The illusion of security: Why the Gulf cannot lead the Arab world alone

Two months before the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states under American sponsorship, Emirati academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla published an article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk in 2020 that sparked wide controversy at the time. In it, he called on Arab states to acknowledge that the Gulf states alone are qualified to lead the exhausted Arab nation. According to him, the banner of leadership had passed to the Gulf “willingly and in haste.” It would remain there for the foreseeable future to achieve a long-awaited Arab civilizational, developmental, and renaissance project.

The Emirati academic known for his proximity to decision-making circles in Abu Dhabi, did not hesitate to deliver sharp criticism of what he described as “charismatic leaderships and ideological parties,” which, in his words, had raised “empty slogans” such as Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine, projects that he believed had ended in abject failure.

Before presenting his arguments for Gulf leadership of the Arab world, Abdulla issued a categorical judgment excluding Egypt from the equation. Egypt’s nationalist experiment in the 1960s, he wrote, had ended in defeat; the signing of the Camp David agreement had ended its leadership role; and finally, Egypt had become preoccupied with its internal crises. In what he described as a moment of “general Arab retreat,” the wealthy and relatively stable Gulf appeared, in his view, as the Arab party most capable of carrying the banner.

Yet the events that followed that call appeared to move in a very different direction.

Agreements without returns

Within weeks, the UAE signed a normalization agreement with Israel even though it was not among the frontline states that had fought direct wars with the occupation. Abu Dhabi justified the move by claiming it had secured an Israeli commitment to suspend plans to annex parts of the West Bank.

Subsequent developments, however, revealed that the matter went far beyond a tactical political step intended to reduce Israeli escalation against the Palestinians or halt the seizure of West Bank land and the legalization of settlements.

Within just a few years, relations between the UAE and Israel became the fastest-growing normalization relationship in the region. According to Israeli economic data, trade between the two countries jumped from roughly half a billion dollars in the first year to more than three billion dollars in the most recent year, making the UAE Israel’s largest Arab trading partner.

This occurred even as Israel carried out its genocidal war on Gaza, while continuing to expand settlements and seize large areas of West Bank land—placing Abu Dhabi in an increasingly awkward position vis-à-vis Arab public opinion.

Yet the most consequential shift was not economic but strategic. In the years following normalization, signs of an expanding Emirati role began to emerge across sensitive regional arenas—from Sudan to Libya and the Horn of Africa. According to numerous testimonies and analyses, Abu Dhabi increasingly became an influential player in reshaping regional power balances in ways that intersect with Israel’s vision of redrawing the map of the region.

A one-sided affair

During periods of tension between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over the Yemen war, Saudi voices openly spoke about the UAE’s complex regional roles and its expanding ties with Tel Aviv.

Amid these transformations, Israeli PM Netanyahu was explicit about his ambitions. After repeatedly speaking about “changing the maps of the region,” he revealed during a meeting with leaders of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, that a new regional axis was being formed to confront what he called “the wounded Shiite axis”, Iran and its allies, and “the Sunni axis that is taking shape,” meaning Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. He used the biblical expression “from India to Cush” to describe the geopolitical space within which Israel seeks to build a network of alliances.

The following day, hours before the joint American–Israeli attack on Iran, Netanyahu told his cabinet that Israel was working to deepen its relations with India, Arab states, African countries, Greece, and Cyprus, in addition to its strategic alliance with USA.

It was not difficult to guess which Arab states were being courted for this alliance. Yet the paradox is that the same Emirati academic who had heralded the “Gulf moment” five years earlier spoke the day after Netanyahu’s statement about a new axis he called the “axis of stability and moderation,” asserting that the UAE would be at the heart of its leadership. He accused those who described his country as a “functional state,” a “Zionist mount,” or a “Trojan horse” of executing plans aimed at dividing Arab states.

A harsh test

The recent war launched by USA and Israel against Iran put this vision to a harsh test. Within hours of the US–Israeli attack, Tehran began a wide military response targeting Israel and American bases and interests across the Gulf.

Suddenly, the Gulf states found themselves at the center of the conflict. The American military bases spread across their territories, supposedly established to protect them, effectively turned into direct targets for Iranian missiles and drones.

The American response to Iranian attacks on targets in Gulf states shocked those capitals. According to an AP report, Gulf officials were “frustrated and even angry” toward Washington for failing to provide sufficient military support to protect them from Iranian attacks. US military operations, the report noted, focused primarily on defending Israel and American forces, while Gulf states were left largely to defend themselves.

These developments highlighted a geopolitical reality that has long been ignored: the Gulf states lie within the direct range of Iranian missiles while simultaneously hosting the largest concentration of American military bases in the world. In other words, they are the most fragile arena in any major regional war.

What is happening today, and what happened previously when Israel struck the Qatari capital Doha months ago in an attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders, and before that when missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi movement reached targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, confirms that American military bases in the Gulf protect only Israel, the state Washington regards as its forward military base in the Middle East.

Only one possible alternative

The Gulf states that Abdulla called upon to lead the Arab world now find themselves caught between two grinding millstones. They cannot enter a direct confrontation with Iran to defend their territory and oil infrastructure, nor can they compel Washington to use its military bases to defend them, even though they have invested trillions of dollars in US Treasury bonds, technology companies, and real estate projects.

Despite attempts to drag them into the war against Iran, veteran Gulf political figures have warned against such a scenario. Former Qatari PM Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani described igniting the war as “a slide toward depletion of both sides’ resources.”

Bin Jassim added: “There are forces that want Gulf states to engage directly with Iran. They know the current clash will eventually end. But we must realize that once this battle ends, new forces will emerge in the region—and Israel will hold dominance over it.”

This position closely echoes that of former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal, who criticized Netanyahu’s war, one that has drawn in USA and is now being expanded to entangle the Gulf, stressing in an interview with CNN that Saudi Arabia should not be dragged into the conflict.

The question of leadership

The reality revealed by the war offers a practical answer to the question of “leadership” raised by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla five years ago. Economic strength alone is not enough to build or lead a regional order. Nor can security alliances with adversaries provide protection. The American military bases into which Gulf states have poured trillions have effectively become a liability that must eventually be reconsidered.

The real lesson of the current war may be that security, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East can only be built through genuine regional cooperation among its major powers.

Such a framework would involve partnership among the principal Arab states alongside Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran—if it emerges from the current confrontation intact—within a collective deterrence balance capable of confronting Israel’s attempts to impose its dominance over the region.

It would be a partnership based on economic and security cooperation rather than sectarian polarization and external alliances. Recent history has shown that any vacuum in the Arab regional order is quickly filled by external powers, foremost among them the Israeli project.

In this context, the Gulf wealth that has flowed for decades into the arteries of the American and Western economies in search of protection could instead become a genuine lever for building an independent regional order, one that invests in the development of Arab states, modernizes their militaries and educational and health systems, and creates networks of shared interests among the peoples of the region.

Otherwise, continuing along the current path will lead to only one outcome: the so-called “Gulf moment” proclaimed five years ago will become yet another historical moment in which Israeli dominance and sovereignty over the Middle East are consolidated.