It is a miscalculation that is pushing Gulf states closer to Israel and the United States.

For years, Iran’s rulers sold themselves as the vanguard of “resistance” in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. But when you strip away the slogans, what they have repeatedly offered their neighbors is a protection racket: submit to our missiles, our proxies, our threats, or live with permanent instability. 

That is the real context for what is happening now. Iran’s attacks on Gulf airports, ports, oil facilities, hotels, and commercial hubs are not just acts of war. They are acts of persuasion in reverse. They are reminding the Gulf monarchies exactly why so many of them moved toward Israel and deeper U.S. security coordination in the first place.

Tehran has badly miscalculated. Publicly, Gulf governments are still speaking the language of restraint. Saudi Arabia hosted Arab and Islamic foreign ministers this week to talk about regional stability. The UAE still says it does not seek escalation. Everybody keeps uttering the expected diplomatic phrases about de-escalation, law, and avoiding a wider war. But that is the public script. The private reality looks very different. Many Gulf Arab states are now urging Washington not to stop short and leave Iran still capable of threatening the Gulf’s oil lifeline and the economies built around it.

That is a remarkable shift, and it matters. These governments did not ask to become battlefields. They did not ask to have their ports hit, their airports disrupted, their cities menaced, their shipping lanes choked, or their energy infrastructure turned into leverage. But once Iran crossed that line, the logic changed. Iran has attacked airports, ports, oil facilities and commercial hubs in all six Gulf states while disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That does not make the Gulf monarchies like war. It makes them remember, very vividly, that an Iran left with meaningful offensive capacity will keep the entire region under permanent blackmail.

And the Gulf states are not just thinking about oil prices. They are thinking about their whole economic model. These countries have spent years trying to build themselves into places known for stability, tourism, aviation, finance, logistics, and investment. Damage from Iran’s attacks goes well beyond the immediate material losses. It strikes at the Gulf’s hard-won image of safety and predictability. That matters to Dubai. It matters to Abu Dhabi. It matters to Doha, Manama, Riyadh, and Kuwait City. A missile hitting an airport or a drone near an oil zone is not just a military problem. 

It is an assault on the business model of the modern Gulf.

That is why Tehran’s strategy looks so self-defeating. If the goal was to frighten Gulf states into pressuring Washington and Israel to back off, Iran may get some nervous public statements, yes. It may get more calls for ceasefire. It may get some diplomatic hedging. But strategically, it is hardening the very alignment it most fears. Reports today indicate that the UAE may join a U.S.-led effort to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Anwar Gargash went further, saying Iran’s repeated attacks on Gulf states were likely to strengthen Israel’s ties with Arab countries that already have relations with it and open channels with others, while also strengthening Washington’s role in the region. 

That is not a win for Iran. That is an own goal.

And let’s be honest about the larger historical pattern here. The path toward Arab-Israeli normalization did not emerge because Gulf leaders suddenly warmed to Zionism. It emerged because Iran and its network of proxies made themselves the region’s most persistent source of menace. Reuters reported back on October 8, 2023, that Hamas’s attack on Israel also struck at emerging regional security realignments that threatened the ambitions of Hamas’s main backer, Iran. Later that month, Joe Biden said the attack was aimed at disrupting possible Saudi-Israeli normalization. Whether every detail of that theory is provable or not, the broad logic has always been obvious: Iran feared a regional order in which Arab states and Israel cooperated more openly against it.

And now Tehran, in the middle of a war it is already struggling to absorb, is helping build exactly that order. Not with diplomacy: With missiles. With sabotage. With pressure on LNG, shipping, and civilian infrastructure. Gulf leaders may still avoid flashy public embraces of Israel, especially with Gaza still politically toxic across the Arab world. Saudi Arabia may still move cautiously and wrap everything in diplomatic language. Oman may still sound more conciliatory than the others. But the hard-security lesson has only been reinforced: if Iran retains the means to terrorize its neighbors, it will use them.

That is why this feels less like a brilliant chess move than a desperate strategic blunder. Tehran may still be able to impose pain. It may still raise costs. It may still frighten markets and disrupt trade. But it is not improving its regional position. It is isolating itself further, stiffening Gulf resolve, strengthening the case for U.S. protection, and making quiet coordination with Israel look not reckless, but necessary. Iran did not break the emerging alignment. It reminded everybody why it emerged.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)