulf states invested heavily in stabilizing the country following the Arab Spring—only to see that process collapse after the Iran-aligned Houthis seized power in the north in 2014, creating a direct threat to Saudi Arabia’s borders. In Syria, Iranian-backed militias and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) played a decisive role in propping up the regime of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad, directly participating in widespread atrocities and helping to turn the country into a narco-state. In Iraq, Iranian influence has shaped political outcomes and enabled strikes on GCC states from Iraqi territory.

These interventions cannot be viewed in isolation. For Gulf policymakers, they form a recurring pattern: Iran exploits a vacuum created by Israeli or American intervention to establish local non-state allies that it can use to project power beyond its borders, eroding state institutions and undermining sovereignty.

This tactic is not a new one. What has changed in recent years, and accelerated dramatically during the ongoing war, is the extent to which these proxy networks have turned their guns on the GCC states. With the exception of Oman, all Gulf states have faced some form of Iranian proxy-linked activity since September 2019, from sabotage operations to direct missile and drone attacks. For years, Saudi Arabia has endured sustained Houthi strikes on critical infrastructure, including oil facilities and airports. The UAE has faced similar attacks from the Houthis, with strikes targeting both energy and aviation hubs. Bahrain has arrested Iranian-backed militant groups responsible for bombings and attacks, intent on stirring up domestic unrest against the monarchy. Qatar has uncovered two sleeper cells spying for the IRGC and three members tasked with carrying out sabotage operations, while Kuwait was attacked by Iran-backed Iraqi militias and uncovered networks linked to Hezbollah in 2015 and again in 2026. Both Jordan and Syria have also announced successful operations targeting Iranian sleeper cells and proxy forces in recent times. These developments have reinforced a key conclusion across the GCC: Iran’s network of proxies is an offensive tool crafted with the aim of targeting all Arab states.

The Shift Toward Deterrence

The most obvious effect of these developments has been an ongoing shift in GCC strategy. Efforts to manage tensions with Iran through engagement and de-escalation are now shifting decisively toward deterrence. Since the first week of the war, the Gulf states have moved to diversify their defenses into multilayered systems, culminating in a deal with Ukraine to acquire low-cost interceptor drones as Iranian attacks deplete their missile stocks. At the same time, the GCC has started to diversify economic and logistical routes to reduce vulnerability to chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz. 

This does not mean diplomacy is over. Gulf states will continue to support negotiations and seek de-escalation where possible. What has changed is the underlying assumption: diplomatic engagement is no longer seen as a long-term solution, but merely as a short-term tool for managing risk. The breakdown of trust between Iran and the GCC is not a temporary phenomenon to be resolved after the current war. Thousands of missiles and drones caused a permanent breakage, reflecting a deeper structural shift in how Gulf states perceive Iran’s role in the regional order.

For the GCC states, the crucial question now is whether “regional order” is even possible while the Islamic Republic continues to rely on coercion, proxy networks, and economic disruption as policy instruments. What will come next is far from clear—and will depend a great deal on the outcome of the war that the GCC states have found themselves entangled in, willingly or not. But the old era of managed rivalry across the Gulf is gone for good.

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