Afkār is a publication of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, providing short-form analyses, insights, and perspectives on regional issues and developments from the Council's experts and outside contributors. Afkār is published in English and Arabic, and is edited by Omar H. Rahman.
As competing narratives emerge from the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran, the real question for the Gulf lies not in who won the war but in what comes next: whether the GCC will continue to operate as six separate states or evolve into a unified strategic bloc capable of confronting an increasingly volatile regional order.
As the U.S.–Israel war with Iran spreads across the Gulf, the erosion of long-standing taboos against attacking water infrastructure could place tens of millions of civilians at immediate risk.
Gulf investments in layered air and missile defenses have enabled regional states to absorb Iranian attacks, protect critical infrastructure, and maintain strategic restraint in a war they neither started nor wish to join.