Since the outbreak of the 2026 war between Iran, Israel and the United States, a conspicuous strategic reality has emerged.
Amid the broad military exchanges, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain—have insisted on maintaining a policy of absolute military passivity. The policy of avoiding offensive action against Iran has been sustained in the face of numerous daily attacks against the GCC.
In a methodical retaliatory campaign, which began mere hours after the initiation of hostilities, Iran has targeted its Arab neighbors. Across the Gulf, coordinated waves of drones and ballistic missiles have systematically struck critical energy infrastructure, prompting multiple state-owned companies to halt production and global shipments.
Beyond the severe economic disruption, the barrage has inflicted a tangible human toll. Iranian strikes hitting residential buildings, hotels and airports have killed at least 16 civilians across the region while wounding well over a hundred more.
Gulf leadership has forcefully condemned these violations.
Following the strikes on the UAE, GCC Secretary General Jasem Albudaiwi stated that “this aggressive act constitutes a blatant violation of the sovereignty of a GCC member state.”
Despite the broad statements of condemnation, in the face of direct kinetic provocations and sustaining significant damage to critical national infrastructure, the Gulf states have uniformly opted for a posture of zero offensive action.
Ariel Admoni, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, observed that this passive policy has not softened the Islamic Republic’s attacks on the GCC states. “They got dragged into the war, and there is no choice for them to be outside it. There is no indication that their hesitation to attack is helping them stay out of it,” he told JNS.
Aviram Bellaishe, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, further noted the stark paradox of the position the GCC countries find themselves in.
“In an irony that almost defies belief, some of the Gulf states that asked Trump weeks earlier not to strike Iran found themselves under fire when the war broke out,” Bellaishe told JNS, adding that “they did not choose this war. And now they are fighting to contain it, not expand it.”
The Gulf’s military position
Historical precedent, as well as evidence from the 2026 conflict, demonstrates that the restraint exhibited by Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and their neighbors is a deliberate strategic choice rather than a failure of military capability.
Gulf nations possess highly funded militaries equipped with some of the most advanced offensive hardware in the region.
Saudi Arabia maintains the Middle East’s highest-funded military apparatus, with an estimated defense budget of $80.3 billion in 2024, more than double Israel’s and vastly exceeding Iran’s expenditures. The Royal Saudi Air Force operates a massive strike fleet composed of some 400 modern warplanes.
Riyadh’s offensive readiness has been actively honed since 2015 during operations in Yemen, where it extensively deployed precision-guided munitions. Furthermore, the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force commands a deterrent arsenal that includes a vast array of intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
The United Arab Emirates possesses similarly formidable strike capabilities. The UAE’s aerial platforms are integrated with sophisticated standoff weaponry, including the Black Shaheen long-range cruise missile, granting Abu Dhabi significant deep-strike potential.
Qatar also maintains a potent, modern strike force featuring a diverse mix of warplanes armed with deep-strike weapons.
Rounding out the regional firepower, Bahrain has heavily modernized its air force to include a fleet of nearly 40 new and upgraded F-16s, equipped with advanced anti-ship and standoff munitions.
Beyond offensive air power, the Gulf states have integrated multi-layered air defense systems that successfully passed their operational test during the early weeks of the current war. These systems include some of the most advanced air defense platforms in the world, including the American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries and Patriot PAC-3 systems.
The UAE Ministry of Defense reported that interception rates against incoming projectiles exceeded 90%, despite the close proximity of the country to Iranian launchers, which significantly reduces the reaction time necessary for a successful interception.
Bellaishe emphasized that the GCC’s military capacity indicates that its restraint is strategic. “This is not a question of capability,” he stated. “The Gulf states deployed some of the most advanced air defense systems in the world, and the 2026 war was their real test. They passed it. So, the restraint is a choice, not a failure.”
The Gulf’s geopolitical interests
Bellaishe observed that to decode the Gulf’s strategic neutrality, the focus must shift from external military dynamics to domestic interests.
“The right question is what they are protecting. And what they are protecting is not honor, it is the future,” he observed. The primary
motivation dictating the actions of the GCC is the protection of the trillion-dollar domestic investments that underpin the GCC’s economy.
For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the current decade is defined by campaigns to diversify their economies away from hydrocarbon dependency, moving toward long-term initiatives such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Furthermore, over the past several years, the Gulf states have invested heavily in expanding tourism and bringing in foreign capital.
These initiatives have been supported by broad marketing campaigns to transform the Gulf’s historic association with war, poverty and human rights abuses into a general image of luxury and success.
Before the outbreak of hostilities, these economic initiatives were mildly underperforming set goals, but they were pushing the ball in the right direction.
In 2025, Saudi Arabia’s non-oil activities generated 52% of its GDP and accepted a record 122 million tourists. However, the transformation of the Persian Gulf into an active war zone is fundamentally incompatible with sustaining these sectors. Furthermore, the eruption of the war will likely do long-term damage to the Gulf’s carefully cultivated image of prosperity, scaring away foreign investment and tourists.
