After his party’s resounding defeat in the US midterm elections this week, President Donald Trump conceded that the war with Iran had likely played a part.
“I think a part of it was Iran, but, at the same time, people understood the importance of what I’ve done with Iran,” Trump told Fox News, conceding that US voters were unwilling to accept the impact of the war on gas prices.
Observers say the United States and Israel had been holding off on major attacks on Iran until after both had held elections.
At the end of October, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was already warning Gulf state governments to brace for a short, intense military campaign after the midterms.
Could conflict escalate again?
While foreign policy is a US president’s purview, analysts have pointed out that a Congress controlled by the Democratic party could ostensibly withhold funding for Trump’s military expeditions. However newly-elected Democratic politicians won’t take their seats until early next year.
As two US professors of political science wrote for Foreign Affairs magazine this week, past American presidents, like Trump, who become “lame ducks” — that is, a president who loses control of Congress and can’t run for another term — have often ramped up international interventions.
“As they think about their legacy, lame ducks often turn to foreign policy, where the power of the presidency allows them to act unfettered by pesky domestic politics,” they explained. And one of the places where Trump is most likely to act is Iran, the professors argued.
On the other hand, Trump also told several media outlets that he was in “no rush” to start bombing Iran again.
Opinions on Iran’s next moves are also divided.
The Iranians have said they’re ready for any attack and rhetoric from senior leaders indicates they may be willing to strike a wider range of targets than previously. That could include regional energy and economic infrastructure and even undersea telecommunications cabling or data centers.
If Iran thinks there is an existential threat to its leadership, then “all bets are off,” Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, or MEI, and an expert on Iran, said during a virtual briefing hosted by MEI this week. “I think they will target differently in the Gulf states [this time] … so it really depends on how all this unfolds.”
But other experts believe Iran was deliberately holding out to pressure Trump before the midterms. Now the election is over, the Iranians may be more willing to negotiate a peace deal.
Unwilling participants
All this leaves the Gulf states, who have been the main targets of Iranian attacks since the conflict began, in a difficult position.
“We find ourselves drawn within a crisis that we worked diplomatically very hard to try to avert,” Anwar Gargash, a foreign policy adviser to United Arab Emirates leadership, said at a security conference in Bahrain last weekend, the Manama Dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS. “We are clearly seeking a political off-ramp.”
Qatar has been trying to negotiate between the US and Iran but has also been conducting emergency drills at its airport. The Emiratis have been doing similar drills. And Saudi Arabia is looking at a war on two fronts: The oil-rich state is already under attack from the Houthi militia in neighboring Yemen. Even Egypt has reacted, reportedly strengthening air defenses around the Suez Canal.
Still, no matter what happens next, the US-Israel-Iran war has already made Gulf states evaluate defense partnerships with the US. Rather than making them safe, US bases have made them a target.
“There is widespread disappointment across the region with the US over the folly of the war, the erratic nature of Washington’s military and diplomatic conduct, and its decision to prioritize Israel’s defense over that of its Gulf partners,” Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow at the IISS, told news agency Bloomberg this week. “If the US liberation of Kuwait in 1991 was the moment that established America’s role in the region, the 2026 war may be remembered as the moment that undid it.”
Replacing America?
Gulf states are widening their outreach with, for example, the UAE getting closer to Israel and the Saudis entering the Mecca defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey.
“The Gulf states have already moved toward strategic autonomy and self-reliance,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, wrote for online outlet Middle East Eye this week. “A lame-duck Trump will speed that process.”
That’s even though a Democrat-led Congress might make the US a slightly more reliable partner again.
Krieg argues that Gulf states should come together to pressure the US not to attack Iran and then negotiate a non-aggression pact with Iran — without US involvement.
Whether that kind of unity is possible in the Gulf is dubious, Ryan Crocker, a former US ambassador to the region and distinguished fellow with MEI, replied to a question from DW during the MEI’s online briefing.
“I’m afraid that meaningful Gulf unity is not coming to a theater near us anytime soon,” Crocker said. The Qataris remain untrusting because of how other Gulf states acted against them in 2017. And, he added, “there are well known differences between Saudi Arabia and the UAE we see in Sudan [and] in Yemen, and, of course, the profound differences … on relations with Israel. So I would not expect any meaningful moves toward [Gulf] security cooperation.”
What’s more likely in the long term is Gulf states eventually coming to some kind of understanding with Iran.
“The Gulf states understand that they probably can’t buy their security only from Washington, and that they’re going to have to buy it, to some degree, by some kind of a relationship with Tehran,” the MEI’s Harrison added. “It’s inevitable. Geography reigns.”
What that sort of non-aggression pact looks like remains to be seen, he added. That’s why one of the big concerns for Gulf leaders now, is the conflict escalating again to a point where the path back to some sort of diplomacy is lost, Harrison concluded.
