Thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have rained down on countries across the Gulf this week, but their leaders have yet to return fire, seeking to contain the crisis and not be drawn into the war between Israel, the US and Iran.
The defence ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates condemned Iranian attacks on Thursday, and warned they were ready to use “all capabilities” for “any measures taken in response.”
These capabilities are formidable: both countries boast hundreds of advanced fighter jets, including US-made F-15s, which outstrip anything in Iran’s ageing arsenal. Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman – the other countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – also enjoy aerial superiority over Iran.
But Gulf leaders have yet to act on their threats, despite at least nine people killed and more than 150 injured – excluding US military casualties – by Iranian strikes in the region.
While Iran has claimed it is limiting its retaliatory attacks to US bases and not its neighbours, air strikes have hit hotels in Dubai, Kuwait’s international airport, and energy infrastructure across the region – striking at some of the countries’ most sensitive and valuable sites.
Qatar shut down Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production this week following Iranian attacks and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which most of the region’s oil is transported.
Doha’s energy minister predicted that all energy exports from the Gulf would grind to a halt within weeks.
The economic and reputational damage is proving severe to countries that have defined themselves as safe havens in a troubled region, Abdullah Baabood, an Oman-based political analyst and visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, told The i Paper.
“Iran is trying to hit each country where it hurts most,” he said. “So for Dubai it’s hotels and tourism, in Qatar, they attacked [LNG facility] Ras Laffan.”
Smoke billows from Jebel Ali port in the UAE after an Iranian attack (Photo: Amr Alfiky/Reuters)But Baabood believes the pain has stayed “in the tolerable range” for Gulf countries. Air defences have shot down the vast majority of incoming drones and missiles. PR mitigation efforts, such as the UAE funding hotel stays for stranded tourists, may have limited reputational damage.
He said the priority for the Gulf is “to avoid being dragged into this war at all costs”.
The region’s leaders are wary of anything that could provoke further escalation from an increasingly aggressive Iran, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East analyst at the US Baker Institute.
“An Iranian regime fighting for survival, feeling it has nothing left to lose, could target desalination facilities in the Gulf that people rely on for water, or go all out in attacking energy infrastructure,” he told The i Paper.
“There is a feeling that if Donald Trump were to decide he’s had enough and declare victory, and the Gulf states were involved, they would be left alone to face any backlash,” Ulrichsen added.
Andreas Krieg, a Gulf security specialist at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, said the region had a lot to lose from being drawn further into the conflict.
“Iran’s retaliation options against Gulf targets are broad, scalable and politically painful,” he said. “If a Gulf state crosses the line into overt participation in a US-Israeli campaign, it makes itself a standing target not just during the war but afterwards as well.”
Krieg said the GCC regimes’ priority is to shorten the war and keep it geographically contained, avoiding a scenario of their cities, airports and oil fields becoming front-line targets.
Explosions were seen from a motorway in Tehran. (Photo: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty)Krieg also questioned whether Gulf states could make anything more than a marginal contribution to the US-Israeli campaign that has already dropped thousands of bombs on targets across Iran.
Arab governments could face major political risks in joining a US-Israeli war on a Muslim-majority country.
In recent days, the Sunni Muslim leadership of Bahrain has deployed additional security forces to police the largely Shia Muslim population over public displays of support for their co-religionists in Iran.
“Even where public sentiment is tightly managed, Gulf leaders are sensitive to being framed as joining an Israeli war effort, and they’re conscious of how that plays domestically, regionally and in the wider Muslim world,” said Krieg.
Many across the region also question whether Iran is primarily to blame for the crisis.
Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, head of one of the UAE’s leading businesses, Habtoor Group, called out Trump in a social media post this week that has been shared by over 13,000 people.
“Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with Iran,” he asked. “You have placed the countries of the GCC and the Arab countries at the heart of a danger they did not choose… who gave you permission to turn our region into a battlefield?”
But Gulf calculations could change if the cost of Iranian strikes increases for them domestically, analysts believe, including if there were a mass casualty event. But even this would probably draw a calibrated response, said Krieg.
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“Most likely the GCC states move their defence further forward, striking launchers inside Iran,” he said, while suggesting that all six countries could take the action collectively.
Even so, lasting damage may already have been done to many of Iran’s neighbours, which have spent years and billions of pounds “trying to take the risk out of the region” in order to focus on economic development, said Ulrichsen.
“This really punctures the aura that the Gulf states are insulated from the region around them,” he said. “Dubai’s mass tourism, Qatar’s stream of business and sporting events, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 3030 project. All of those are now in jeopardy.”
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