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صمود الحياد الخليجي في الحرب الأمريكية-الإسرائيلية-الإيرانية

The piece argues that Iranian pressure on Gulf states exposes the fragility of traditional neutrality in an era when alliances, bases, energy infrastructure, and maritime routes turn political nonalignment into a contested strategic space.

صمود الحياد الخليجي في الحرب الأمريكية-الإسرائيلية-الإيرانية
Middle East Council on Global Affairs · By خالد الجابر المدير العام · 22 April 2026 · read the original in Arabic →

أشعلت الضربات المشتركة التي شنّتها الولايات المتحدة وإسرائيل على إيران، والتي أسفرت عن مقتل المرشد الأعلى للثورة الإسلامية آية الله علي خامنئي، حرباً امتدت لتشمل جزءاً واسعاً من منطقة الخليج.1 ورغم إعلان عدد من الدول الخليجية عدم سماحها باستخدام أراضيها من قبل الولايات المتحدة أو إسرائيل في الحرب، فإن ذلك لم يمنع إيران من استهداف أصول عسكرية أمريكية في دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي، ملحقةّ أضراراً أيضاً بالبنية التحتية المدنيّة.2 3في المقابل، تواصل الدفاعات الجوّية في الدول الخليجية اعتراض صواريخ وطائرات مسيّرة في حوادث شبه يومية، ما يضع حكومات المنطقة تحت ضغوط متزايدة للرد على هذه الهجمات، رغم حرصها على تجنّب الانخراط المباشر في الحرب.4

The joint strikes carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran, which resulted in the killing of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ignited a war that spread to encompass a wide part of the Gulf region.1 Although a number of Gulf states announced that they would not allow their territories to be used by the United States or Israel in the war, this did not prevent Iran from targeting American military assets in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, also inflicting damage on civilian infrastructure.2 3 In response, the air defenses of the Gulf states continue to intercept missiles and drones in near-daily incidents, placing the region’s governments under growing pressure to respond to these attacks, despite their determination to avoid direct involvement in the war.4

في ظلّ تصاعد الضغوط الإيرانية على دول الخليج، تجد المنطقة نفسها في بيئة أمنية شديدة التعقيد لم يعد يسهل فيها الفصل بوضوح بين حالتَي السلم والحرب. فمن جهة، تسعى هذه الدول إلى تجنّب الانخراط المباشر في مواجهة مفتوحة، حفاظاً على مكتسباتها الاقتصادية والتنموية، وحرصاً منها على حُسن علاقاتها مع القوى العالمية والإقليمية. لكن في الوقت نفسه، لا يمكن لهذه الدول أن تتجاهل أمنها الوطني وبنيتها لتحتية الحيوية، لا سيّما في مجالات الطاقة والملاحة البحرية والاتصالات، والتي أصبحت عملياً ساحات مناورة بين القوى الكبرى والأطراف الإقليمية.

As Iranian pressure on the Gulf states intensifies, the region finds itself in an exceedingly complex security environment in which it is no longer easy to draw a clear line between peace and war. On the one hand, these states seek to avoid direct involvement in an open confrontation, in order to preserve their economic and developmental gains and to maintain good relations with global and regional powers. At the same time, however, these states cannot ignore their national security or their vital infrastructure, especially in the fields of energy, maritime navigation, and communications, which have in practice become arenas of maneuver among major powers and regional actors.

Amid this increasingly complex conflict, neutrality has come to be seen as weakness, as the Gulf states are turned into an arena for the exchange of strategic messages among adversaries before they potentially become an actual battlefield.

This policy paper shows that the escalation between the United States of America and Iran has exposed the extent to which the traditional neutrality upheld by the Gulf states can endure. Accordingly, these states are now required to strike a balance between deterrence and diplomatic efforts, in a way that protects their sovereignty and vital infrastructure while avoiding being dragged into a wider confrontation.

