The End of the Axis of Abraham |
In spring 2024, Iran directly attacked Israeli territory for the first time, launching more than 300 drones and missiles at its adversary. U.S., British, French, and Jordanian forces rapidly intercepted them. The message was hard to miss in Gulf capitals: when Iran attacks Israel, the U.S.-led response will be immediate and collective. But there was an uncomfortable, unspoken question left lingering: What would happen if Iran attacked the Gulf?
That question has now been answered. When the United States and Israel began their war on Iran on February 28—a war that Gulf governments had lobbied against—Iran retaliated by striking Gulf Arab states’ airports, seaports, oil installations, and desalination plants. Although U.S. forces helped intercept some attacks on the Gulf Arab states, damage was done to the region’s reputation as a safe haven for global business—which, no doubt, was the Iranian regime’s intention. And Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz—fully blocking the exports of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, and impeding those of Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
For roughly a decade, Gulf states maintained their security by trying to appear neutral in confrontations involving Iran, cultivating deep defense relationships with Washington, and keeping an open line of communication with Tehran to prevent military escalation. But now Gulf governments are reconsidering, if not abandoning, all three strategies.
They are also rejecting an assumption, held by the United States and Israel, that Gulf states could be incorporated into a regional security architecture premised on Israeli dominance—one in which Israel retains decisive military superiority over its neighbors, freedom of action across borders, and the ability to set terms that others must accommodate. Such an arrangement made sense to U.S. and Israeli leaders. Israel and the Gulf Arab countries were united in their opposition to Iran’s nuclear program and its destabilizing allies in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. By working together, Israel and Gulf governments could deter their common enemy.
But the current war in Iran has made it clear that Israel’s aspirations of regional dominance put the Gulf in harm’s way. Israel is too willing to wage war preemptively to get what it wants and too comfortable disregarding the interests of neighboring countries. Many Gulf leaders are now determined to find alternative ways to protect themselves. It won’t be easy to create a new regional order, but Gulf leaders have already started diversifying their arms suppliers and security partnerships. To have a greater say over what happens to them, they will also need to coordinate better among themselves, both militarily and diplomatically.
Normalization deals became one mechanism through which the United States tried to fold Gulf governments into a regional order built around the idea that Israel should enjoy lasting dominance over its neighbors. For decades, all the Gulf states pledged that they would formally recognize Israel only if Israel withdrew from the occupied Palestinian territories. In fact, all Arab states solidified that commitment by signing the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and by endorsing that initiative in subsequent years.
But within the last decade, some Gulf countries have normalized relations with Israel (or considered doing so) while sidestepping questions of Palestinian self-determination, thereby depriving Palestinian leaders of important leverage. For countries such as the UAE, normalization came with access to advanced U.S. and Israeli military technology, commercial deals with Israel, and the chance to embed more deeply into Washington’s regional security architecture. The first Trump administration, for example, agreed to sell the UAE F-35 fighter jets to sweeten........