Expert Analysis: The War in Iran and the Future of the Gulf

For years, the Gulf States sold the world on stability, investment, and distance from the Middle East's wars.  Iran's retaliatory strikes shattered that premise in a matter of hours, hitting population centers, energy infrastructure, and military installations across the Arabian Peninsula. On March 12, Wikistrat invited Gulf and Middle East geopolitics expert Dr. Neil Quilliam to examine how the GCC is absorbing the shock and what the post-conflict landscape means for the region's security, economy, and diplomatic future

Webinar Recording:

Dr. Neil Quilliam is an energy policy, geopolitics, and foreign affairs specialist with deep expertise in the Middle East and North Africa. He is Managing Director of Azure Strategy Consulting and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, where he previously led the Future Dynamics in the Gulf project. Earlier in his career, he served as Senior MENA Energy Adviser at the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and held senior roles at the UN and Control Risks.

Key Insights

1. The Gulf States are absorbing the blows, not fighting back

The GCC states are hunkering down rather than escalating. Despite being struck repeatedly, none have engaged in direct military action against Iran or opened their airspace for offensive operations. The calculation is straightforward: whatever regime emerges in Tehran after the bombing stops, the Gulf States will have to live next door to it. Engaging militarily alongside the United States without confidence that Washington will follow through with a decisive, transformative campaign would leave them exposed to long-term Iranian retaliation with no strategic payoff.

2. Gulf influence over the White House is present but limited

Saudi Arabia demonstrated its access to the Trump administration through the rapid lifting of Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, a diplomatic achievement that moved Washington from one position to its opposite in remarkably short order. But on Iran and Israel, the Gulf States are several steps behind Netanyahu in the influence queue. Their strongest card is economic: with exports frozen for two weeks, oil prices climbing, and Gulf sovereign wealth funds unable to deploy capital into the U.S. economy, the financial pressure may start to register in Washington as the midterms approach. That is when their leverage could shift.

3. The Strait of Hormuz scenario everyone dismissed has arrived

For decades, analysts treated a disruption of the Strait of Hormuz as a theoretical worst-case scenario, reasoning that Iran would never follow through because it would hurt Tehran as much as anyone. Every one of those assumptions has collapsed. The strait is not formally closed, but effectively nothing of significance has passed through it in two weeks. The immediate economic damage is severe, but the deeper wound is strategic: now that the vulnerability has been demonstrated and exploited, it can happen again in six months or two years. What was once a hypothetical risk is now a proven capability, and that repricing of risk will outlast the current conflict.

4. The UAE is bearing the heaviest Iranian fire, and it is not accidental

The Emirates are absorbing disproportionately more strikes than any other Gulf state, including Israel in some tallies. The targeting reflects more than geographic convenience. It is driven by the UAE's position at the forefront of the Abraham Accords, its diplomatic and security relationship with Israel, the longstanding dispute over three Persian Gulf islands, and the concentration of American military assets on Emirati soil. From Tehran's perspective, making the Abraham Accords costly is a strategic objective, and the UAE is the most visible symbol of that normalization.

5. Despite the punishment, the Abraham Accords will hold

If the UAE were going to reconsider its relationship with Israel, the inflection point would have come after October 7 and the two years of regional upheaval that followed. Instead, Abu Dhabi doubled down, taking a front seat on the executive board overseeing post-conflict Gaza planning and seeking to influence the trajectory of Palestinian governance. The current strikes reinforce rather than undermine the logic: the Gulf States have few independent military options to resist what they are undergoing, and the trilateral alignment with Israel and the United States remains the strongest security framework available. The cost of the Abraham Accords is now visible and tangible, but the UAE appears willing to bear it.

6. Saudi Arabia's overriding priority is stability, and this war threatens everything built around Vision 2030

For Riyadh, the analysis starts and ends with Vision 2030. Regional stability is the precondition for attracting the foreign direct investment, international business presence, and tourist flows that the economic transformation requires. The war has set all three back. Vision 2030 was already missing its targets before the conflict; sustained instability, a damaged brand, and a newly demonstrated vulnerability to Iranian strikes will make the gap harder to close. Whether Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman harbors private satisfaction at Iran's degradation, the overriding institutional interest is in a stable post-war outcome, not prolonged chaos on the doorstep.

