The debate over a potential American military confrontation with Iran has exposed fault lines far deeper than conventional security calculations. While Gulf Arab capitals have publicly framed their opposition to strikes as concern over economic disruption and regional stability, the strategic dynamics at play reveal a more complex picture involving ideological exposure, proxy dependencies, and competing ambitions for regional supremacy that several key actors prefer to keep obscured.
Tehran’s Regional Architecture and the Proxy Equation
Understanding why certain Gulf and Middle Eastern governments resist decisive action against Iran requires grasping the full scope of Tehran’s regional infrastructure. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has constructed an extensive network of armed partners spanning multiple conflict zones, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Houthi forces in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. These organizations operate not as autonomous insurgencies but as coordinated elements of a strategic doctrine aimed at projecting Iranian influence, destabilizing adversaries, and eroding Western presence across the region.
This proxy architecture serves a paradoxical function for several of Iran’s ostensible rivals. While Tehran’s network poses genuine security threats to its neighbors, it simultaneously provides a convenient focal point that absorbs international attention and scrutiny. Multiple regional governments have quietly benefited from the fact that global diplomatic energy remains fixated on containing Iranian expansionism—a focus that deflects examination of their own ideological projects, financing networks, and geopolitical ambitions. The elimination of Iran as the region’s primary disruptor would strip away this strategic cover, forcing actors who have operated in Tehran’s shadow to face uncomfortable questions about their own conduct.
Washington’s renewed maximum pressure campaign against Iran, which has combined escalating economic sanctions with military deterrence and limited diplomatic engagement, has intensified these anxieties. As reported by Reuters, multiple Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman—have actively lobbied Washington against military action, with their opposition extending beyond simple risk aversion into far more complex strategic territory.
The Doha Paradox: Mediation and Militant Networks
Among the regional actors most vulnerable to the scrutiny that would follow Iran’s diminishment, Qatar occupies a uniquely contradictory position. The tiny but extraordinarily wealthy Gulf emirate has cultivated an international reputation as a neutral diplomatic mediator and facilitator of dialogue across conflict zones. Doha’s hosting of peace talks and its financial engagement in post-conflict reconstruction have earned it considerable diplomatic capital in Western capitals.
Yet this image of constructive neutrality exists in tension with longstanding allegations and documented connections to illicit financing of extremist organizations, a pattern that multiple governments and intelligence agencies have flagged over the past two decades. Senior Hamas leaders have maintained a comfortable and well-funded presence in Doha for years, directing operations from a safe haven while Qatar simultaneously presented itself as a good-faith interlocutor. Former Israeli intelligence officials have publicly asserted that Qatari financial channels have facilitated funding flows to designated organizations on a scale that rivals or exceeds Iran’s own contributions—a claim that, while contested by Doha, reflects a broader pattern of concern expressed by the US Congress, the UK Parliament, and counter-extremism researchers.
Qatar’s state media apparatus further complicates the picture. Al Jazeera, the Doha-based broadcasting giant, has been accused by multiple regional governments and independent analysts of amplifying narratives sympathetic to Islamist movements while undermining secular and moderate Arab governance models. With Iran serving as the region’s primary lightning rod for international criticism, the removal of that distraction would inevitably redirect analytical and diplomatic attention toward the networks and narratives emanating from Doha—a prospect that Qatar’s leadership has strong incentives to forestall.
Ankara’s Neo-Ottoman Calculus
Turkey presents a parallel case with distinct characteristics. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade tenure, Ankara has undergone a fundamental strategic realignment that analysts at CSIS have characterized as “strategic ambiguity”—maintaining NATO membership and hosting American military assets at Incirlik Air Base while simultaneously pursuing an expansionist regional agenda rooted in Islamist ideology and neo-Ottoman nostalgia.
Turkey’s geopolitical footprint has expanded dramatically in recent years, with Ankara establishing military presences in Qatar, Libya, and Somalia while exercising decisive influence over post-Assad Syria through proxy forces and direct intervention. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has documented how Turkey has positioned itself to fill the power vacuum left by Iran’s regional decline, pursuing dominance through advanced weapons programs, naval expansion, and political leverage across multiple theaters.
Iran’s continued existence as the Middle East’s most visible destabilizing force provides Ankara with essential strategic cover. While Turkey competes with Tehran in certain arenas—particularly Syria and the contest for influence over Sunni Islamist movements—Erdogan’s government benefits enormously from the international community’s preoccupation with Iranian nuclear ambitions and proxy warfare. A decisive weakening of Iran would expose the full scope of Turkey’s own revisionist agenda at a moment when Ankara is simultaneously seeking American F-35 fighter jets, threatening Greece, and expanding its military footprint across the Mediterranean and beyond.
