The GCC Will Not Unify on Iran 

The war that has unfolded across the Gulf has done more than shatter the region’s security architecture. It has also underscored a long-standing reality: the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has never operated as a unified actor in its approach toward Iran, and it is unlikely to do so after the conflict ends. 

The GCC is often treated in policy discussions as a coherent bloc confronting a common Iranian threat. The past decade—and now the war—have shown otherwise. Even as missiles and drones crossed into the skies of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, the six states have not converged around a single view of Iran, a shared reading of the war, or a common preferred outcome. 

This divergence is not the result of a temporary disagreement. It is structural. Each GCC state approaches Iran through a distinct foreign policy lens shaped by geography, demography, economic exposure, military alignments, domestic politics, regional ambitions, public opinion, and historical memory. Those variables do not carry equal weight across capitals, and they produce different policy choices. Some states lean toward confrontation, others toward dialogue, and most combine engagement, deterrence, and hedging in varying proportions. The war has not erased these differences. It has just made them more visible, and more consequential. 

What distinguishes the current conflict from previous downturns in GCC-Iran relations is not simply the scale or that all six states are affected, but that most of the critical factors shaping their decision-making have shifted negatively at once. What the GCC leaders long treated as a worst-case scenario has materialized.  

That matters because the Gulf’s economic model depends on openness, connectivity, safety, and stability. It requires ports functioning, airports operating, desalination plants running, food imports arriving, tourists landing, and capital remaining in place. When maritime insurance spikes, fuel exports are disrupted, and food shipments are delayed, the impact is systemic across the Gulf—and far beyond. Yet even under these pressures, no unified GCC approach to managing the crisis or its aftermath has emerged. 

The Structural Divergence 

GCC policy toward Iran is shaped by factors that interact differently in each state, and that have been repeatedly reshaped by major events since 1979: the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the 2010-2011 Arab uprisings, the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement, the 2016 diplomatic rupture, the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, and the 2023 Saudi–Iran rapprochement. The current war is the latest and most severe of these events.  

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have remained the most structurally adversarial toward Iran, but even within this grouping, their calculations diverge.  

Bahrain maintains the most securitized view of any GCC state, shaped by historical territorial claims, acute regime security concerns, and its domestic demographic composition. For Manama, Iran represents a direct and persistent threat. While it is part of the Abraham Accords with Israel, Bahrain was the only GCC state that did not formally restore ties with Tehran after 2021. During this war, Bahrain has spearheaded efforts at the United Nations, co-sponsoring a Security Council resolution—backed by 135 countries—to demand that Iran end its attacks on the Gulf. Bahrain drafted another resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China the day before the recent ceasefire. 

Saudi Arabia’s view is broader and more geopolitical. Iran is seen as a challenger to Saudi regional influence, internal stability, and long-term strategic primacy. While some reporting suggests that the Saudi crown prince has encouraged Trump to carry on the war against Iran, Saudi domestic and foreign policy has largely been driven in recent years by its own economic and social transformation agenda under Vision 2030, which depends on the very regional stability the war has undermined. Despite Iranian attacks on Saudi territory, the Kingdom’s foreign minister has remained diplomatically engaged with his Iranian counterpart, and the country is part of the new quadrilateral mediation effort alongside Egypt, Türkiye, and Pakistan. Thus, facing both a threat from Iran and recognition that prolonged regional conflict undermines its strategic interests, Riyadh has attempted to strike a more calibrated posture: deterrence without escalation, diplomacy without investments, and pressure without direct entanglement. 

The UAE presents a different configuration. Historically, Emirati policy toward Iran was defined by a multi-track approach of hard balancing alongside economic pragmatism. Dubai sustained extensive commercial ties with Iran even during past conflicts, while Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah are in a managed territorial conflict with Iran over three islands. This has been under Abu Dhabi’s strategic umbrella, which inherently views the Islamic Republic as a primary security and ideological threat. The current war is placing that balance under severe strain, as economic engagement demonstrably failed to deter Iranian escalation. The UAE is considering freezing billions of dollars of Iranian assets, and has already closed Iranian schools, a university, a hospital, and a social club in Dubai. Abu Dhabi is signaling a shift to a more confrontational posture and appears to be pushing Trump not to end the war without a clear resolution. The UAE’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al-Otaiba, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “A simple cease-fire isn’t enough. We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats.”   

