The Iran war inflicted substantial pain on Persian Gulf states, as their exports and sense of safety declined. Yet some have emerged more resolute about cooperating together on regional politics. A new grouping outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has emerged, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and non-Gulf actors Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. The United Arab Emirates is conspicuous by its absence.
Some of these states have emerged as clear winners from the war, while others are content with having built new resilience. There is a veneer of camaraderie among them, but deep divisions lie underneath regarding how best to deal with Iran and whether to pursue normalization with Israel or brace for its feared hegemonic expansion. Either way, it’s clear that the war in Iran has produced a new order in the Gulf that extends beyond to the larger Islamic world.
The Iran war inflicted substantial pain on Persian Gulf states, as their exports and sense of safety declined. Yet some have emerged more resolute about cooperating together on regional politics. A new grouping outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has emerged, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and non-Gulf actors Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. The United Arab Emirates is conspicuous by its absence.
Some of these states have emerged as clear winners from the war, while others are content with having built new resilience. There is a veneer of camaraderie among them, but deep divisions lie underneath regarding how best to deal with Iran and whether to pursue normalization with Israel or brace for its feared hegemonic expansion. Either way, it’s clear that the war in Iran has produced a new order in the Gulf that extends beyond to the larger Islamic world.
The new bloc is defined by two goals: containing the Iranian threat while also regaining influence in countries dominated by Iranian proxies or allies such as Syria and Lebanon; and also pushing back against Israel to define limits to its military adventurism. One regional observer said Israel’s strike on Doha last year—to hunt Hamas members—spooked Gulf nations into thinking that they could be next. It brought rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey closer together. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons underpin the alliance, serving as a bulwark against Israel, under the Saudi-Pakistani defense framework.
While there is no official name for the grouping—only described as a Sunni alliance in Israeli reports or an expanding Islamic NATO—it signals realignment built on deepening mistrust between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. As both wean away from an oil-based economy, Saudis are competing with Emiratis to win over the same foreign investments.
In the post-Arab Spring phase, Saudis and Emiratis saw eye to eye on the Muslim Brotherhood as a common threat and were aligned on regional policy questions. Now interests appear to have diverged. The UAE believes normalization and peace are the way forward with Israel, while Riyadh has banded together a more Israel-critical bunch.
The grouping of five is also a Saudi bid to claim the regional leadership role. The UAE’s exit from OPEC questioned the Saudi position as the unofficial leader of the pack. Riyadh has now decided to host a regional summit between Arab states and Iran, but it is unclear when it will take place and whether the UAE will attend—but it will be circumspect of any assurance.
Saudi Arabia came under relatively fewer attacks than many of its neighbors, but its sense of security was no less shaken. Reuters reported that it even carried out numerous strikes against Iran in response. Riyadh said whatever little trust had been built with Iran as a result of the 2023 Beijing-led rapprochement was quashed.
On the economic front, Saudi Arabia benefited from the rise in demand and the price of oil. In March, even as the Strait of Hormuz remained shut, the value of Saudi exports recorded a three-year surge. Saudi oil company Aramco’s net profit jumped 26 percent for the first quarter as prices spiked from $74 to over $119 a barrel, said Hesham Alghannam, a Riyadh-based scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. The East-West Pipeline offered an alternative export route via the Red Sea coast and operated at its full capacity of 7 million barrels.
However, Saudi GDP growth slowed to 2.8 percent from 3.7 percent because wells were shut, even as flows were rerouted, Alghannam added. Experts are divided over Saudi Arabia’s economic projections, yet the war has spurred the kingdom to strengthen its Red Sea infrastructure.
Another player in the new alliance is Qatar. In 2017, Qatar was ostracized by a quartet of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, but now it is recognized as a diplomatic leader. During the war with Iran, Qatar’s geographical constraints, Washington’s inability to prevent Iranian strikes on the Gulf, and Doha’s comparatively warmer prewar ties with Tehran all led its leadership to conclude that diplomacy with Iran offered the best path forward.
Qatar faced the fewest Iranian strikes during the war, though attacks did target a key installation. A strike shut down its key Ras Laffan refinery—one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facilities—reducing its export capacity by an estimated 17 percent.
It then jumped full throttle into mediation efforts in mid-May when Pakistan’s efforts to broker peace proved insufficient. Last week, as U.S. and Iranian negotiators huddled for 18 hours at a luxury resort overlooking Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, there was reason to believe that an exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah might derail the talks, a person familiar with the events told me.
“Even as the principals sat down for talks”—referring to U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump advisors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and chief Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—“there were tensions over Lebanon,” the person said. He complimented Qatari mediators for extinguishing last-minute fires, adding that Qatar used its channels with Iran to get Hezbollah to release a statement agreeing to a cease-fire and also encouraged the Americans to get Israel to back off.
Other members of the Saudi-led grouping also intend to gain from the war. Egypt hopes to benefit from a Saudi rush to expand its infrastructure. Riyadh has formalized plans to build a bridge to Sinai, aiming to turn Egypt’s Mediterranean coast into a gateway to Europe. Turkey hopes to boost arms sales, as apprehensions over security are unlikely to subside anytime soon. Pakistan, for its part, enjoyed some good press after years of international condemnation for supporting terrorist networks.
The UAE has also decided to improve its logistics and reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz to zero. Even during the war, it managed to export via its Fujairah port and is now looking at expanding eastern ports along the Gulf of Oman. The UAE, however, is outside the Saudi-led bloc. Alghannam of the Carnegie Middle East Center said the bloc exists “because the GCC itself is unlikely to unify on Iran” but also because for Saudi Arabia it is a “vehicle to project Arab leadership.”
Over the last few months, the mentor-protégé relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan turned sour, largely over disagreements over Yemen and Sudan.
It is unclear whether the UAE will attend any Saudi-led Iran summit. The country endured more than 3,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks—more than the total number of attacks on the other five GCC members—and is thus more at odds with Iran. It would have preferred a longer U.S. military operation against Iran to debilitate Iranian capabilities before a cease-fire was struck.
A more divisive divergence between the two blocs, however, is over Israel. “There are two camps: one pro-Israel, and the other is an Israel-cautious camp,” a Gulf official told me over the phone.
The Emirati commitment to the Abraham Accords weathered the recent conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, whereas Saudi Arabia found it difficult to pursue normalization in such an atmosphere. The UAE reportedly received key defense equipment from Israel during the war: “an Iron Dome air defense system with troops to operate it,” Axios reported in April. That indicates an enhancement in future defense-related cooperation against Iran.
The Emiratis see Iran as a bigger threat than many of their neighbors, including those now following the Saudis’ lead. The UAE was struck by Iran with an unmatched ferocity and helped by Israel, while Saudi Arabia wants to contain both Iran and Israel. What’s clear is that the divergence over how to manage the collective security of the Gulf will define the future of the region—and that the UAE is likely to be on the outside with its own vision to break with the status quo.