Since February 2026, Washington has ceased to be a shield and has become a prime target of hatred and questioning of 80 years of American presence in the region and 35 years of security delegation since 1990-1991.
This is not a short-term analysis. It is a structural break. And the American media are now converging on an observation that foreign ministries had long kept quiet about: the Persian Gulf countries can no longer afford to delegate their security to Washington.
In an article published on The American Conservative website, Ted Snider sums up the equation with surgical precision: the Gulf States “thought that hosting American bases provided them with a defensive umbrella against Iran.” They discovered that these bases became “magnets for Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.”
Bases that attract missiles
The paradox is stark. For decades, the Gulf monarchies financed, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, an American military presence supposedly designed to protect them. They realized too late that these bases, far from being shields, had become magnets for Iranian strikes. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio boasts that “Kuwait has been fantastic in this area,” he implicitly acknowledges that this country placed its territory at the service of American operations and paid a deadly price.
The New York Times slipped in, almost in hushed tones, a revealing sentence: American forces were operating from a site within the Kuwaiti airport complex. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated it unequivocally: “Tehran struck sites that Washington was using for its own offensive operations.” Iran’s right of reply, morally undeniable, thus finds a geopolitical logic that even its Gulf allies cannot entirely dismiss.
The Arab Gulf States Institute think tank documented the stark reality: over forty days of combined strikes – ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and kamikaze drones – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar were placed on a high-intensity defensive posture. The expensively supplied American systems demonstrated their limitations against waves of inexpensive munitions. Asymmetric warfare hammered home the myth of invulnerability guaranteed by Uncle Sam.
Oman and neutrality punished
Oman embodies the tragedy of a rational actor in an irrational system. This small state possesses unparalleled diplomatic value in the region. It facilitated the secret channel that allowed the Obama administration to negotiate the Iranian nuclear agreement – what Trita Parsi, in her book “Losing an Enemy,” describes as “the real show that unfolded in secret under the heat of the Omani mountains.” It mediated the ceasefire between the United States and Yemen. It has maintained discreet but invaluable ties with Tehran.
His reward? Donald Trump threatened him with bombings. His only fault: refusing to sever ties with Iran. Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi had said, in The Economist, what everyone was thinking but not saying aloud: that the American strikes were illegal and that the Trump administration had “lost control of its own foreign policy.” The next day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened Muscat with sanctions. The equation is clear: in the new Washington logic, neutrality is no longer an asset. It’s a crime.
This stance reveals a fundamental shift. Washington is no longer seeking partners; it demands instruments. The Middle East Council on Global Affairs has stated it precisely: the Gulf states cannot cut themselves off from the United States, but they can no longer maintain an alliance architecture that exposes their security to decisions made beyond their borders.
When 77% of Arabs disavow Washington
The figures are devastating. The Arab Opinion Index: The survey reveals that 77% of respondents believe that US policies threaten regional security. 84% identify Israel as a destabilizing factor. These figures are not fringe opinions. They map a breakdown in legitimacy that is eroding the very foundations of the transatlantic relationship in the Gulf.
Paradoxically, Gulf diplomats are openly discussing a future in which Washington plays a much smaller role in the regional security architecture. Some are considering a non-aggression pact with Iran – an idea unthinkable five years ago, but one that has become plausible after months of bombing without effective American protection. Asia Times highlighted the ultimate strategic irony: in May 2025, Trump chose Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates for his first international trip, securing massive investment commitments and, curiously, Qatar offering him a Boeing 747. A year later, Riyadh restricted American access to its air bases.
Qatar illustrates the paradox in all its cruelty. After Israel bombed a residential building in Doha on September 9, 2025 – killing six civilians, the first Israeli strike on a GCC member – Doha publicly reaffirmed its partnership with Washington. But behind the scenes, Qatari officials were asking a question no one dared to voice officially: Why hadn’t the United States prevented the attack? As one Qatari official stated at the conference on the new regional security architecture in Doha in March 2026: “Almost all the interceptions were carried out by the Qatari armed forces. The fighter jets that protect our airspace are Qatari.”
Diversification of dependencies
The Gulf States’ response is methodical, multifaceted, and irreversible. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement – with a clause extremely rare in regional diplomacy: any aggression against one will be considered an aggression against the other. During the war against Iran, Islamabad deployed 8,000 troops, 16 fighter jets, and a Chinese air defense system on Saudi soil. A strong signal, even if the analysts at the Middle East Council… They rightly note that formal alliances remain constrained by the national interests of each party.
Riyadh is acquiring South Korean air defense systems – South Korea is emerging, according to the Arab Gulf States Institute, as the partner for hardware diversification – and exploring Sino-Pakistani platforms. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have concluded agreements involving the fifth-generation KAAN fighter jet and Bayraktar Akinci drones. Ukraine, Washington’s laboratory for drone-on-drone warfare, shares its low-cost interception expertise with Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha, before being forced to withdraw due to proven incompetence. The partnership with Kyiv is not merely symbolic: the $800 Ukrainian drones, intended to precisely address the threat that multimillion-dollar American systems struggle to counter, are failing miserably.
The study published in International Affairs (Oxford) identifies another, less visible but decisive factor: informal military socialization. China trains senior officers from the Gulf. Turkey is establishing a presence in Qatar. These processes are reshaping professional norms and doctrinal reflexes far beyond what formal treaties can achieve. The security architecture is being rebuilt layer by layer, without dramatic ruptures but with a consistency that makes the movement irreversible.
Towards Arab-Muslim strategic autonomy?
Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan – the only nuclear power in the Muslim world – have signaled their interest in an inclusive regional security architecture encompassing all Muslim-majority nations. The concept is no longer mere pan-Islamic rhetoric. It is a functional response to a real security vacuum. This dynamic, mutatis mutandis, recalls what Emmanuel Macron attempted to formulate for Europe with European strategic autonomy: when faced with an unpredictable ally, exclusive dependence becomes an existential vulnerability.
The obstacles are real. Intra-GCC rivalries – the 2017 blockade of Qatar, the Saudi-Emirati competition in Yemen and Sudan – have historically paralyzed any collective architecture. Defense systems are too integrated into the American platform to be abandoned overnight, even when the guarantees they offer prove hollow. China, Russia, and Turkey now offer credible alternatives, not to replace Washington immediately, but to rebalance a dependence that has shown its limitations.
But the underlying logic of the situation points in a single direction. As the Middle East Council writes, “The goal is not to replace one ally with another in a zero-sum game, but to establish a balanced portfolio of partnerships.” This is precisely what the Gulf States are building. Not a break with America, but the end of exclusive dependence. Not a rejection of Washington, but the creation of a degree of autonomy that American tutelage had hitherto denied them.
It is therefore clear that the war against Iran acted as a brutal wake-up call. It exposed the illusion of the American umbrella. It demonstrated that American bases, far from protecting, expose. It revealed that an ally who threatens to bomb Oman is no longer an ally; it is a suzerain. And the Gulf States, now pragmatic to the core, have drawn the necessary conclusions.
In short, the history of alliances is built on this dialectic: one clings to a protector until the cost of protection exceeds the cost of independence. For the Gulf monarchies, that moment has arrived. Not dramatically. With the quiet composure of those who account for power.
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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