NATO and the GCC: what lies ahead?

This situation assessment examines the evolving relationship between NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in the aftermath of the 2026 U.S.-Israel-Iran war and the Alliance’s Ankara Summit. It assesses how NATO’s southern engagement is being operationalized, the limits of that engagement, and the parallel rise of regional minilateral arrangements such as the August 2026 Mecca Defense Alliance.

In the emerging regional security order, NATO–GCC relations have become an increasingly timely strategic issue. NATO’s engagement with the Gulf has evolved from a partnership initiative into an important instrument of the Alliance’s broader approach to its Southern Neighborhood. In particular, the 2026 U.S.-Israel-Iran war fundamentally altered the strategic context of NATO–GCC relations. By exposing the direct implications of Gulf security for Euro-Atlantic interests, the conflict accelerated NATO’s engagement with its southern partners and positioned the 2026 Ankara Summit as a turning point towards a more structured and operational partnership.

The Ankara Summit Declaration explicitly linked the Alliance’s security to strategic competition, instability and freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz—the first time the Strait was named in a NATO Summit Declaration. While the foundations of NATO–GCC cooperation were established more than two decades ago, the changing geopolitical environment indicates that the relationship is entering a new phase. On the margins of the Summit, officials from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates met with Allied Foreign Ministers to discuss maritime security, defense cooperation and deeper institutional engagement. Qatar’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, participated in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) ministerial meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and held bilateral discussions with NATO’s Special Representative for the Southern Neighborhood, Javier Colomina, underscoring the practical elevation of the partnership.

The ICI, launched at NATO’s 2004 Istanbul Summit in Türkiye, established the Alliance’s first formal framework for cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Built on the principles of flexibility, mutual benefit and non-imposition, the initiative sought to strengthen regional security through practical defense cooperation rather than political dialogue. Although all six GCC member states initially expressed interest, only Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formally joined the initiative in 2005, while Saudi Arabia and Oman opted for selective engagement.

Consequently, the envisioned NATO–GCC multilateral framework never fully materialized, and from 2008 onwards the ICI effectively evolved into a NATO+4 format. Nevertheless, it established an enduring platform for cooperation in defense reform, military interoperability, counterterrorism, non-proliferation, border security and civil emergency planning. Differing strategic expectations—Gulf partners seeking stronger security assurances while NATO emphasized capacity-building and interoperability—combined with the Gulf states’ longstanding preference for bilateral security relationships with the United States, constrained the ICI’s evolution into a broader strategic partnership.

The strategic environment has changed profoundly over the past five years. The withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Russia’s 2022 war on Ukraine, and the regional escalation following October 2023 reinforced the growing interconnectedness of Euro-Atlantic and Middle Eastern security. Energy security, maritime trade, the protection of critical infrastructure and supply chain resilience have become shared strategic priorities, while disruptions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden demonstrated the global consequences of regional instability. Simultaneously, the transition towards a more multipolar international order has encouraged GCC states to diversify their security partnerships while pursuing greater strategic autonomy. Following the 2021 Al Ula Summit and the adoption of the GCC Vision on Regional Security in 2024, Gulf states demonstrated a greater willingness to coordinate regional security policies and engage more systematically with international partners, including NATO. In parallel, NATO elevated the Gulf within its southern strategy through the Southern Neighborhood Action Plan, the appointment of a Special Representative for the Southern Neighborhood and intensified high-level political engagement. The Ankara Summit reinforced this broader shift by formally stating that European Allies and Canada are assuming greater responsibility for the Alliance’s defense, while NATO simultaneously expanded engagement with its Southern Neighborhood.

Against this backdrop, the 2026 Ankara Summit represented the clearest indication that NATO–GCC relations are moving beyond the limitations of the original ICI framework. Convened in the aftermath of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war and following attacks against U.S. military installations and critical infrastructure across the Gulf, the summit underscored the region’s growing strategic importance for Euro-Atlantic security. Iranian missile and drone attacks, together with threats to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Aden, demonstrated that Gulf security can no longer be regarded solely as a regional concern. Moreover, the launch of four flagship cooperation projects covering maritime security, uncrewed aerial systems, counterterrorism and defense against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, further reflects NATO’s shift towards more operational and capability-oriented cooperation with its Gulf partners.

Maritime security is increasingly emerging as a shared and urgent priority. The U.S.-Israel-Iran war exposed the risk that temporary control claims could be converted into customary-law assertions over the Strait of Hormuz. The extreme cost asymmetry between sea, land and air transport means that no land corridor can substitute for secure maritime routes in the near term, making sustained domain awareness and crisis communication essential for both Gulf partners and Euro-Atlantic interests.