Riyadh’s Shifting Posture and the Kingdom’s Dilemma
Saudi Arabia occupies a fundamentally different position in this equation. The Kingdom has suffered direct Iranian aggression, most notably the devastating 2019 drone and missile strikes on Aramco oil processing facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais that temporarily halved Saudi oil production. Riyadh has legitimate and well-documented security concerns about Iranian expansionism, including Tehran’s apparent ambitions regarding the Kingdom’s eastern oil fields and its challenge to Saudi custodianship of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina. The deep historical roots of this rivalry span decades of proxy conflicts, sectarian competition, and strategic maneuvering across Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon.
Yet Saudi Arabia’s calculations have grown more complex under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s leadership. The Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 economic transformation program, its massive investments in tourism and infrastructure, and its hosting of global sporting events create powerful incentives to avoid regional conflagration. As Middle East Eye reported, Gulf states see an opportunity to extract concessions from an already weakened Tehran through diplomatic and economic leverage rather than military confrontation—an approach that preserves their investments while avoiding the unpredictable cascading effects of open conflict.
The Kingdom’s recent rhetorical shifts regarding Israel have further complicated its strategic positioning. While Riyadh had been cautiously moving toward normalization under the Abraham Accords framework, domestic political pressures and regional dynamics have introduced new volatility into this trajectory, reflecting the fundamental tension between modernizing ambitions and ideological constraints that defines Saudi policymaking.
The UAE Exception and the Transparency Model
Amid the region’s overlapping duplicities and hedged commitments, the United Arab Emirates has charted a notably different course. Abu Dhabi’s decision to formalize relations with Israel through the 2020 Abraham Accords normalization agreement represented a strategic gamble predicated on the belief that transparent alignment with both Washington and Jerusalem could enhance rather than undermine regional security and economic development.
Under President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s leadership, the UAE has demonstrated that opposing Iranian expansionism need not require embracing extremist ideology or anti-Western posturing. The Emirati model—combining technological cooperation with Israel, economic diversification, religious tolerance initiatives, and firm counter-extremism policies—presents a direct challenge to the strategic ambiguity practiced by Qatar and Turkey. Abu Dhabi’s willingness to operate transparently stands in contrast to neighbors that maintain contradictory public and private positions on fundamental questions of regional security and ideological alignment.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies has noted that Gulf states broadly recognize Iran’s weakened position but diverge sharply on how to capitalize on it. The UAE’s approach suggests that the most durable regional architecture will emerge from clarity of purpose rather than strategic obfuscation—a proposition that several of its neighbors remain deeply reluctant to test.
The Accountability Deficit and Strategic Double-Talk
The broader pattern that emerges from examining Gulf and Middle Eastern responses to American Iran policy reveals a fundamental accountability deficit in regional geopolitics. Multiple governments simultaneously benefit from American security guarantees—hosting US military installations, receiving advanced weapons systems, and sheltering under Washington’s extended deterrence—while pursuing parallel agendas that directly undermine stated American objectives regarding counter-terrorism, nonproliferation, and regional stability.
This dynamic has persisted for decades in part because successive American administrations prioritized stability over transparency, accepting the contradictions embedded in relationships with allies whose private conduct diverged sharply from their public commitments. The current approach from Washington, which has emphasized sanctions enforcement and demanded clearer alignment from partners, has disrupted these comfortable arrangements. The resistance this has generated from ostensible allies reflects not merely disagreement over tactics but a deeper fear that the era of strategic double-talk may be ending.
The consequences of an Iran unburdened by its current regime would ripple far beyond Tehran. It would require a comprehensive reassessment of financing networks that have sustained extremist organizations for decades, ideological projects that have exported instability across multiple continents, and intelligence relationships that have blurred the line between counter-terrorism cooperation and covert support for militant groups. For governments whose regional influence depends partly on the opacity of these arrangements, the prospect of a transparent post-Iran Middle East represents an existential challenge to their operating models.
What Transparency Would Reveal
The reluctance of certain Gulf and regional powers to support decisive action against Iran ultimately reflects a fear not of military escalation but of ideological exposure. A Middle East no longer organized around the central drama of Iranian aggression would require all regional actors to justify their conduct, expenditures, and alliances on their own merits rather than by reference to the Iranian threat. For states that have leveraged this threat to maintain strategic ambiguity while pursuing contradictory objectives, the removal of that justification would demand a level of honesty that their current governance structures are poorly equipped to provide. The region’s deepest vulnerability may not be the missiles aimed at its infrastructure but the questions that would follow if the primary excuse for its contradictions were to disappear.
Original analysis inspired by Pierre Rehov from Gatestone Institute. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
