Gulf security model nears breaking point as external guarantees prove increasingly conditional

Are Gulf States as we know them beginning to unravel?

This is a question that has resurfaced with unusual urgency in the wake of the Iran war of 2026. Years ago, Kuwaiti political thinker, Dr Abdullah Al-Nafisi recalled, in an interview, a CIA analyst’s warning at a 1991 post-Gulf War conference in New York, that several Gulf states might not survive in their existing form into the 21st century.

More recently, rapper and political activist Kareem Dennis, aka Lowkey, while reflecting on the war in Iran, echoed similar concerns, suggesting that the region may be approaching a structural breaking point. In both their estimations, the absorption of smaller Gulf states by larger neighbours is premised as a tangible possibility.

These claims are often dismissed as alarmist but the current war in the Gulf region has exposed the vulnerabilities of the Gulf security order. The predictions of dissolution now appear to be prophetic warnings of what may occur if these rentier states fail to recalibrate immediately.

Without meaningful strategic transformation, the Gulf’s political architecture risks collapse through external regime change, internal coups, or Arab Spring-type uprisings that would render the monarchies more vulnerable than at any point in their modern history. The question is not whether the Gulf will change, but whether it can adapt fast enough to avoid becoming a casualty of the very alliance system that was built to preserve it.

The vassal state model

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Gulf monarchies confronted an existential reality: their territorial sovereignty could not be guaranteed by geography, wealth or diplomacy alone. The Gulf states built their survival on a transaction: rent American protection, buy social peace, and have an illusion of sovereignty. They opened their territories to American military infrastructure, embedding themselves within a US-led security architecture that effectively reduced them to vassals of Washington.

The asymmetry ingrained in this arrangement has, at times, been expressed with unusual bluntness, particularly during the Trump presidency. He remarked that Saudi Arabia “might not last two weeks” without American protection – a statement widely understood to be directed at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. More recently, his language toward Gulf leadership has turned more vulgar and is widely perceived across the region as dismissive and demeaning.

These remarks articulate a consistent underlying logic that Gulf security was not a partnership of equals, but a conditional arrangement between patron and client. The security guarantee was contingent, revocable, and ultimately subordinate to American interests that could diverge catastrophically from Gulf survival.

One of the most consequential moves in this vassal relationship came in April 2003, when Qatar positioned itself to host the headquarters of US Central Command. The construction of Al-Udeid Air Base, at Qatari expense, was designed to make Doha indispensable to American military planning, as it encouraged a move of the US Air Operations Center from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base to Qatar.

This irked Saudi Arabia and intensified strained relations between the two Gulf states, as Saudi Arabia had previously been host to the largest US military presence in the region. The Centcom shift represented a direct challenge to Saudi primacy in the US-Gulf relationship. The rivalry over American bases exposed the uncomfortable truth: Gulf security had become a competitive marketplace, with states bidding for US attention through infrastructure investment and strategic positioning.

The critical awakening occurred in September 2019, when Iranian drones struck Saudi Aramco’s facilities, temporarily halving Saudi oil production. While the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, the US blamed Iran. If there had been an expectation of US military might acting as a deterrent to Iranian attacks, or actively responding to a security threat, this moment proved that Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations who had heavily invested in these security arrangements, were on their own: the security guarantee extended only to American assets, not to the states that hosted them.

Deeper rupture

A deeper rupture emerged on September 9, 2025, when Israel conducted an airstrike on Doha targeting senior Hamas leadership housed in a residential complex before critical negotiations. The attack marked Israel’s first direct strike on a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member. Qatar described the attack as “state terrorism” and a “blatant violation of all international laws and norms”.

Qatar’s prime minister confirmed that the Israeli weapons were “not detected by radar”, raising serious concerns about the effectiveness of the US air defence systems that could not – or would not – protect against Israeli aggression. The vassal state had learned that its patron would not defend it against its patron’s closer ally.

The 2026 war in Iran confirmed the Gulf states’ ultimate vulnerability and the superiority of Israel-US relations over the Gulf-US friendship, despite the trillions in investment pledged to Trump. As Trump collaborated with Israel to attack Iran, while negotiations were reportedly at an advanced stage, according to the Omani foreign minister, Gulf states were rendered vulnerable to Iranian retaliatory attacks.

The very American bases that were meant to protect them, turned them into targets, a risk that was poorly planned for. Israel, in coordination with the US then attacked the South Pars gas field – the world’s largest natural gas field, shared between Iran and Qatar.

Iran retaliated within hours, striking Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar’s energy production hub, causing “extensive damage”, taking out 17% of Qatar’s Liquid Natural Gas production capacity, costing billions of dollars daily in lost revenue, and systemic collapse.