Finally, the constriction of the oil economy, the closure of the Hormuz Strait, and the devastation of the Gulf’s ports, airports, LNG facilities and refineries are damaging the natural resource-based economy, which has been underwriting the Gulf’s economic diversification effort.
Compounding this economic fragility is the prospect of an Iranian state collapse. While the Gulf states view Tehran’s expansionism as a severe threat, Bellaishe noted that “they fear what replaces it even more.”
A total collapse of the Iranian government would create a massive security vacuum involving a population of 90 million. Questions over who would control nuclear infrastructure or the remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are “planning nightmares sitting on the desk of every Gulf defense minister every morning,” Bellaishe observed.
The precedent of the post-9/11 wars looms heavily over regional decision-making. “An Iran of 90 million people collapsing into chaos is not Iraq 2003,” he stated. “It is a massive oil tanker breaking apart inside a strait they share with it.”
Consequently, Bellaishe noted that the Gulf’s stated preference is not a fallen Iran, but rather a “weakened, deterred and predictable” neighbor, a regime under sufficient duress to alter its behavior, but intact enough to prevent an unmanageable regional vacuum.
Admoni added that it is important not to look at the Gulf as a monolith, noting there is a diversity of interests in relation to the current conflict. “We need to remember that this current regime was problematic for the UAE or Saudi Arabia, but for Qatar and Oman, it was very beneficial,” he told JNS.
Admoni explained that Qatar and Oman have historically “leveraged Iran as a geopolitical asset” to expand their global profile as mediators. “When the European Union or the U.S. wanted to talk with Iran, they approached Qatar and Oman.”
The US’s influence
The Gulf’s posture of strategic neutrality is inextricably linked to the mixed signals emanating from Washington during the 2026 conflict. A primary factor influencing Gulf restraint is the apparent desire of the U.S. to limit the number of actors launching offensive operations.
This was distinctly illustrated when Trump recently reversed course on encouraging Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters to enter the conflict, indicating that he would not like to see them join the fight because it would get “too complicated.” This signals an American preference to prevent bringing in further offensive actors.
Simultaneously, Gulf leaders face deep uncertainty regarding Washington’s long-term political commitments in the Middle East. Admoni noted that this ambiguity serves as a primary deterrent to Gulf military involvement.
“I think their assessment of Trump is that he will lose interest in a week or a month,” he said, adding that they assess that the Tehran regime will likely survive the war and that “they don’t want to attack a neighbor who, in a week or a month, will be back in the saddle, and they need to communicate with.”
Bellaishe added to this assessment, saying, “The paradox is that for both critical questions, what is the right policy if the regime survives, and what is the right policy if it does not, the Gulf states have not received a satisfying answer from Washington.”
Counterbalancing these incentives is the intense public pressure mounted by hawkish factions within the U.S. political establishment.
On March 9, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham publicly demanded Gulf military involvement and questioned the justification of ongoing U.S.-Saudi defense partnerships.
Expressing frustration over the evacuation of the American embassy in Riyadh, Graham stated, “Americans are dying, and the U.S. is spending billions to dislodge the terrorist Iranian regime. Hopefully, GCC countries will get more involved as this fight is in their backyard,” before concluding with a direct ultimatum: “If not, consequences will follow.”
Impact on Israeli-Gulf relations
While the short-term impact of the current conflict has been transformative, the long-term impact is likely to be even more profound. The 2026 Iran-Israel-U.S. war is certain to reshape the trajectory of the Abraham Accords, creating a stark divergence between private security necessities and public political realities.
The war has demonstrated that Israel is a militarily dominant power and that Jerusalem and the U.S. operate as a highly integrated regional defense network, making Israel an indispensable partner for Gulf states seeking to intercept incoming Iranian munitions or to strengthen ties with the U.S.
However, this strategic reliance clashes directly with intense domestic backlash. Bellaishe observed, “Israel has become a more essential security asset at exactly the moment it has become a nearly unbearable political liability.”
Public support for Arab-Israeli normalization has suffered a verifiable collapse, driven by the prolonged war in Gaza and the subsequent regional escalation. In Saudi Arabia, positive views of the Abraham Accords plummeted from 41% at their inception in 2020 to just 13% by 2025, according to polling data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This overwhelming domestic opposition establishes firm boundaries for Gulf leadership.
Because these closed-door strategic needs and public-square political realities are fundamentally irreconcilable, the architecture of Gulf-Israel relations is evolving. The era of highly publicized diplomacy and televised normalization ceremonies is likely to be replaced by a strategy of quiet accumulation.
To avoid the domestic political costs associated with public summits, regional cooperation is being driven underground.
Bellaishe observed that the direct implication of the current conflict is that the future of Israeli-Gulf relations is unlikely to take the form of a “handshake on the White House lawn,” even as those relations are revealed to be critical.
“Every public summit that forces each leader to declare openly what he only agrees to privately adds a political cost” to the Gulf states. Any public declarations of ties will generate “free legitimacy for the Turkish-Qatari axis,” creating a problematic reality where “everything Israel gains by saying publicly that it has a relationship with Riyadh, Riyadh loses,” Bellaishe said.