Nevertheless, this evolving relationship should not be interpreted as the emergence of a collective defense arrangement. NATO is very unlikely to replace the United States as the Gulf’s principal security guarantor, nor are GCC member states seeking formal alliance commitments. NATO has never regarded itself as a direct security provider for the Gulf. Rather, the Alliance’s comparative advantage lies in supporting defense modernization, professional military education, training, military interoperability, intelligence cooperation, cyber resilience, maritime security and crisis management.

NATO–GCC relations are therefore best understood through the framework of cooperative security. Although the current geopolitical environment has created unprecedented incentives for closer cooperation, sustained progress will depend upon greater institutionalization—clear implementation timelines, joint exercises and measurable capability outputs for the flagship projects—and closer alignment of strategic priorities between NATO’s southern strategy and the security agendas of individual Gulf partners.

NATO’s Southern Neighborhood in a Layered Security Order

For Middle Eastern policymakers, the key question is how NATO fits into a security order in which external guarantees, national defense capabilities, GCC mechanisms, bilateral partnerships and new minilateral arrangements increasingly coexist. This distinction matters because it shifts the policy focus from alliance membership to practical questions of interoperability, air and missile defense, maritime awareness, critical infrastructure protection, cyber resilience, technology transfer, and crisis coordination.

Looking ahead, defense diplomacy is likely to become the most practical avenue for advancing NATO–GCC cooperation in an increasingly multipolar and contested security environment. As hybrid threats increasingly target maritime infrastructure, supply chains, critical energy assets and undersea networks, traditional alliance models alone are insufficient to address security challenges below the threshold of armed conflict. Flexible, capability-oriented partnerships therefore offer a more politically viable and operationally effective approach.

NATO’s extensive experience in cooperative security, capacity building and military interoperability complements the GCC’s growing interest in strengthening regional resilience while preserving strategic autonomy. Rather than pursuing formal security guarantees or institutional integration, both sides can expand cooperation through practical initiatives, including joint training and exercises, professional military education, officer exchange programs, maritime domain awareness, cyber resilience and the integration of emerging and disruptive technologies.

The NATO–ICI Regional Center in Kuwait already provides an established platform for many of these activities, while smaller coalitions of willing NATO Allies and GCC member states could accelerate cooperation in areas where broader political consensus remains elusive. The evolution of NATO’s partnerships demonstrates that differing regional contexts require differentiated cooperation models. In the Gulf, the ICI’s request-driven and consent-based framework, which allows partners to engage selectively according to national priorities, has proven to be a pragmatic and politically sustainable model of engagement.

In this respect, Qatar’s participation in NATO’s Operational Capabilities Concept (OCC) in 2024 represents a flagship example of deeper operational cooperation, particularly in the field of operational preparedness and interoperability. The OCC has become one of the most effective instruments for operationalizing the ICI partnership, providing structured certification, joint training and interoperability pathways that go beyond ad-hoc engagement. The Partnership Cooperation Menu (PCM) and Individual Tailored Partnership Programmes (ITPP) further enable multi-annual, demand-driven capacity building, although non-ICI states such as Saudi Arabia and Oman still face bureaucratic barriers to full access. More recent diplomatic initiatives, including the work of the NATO–ICI Policy Advisory Group, NATO’s expanding outreach to Oman and Saudi Arabia, and the launch of new flagship cooperation projects, indicate growing momentum towards a more institutionalized partnership.

Nevertheless, defense diplomacy cannot eliminate political divergences nor replace the bilateral security arrangements that continue to underpin Gulf security. It can, however, strengthen mutual confidence, improve interoperability, enhance resilience and facilitate strategic dialogue. Consequently, incremental, practical and capability-driven cooperation is likely to provide the most sustainable foundation for the next phase of NATO–GCC relations. Rather than focusing exclusively on the further formalization of existing partnership mechanisms, NATO should also pursue more flexible and less institutionalized forms of high-level political engagement with Gulf partners to broaden dialogue, accommodate varying levels of participation, and reinforce strategic cooperation across the region.

The Mecca Defense Alliance: A Post-Summit Test of the Multipolar Trend

The Mecca Defense Alliance between Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan sharpens the post-Ankara picture. The agreement contains a mutual defense principle, but it should not be treated as a “Middle Eastern NATO” or as a substitute for existing security arrangements. Rather, its immediate significance lies in consultation, coordination and deterrence among three states with complementary capabilities but different threat perceptions. Its likely effect is to layer a regionally owned mechanism onto Saudi Arabia’s U.S. partnerships and GCC frameworks, Türkiye’s NATO membership and Pakistan’s existing defense relationships. On August 31, senior officials from the three countries met in Istanbul, convening the newly created Strategic Political and Defense Committee. Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also announced the pact’s formal name “The Mecca Defense Alliance,” with a secretariat established in Riyadh that would initially be led by a Pakistani secretary-general.

This development also illustrates a deeper transition from “imported security” toward regional joint security. Regional states are seeking greater capacity to shape the rules of their own security environment as the reliability and priorities of external guarantors become less certain. The emerging model is therefore increasingly layered and networked: enduring relationships with external powers coexist with regional defense arrangements, bilateral partnerships and more flexible mechanisms for consultation and deterrence. This can strengthen regional agency and bargaining power, but whether it ultimately produces stabilizing deterrence or competing security blocs will depend on implementation, transparency and the extent to which these new arrangements remain compatible with wider regional dialogue.

The Ankara discussions highlighted a central paradox: security cooperation is becoming denser even as the region remains institutionally fragmented. NATO is strengthening functional ties with Gulf partners; regional powers are experimenting with minilateral arrangements; and the credibility and future role of the United States are being recalibrated rather than simply disappearing. This creates opportunities for burden-sharing and regional ownership but also raises the risk that overlapping frameworks develop without common rules for deconfliction.

A Regional Architecture Beyond Blocs: What the Helsinki Process Can Offer

Despite growing recognition that the region’s increasingly interconnected security challenges require more structured mechanisms for dialogue and crisis management, the current political conditions remain unconducive to the creation of a comprehensive regional organization. What is emerging instead is an incremental, confidence-building approach centered on practical cooperation among regional actors.

The Helsinki Process serves as a valuable conceptual reference. Its principal relevance lies less in its institutional design than in its emphasis on sustained political dialogue, informal diplomatic engagement and confidence-building measures among strategic competitors. In this sense, the Helsinki framework offers a flexible methodology for reducing tensions in politically fragmented regions without requiring prior consensus on broader political disputes. The Helsinki Process is relevant here not because the 1975 Final Act can be transplanted to the Middle East, but because it institutionalized dialogue among adversaries before their fundamental disputes were resolved. Its three broad baskets—politico-military security; economic, scientific and technological cooperation; and the human dimension—offer a useful way to organize incremental engagement while keeping expectations realistic. The transferable lesson is procedural: sustained contact, transparency and confidence-building can be valuable even in the absence of a shared strategic order.

The three traditional “Helsinki baskets” could provide a useful organizing framework for regional engagement. The first basket, security cooperation, could facilitate the establishment of channels that enhance crisis communication, military transparency, and confidence-building measures and encourage greater regional ownership of security challenges. Such initiatives represent pragmatic steps towards reducing the risk of escalation in an increasingly volatile strategic environment.

Economic cooperation is a second pillar with considerable stabilizing potential. Structural socio-economic challenges, including corruption, unemployment, uneven economic development and limited regional connectivity, remain significant drivers of instability. Expanding economic interdependence through infrastructure development, trade, investment and joint development initiatives is not only an economic objective but a practical confidence-building instrument capable of mitigating political tensions over time.

The third basket, the human dimension, is equally important yet comparatively underutilized in regional security initiatives. Cooperation in areas such as education, cultural diplomacy, climate resilience, human rights and refugee protection is arguably considered politically less contentious and therefore better suited to sustaining dialogue during periods of heightened geopolitical tension. Such initiatives could gradually strengthen societal resilience while fostering habits of cooperation beyond traditional security institutions—complementing the layered security arrangements in which NATO participates as one external actor among others.

Recent regional conflicts have also demonstrated that contemporary security threats, including missile attacks, disruptions to maritime trade, energy insecurity and humanitarian crises, transcend political alignments and ultimately affect all regional actors. This shared exposure creates incentives for dialogue even among geopolitical rivals and may provide a more durable foundation for regional cooperation than attempts to resolve longstanding political disputes.

Moreover, a broader structural dilemma is worth noting. The erosion of the international rules-based order coincides with the continued absence of an effective regional security framework, leaving the Middle East without either a robust external stabilizing mechanism or a functioning indigenous security architecture. This institutional deficit is compounded by deep political fragmentation, divergent threat perceptions and competing strategic priorities, all of which continue to impede the emergence of collective security arrangements.

Any future regional security architecture is therefore likely to evolve gradually rather than emerge through comprehensive institutional design. Confidence-building measures in relatively low-politics domains, including regional connectivity, economic integration, humanitarian cooperation, environmental initiatives and educational exchanges, appear to be the most viable entry points for generating trust before tackling more contentious political and security issues. Informal Track 2 diplomacy may be a valuable mechanism for sustaining dialogue, with the potential to evolve into a broader regional consultative framework involving key regional actors such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Türkiye and Egypt.

Looking Ahead: The Future of NATO-Gulf Cooperation

The most likely medium-term outcome is a layered security order rather than a new comprehensive alliance system. NATO–Gulf cooperation will probably deepen in technical and operational domains while stopping short of collective defense. Regional minilateral arrangements such as the Mecca Defense Alliance may become more important, but their durability will depend on whether they develop credible consultation and implementation mechanisms. At the same time, an inclusive regional security architecture is more likely to emerge through cumulative confidence-building than through a single founding treaty or institution. If Gulf states ultimately choose a collective-defense route among themselves, NATO’s institutional experience in force integration, standards, and managing national differences would remain the most relevant external template—even while formal NATO membership or Article-5 guarantees remain off the table.

A more positive trajectory would see these layers become mutually reinforced: NATO helps build interoperable capabilities; GCC and minilateral mechanisms strengthen regional ownership; and Track 1.5/Track 2 platforms provide channels for crisis communication that include states outside formal security groupings. A negative trajectory would see the same arrangements harden into rival blocs, with duplicated defense commitments and little communication across them.

Achieving sustainable cooperation will, however, require NATO and regional powers to carefully navigate a number of challenges:

• Fragmentation Without Coordination: NATO–ICI projects, bilateral U.S. guarantees, GCC mechanisms, the Mecca Defense Alliance and other ad hoc coalitions may add capacity while also creating unclear expectations, duplicated structures and incompatible planning assumptions. Implementation hurdles also complicate these arrangements. Political-level agreements must navigate lengthy scoping, certification and funding processes (PCM access, trust funds, self-funding), and an overly formal partnership label can deter engagement by states that prefer to avoid binary alignments.
• Competing-Bloc Dynamics: A regional turn toward minilateral deterrence can raise the costs of aggression, but if framed against named adversaries it can also deepen security dilemmas and produce counter-alignments, especially amid continuing Israel–Iran competition.
• Uneven Gulf Threat Perceptions: Saudi Arabia and Oman remain outside the ICI, while GCC states continue to differ on the role they want NATO and other external actors to play. Institutional expansion that outruns political consensus could weaken, rather than strengthen, cooperation.
• Alliance Cohesion and U.S. Unpredictability: Ankara demonstrated that NATO can still produce concrete capability and spending commitments, but the exceptionally short Summit Declaration and visible transatlantic disagreements suggest that common strategy remains thinner on issues beyond core deterrence and defense.
• Legitimacy Risk: NATO’s regional role remains politically sensitive in parts of the Middle East owing to historical perceptions of the Alliance as a Western instrument and to past mismatches between Gulf expectations of security guarantees and NATO’s capacity-building focus. Cooperation that appears externally imposed, overly militarized or disconnected from local priorities could revive longstanding skepticism toward the Alliance.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the trajectory of Gulf–NATO relations will be shaped by how effectively both sides translate political commitments into sustained, practical cooperation. At the institutional level, this will depend on whether NATO’s four flagship Gulf projects acquire clear implementation timelines, regular exercises and measurable capability outputs; whether mechanisms such as the Operational Capabilities Concept and Partnership Cooperation Menu are opened more flexibly to non-ICI Gulf states; and whether maritime-domain confidence-building and crisis-communication mechanisms receive meaningful follow-up. It will also depend on whether Saudi Arabia and Oman deepen practical engagement with NATO without formally joining the ICI.

At the regional level, the evolution of the Mecca Defense Alliance will be consequential, including whether it develops durable consultation, command, exercise or procurement mechanisms and whether its membership expands. Türkiye’s ability to balance its NATO obligations with deepening regional defense partnerships and expanding defense-industrial relationships will also shape the emerging security architecture. Finally, post-war diplomacy could create openings for broader regional crisis-communication mechanisms covering missiles, drones, maritime incidents and critical infrastructure, potentially including channels involving Iran. These dynamics will determine whether Gulf–NATO cooperation remains primarily a series of bilateral and project-based engagements or develops into a more coherent framework for regional security and crisis management.

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Özge Genç contributed to this Situation Assessment.