While the Gulf states decried the Iranian neighbourly betrayal, the real betrayal was that of the vassal relationship with Washington, who together with Israel demonstrated that Gulf sovereignty is expendable when it conflicts with their strategic objectives.

Exposed hostages

The Gulf states have become “hostages in the US security umbrella”, absorbing punitive retaliation that the US cannot shield them from. The vassal relationship has transformed these states from protected clients into exposed hostages – liable for the sins of their patron, defenceless against their patron’s enemies, and ultimately disposable to their patron’s strategic calculations.

Beyond military targets, political vulnerabilities are emerging. Not all Gulf states face equal risk. Some monarchies are seemingly more immediately fragile than others.

Bahrain appears to be the most vulnerable. The island kingdom combines a restive Shia majority population with decades of squashed opposition and sectarian marginalisation. With opposition parties banned, hundreds of political prisoners incarcerated and more than a thousand stripped of citizenship for participation in the 2011 uprising, the demographics are explosive.

Meanwhile, normalisation of relations with Israel, widely unpopular among Bahrainis, with the majority holding negative views on the Abraham Accords, has widened the gulf between the king and his subjects.

The regime’s dependence on Saudi security support and the US naval presence leaves it doubly exposed: if the Causeway between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is disrupted, and internal unrest erupts, Bahrain lacks the autonomous capacity to suppress revolt.

Kuwait is similarly fragile, with relentless attacks on its critical infrastructure, as Iran pummelled its airport, ports, power grid and oil facilities. While Iran has borne the responsibility, geographic proximity suggests there may be Iraqi militia involvement, acting as Iranian proxies, reinforcing Kuwait’s strategic dilemma, recollecting the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

The external vulnerability compounds the internal crisis. The emirate introduced power cuts to manage energy resources, a humiliating admission of infrastructural failure for one of the world’s richest countries.

This comes atop the indefinite suspension of parliament in May 2024, the seventh dissolution since 2006 and the most severe constitutional rupture in Kuwaiti history. This has created a tectonic threat: a population accustomed to constitutional participation now faces autocratic rule at a time of economic and security threat. The makings of an uprising may just be simmering beneath the surface.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) in contrast has drifted closer to embracing Israeli overtures and managing any potential expression of opposition with draconian laws that suppress any visible dissent, while glorifying the leadership. This control is temporarily effective but brittle.

Qatari paradox

Qatar appears to be facing a paradox of being the highest risk for economic damage from the military strikes but least vulnerable to internal dissent. Its shared gas field with Iran creates mutual economic interest that the war destroys and its reliance on desalination for water leaves it on the cusp of reversing the development it has enjoyed over the past two decades.

These differential vulnerabilities matter for the region’s trajectory.

The “dissolution” predicted by Al-Nafisi and echoed by Lowkey is not uniform; they reflect the logic of vassalage: when the patron can no longer protect, the vassal must seek new arrangements or face absorption by stronger powers.

The dissolution predicted is not inevitable collapse, but could be a consequence of failed recalibration. In the current geopolitical atmosphere, the divergence between the Gulf states and Washington is much more pronounced.

Their resistance to being drawn directly into the war with Iran or capitulating to the notion of participating directly in military operations against Iran already displays clear understanding of what those optics would look like to its own people – failure of protection combined with subservience to Israel.

While the Gulf states have not completely abandoned their ties with Washington, indications are that they are actively pursuing regional defence and economic alliances that seek to diversify their dependence. Their survival depends on this recalibration.

A Gulf-Turkey alignment is emerging strongly, but consolidation may require time that is severely limited, especially in the face of threats emerging from Israel explicitly naming Qatar and Turkey as “next in line” after Iran. Saudi Arabia, before the Iran war, clinched a defence agreement with nuclear power Pakistan, and more recently, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, has declared that “the era of relying on the US has ended. How can Trump protect us when he cannot even protect his own country?”

The provocative projections of the smaller emirates’ absorption into the greater states in the region may remain an unlikely outcome.

A more plausible, strategic trajectory is reconfiguration rather than dissolution, whereby governance models or even consideration of a federative model where critical sectors such as defence, intelligence sharing, the oil and gas economy and perhaps even segments of foreign policy are coordinated at a regional level, while domestic governance remains locally anchored would present a stronger Gulf alliance.

The finalisation of the “Joint Gulf Missile Defence Shield” at the December 2025 46th Gulf Cooperation Council Summit is indicative of a move towards this model.

The rentier security state, where protection was purchased with oil revenue, is dead. What follows will require the Gulf states to pay for survival in the currency of strategic autonomy, collective self-reliance and the political will to defy a patron that has become more dangerous than its enemies. DM