There is no doubt that current developments in the Middle East reflect a return to old conflicts, but they also point to a fundamental transformation in the nature of the wars the region is experiencing. Conflicts are no longer confined to clear fronts and fixed battle lines; rather, they increasingly extend to energy infrastructure, maritime navigation routes, and instruments of economic pressure. In this context, neutrality is no longer measured only by official statements or diplomatic declarations, but also by the nature of the environment encompassed by operations, including military infrastructure and security partnerships.

The presence of Western military bases alongside logistical and intelligence networks linked to regional security alliances5 makes the Gulf states, according to Iranian calculations, part of the war even if these states do not participate directly in military operations. The United States alone maintains a network of bases, naval facilities, and forward operating points in at least 19 locations in the Middle East, including eight permanent bases in the region spanning Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.6 7 Thus, political neutrality on the ground inevitably collides with the reality of logistical and technical involvement.

From the Iranian strategic perspective, expanding the scope of targets covered by deterrence is at once a tactical and a political necessity. The targets are not limited to Tehran’s direct adversaries, but extend as well to their allies and partners. From this standpoint, targeting the Gulf states, despite their declared neutrality, seeks to achieve two basic aims. The first lies in sending a message to the United States that the security of its partners in the region is not insulated from the consequences of escalation, and that any war in the region will translate into a steep economic and security cost for the external powers involved in it. The second message is directed at the Gulf states themselves, warning them that the cost of hosting Western military and logistical infrastructure will inevitably rise in wartime,8 and that the presence of these facilities amounts, from the Iranian point of view, to implicit participation in the confrontation. According to this logic, political neutrality is transformed in military calculations into what may be described as “incomplete neutrality.” A state may proclaim full neutrality, yet in practice remain vulnerable to pressure and targeting. Targeting thus becomes an instrument of pressure intended to influence an adversary’s behavior within the regional environment, which may push Gulf states to reconsider their alliances, or at least to reduce their role in supporting international coalitions.

This equation places the Gulf states before two contradictory choices. The first is direct military involvement in the war, a choice that entails unpredictable risks of escalation and a high cost, in addition to the possibility that development resources will be diverted toward the war effort, with long-term consequences for their economic and social models. The second choice is to confine the response within a calculated defensive framework, while working to entrench a deterrence equation capable of preventing the recurrence of such targeting, or at least limiting its frequency and scale.

Here, history offers a clear example. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he tried to drag Israel into the confrontation by launching Scud missiles at its territory.9 Israel, however, took the decision not to enter the fighting directly, keeping the confrontation within the framework of the international coalition led by the United States of America. That was a strategic decision to contain the provocation and avoid widening the conflict in a way that might ultimately serve the adversary. This experience is not an argument for surrender or hesitation in defending sovereignty; rather, it shows that a response does not always require full engagement or escalation into open confrontation. At times, the most effective deterrence lies in denying the adversary the achievement of its aim of expanding the theater of war, thereby sparing the region a slide into a multi-front war whose course no party would be able to control.

Being drawn into a long war of attrition with Iran evokes the experience of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, which left hundreds of thousands dead and inflicted grave damage on the economies and infrastructure of both countries over eight years, leaving immense losses from which the two states needed decades to recover.10 Today, the cost of a similar scenario would be far higher, given the deep integration of Gulf economies into global markets and their dependence on the stability of maritime routes.11 In this context, wars are not measured by initial tactical victories, but by their long-term costs, including their impact on future generations, the wasting of development opportunities, and the depletion of financial reserves that should be directed toward education, health care, infrastructure, and economic transformation, rather than being consumed by the war effort.

In addition, betting on the ability of airstrikes alone to bring about regime change in Iran lacks realism and rests on a narrow horizon. Modern experiences, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, clearly demonstrate the limited capacity of aerial bombardment to topple entrenched political regimes. Achieving that objective requires a prolonged ground presence, with all the enormous political and military costs that entails, as well as a certain level of commitment that history has shown even the major powers are unwilling to bear. Airstrikes may weaken military capabilities and inflict major damage on military infrastructure, but they rarely lead to a final political settlement in conflicts with deep structural roots. Accordingly, any large-scale aerial escalation may prolong the confrontation without achieving a clear strategic outcome, pushing the region into a continuous cycle of escalation.

