Arab States Scramble to Adapt to New Regional War

Since the United States and Israel began intensive airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28, Iran has retaliated with missile and drone strikes against multiple Arab countries. Although Iran says it is striking U.S. military targets based in the Arab states, it has also hit civilian infrastructure and buildings. Iran has hit targets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Jordan. The war marks a hard stop to a recent warming in relations between Iran and some Gulf Arab states.

Arab states are now trying to understand the war, its consequences, and how to adapt their foreign policies. We asked five experts to assess how Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are responding — and how they are re-assessing their approach to key regional and global relations.

Fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute and Co-Director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable at Rice University

Since the mid-1990s, Qatari foreign policy has been based on strategic hedging and diplomatic mediation, not least because the world’s largest non-associated gas field straddles the maritime boundary with Iran. The balancing of relationships — the United States and Iran, or Israel and Hamas — was designed to shield Qatar from spillover of regional threats and volatility. Similarly, the emphasis on mediation was intended to project Qatar’s ability to serve as an interlocutor to ensure flashpoints could be addressed before they became security challenges. Although Qatar has now come under attack three times in a year — twice from Iran and once from Israel — the country’s small size and conventional power capability mean there is little alternative to redoubling its focus on dialogue and diplomacy. In recent years, Qatari officials sought to magnify their presence by aligning closely with the United States, but a more Gulf-centric approach, especially with Saudi Arabia, is more likely moving forward.

Abu Dhabi will have to reassess several regional relationships. The United Arab Emirates resumed full relations with Iran in 2022 and was one of Tehran’s key economic partners, and that relationship will fundamentally change. Abu Dhabi has not focused on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in recent years, but after all six members of the GCC came under fire, there will be a renewed push for intra-GCC defense cooperation, which the United Arab Emirates will likely support. The war has forced tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to temporarily take a backseat. The United Arab Emirates has derived strategic and economic benefits from its relationship with Israel and is likely to remain committed to it. However, given Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank and its decision to launch a second war with Iran, Abu Dhabi is likely reassessing how to manage Israel’s increasingly aggressive posture.

In terms of global relations, Emirati trust in the U.S. administration is at one of its lowest points — even as strong relations with Washington remain a strategic imperative. The United Arab Emirates was always the Gulf state that most seriously hedged among great powers and cultivated strong ties with both Russia and China. This trend will accelerate, as will Emirati ties with Europe after partners like France and the United Kingdom sent defensive reinforcements to protect the Gulf from Iranian attack.

The Gulf has been on fire since the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began. Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf monarchies, faces serious dilemmas in a war that Riyadh sought to avert. Continued conflict poses an existential threat to Saudi Arabia’s economic health, especially considering that the country’s Vision 2030 depends on peace and regional stability. The war has reinforced a Saudi perception that the United States — long the kingdom’s security guarantor — brings chaotic instability, rather than calm, to the Middle East, undermining Saudi national interests. Iran’s retaliatory strikes, which have hit high-value targets and caused casualties in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states, have effectively ended the Riyadh-Tehran détente, raising difficult questions about how the kingdom will deal with post-conflict Iran. With no viable alternative security partner and Iran as a permanent neighbor, Riyadh faces hard choices. For now, Saudi Arabia will continue pushing for de-escalation despite dim prospects.

Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Jordan’s King Abdullah has long portrayed Iran and its regional allies as existential threats. But Jordan’s close military cooperation with Israel and the United States — including its peace treaty with Israel — make the kingdom an Iranian target in the war, with at least two missiles crashing in urban areas so far. The king has struggled with messaging that warns against expanding the conflict and for Arab solidarity and the protection of civilians. At the same time, public perception is that Jordan is fully cooperating with the prosecution of the wars in Iran and Lebanon, which are highly unpopular and have sparked anti-war protests. Israel’s irredentism in Lebanon — and Syria last year — complicates Jordan’s strategy. The king insists on Lebanese sovereignty and condemns Israel’s escalation of violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but does not criticize Washington for enabling Israel’s actions. Meanwhile, Jordan’s weak economy relies on $1.5 billion in U.S. foreign aid annually.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is an intense reminder for Arab states that Western security guarantees are not ironclad — even against a nefarious regime they have long regarded as a destabilizing threat. On the contrary, the war is a reminder that Washington’s main ally in the region, Israel, has itself become a deeply destabilizing force — one that has drawn Washington into a deadly conflict of its own making. Washington ought to expect that the region writ large will continue to view the United States as an unreliable security partner.

This certainly includes one of America’s closest allies in the region, Egypt. The conflict is subjecting longstanding partnerships to a serious stress test. Capitals like Cairo are not only concerned about how Iranian activity might unsettle the wider regional security architecture, but also about how Israeli ambitions toward regional paramountcy override any effort to build a sustainable and stable order. Washington may find that partners it has long counted on, such as Egypt, come to see the war not as a shared burden but as yet another source of damage to the relationship.