On Saturday morning, February 28, white contrails streaked across the blue skies above Abu Dhabi. They were not passenger jets. They were Iranian ballistic missiles. Within 24 hours, six Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman) had all been struck, even though not one of them had fired a single shot at Iran. Apart from military installations, luxury hotels and airports were also targeted by Iran. At least three people have been killed in the UAE, and 58 have been injured as a result of these strikes. Not only that, but these strikes also shattered the Gulf's carefully constructed image of stability, which they spent decades cultivating. Now the question is this: how did the Gulf countries that spent years trying to prevent this war end up on the receiving end of it?
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi was quick to offer an explanation: Iran is not attacking its neighbors, he told Al Jazeera. "We are targeting the presence of the U.S. in these countries." These attacks can be seen as Iran’s retaliatory actions against a massive U.S.-Israel joint military assault that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, high-ranking senior leaders, and 180 civilians. In response, Iran simultaneously attacked the Gulf States and Israel. The U.S. has Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, Naval Support Activity in Bahrain, Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra Airbase in the UAE, and Prince Sultan Airbase in KSA, which means that the presence of U.S. military installations makes them targets. The attacks in the Gulf States are primarily focused on U.S. radar and surveillance infrastructure because Tehran wants to degrade their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities before resuming more intense missile operations. In other words, Gulf States are not victims; they are venues, and if American bases operate from their soil, they share the consequences, according to Iran.
There is a thread of strategic logic here, even if it is ultimately unconvincing. Iran has, on multiple occasions, argued that Gulf Arab states should not provide air and naval bases to the U.S. that may be used against Iran during a conflict. Iran also warned that any attack from these bases will be met with the same retaliatory actions. The Gulf States refused, and they chose Washington as their ally and security guarantor. Now, Iran is making them feel the cost of that choice. However, this logic has certain limits: when missiles strike airports, commercial ports, shopping districts, and hotels, the argument that you are only targeting U.S. presence collapses. The 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones launched at the UAE alone in less than 24 hours were not surgical.
To understand why Gulf States are in this position, one has to understand what the U.S. and Israel are actually trying to achieve. This is not a campaign to contain Iran's nuclear program, which could have been settled through negotiations. However, the killing of the Supreme Leader Khamenei in the opening hours of the war makes the objective unmistakable: regime change. The U.S. and Israel want to restructure Iran from the inside out, and regionalizing the conflict serves that goal. The more Gulf States are drawn in, through their bases, their airspace, and their infrastructure, the harder it becomes for Iran to sustain a war it cannot win militarily. Gulf States become not just hosts but participants, whether they want to be or not. The U.S. benefits from the strategic depth, and the Gulf States absorb the risk.
The uncomfortable truth about this scenario is that Gulf capitals were never consulted as partners; rather, they were treated as facilities. Oman was actively mediating indirect U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in the days before the strikes, with its Foreign Minister declaring that peace was "within reach." The Gulf States had, by all accounts, spent months trying to prevent exactly this outcome; however, they were ignored, and then they were attacked by both the consequences of Washington's decision and Tehran's retaliation.
The tragedy for Gulf States is that they are being punished for relationships they built in good faith. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China in 2023 was a genuine, costly investment in regional stability. The UAE also rebuilt trade ties with Tehran in 2024 after 10 years. Qatar and Oman kept the communication channels open and played a pivotal role in nuclear negotiations. These were real diplomatic achievements, built on the understanding that stability, not confrontation, was the only viable path for states trying to build post-oil economies and global cities. The current conflict has undone all of this. And worse, those who tried hardest to prevent the war, Oman and Qatar, the region's most active mediators, were struck anyway. Gulf officials have learned that mediation, particularly involving Iran and Israel, may actually lead to greater insecurity. That is a devastating conclusion, and it will shape Gulf diplomacy for years.
The Gulf States now face a future fundamentally different from the one they were planning for. For years, their security model rested on three pillars: the U.S. as the ultimate guarantor of their safety, managed rivalry with Iran kept below the boiling point, and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) as a coordination framework for regional cooperation. All three are now under serious strain, and the emerging pattern in their place should be more self-reliant and cautious. Gulf States should invest heavily in their own missile defence, intelligence capabilities, and military deterrence, not because they want to fight, but because they can no longer afford to assume someone else will protect them. The era of alliance-based security is giving way to capability-based security, and it is the need of the hour.
However, this shift also carries its risks. Gulf States' deeper military dependence on the U.S. is almost inevitable in the short term, even as Gulf States grow more skeptical of Washington's reliability. China, on the other hand, can present itself as an alternative diplomatic anchor, and Russia, buried deep in war with Ukraine, may only offer arms. The result is likely to be a more fragmented, more transactional Gulf, one that cooperates with the U.S. militarily while quietly widening its options everywhere else. The deeper cost, though, is economic and existential. Saudi Vision 2030, Dubai's global city ambitions, and Abu Dhabi's cultural investments: these projects were all built on a single premise: that the Gulf could offer stability in an unstable region. Missile contrails above the Burj Khalifa don't just damage buildings. They damage the entire story these states have been telling the world and themselves about their future.
The Gulf did not start this war; rather, it tried, visibly, to stop it. Yet it is paying the price in damaged infrastructure, shattered reputations, and a security environment far more dangerous than before. Iran's attacks on civilian areas are indefensible. But many in the Gulf argue that the United States should also have engaged its Gulf partners in an honest discussion about the broader implications of its decisions. The Gulf States find themselves at a truly challenging juncture. They can remain passive, absorbing the cost of being on the war’s front line. Or they can begin the harder, longer work of building a security doctrine that serves their interests first. The second path is riskier and more uncertain. But the first path, as this ongoing war has made painfully clear, is not as safe as it once looked.
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