7. The GCC rift is being compartmentalized, at least for now

The well-documented tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen, Sudan, and competing regional visions have not disappeared. But the common threat from Iran has pushed the Gulf States toward greater coordination, managing to separate those disputes from the immediate crisis. The more interesting structural divide is not Saudi versus UAE but rather a split between two orbits: a cluster of states led by Saudi Arabia emphasizing diplomatic caution, and a UAE-led grouping more closely aligned with the Abraham Accords security framework and pulling Bahrain into its orbit.

8. Qatar sees its mediator identity as existential, regardless of the cost

Qatar is being struck despite maintaining closer ties to Iran than most Gulf neighbors, and despite its track record as a mediator between warring parties. The Qataris view this as the price of their role, not a reason to abandon it. Mediation is not just Qatar's brand; it is what the state considers its fundamental purpose on the international stage. The LNG (Liquefied natural gas) trade is the commercial offering; shuttle diplomacy is the political one. The Israeli strike on Hamas leadership on Qatari soil in September was a far deeper blow to Doha's sense of sovereignty than Iranian missiles, and it was that violation, not the current bombardment, that triggered the demand for a formal U.S. security guarantee.

9. The Gulf States will double down on the American security partnership, not diversify away from it

The instinct after being dragged into a war partly caused by hosting U.S. military bases might be to reconsider the arrangement, but the opposite is happening. The Gulf States see the current crisis as proof that they need a more energized external security patron, not a different one. China cannot and will not provide the military commitment that the United States offers. Diversification takes time the Gulf does not have. The cost of American basing has been made painfully visible, but for Qatar, the UAE, and others, having the U.S. behind them still beats the alternative of having no one.

10. The Houthis' non-intervention reflects autonomy, not Iranian strategy

Hezbollah is fully committed to the fight, coordinating strike patterns directly with Tehran. The Houthis are not. Quilliam's assessment is that this is not because Iran is holding them in reserve as a strategic card; Tehran would activate them now if it could. The Houthis operate with a degree of independence that the proxy label has always understated. Their domestic priorities, including the unresolved dynamics with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen, are taking precedence. That said, the situation is not static. Houthi messaging has shifted over the past week, and the possibility of missile strikes toward Bab al-Mandab Strait has not been ruled out.

11. The proxy strategy is broken, and Iran knows it

Hezbollah is a spent force; the Syrian network collapsed,  and Hamas is shattered. The forward defense architecture that Iran spent decades constructing has been dismantled in under two years. The theater of conflict is now direct, state-to-state, no longer mediated through proxies. If the regime survives, and Quilliam believes it will, Iran is likely to double down not on rebuilding proxy networks but on its own missile capabilities, drone programs, and cyber operations, launching from its own territory rather than through intermediaries. Rebuilding a proxy network would be a 20-year project. Scaling up indigenous strike capacity is faster and more survivable.

12. The war ends when President Trump declares victory, but the aftermath will be uncertain

The most probable termination scenario is a unilateral American declaration that the mission is accomplished, after which the diplomatic and operational fallout will take far longer to resolve than the campaign itself. The Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to reopen immediately; Tehran will want the last word. Iran will be consumed by succession dynamics and reconstruction while the Gulf States scramble to restart exports and stabilize investment environments. Israel may retain the operational freedom to strike Iran again on its own timeline, decoupled from Washington's political calendar.

13. The wild card: an Iranian assassination of a Gulf head of state

Quilliam flags a scenario that most current analysis overlooks entirely. Drawing a parallel to the 2004 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, he raises the possibility that Iran targets a Gulf head of state, with the UAE's leadership being the most likely candidate given the Emirates' position as the primary target of Iranian fire throughout the conflict. The Hariri assassination reshaped Lebanese and regional politics for a generation, and its aftershocks are still being felt today. A comparable strike against a Gulf leader would represent an escalation of a categorically different order, one that no existing strategic framework or contingency plan is adequately built to absorb.