At the same time, governments across the Arab world increasingly view Israel as a deeply destabilizing actor in the regional system. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, which were pursuing closer ties to Tel Aviv, have pulled back in response to Israeli actions in recent years. Under its current leadership in particular, Israel is widely seen as pursuing military and strategic paramountcy in the Middle East. That approach places it in direct tension with the interests of most regional governments, which seek a balance of power that constrains both Iran and Israel rather than enabling either one to dominate.
The fact that Washington began this campaign in coordination with Israel therefore amplified regional concern. For many governments, the problem is not simply escalation with Iran. It is that the United States appears willing to align itself with a regional actor widely viewed as willing—if not eager—to escalate conflict in pursuit of its own strategic primacy without consideration for its neighbors’ interests.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes across the Gulf exposed the limits of the strategy many Arab states had pursued to manage that risk. For years, Gulf governments had tried to balance security partnerships with Washington—and, in particular, with the Trump administration—against diplomatic engagement with Tehran on the understanding that avoiding participation in confrontation with Iran would reduce the likelihood of becoming a target. The events of the past week have seemingly repudiated that assumption and, with it, the prevailing strategy of Gulf states.
Regional recalibration
Public statements from Arab capitals have emphasized restraint and deescalation. Privately, however, governments across the region are reassessing the strategic assumptions that have guided their policies for much of the past decade.
For the Gulf states collectively, the lesson from the recent Iranian reprisals is stark. Even governments such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar that signaled neutrality—and did not facilitate the U.S. strikes—found themselves within the crosshairs of Iranian retaliation.
If neutrality and diplomatic engagement cannot shield Gulf states from retaliation during crises, the logic of hedging weakens considerably. In future confrontations, Gulf governments may assume they will be targeted regardless of their posture. Under those conditions, the incentive structure shifts: Neutrality offers fewer benefits, and closer alignment with the United States during crises becomes more rational, not less.
This does not mean that Gulf states will abandon engagement with Iran. Geography imposes limits on confrontation. Iran retains significant asymmetric capabilities—from missile strikes and maritime disruption to extensive militia networks—that Gulf governments cannot ignore.
But the balance between diplomacy and deterrence is likely to change. Defensive cooperation, infrastructure protection, and contingency planning will take on greater urgency as Gulf governments prepare for the possibility that future confrontations will inevitably involve them.
The targeting of energy infrastructure reinforces this shift. For major producers—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar—energy facilities represent both economic lifelines and reputational assets. Their development strategies depend on the perception that Gulf exports remain reliable even during geopolitical crises. Strikes near pipelines, processing facilities, or shipping routes directly undermine that credibility. Energy security is accordingly moving back to the center of defense planning: Missile defense systems, infrastructure hardening, maritime security, and intelligence cooperation are all likely to see accelerated investment. For energy importers such as Egypt and Jordan, the implications are different but equally serious. Both economies are highly sensitive to fluctuations in global energy prices. Sustained disruption would exacerbate fiscal pressures and increase domestic economic strain, reinforcing the connection between regional stability and internal economic security.
Beyond the Gulf, policymakers across the region are increasingly concerned about a different—and potentially more dangerous—scenario: the internal destabilization of Iran.
Regional implications of a fragile Iran
Sustained military pressure could weaken the Iranian state in ways that produce fragmentation along ethnic or regional lines. Analysts across the region have noted the possibility of unrest or fragmentation involving Kurdish, Baluchi, or Azeri populations. Such developments would not remain contained within Iran.
Any serious destabilization of Iran would almost certainly reverberate across Iraq, whose political and security structures remain deeply entangled with Iranian influence and militia networks. Kurdish dynamics in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey would immediately become more volatile, as moments of regional upheaval have historically provided opportunities for Kurdish political movements to consolidate autonomy or territorial control.
For governments across the region—including the Gulf states but also Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq—these scenarios represent a major source of concern. A weakening or fragmentation of Iran could trigger cascading instability across multiple states simultaneously, drawing external actors into new conflicts and reshaping territorial and political balances that have held, however imperfectly, for decades.
It is precisely because these fragmentation risks are so acute that regional governments viewed Israel’s push for sustained military escalation against Iran as reckless. Though regional governments view Israel’s pursuit of paramountcy as objectionable on political grounds, it is more dangerously a threat to the structural integrity of the regional order itself. These governments are aware that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long desired to strike Iran, but the fact that all U.S. presidents until now rebuffed his entreaties just places the current decision into a starker contrast.
