Will Gulf states enter the Iran conflict with their own armies?

DW News · Mar 1, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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A luxury hotel, ports, inner city neighborhoods, industrial areas, airports and oil infrastructure: All have been targeted by Iranian missiles in the neighboring Gulf states over the past two days, after a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran started the current conflict. In a letter sent to the United Nations Security Council, Iran's foreign minister said Iran would "exercise its right of ⁠self-defense." The country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, explained that it would consider all US assets in the region to be legitimate targets. Subsequently, an Iranian missile hit the headquarters of the US navy in Bahrain. Qatar said it intercepted missiles heading for Al Udeid Air Base, the largest American base in the region. And Kuwait said Iranian strikes had hit Ali Al-Salem air base, where members of the US air force are hosted. But then the targets appeared to change. "While Iranian strikes against US bases in the region were predictable, Iran has crossed a new threshold by targeting Gulf cities, airports and energy infrastructure," Hasan Alhasan, a Bahrain-based expert on Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, told DW. "The Gulf states are much closer to Iran and not as heavily defended as Israel, improving Iran's chances of landing hits." After they were hit, leaders of the various Gulf states commiserated with one another, expressed their unity and condemned the Iranian attacks. "Your war is not with your neighbors," Anwar Gargash, a former UAE foreign minister and currently a foreign policy adviser to the country's president, wrote on social media platform X in a message directed at Iran. Later, Gargash also told local media outlet The National that the UAE won't just sit by while being attacked. What else could Gulf states actually do? Up until now, hosting US bases or troops, or buying US weapons, had been seen by Gulf states as the best way to deter an attack. Over the past few years, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also spent considerable diplomatic capital coming to better terms with Iran, a country they previously considered an historic enemy with faultlines based on ethnic and religious enmities and a struggle for regional power. Gulf states also continuously urged a diplomatic solution to questions about Iran's nuclear capabilities. On March 1, Israel said it is targeting sites 'in the heart of Tehran' Image: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/picture alliance Before the US and Israel launched this weekend's attacks, a number of Gulf states had warned against such a military campaign. As the US military build-up began, several US allies — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan among them — stated they wouldn't allow the Americans to use their territory to launch airstrikes against Iran. But, as Alhasan points out, those pledges haven't helped prevent Iranian missile and drone strikes. "The exchange of mutual assurances with Iran proved ineffective," he noted. Caught in the middle, Gulf states are now on the verge of being pulled into a conflict they say they want no part of, as well as potentially into an alliance with Israel, a country the majority have no official diplomatic relations with. It is also uniting them, even though some, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have recently had major political disagreements.Fighting a longer war The Gulf states all have their own military forces, with Saudi Arabia's considered the most powerful and well-funded. But experts doubt that the states will enter the fighting with their own militaries. Instead, they could allow the US greater access to territory or airspace, or they could even launch limited strikes against Iran, Alhasan said. "But barring mass casualty events or major outages due to Iranian attacks on Gulf cities or critical national infrastructure, direct Gulf retaliation against Iran remains unlikely at this stage," he argued. "Could Gulf militaries enter the war directly? It is possible, but more likely in narrow self-defense terms rather than through offensive strikes." Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King's College London, confirmed. "Gulf states will try to contain spillover rather than actively join a widening war. Once missiles started landing around the region, they faced an ugly choice: Respond hard and risk being locked into escalation, or respond softly and look exposed at home." Gulf states said that on the first day of fighting, Iran fired 137 missiles at the UAE, 66 at Qatar and 45 at Bahrain (pictured) Image: Anadolu/picture alliance Krieg predicts that the first thing the affected countries will do is improve their defensive posture. That means "maximizing air and missile defense, protecting bases and critical infrastructure, tightening internal security, and putting continuity plans into motion," he said. Then they'll intensify diplomatic efforts, he suggests. "Oman and Qatar [who have been working on US-Iran negotiations] will keep lines open and search for an off-ramp, and others will quietly encourage them," Krieg says. He and other analysts believe Gulf states will use their close ties to Washington to push for an end to this campaign. "They are acutely aware that they end up paying much of the retaliation bill, whether through disruption to shipping, investor confidence, energy infrastructure or direct strikes," Krieg explains. "Gulf allies do not share Washington's risk tolerance, and they fear being dragged into campaigns they did not choose." This kind of conflict threatens the economic model — which includes tourism and being seen as a safe regional hub for investment — that Gulf states like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are basing their non-oil future on. Gulf states' outlook will change While strikes and counter-strikes are ongoing, what is already clear is that the equation Gulf states had based their security on, which relied on an alliance with the US and improving relations with Iran, has been badly shaken. "The long-term damage to Iran's relations with its Gulf neighbors is probably already done, especially if the current Iranian regime survives in some form," Alhasan argued. He believes that, rather than going back to trying to improve relations with Iran, Gulf leaders will focus on deterrence in future. But it's unlikely to be a rapid change, Krieg added. Some countries might try to recalibrate the US presence inside their territory or further diversify international partnerships so that they have a wider range of diplomatic and economic buffers. "But the overriding aim will be to reduce the chance that geography alone forces them into the frontline of someone else's war," Krieg concluded. Edited by Ben Knight