The Gulf States’ Hosting Of US Forces Actually Made Them Less Safe

From Iran’s perspective, they’re all complicit in the US’ massive first strike even if the role that US military infrastructure in their countries allegedly played was only indirect in the sense of providing radar or just logistical support, with this perception and its response thereto being totally predictable.

Prior to the joint US-Israeli campaign against Iran, there was a belief among the Gulf States that hosting US forces strengthens their security by deterring hypothetical attacks by Iran, yet that thinking was just discredited over the past few days after Iran launched strikes against all of them. The pretext was that US military infrastructure on their territories allegedly played a role in attacks against it, but regardless of whatever one thinks about that, the fact is that hosting US forces actually made them less safe.

At the time of this analysis’ publication, none of the Gulf States have retaliated against Iran, but it can’t be ruled out that one, some, or all of them are planning to do so. If more than one of them goes to war against Iran, which they all might be reluctant to do due to how vulnerable their energy and civilian sites are, then it’s possible that Saudi Arabia would take the lead as the core of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), their regional integration group. They’d obviously coordinate this with their shared US ally.

The UAE might opt out of coordinating military action with Saudi Arabia due to the recent revival of their rivalry, but in any case, the point is that Saudi Arabia would still attempt to reaffirm its self-assumed role as the regional leader by rallying the smaller countries under its aegis. Intra-GCC feuds aside, another commonality between these countries apart from their shared US ally and economic dependence on resource exports is the optics of Iran’s attacks, which might be perceived by them as a Persian-Arab War.

They’ve been rivals for centuries, but their competition took on a sectarian dimension after Iran’s 1979 revolution and subsequent efforts to export its then-new governing model throughout the region, particularly in Arab states with significant Shiite populations. Likewise, these same Arab states’ consequently common cause with Israel vis-à-vis Iran led to some in the Islamic Republic considering them traitors to the faith, thus further worsening mutual perceptions and associated tensions.

This contextualizes why they decided to host US forces as a deterrent, but the security dilemma that had already set in between them and Iran led to the latter perceiving this as a means of better defending themselves ahead of the retaliation that would follow a speculatively planned massive first strike. Iran then began identifying targets on their territories and ensuring that it could still hit them after surviving a massive first strike, which ultimately came last weekend, albeit without their direct participation.

Nevertheless, from Iran’s perspective, they’re all complicit in what just happened even if the role that US military infrastructure in their countries allegedly played was only indirect in the sense of providing radar or just logistical support. Iran’s aforesaid perception and its response thereto in this context were totally predictable, yet the Gulf States were already so tethered to the US that none of them wanted to risk its ire by asking its forces to leave once regional tensions worsened in the run-up to the ongoing war.

They’re therefore all paying the cost of their epic miscalculation that hosting US forces strengthens their security when it actually guaranteed that they’d be targeted once Iran was hit by the massive first strike that their shared American ally and its Israeli partner were planning for years. This is a lesson that the US’ allies in Europe and Asia should keep in mind in case it ever sends similar clear signals just like it did vis-à-vis Iran that it’s preparing for a massive first strike against Russia and China respectively.