The Gulf States' Impossible Position: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar Between Washington and Tehran

The Gulf Cooperation Council states occupy a geopolitical position that is, in the current crisis, almost uniquely uncomfortable. They depend on the United States for the security guarantees that protect their governments from external threats — including, historically, from Iran. They need the Strait of Hormuz open to export their oil, which is the source of essentially all their wealth. They share a waterway, a neighbourhood, and complex economic relationships with the country the United States is currently bombing. And they were not consulted about any of this before it started.

Saudi Arabia's Dilemma

Saudi Arabia's position is the most consequential and the most contradictory. Riyadh has long viewed Iran as its primary regional rival — the Shia power whose influence across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen represents a strategic encirclement that Saudi foreign policy has spent decades trying to resist. In that sense, the degradation of Iran's military capabilities is not unwelcome in Riyadh. But the Hormuz closure has directly damaged Saudi Arabia's ability to export oil through the waterway, and the East-West Petroline — which routes Saudi crude to the Red Sea — is operating at near-maximum capacity and cannot compensate for the full loss of Gulf export capacity.

Saudi Arabia has also been navigating a careful diplomatic repositioning since 2023, when the China-brokered rapprochement with Iran seemed to offer a path to regional stability that avoided dependence on a volatile and increasingly unreliable United States. Operation Epic Fury has upended that positioning without warning, plunging the kingdom back into the centre of a conflict it had been trying to step back from.

The UAE's Particular Exposure

The UAE, and Dubai in particular, faces an economic exposure to the current crisis that goes beyond oil exports. Dubai has spent twenty years building itself into the Middle East's premier financial, logistics, and tourism hub — a position that depends absolutely on stability, reliable air and sea connectivity, and the perception of the emirate as a safe, neutral space between rival powers. All three of those foundations are under pressure. Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest by international passenger numbers, has seen a significant reduction in traffic as airlines reroute away from the Gulf. The port of Jebel Ali — the largest port in the Middle East — is experiencing severe congestion and disruption as the strait closure redirects shipping patterns.

Qatar and the LNG Dimension

Qatar faces perhaps the most acute of all Gulf state dilemmas. Qatar is the world's second-largest LNG exporter, and essentially all of its maritime LNG exports transit the Strait of Hormuz. The closure has not just disrupted Qatar's exports — it has made the country the epicentre of the global gas supply crisis that is devastating energy markets from Japan to Germany. Qatar had no role in precipitating this crisis and has strongly opposed the military action that caused it. It is now being asked, by the United States, to use its relationships with Iran to help facilitate back-channel communications — a role that puts Doha in the uncomfortable position of being expected to clean up a mess it did not make.

The Long-Term Strategic Consequence

Whatever the immediate military outcome, the Hormuz crisis has accelerated a shift that was already underway in Gulf foreign policy: the search for strategic autonomy that reduces dependence on any single external patron. The GCC states watched the United States start a war that directly damaged their economic interests without consultation, and are drawing the obvious conclusions. Chinese investment, Indian trade relationships, and European diplomatic engagement are all becoming more attractive as complements to — and partial substitutes for — the American security relationship that has proved both indispensable and deeply unreliable in the same fortnight.