The Gulf states currently find themselves living their worst nightmare.

Decades of diplomatic maneuvering to avoid direct military confrontation with Iran are going up in smoke from Tehran’s ballistic missile and drone attacks on all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Since the US and Israel launched their bombing campaign targeting the Iranian regime over the weekend, estimates indicate that Iran has fired more ballistic missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbors than at Israel itself, damaging US military assets as well as tourist and energy sites.

According to data released by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies on Wednesday, Iran fired more than twice as many missiles and about twenty times more drones toward Gulf states than at Israel, with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait facing nearly 200 ballistic missiles each.

Iran hopes that by inflicting enough pain on its Arab neighbors — and other countries further afield — it will pressure US President Donald Trump to end the war.

But not only has that strategy not worked so far; it may end up backfiring spectacularly, pushing Gulf states toward closer security cooperation with Israel — even among those who remain wary of openly aligning with the Jewish state.

Closer to CENTCOM, closer to Israel

Israel has long argued that the Iranian regime’s weapons programs threaten not only Israel, but the whole region and world. That contention is now emphatically reinforced by this week’s attacks, strengthening the case for Gulf cooperation with Israel, at least on the security level.

“The fact that Arab countries and Arab allies were targeted just goes to show that the Iranian regime doesn’t only pose a threat to Israel,” a spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry told The Times of Israel while briefing reporters at the site of an Iranian missile attack in central Tel Aviv on Sunday.

However, the extent to which Israel is providing military or civilian assistance to the Gulf to counter that threat remains difficult to verify.

When asked by The Times of Israel if Jerusalem was sending any assistance to help those Arab countries defend themselves, the spokesperson was elusive, saying only, “We are doing everything possible to meet the objective of this operation, and this operation is working and happening hand in hand with our American friends.”

The IDF spokesperson’s unit declined to comment on what kind of military assistance, if any, Israel provided to the Gulf states ahead of or after the start of the strikes on Iran, called Operation Roaring Lion.

There have nonetheless been unconfirmed reports of assistance.

According to unverified Hebrew-language media reports, Israel has dispatched a Home Front Command crew to the United Arab Emirates to assist with emergency preparedness.

Such cooperation is politically easier with countries like the UAE and Bahrain, which normalized relations with Israel under the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020.

“With Qatar, [assistance] is much more explosive politically,” said Ariel Admoni of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. Ties between Israel and Qatar grew increasingly strained throughout Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza due to Doha’s ties to the terror group and its condemnation of Israel’s military conduct in the Strip.

“Neither side can tolerate even rumors of helping the other,” Admoni said.

The US bolstered its commitment to Qatar’s security through an executive order signed last year, after an Israeli air strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha.

An anonymous senior Israeli official told the Kan public broadcaster on Tuesday that Israel is holding discussions about possibly providing defense to American assets in the Gulf, to “help in the American defense effort, just as [the Americans] help in our defense effort.”

But the extent of security ties with Israel is also being indirectly increased during the campaign as coordination between CENTCOM — the US regional military command that includes all of its Middle East allies, including in the Gulf — and the IDF reaches an unprecedented level.

As a result, Gulf countries’ reliance on America’s protection could lay the groundwork for an ad-hoc strategic coalition that includes Israel as well, increasing cooperation on civil defense, air defense, and intelligence sharing.

Elements of that cooperation took shape during the CENTCOM-guided defensive effort against two Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel in 2024. Multiple Arab countries joined the defense against the strikes.

The current conflict “creates a shared strategic foundation between [Israel] and [the Gulf],” said Eran Lerman, vice president of the JISS and former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council.

The United States has for years played a central role in Gulf security — one that has only grown more visible during the conflict.

Gulf requests for more interceptors would be primarily directed at Washington. Several Gulf states rely heavily on American defense systems, including Patriot missile interceptors. Qatar and the UAE, in particular, depend on these systems to a significant degree, while the US maintains major military bases throughout the region.

The US has also moved to secure regional energy supplies, with Trump promising that US naval forces will protect oil tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Even though the shared threat of the Iranian strikes may lead to greater security ties with Israel in the short or long term, Gulf states have not fundamentally altered their diplomatic approach toward Tehran — or toward Jerusalem.

Many Gulf governments summoned Iranian ambassadors for explanations, but have not expelled them outright or frozen ties, as they appear to be attempting to coordinate a unified regional response rather than escalating tensions further.

“Broadly speaking, the original dynamic is continuing,” said Admoni. “The fact that the Gulf states and Israel are being attacked from the same source does not suddenly change the divisions in the Gulf — between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman — in terms of how each of them views Israel.”

For some countries, Iran’s actions were less surprising than for others.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have maintained cautious engagement with Iran in recent years, maintaining embassies in the country and holding limited trade ties, even amid strategic tensions. The current conflict “has only reinforced” their long-held perception of the Islamic Republic as an unreliable actor, Admoni said.

Countries such as Qatar and Oman, by contrast, had hoped their diplomatic outreach toward Iran might insulate them from direct confrontation. “There was a real sense that Iran depends on them,” Admoni said.

But regardless of those differences, the Gulf appears to be unified in how it is responding to Tehran, amid damage to economic targets such as tourism infrastructure and energy facilities — the backbone of the Gulf economies.

Despite some media reports that Riyadh may take a more aggressive tone toward the Islamic Republic, the Saudis, Qataris, and Omanis all appear to still be choosing a dialogue-based approach, albeit one replete with rebuke.

This may be because these countries are experiencing “a real fear that Trump will not go all the way” in the goals laid out in the operation, making them wary of supporting a campaign that antagonized the Iranian regime without gaining much from it, Admoni said.

Nonetheless, Lerman sees the current situation as an “opportunity for us to rebuild what I’ve been calling for years the ‘stability camp’ in the Middle East,” by coordinating what the endgame is in the Iran campaign, and “to significantly tighten security ties with the Gulf states.”

Whether this security coordination could ultimately lead to new or expanded formal or diplomatic ties — especially with countries more reluctant to create ties with Israel, like Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia — remains to be seen.

For both future security cooperation and formal ties, Israel’s military performance carries great potential at the moment.

“We’re demonstrating our capabilities to them — this is very important,” Lerman said.

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