From this perspective, the danger is not simply escalation between Iran and Israel. It is the possibility that the confrontation could fracture the regional order itself.
Implications for U.S. regional strategy
The crisis exposes structural tensions in Washington’s approach to the Middle East.
The deescalation frameworks Gulf states pursued with Iran were not symbolic gestures. They were deliberate attempts to reduce the risk that Gulf territory would become a theater for great power confrontation. The joint U.S.–Israeli strikes effectively overrode those frameworks, demonstrating how quickly decisions taken outside the region can transform the strategic environment for states that had little role in shaping them.
Equally significant is the perception of alignment between Washington and Israel during the crisis. Across the Arab world, Israel’s current government is widely viewed as pursuing policies—in Gaza, the West Bank, and Palestine generally; in Lebanon; and in Syria—that increase regional instability rather than mitigate it. The United States’ willingness to coordinate military escalation alongside such a government, without meaningful coordination with Arab parties, has reinforced doubts about whether American strategy prioritizes regional stability or the interests of its purported Arab partners.
Arab governments do not view Iran benignly. Many consider it a serious and enduring security challenge. But that assessment exists alongside a parallel view: that Israel’s pursuit of regional paramountcy—and Washington’s readiness to support it—represents a separate destabilizing dynamic within the regional system.
For policymakers in Washington, this creates a difficult strategic landscape. Regional partners are unlikely to abandon security cooperation with the United States—no other external power currently offers comparable military capabilities—but those same partners are increasingly determined to reduce their exposure to conflicts shaped by decisions taken elsewhere.
Strategic autonomy—once a cautious aspiration in many regional capitals—is becoming a more explicit objective.
Domestic political pressures
Regional leaders must also contend with public opinion—their own and America’s.
Within the United States, this war is deeply unpopular. And a pointed question is emerging across the U.S. political spectrum about whether the Trump administration was drawn into a confrontation driven primarily by Israeli strategic calculations rather than core American interests, even while ultimate responsibility lies with the president for deciding to take this course of action. Every recent administration judged a direct military confrontation with Iran to be contrary to those interests—President Barack Obama refused it, President Joe Biden actively constrained it, President George W. Bush at the height of post-9/11 interventionism declined to pursue it, and President Trump himself pulled back from the brink in 2019, cancelling strikes he had already ordered. That Netanyahu was able to secure American participation in a campaign he had sought for more than 30 years—from the very same president who rejected the idea just six years earlier, and who went down a very different route last July—should be examined closely.
For audiences across the Middle East, this is not an abstract debate. The belief that the Israeli government dragged the United States into a catastrophic escalation—one that has now visited destruction on countries that had nothing to do with the decision—is not a fringe view in the region. It is the dominant one. Whatever anger exists in Washington over the perceived role the Israeli government played in precipitating this conflict, that anger is multiplied one hundredfold in the mood from Riyadh to Cairo to Amman.
For regional governments, this creates a deeply constrained environment. Leaders who wish to preserve security partnerships with Washington must do so within societies where anger toward both Israel and the United States has intensified sharply. The political space for publicly reaffirming cooperation with Washington has narrowed, and any recalibration of security arrangements will have to account for domestic legitimacy as much as strategic calculation.
The structural problem: No regional security architecture
The deeper issue exposed by the past week is, frankly, a structural one: The Middle East still lacks a regional security architecture capable of managing escalation between its major actors. For decades, the United States functioned as the closest approximation of such a system, combining deterrence with diplomatic mediation.
That role is now increasingly contested—not because regional states have found an alternative guarantor, but because confidence in Washington’s ability to act as a stabilizing actor has weakened. Indeed, the scenarios of Iranian territorial fragmentation, and knock on effects to neighboring countries, encourage many in the region to see U.S. engagement on Iran as a destabilizing factor altogether.
The question confronting regional governments is no longer simply how to avoid confrontation between Iran and Israel. It is how to shield themselves from a regional order increasingly shaped by forces beyond their control—whether Iranian retaliation and proxy activity in the near term, the cascading instability that sustained military pressure on Iran could unleash, or Israel’s pursuit of strategic paramountcy across the Middle East—and the willingness of the United States to enable it. And for many across the region, this latter outcome is the most consequential long-term concern.
Regional governments are not replacing the United States as a security partner. But it is far more likely that they will increasingly adjust their strategies to reduce vulnerability to crises shaped by decisions taken elsewhere.