Yeah. There could have been some sort of eleventh-hour effort at convincing the Trump Administration that, if they were going to attack Iran, to try to do it properly and execute a war that wouldn’t leave the region vulnerable. But I think the fears of Gulf states have been borne out even worse than they imagined, because, obviously, the Iranians have struck more than just military installations, with strikes on infrastructure, energy sites, and civilian spaces. The diversity of these targets has exposed the weakness in the security architecture of Gulf states, and the reality of their geography being their destiny. And the strikes have also brought up a host of other issues. For example, the United States actually didn’t protect Gulf interests and prioritized protecting Israel’s interests. So the war has brought up a lot of security challenges that cannot be quickly or easily resolved. And I think the worst-case scenario for the Gulf states is playing out, because they’re seeing a U.S.-Israeli operation being executed very effectively, perhaps, on a military level, but with no day-after planning, and they recognize that President Trump has a short attention span and, as pressure mounts, could abruptly exit this war, leaving the region both paying the price for the war, and also exposed to what version of the Islamic Republic remains.
Does that mean you think the Gulf States hope that the Americans and the Israelis only stop the war after there is regime change in Iran and the Islamic Republic has come to an end, or do you think they just want the war to be over quickly?
I think that they want both things, but they’re very aware that the former is unachievable. You cannot fully dismantle this regime. That’s the reality. It’s heavily institutionalized and bureaucratized. And, even if you eliminate chains of command by killing and decapitating, there will still be bureaucrats, technocrats, and security officials who have been part of this regime. I think that they want this war to end as soon as possible, but they remain very anxious about the day after. And they think that a weakened, fragmented, divided Iran is going to be equally hard on its neighbors, from a humanitarian perspective, from an economic perspective, and from a security perspective. And we should also, obviously, say very clearly that the populations of these states have been watching the Gaza war for over two years and have become heavily politicized, and are now living through this war which has punctured the image of the Gulf as a safe haven for economic interests and as a destination for tourists. And they look vulnerable to Iranian attacks, even though they have mounted very effective defensive operations. That defense is a silver lining, but vulnerabilities have still been revealed.
You mentioned the Gulf states trying to convince the Bush Administration that invading Iraq was a mistake, and I’m thinking about how the relationship between the Gulf states and America has changed since then. One factor that feels very different from 2002 or 2003 is that some of the governments of the Gulf states have been paying Trump and his family. The Wall Street Journal reported that a U.A.E. government official invested half a billion dollars in the Trump family’s crypto company. Qatar basically bought Trump a plane. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is involved in business opportunities throughout the Middle East. And yet all of this added up to very little for the Gulf states. Does that make you question the relationship going forward?
I think this is a really important point, because the Gulf states were quite enthusiastic about Trump returning to office. They obviously were so deeply frustrated, if not angry, with President Biden for his position on the Gaza war, and for his overly indulgent position toward Netanyahu during the war. And so they saw President Trump as being more pragmatic, transactional, and they hosted him very early on in his second term in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha, where he made this famous speech criticizing the idea of regime change and promised that the era of neoconservative American-funded operations in the region would be over, and this was a new America that with the Middle East was going to focus on “commerce, not chaos” and exporting “technology, not terrorism.” And this was wholly celebrated across the Gulf, that they would continue to be able to do business with the President and his family, and that the U.S. respected them, saw them as stable partners.
And I think, unfortunately, since then, they’ve been deeply disappointed by the Trump Administration. They’ve invested in the United States financially, and, I would say, they are still deeply committed to, and invested in, their security relationship with the U.S. Qatar, before this, had doubled down on its relationship with the U.S. It’s not just Qatar—each Gulf state has its own offering to the U.S., if you will, be it tech, be it a regional role, et cetera. Going forward, I don’t think this style of relationship is going to change right away, but there are certainly deep frustrations across the Gulf that this war has exposed, and concerns that it has made them vulnerable, that America hasn’t had their back. And I think there will be a tail to this.
You said that the Gulf states were fed up with Biden over Gaza. Saudi Arabia was also fed up at the beginning of Biden’s term, over what it perceived to be his moralism about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But I always assumed that the reason people like Mohammed bin Salman were angry about Gaza was not the reasons many of us were angry about Gaza but, rather, because he hoped that, after some sort of fig-leaf peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, you could have normalization agreements between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and Saudi business in the region would go more smoothly, while the Palestinian problem would be pushed to the side, and this was how the Middle East could function. And October 7th and the Gaza war made clear that that was a fiction, if it ever had been truly possible. And then what the past few years have revealed is not just that these countries can’t align with Israel, because their publics would be very angry about it, but that Israel is also now being so aggressive in the region that they have to rethink that entire idea. Is that too cynical?
No. The cynicism prevails. Many Gulf leaders were clearly flirting with the idea that normalization could, through stronger economic ties and security partnerships, lead to greater regional integration, with or without the Palestinians. But there were two missing pieces in this vision for the region. One was the very clear sidestepping of Palestinian sovereignty, and the second was the issue of Iran. And I think these issues were ignored because people were taking too much of a zero-sum approach to the idea of normalization.