Repelling any aggression remains an unambiguous sovereign duty. Protecting airspace, vital facilities, basic infrastructure, and economic assets is a priority for any state, as is protecting civilians. Yet strategic thinking recognizes that military deterrence alone is not enough; it must be paired with political, economic, and diplomatic instruments of deterrence. The challenge lies in achieving a delicate balance between a defensive response and avoiding being dragged into a broader regional war. For once the war expands, containing it becomes exceedingly difficult. The confrontation will not remain confined to reciprocal strikes on military targets, but will extend to the economy, shipping, and energy, pushing governments to shift a large share of public spending from education and health care to military expenditure that burdens states heavily. In the end, civilians will pay the price.

From another angle, the fragmentation of Iran or its collapse as a state would pose a threat to the interests of the Gulf region and of the principal regional powers. The lessons drawn from previous conflicts are clear: the collapse of a regime does not mean the end of a conflict; rather, it often leads to a new phase of chaos, the rise of militias, a security vacuum, and the spread of conflicts across borders. Consequently, Iran’s remaining a cohesive, stable, and secure state is a regional interest as much as it is an internal matter. Geopolitical fragmentation could pave the way for cross-border wars and long-term unrest, and open the door to external interventions in the region for many years, if not for decades to come.

The targeting of energy sources in the Gulf and the threat to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz may be seen as part of a broad pressure strategy.12 Driving global energy prices upward and destabilizing financial markets sends a clear message to the international community: the war will not remain geographically confined within the region, but its repercussions will extend to energy markets and the global economy. This strategy aims to prompt the major powers to exert political pressure on adversaries, or at least to push toward de-escalation, before the economic damage becomes a permanent reality. Yet this approach may backfire. Major industrial states that depend heavily on Gulf oil and gas may find themselves compelled to protect their interests more directly, which could widen the circle of international military involvement rather than narrow it.

The question that presents itself today is how regional actors can build a security equation that prevents neutrality from becoming a point of weakness. What is required here is the formulation of a new security approach that acknowledges the close interdependence of the region’s states in security terms and seeks to manage it through clear frameworks for deterrence and negotiation. Neutrality in an age of interwoven wars requires “multilevel fortification,” whether defensively through the development of military capabilities, diplomatically by opening channels for negotiation and obtaining security guarantees, or economically by diversifying sources of income and strengthening resilience in the face of manipulation of prices and maritime navigation.

The Gulf states stand before an extremely sensitive strategic choice: either to become part of an escalation whose course they do not control, or to deal with this threat with a measure of strategic cohesion that prevents the conflict from widening. Deterrence remains necessary, but being drawn into an uncalculated entanglement would be a policy of exorbitant cost. Protecting sovereignty is a duty, but safeguarding the future is no less important. And amid the intertwining of military messages with instruments of economic pressure, maintaining balance becomes the most effective weapon: by this we mean the balance between possessing the capacity to respond forcefully and having the wisdom to keep the conflict confined to the narrowest possible scope, thereby denying adversaries the achievement of their aim of expanding the arena of confrontation.

In the final analysis, Iran’s targeting of the Gulf states has exposed the weakness of the concept of neutrality when alliances overlap. It has become clear that geopolitics is no longer measured by fixed military lines, but by fields of strategic and economic pressure. At the same time, this reality presents an opportunity to reconsider the architecture of regional security and to build a comprehensive security framework capable of managing a new phase of wars in which borders overlap and unconventional instruments prevail. The real battle is not limited to intercepting missiles and drones; it lies in preventing geography and the economy from being transformed into instruments of pressure in the hands of external powers. Only long-term strategic thinking, founded on a delicate balance between deterrence and restraint, can rescue the region’s future from the thicket of the present.

Y done · S save · G great · B bad · N not for me