Israel attacks Iran: Will Gulf states lead or be left behind?

Middle East Eye

6 hours ago

By all indications, the Middle East stands at an inflection point. For more than a decade, the US has tried to step back from its historical role as the region's principal powerbroker, seeking to shift its strategic focus to Asia.
Since former President Barack Obama's 'pivot', every administration has made gestures towards disengagement - only to be pulled back in by crises, some of which they neither initiated nor fully controlled.
But the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term carried a real chance for strategic disengagement. The Trump administration's purging of neoconservatives and doubling down on 'America First' gave the Gulf states a clear signal: Washington was stepping aside.
For once, they had to step up - not just as financiers of regional order, but as strategic architects.
To their credit, the Gulf states - particularly Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia - rose to the occasion. In coordination with Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, they worked steadily towards a new nuclear framework with Tehran.
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The outlines of a regional detente began to take shape. The Gulf states thought they were transitioning from sponsors to strategists, drawing up plans for economic entanglement and integration. This could have become the Middle East's 'end of history' moment - a soft-power-driven, non-hegemonic order rooted in interdependence.
But that vision failed to reckon with one crucial actor: Israel.
Dramatic escalation
Since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reversed a long-standing strategic posture. From 'mowing the lawn' with calculated, periodic strikes, Israel has transformed into a chainsaw operator: disruptive, maximalist and ideologically rigid.
While a decisive victory in Gaza remains elusive, Israel has successfully fought Hezbollah to a standstill and degraded its leadership structure. Flush with these tactical wins, Netanyahu has now escalated dramatically, initiating strikes deep inside Iran. His ambition: to force regime change and pre-empt a negotiated settlement between Washington and Tehran.
Netanyahu's calculus is deeply personal and political. With Gulf-backed diplomacy gaining momentum and anti-Iran hawks pushed out of Washington, the Israeli prime minister feared that his influence was waning.
Israel, a destructive hegemon, is effective at degrading its foes, but lacks the will, legitimacy and capacity to build anything durable in their place
By initiating a high-stakes confrontation, he has not only reasserted his relevance, but also sought to corner Trump into a potentially long, destabilising conflict - thus killing the Iran deal before it could materialise.
At its core, strategy is about creating power or influence with the means available to you. It's about reshaping your environment to reflect your interests. The Gulf states have both the means and the moment. But they are hesitating.
In many ways, the Gulf states find themselves in a situation reminiscent of the 1973 oil crisis, when Riyadh used oil as a geopolitical weapon to reshape American foreign policy. Today, the Gulf states enjoy far greater entanglements in the financial, energy and diplomatic realms.
But while they have succeeded in translating these entanglements into global influence, they remain reluctant to wield them to shape Washington's regional posture.
Despite having substantial leverage - ranging from ties with Iran, to influence over actors like the Houthis or even Hamas - the Gulf states continue to prefer soft, transactional statecraft. Courting Trump with investment deals or energy alignment is no match for Israel's coercive diplomacy and military brinkmanship.
Regional transformation
Israel, by contrast, has maximised the tools at its disposal - military technological superiority, an intelligence edge, and influence and information operations - to set the terms of Washington's Middle East policy.
That these moves run counter to long-term US interests seems immaterial. Netanyahu, who since the 1980s has been a vocal neoconservative advocate for drawing the US into military interventions in Iraq and Iran, is not interested in inclusive regional stability.
He wants to dictate a regional transformation according to an Israeli interpretation of friend and foe. His regime change fantasies appear now finally within reach.
But Iran is not Iraq. Neither the US nor Israel is likely to put boots on the ground. Instead, what's emerging is a long-term strategy of degradation - hollowing out the Islamic Republic, one missile and air strike at a time.
Assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would set in motion a potentially long and contested succession crisis. The endgame may be a military-industrial dictatorship dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or a failed state where power remains concentrated in a besieged Tehran.
Israel could retreat behind its buffers in Jordan and Iraq, while the Gulf states would inherit the instability to come.
The Gulf would be left next to a broken neighbour with porous borders and contested sovereignty, and full of armed networks operating, as they have for decades, almost autonomously - networks that would not disappear, but reconstitute as fragmented nodes of resistance, trading arms and ideology in equal measure.
Indeed, the greatest irony may be that by trying to eliminate the state behind the IRGC, Israel will only make the IRGC more ungovernable.
Emerging order
The Shia Islamist militant networks predate the Islamic Republic, having operated in the Lebanese Civil War before the Iranian Revolution. Stripped of a central authority, these networks will adapt and mutate, becoming less accountable and less deterrable.
The emerging regional order will be one without balance. Israel, a destructive hegemon, is effective at degrading its foes, but lacks the will, legitimacy and capacity to build anything durable in their place. The Gulf, meanwhile, will remain surrounded by hostile non-state actors - Hezbollah, the Houthis and various Iranian paramilitary groups - now decoupled from Tehran, but no less lethal.
Occasional containment strikes by Israel may limit their capacity, but the region will be unlikely to reach an equilibrium of stability.
Worse still, Israel's trajectory under Netanyahu is taking the state towards a Jewish fundamentalism that is increasingly isolationist, belligerent and indifferent to the interests of its Arab neighbours - let alone the Palestinians it occupies. Such a state is ill-suited to be a pillar of any consensual regional order. Instead, it acts as a strategic wrecking ball: shattering balances, but incapable of setting new ones.
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Amid this backdrop, the Gulf states must embrace their role as strategic players, not just financiers.
This means transforming their influence into leverage. They should not only rebuild the Gulf lobby in Washington to represent their interests, but also actively coordinate pressure on the Trump administration to re-engage with diplomacy, not escalation. A Qatari-Omani diplomatic bridge between the Trump administration and Tehran appears to be already in the making.
Secondly, they must draw on their diverse geopolitical partnerships. A multipolar world gives the Gulf states options outside of Washington. China and Russia may not replace the US, but their growing footprint allows for hedging strategies. Aligning more closely with Beijing on economic integration, or with Moscow on security dialogues, creates external pressure on the US to take Gulf concerns more seriously.
Finally, the Gulf states must recognise that they are indispensable not just financially or diplomatically, but also strategically. They sit at the centre of energy, trade, and the geo-strategic buffer zone between the Global East and West, as well as North and South. Their ability to mediate, to finance peace, to engage adversaries, and to balance great powers is unique. But they need to develop the confidence to use this power.
The Gulf has a choice. It can rise to shape the future of the Middle East - or be left cleaning up its ruins.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.