Months of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iranian retaliation against Gulf states hosting U.S. military installations, have reframed the principal question confronting Gulf security. It is no longer simply whether alliances can deter aggression, but whether they offer sufficient agency to shape the conditions under which deterrence succeeds, fails, or gives way to escalation. Security, in this context, becomes inseparable from influence over the management of escalation itself. U.S. strikes against Iran have exposed a structural vulnerability embedded within the Gulf security architecture: The same hosting arrangements intended to strengthen deterrence have also enlarged host states’ strategic exposure to retaliation, without giving them corresponding say in the U.S. decisions that trigger them.
The Basing Paradox
Early in the war, one policy response advocated by this author was to convert U.S. military presence in the Gulf into protection through integrated air and missile defense, shared early warning, hardened infrastructure, and stronger command coordination. Importantly, U.S. basing arrangements across the Gulf Cooperation Council states are neither uniform nor synonymous with unrestricted American operational freedom. As the governing provisions remain undisclosed, their legal frameworks range from defense cooperation agreements in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to facilities-access arrangements in Oman and more politically negotiated access in Saudi Arabia. The frameworks do not deprive GCC states of their territorial agency, yet the deficit arises because control over their territories does not confer equivalent influence over escalation initiated outside the Gulf, even when the consequences bear directly on it.
That diagnosis remains valid. But renewed escalation after the collapse of the July memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the parties shows that vulnerability is now only the first layer of the problem. The deeper question is who gets to shape escalation when its territorial, economic, and political costs are distributed across GCC states that did not necessarily choose it.
The relapse into fighting made this distinction clearer. On July 14, U.S. Central Command resumed its naval blockade against vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports. On the same day, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued a new conflict-zone bulletin advising operators not to fly through the airspace of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, or the UAE. EASA explicitly linked the danger to Iranian missile and drone attacks, U.S. military activity, activated air defense systems, and the presence of major U.S. military facilities. GCC states’ airspace, bases, shipping routes, and infrastructure became part of U.S. wartime operational geography. Recent missile and drone activity affecting Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar illustrates this sustained and widening geography of pressure. Renewed aviation warnings concerning the airspace of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and the Gulf of Oman similarly illustrate how the concentration of major U.S. military installations increases the risks of attack, interception, misidentification, and wider operational disruption.
Additionally, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz—through which more than one-third of global seaborne crude oil and nearly one-fifth of liquefied natural gas flows, as well as numerous other essential products—has demonstrated the power of coercion in contemporary warfare. Iran’s retaliatory strategy was not simply aimed at pressuring the Gulf states through attacking their infrastructure, but about pressuring the global economy through targeting Gulf connectivity. Disrupting energy exports, maritime traffic, and airspace access has been just as pivotal as attacking U.S. basing infrastructure, imposing wide economic and political costs on the Gulf states.
From Systemic Coercion to the Gulf Agency Deficit
GCC states are increasingly indispensable to the functioning of the regional security order, yet remain insufficiently empowered to shape the escalation dynamics that place them at risk. Academic scholarship on GCC states often describes mediation, diversification, and hedging as instruments of Gulf strategic agency. Yet diplomatic activism and agency are not interchangeable. Qatar can help keep diplomatic channels open between Washington and Tehran, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can diversify economic and defense relationships. While Gulf governments exercise greater foreign policy autonomy through diversification and strategic hedging against great power rivalry, this in and of itself does not necessarily confer influence over the initiation, tempo, geographical scope, operational conduct or termination of war.
The emerging strategic approach is shifting toward conditional partnership: If military presence must be converted into effective protection, then security partnership must also be converted into meaningful influence over the management of escalation. Conditional partnership would require more than rhetorical consultation or incremental improvements in burden-sharing. It would entail a substantive renegotiation of the political terms governing military access, basing, and operational support. At present, Gulf governments do possess significant territorial agency: they can constrain how bases, airspace or facilities on their sovereign territory are used. The deficit emerges when U.S. operations undertaken outside those territories alter the threat environment inside them. That is, a GCC state may have exercised its sovereign right to refuse participation in an attack but still becomes a retaliatory target.
| Conditional partnership mechanism | What it governs | Policy objective | Effects |
| Basing and access authority | Use of Gulf territory, airspace, facilities, and logistical assets for offensive military operations | Preserve host-state sovereignty over operations launched from or materially supported by its territory | Gives GCC states clearer authority to approve, limit or condition specific categories of military use |
| Escalation-risk consultation | Major US military actions conducted elsewhere that are likely to increase retaliatory risks for GCC states | Extend Gulf agency beyond territorial consent to decisions that materially alter their threat environment | Creates structured consultation, prior notification where feasible and joint assessment of likely regional consequences |
| Exposure-linked protection commitments | Situations in which allied military action increases the likelihood of retaliation against Gulf territory, infrastructure or civilian systems | Link increased strategic exposure to predefined defensive obligations | Triggers reinforced air and missile defense, intelligence sharing, force protection, early warning and critical-infrastructure support |
Conditional partnership should therefore operate across three layers of agency: sovereign control over the use of Gulf territory, structured influence over external military decisions that materially increase Gulf exposure, and predefined protection commitments when that exposure rises.
The policy objective is not to question U.S. indispensability to Gulf security, but to prevent that indispensability from entrenching an asymmetrical relationship. The Gulf security agency deficit is not primarily a deficit of sovereignty over bases; it is a deficit of influence over escalation decisions whose consequences extend beyond the territorial boundaries of those arrangements.
