Gulf states take the fight to Iran as missiles target oil, gas and trade

Since Iran came under US and Israeli attack on Saturday, its retaliatory missile and drone barrages have struck Saudi oil refineries, the world’s largest LNG plant in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates’ trade and transit infrastructure. Now the Gulf is signalling it has had enough of just absorbing the hits. None of the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council wanted this war, analysts say. They had spent months trying to mediate a way out of the confrontation, warning of precisely the kind of regional blowback now unfolding. The destabilising fallout of “Operation Epic Fury” has badly shaken the GCC’s trust in Washington. But Iran’s campaign has forced a harder question on Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha and their partners: how long can a purely defensive posture survive a missile barrage? ‘Offensive defensive’ The clearest sign that the Gulf’s posture was shifting came not from a press conference but from an accident. On Sunday, US Central Command confirmed that three American F-15s operating against Iranian warplanes, ballistic missiles and drones had been mistakenly shot down – by Kuwaiti air defence batteries. The GCC also includes Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Sunday’s incident, painful as it was, confirmed that US warplanes were already flying from Kuwaiti soil. In doing so, Kuwait became the first GCC member to abandon the bloc’s collective pre-war pledge to deny Washington use of its bases and airspace against Iran. The UAE has since warned it may follow. A day later came another signal, this one deliberate. Qatar announced that its warplanes had shot down two Iranian Sukhoi Su-24 bombers. Officials offered no details about where. They did not need to: defence analysts say the Russian-built aircraft were intercepted before reaching Qatari territory. The operation was conducted jointly with Britain’s Royal Air Force, according to Andreas Krieg, an academic who has previously advised the Qatari military on behalf of the UK’s defence ministry. He described the strategy as “forward defence” or “offensive defensive” operations, in which combat aircraft use long-range missiles to destroy threats at source rather than wait for them to arrive. Intercepts take place over water, he told This Week in Asia, and can neutralise targets on Iranian soil without entering Iranian airspace, sparing Qatar’s ground-based batteries from the relentless interception duty “which is depleting costly munitions”. GCC states “have already joined forces with European partners in defensive offensive operations,” said the European Council on Foreign Affairs think tank in an analysis on Monday. “The next step might be retaliation against Iranian energy assets,” it said – a direct response to the strikes on Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery and Qatar’s LNG infrastructure. Forged by fire Publicly, the bloc’s foreign ministers are being careful. In a joint statement on Monday, they vowed to “take all necessary measures to defend their security and stability and to protect their territories, citizens and residents, including the option of responding to the aggression” – stressing their “right of self-defence, individually and collectively”. The language was pointed enough to serve as a warning, but open enough to preserve room for manoeuvre. Analysts say that ambiguity reflects the GCC’s lack of interest in being swept into a war it tried to prevent, or being seen as a tool of Washington. Few members have more at stake than the UAE. Because of its role as a global connectivity hub – Dubai’s airport is the world’s busiest for international travel, while Jebel Ali is the largest maritime transshipment point between Asia, Europe and Africa – Iran has made the country its primary economic target. “Iran’s objective was not kinetic impact, it was psychological and economic signalling,” strategic analyst Ebtesam al-Ketbi, president of the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Policy Centre, said at a virtual conference on Monday. She described the campaign as being at a “doctrinal inflection point”. “Airspace management, economic confidence and urban vulnerability have become part of the strategic battlefield,” Ketbi said at the event hosted by the Gulf International Forum think tank. Abu Dhabi was pivoting from “interception to continuity” in response, she said: prioritising the resilience of critical infrastructure over simply downing incoming projectiles. Ketbi said the UAE would “double down” on counter-saturation capabilities, reinforce protection of its aviation and logistics hubs and fuse civil defence with military command structures. “The aim is clear: deny strategic effect when an attack occurs,” she said. Deeper integration with US forces will “almost certainly” follow if the attacks persist, but on Abu Dhabi’s terms. The aim is clear: deny strategic effect when an attack occurs Ebtesam al-Ketbi, strategic analyst The UAE would not be driven towards “reckless escalation”, Ketbi insisted. The emerging formula was “precise, maximum technical interoperability paired with maximum political autonomy”. Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s largest and most powerful member, has so far maintained a strictly defensive posture, wary of handing Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthis any pretext to open a second front against the kingdom. But Riyadh’s strategic outlook is already being transformed by the war, according to security researcher Aziz al-Ghashian, who spoke at the same forum as Ketbi. He does not expect the kingdom to sever diplomatic ties with Tehran – restored three years ago with China as guarantor – but anticipates Riyadh will turn its focus more on Washington. Once the guns fall silent, Ghashian predicts the Gulf states will systematically diversify their defence procurement beyond their heavy Western dependence and build genuine “offensive capabilities” to create the foundation of a “more synchronised GCC effort” among states that “really need each other more than ever”. The war has laid bare a structural vulnerability that Gulf leaders long acknowledged but never resolved. Sovereignty sensitivities, competing arms procurement preferences and political mistrust had for years blocked the creation of a truly integrated air and missile defence system built around shared, real-time early warning and coordinated engagement protocols. That reluctance is dissolving under fire. “It is no longer an aspirational project,” Ketbi said. “It is becoming a strategic necessity.”

Gulf states take the fight to Iran as missiles target oil, gas and trade

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The UAE, Qatar and others had a plan for staying out of a US-Iran war. It relied on the assumption that Iran would leave them out of it too

‘Offensive defensive’

The UAE, Qatar and others had a plan for staying out of a US-Iran war. It relied on the assumption that Iran would leave them out of it too