Kuwait has historically built its Iran policy around cautious balancing rather than sustained confrontation, shaped by its geographic exposure, strong diplomatic tradition, and a domestic political structure that encourages restraint. That tradition persists even now. Despite being targeted heavily during the war, Kuwait’s official rhetoric has remained measured. The Emir’s characterization of the attacks as the aggression of a “neighboring Muslim country, which we consider a friend,” captures the dissonance Kuwait is navigating: absorbing serious damage while refusing to abandon a posture of relative moderation. Relations between the two states have had major ups and downs since 1979, but they have managed them with reasonable cordiality through most of the past few decades. That management is now being tested by the scale of strikes on Kuwaiti civilian areas and infrastructure.  

Qatar’s position is rooted in a pragmatism that took center stage during the 2017 blockade, which deepened its functional relationship with Iran. Doha has not only sought to preserve communication channels with Tehran, but has offered its mediation on major issues involving the country. Even before the blockade, Qatar was one of the first countries to welcome the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and has repeatedly called for regional dialogue as the path toward stability and security. That pragmatic approach continues even after Iran’s recent “betrayal.” On March 2, Qatar’s deputy foreign minister said, that the “total annihilation of Iran is not an option,” and “we will live next to each other and we will be neighbors for the future of humankind. We have to find ways of living next to each other.” Doha’s emphasis remains on coexistence and de-escalation—not alignment against Iran, and certainly not in any configuration that includes Israel. Whether Qatar’s role as mediator survives in its current form is less certain. 

Oman occupies a category of its own. Its commitment to neutrality, mediation, and dialogue is not tactical but doctrinal—embedded in its foreign policy identity in a way that predates and will likely outlast the current conflict. Even after being attacked and its status over the Hormuz Strait put under pressure, Muscat has maintained—and in some respects elevated—this position. Its role as mediator may be constrained in the current environment, but its strategic outlook has not shifted. On March 11, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi stated plainly, in the aftermath of attacks on his country, that “our neutrality stands for the cause of peace: the cornerstone of our national security and our unique gift to the world.” Oman’s measured and cordial relations with Iran are likely to be a decisive factor in any eventual reopening of the Strait and in Iran’s broader engagement with the region. Muscat has been consistently opposed to a united GCC military front against Iran. That will not change.  

Differences Sharpened, Not Resolved 

The onset of war has brought each state’s underlying orientation into sharper relief. Bahrain sees confirmation of long-held threats. Saudi Arabia sees strategic risk and development vision pulling in different directions. The UAE faces tension between security and economic priorities. Kuwait emphasizes caution. Qatar reinforces its preference for de-escalation. Oman remains committed to dialogue. 

GCC leaders moved toward diplomacy with Iran after 2021 not because they trusted Tehran, but because they no longer believed that military deterrence and U.S. backing alone could provide a stable regional order. The war has not discredited that judgment—for most of them, it has reinforced it. For that reason, as severe as the war has been, it will not produce a unified GCC front against Iran. Some states will deepen deterrence, expand military cooperation, and reinforce external alliances. Others will continue to prioritize diplomacy and de-escalation. Most will pursue a combination, but in proportions that reflect their own interests, histories, and calculations of risk.  

What the war has made clear is that the GCC will not approach Iran as a single strategic actor. The six GCC member states do not assess Iranian power in the same way, do not rank threats in the same order, and do not tolerate risk at the same level. Any effort to construct a postwar security framework in the Gulf must begin from this reality, and from a clear-eyed recognition of the distinct agency of each state.