Al-Udeid US military air base, south of Doha (photo: AFP)
Last week, the extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed that he had reached out to Gulf states, along with Germany, France, and the UK, seeking contributions to finance Israel’s military campaign. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, took to X in response: “The audacity of Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich has reached the point of calling for funding for Israel’s war on Iran... Such a proposal is nothing but moral bankruptcy from an extremist who fails to grasp the consequences of escalation.”
Gargash later deleted his post, saying that he realised that Smotrich’s statements were taken out of context by media reports. But the initial reaction of the Emirati official was a rare open manifestation of the Gulf countries’ anxiety over the Israeli war on Iran and later the American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran responded to the Israeli bombardment of Tehran and other areas, along with the assassination of military leaders and nuclear scientists, by striking major Israeli cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa with drones and ballistic missiles. It also responded to the American strikes by targeting the major US military base of Al-Udeid in Qatar, in a carefully calculated and coordinated missile attack.
Though anti-missile defenses downed Iranian missiles, it was the first time in this conflict the fire reaches a Gulf country. Due to early warnings from Tehran most Gulf countries closed their airspace for a short period, rendering the whole region around the Gulf a no-fly zone.
Since Israel started bombing Iran and Iran retaliated with missile attacks, the Gulf Arab countries have been seriously seeking de-escalation despite Israeli claims that they were content with “weakening” Iran. Even those countries that normalised relations with Israel in 2020, signing the so called Abraham Accords, were not supportive of war or the notion of regime change in Tehran.
Many analysts and commentators noted the dangers of Iran being plunged into chaos, which could unleash a humanitarian crises and refugee flows that would be morally troubling and economically disastrous for the region. The Gulf is evidently not keen on regime change in Tehran, but views expressed in government-controlled media suggest there is interest in seeing a political transformation in Israel. According to Mira Al-Hussein of the University of Edinburgh, writing in The Conversation: “It seems to me that the Gulf States would prefer neither Iran nor Israel to emerge as a decisive winner in this military confrontation. A prolonged war of attrition weakens both, reducing the threats they pose to Arab sovereignty and regional stability.”
The mood in the Gulf is shifting. Dubai-based analyst Mohamed Baharoon told The Economist this week that Israel “becomes the main source of instability in the region, a position it used to share with Iran”. Later Baharoon wrote on social media, “hammer-wielding Israel will have very limited space in a region that seeks economic partnerships over security alliances.”
Media reports in different outlets attributed US President Donald Trump’s position of not committing to a full-scale war on Iran to Israel seeking Gulf diplomacy. Some commentators saw that as leverage. Gulf countries had to be able to influence American policy, contrary to Israeli lobbying. Some are intrigued by the shift in the Gulf position on Iran, since ten years ago the Gulf capital might have asked Washington to bomb Iran.
As Andrew Hammond of Oxford University told Al-Ahram Weekly, the war on Iran “confirmed in them [the Gulf] the view that they were right to make peace with Iran in recent years because it again became clear that the Americans have a limited stomach for war in the region. They gave up in Yemen because it was costing too much with no major result and now they did a quick attack of dubious value in order to keep the ‘Israel Firsters’ quiet. Trump is not going to war with Iran for Israel, that’s the bottom line and everyone sees it.”
Another factor behind the shift in the Gulf stance is that the Gulf has realised that Washington will only come to help Israel and not others in the region. When the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen attacked Saudi oil facilities in 2019, Trump was in power and did nothing to defend Saudi allies. The same happened when the UAE was hit by Houthi missiles and drones in 2019 and 2022.
One of the results of Gulf positions on the war, besides gaining Trump’s ear and sharing his attention with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, is the possibility of reconciliation in Yemen. Hammond suggests that “the Houthis might get less Iran support though it won’t hurt them. What it will do is encourage Saudi Arabia even more overtly to be their sponsor.” Another outcome might be that Saudi Arabia will ask for more in return for normalisation with Israel.
The director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Emile Hokayem wrote in The Financial Times that Gulf countries “are more inclined to show patience and magnanimity these days. There will be political statements, visits (to Iran) and economic inducements, as well as greater criticism of the US and Israel. Ironically, Israel’s success against Iran further reduces Saudi Arabia’s already-waning desire to normalise with Israel.”
This is a change of heart for those who have already normalised relations with Israel, but not for those who still take a strong stance objecting to it. A poll carried out by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the first months of the Gaza war revealed that 96 per cent of people in Saudi Arabia oppose normalisation with Israel. The vocal shift against Israel is similarly echoed across the gulf.
Gulf relations with Washington are improving, without the need for an Israeli back door. The best bet for the region, in view of Gulf policy-makers, is de-escalation and prevention of another war. The Gulf Arab countries are wary of being sucked into regional war as they juggle relations with Washington, while seeking to improve ties with Tehran.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: