The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has done much more to the Arab Gulf than inflict material and economic damage. It has shattered the foundational assumptions of the regional security order and forced a reassessment of the defense-industrial policies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states.
From the war’s zero hour on February 28, Iran systematically targeted its neighbors’ territories by unleashing unprecedented missile and drone attacks against them in order to achieve escalation parity with its adversaries. Throughout, the U.S. security architecture not only failed to deter the attacks but arguably invited them, while the Gulf states largely adopted a restrained posture toward Iranian aggression and relied on their own defensive capabilities.
Gulf states are now under pressure to revisit their priorities as they contemplate how to reconfigure security and defense policies. In light of the bitter lessons learned during the course of the conflict, the future outlook of regional defense-industrial architecture and individual national trajectories will be determined by how they answer some of the most critical questions they face, including what is the proper security balance, who poses a threat, and by what means is security best achieved.
How much security?
At a conceptual level, the very meaning of security and the value attributed to it are being revisited. In the past, the Gulf security calculus, which was based on a U.S. security umbrella, took a maximalist approach to the balance between risk tolerance and security. Treating security as an absolute value, the assumption was that the deterrence gained through high-cost security cooperation with Washington would shield them against aggression, hence minimizing the vulnerability to external shocks.
Now that this vision has been shattered, the balance between risks and security may have to be redefined, forcing the Gulf states to make painful choices. On the one hand, achieving a new equilibrium of deterrence on a maximalist notion of absolute security will likely require an enormous expansion of military spending and compromises to welfare objectives, which may strain the domestic social contract. On the other hand, risk-tolerant security planning may lock the region into a phase of structural insecurity and uncertainty, thereby undermining the current developmental model predicated on the absolute preservation of physical security and stability. In the final analysis, security comprises only one area of public policy, with significant distributional implications. Therefore, depending on the value attached to security in relation to other welfare objectives, each nation’s allocation of resources to the defense-industrial sector will differ.
Security against whom?
A related question concerns threat perceptions. Eventually, defense-industrial planning has to answer the critical question: “Security against whom?” For a long time, Iran has been the main threat on which the Gulf security and defense planning was predicated, and on which defense-industrial and procurement decisions have been taken. During the current period of conflict, however, a second systemic risk, appears to be taking shape: Israeli regional ambitions. For now, the primary concern remains reestablishing deterrence vis-à-vis Iran in light of the lessons learned. This will require procurement plans for various conventional and unconventional capabilities, ranging from layered air defense systems to drone programs and missile systems, and potentially even toying with the idea of pursuing nuclear capabilities. Increasingly, however, Israel’s destabilizing actions in the wider region have come to the fore. This poses a considerable dilemma, given that while some GCC states are incorporating Israel into their threat calculus, others are keen to deepen their security cooperation with it.
The extent to which containing, countering or deterring the Israeli threat is incorporated into security thinking will also have ramifications for the defense industrial planning, as it has direct bearing on critical questions ranging from how much to spend on defense, to which platforms to develop and, eventually, through which partnerships. Inclusion of Israel in threat perceptions may also entail opportunity costs: forgoing potential partnerships with Israel, which can provide advanced technologies and a competitive edge in certain systems, and losing the privileged access to the U.S. military-industrial ecosystem. In any case, the dual-deterrence challenge—simultaneously reasserting deterrence against Iran and containing Israel—will raise the bar for securing the Gulf.
Security by what means?
Thirdly, at the security policy level, major choices regarding strategic partnerships are incumbent upon the Gulf, with implications for defense-industrial planning. Given the massive erosion in the reliability and credibility of U.S. security guarantees on the one hand, and the destabilizing nature of U.S. policies on the other, a search is underway to redefine the defense relationships. Possible options range from diversification through other actors with sizeable defense-industrial capacity, to greater intra-GCC integration, to doubling down on Washington. But, even in the latter case, the impetus for autonomous capacity-building will be stronger than before, at the very least due to the trust deficit with the U.S.
While the diversification of security partnerships may, in theory, be appealing, in practice, it may not be a solution to the Gulf’s security problem in isolation. Gulf militaries are deeply embedded within the U.S. defense-industrial system, which also enables their access to advanced platforms and a robust military arsenal that has been used to great effect in defending against Iranian missile and drone strikes. However, this embeddedness—forged over decades—locks them into partnership with the United States and limits the options for diversification away from the U.S. or its allied defense-industrial ecosystem.
Unless they are willing to risk the major opportunity costs of breaking away from the U.S., shifting to China or finding other alternative suppliers is highly improbable. Even within the U.S.-allied ecosystem, the kind of high-end platforms that the Gulf militaries rely on, and will continue to procure, may not be easily accessible. Therefore, as the Gulf countries seek to renegotiate the terms of partnership with the United States, they might press to expand programs in the defense-industrial sector, including technology transfers or joint production arrangements, parallel to the drive for greater localization.
Security by whom?
Finally, the Iran conflict has revived a perennial question in the Gulf: Who provides for regional security? For Gulf states, localization and the expansion of domestic defense industries appear to be the most sustainable path forward. Investments in homegrown military production have already become central to broader economic strategies. Yet without a renewed effort to collectivize defense-industrial planning and procurement programs at the GCC level, the risks of duplication, inefficiency, and rising costs will persist.
Traditionally, the defense posture of individual Gulf states rested on the assumption of U.S. protection, reinforced by sustained procurement of advanced American weapons systems. But this dependence did not translate into a unified or integrated regional defense architecture capable of autonomous collective military action. Amid the current conflict, renewed calls have emerged for prioritizing collective solutions over unilateral ones. This also aligns with broader trends in recent years toward greater GCC-level coordination on joint defense initiatives, particularly in areas such as integrated air and missile defense.
At the same time, the Gulf is unlikely to move toward a post-American security order anytime soon. Nonetheless, achieving a collective approach to defense policy even within a broader U.S. security umbrella is far from guaranteed. The early signs during this conflict are hardly encouraging and point instead to the persistence of political rivalries and strategic divergences that have hindered intra-GCC political and security cooperation for decades. Short of a truly integrated regional defense strategy, the most realistic path forward may be greater coordination to avoid competitive unilateral approaches, alongside the development of flexible sub-GCC partnerships among like-minded members, including through joint procurement and industrial cooperation programs. Such arrangements could help Gulf states reap the benefits of economies of scale, as they expand their defense-industrial bases and diversify arms procurement partnerships, while gradually carving out greater autonomy in their security relations with the United States.
