September 20, 2026

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Ali Abootalebi Informed Comment

The Arab states have long suffered from weak political legitimacy and ineffective governance. Authoritarian rule remains pervasive. According to Freedom House, no Arab country is currently classified as “Free,” while Jordan, Lebanon, and Comoros are rated “Partly Free.” Kuwait, following the suspension of its elected parliament in 2024, is now classified as “Not Free.”

The Arab world’s contribution to global scientific and technological development also remains below its potential. Although UNESCO reports that scientific publications from Arab states increased by 64 percent between 2015 and 2019, research-and-development spending remains comparatively low, and much of the region continues to depend heavily on imported technology.

These political and developmental weaknesses cannot be explained by domestic authoritarianism alone. External powers have profoundly shaped state-society relations in the Middle East.

Colonialism, military intervention, foreign-sponsored coups, economic dependence, and patron-client security relationships have influenced both the distribution of political power and the capacity of states to pursue independent national development.

The Persian Gulf monarchies’ longstanding military dependence on the United States represents

perhaps the clearest contemporary example.

From the Sykes-Picot Agreement and Balfour Declaration through the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli wars, outside powers repeatedly shaped the regional order. After the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, the expansion of American military bases further institutionalized the security relationship between Washington and the Gulf Cooperation Council states.

The post-Cold War period did not bring an end to external military intervention. The United States has intervened militarily in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, among other countries, while Israel has repeatedly conducted major military operations in Lebanon and Gaza. The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University identifies almost 400 U.S. military interventions since 1776, with more than one-quarter occurring after the end of the Cold War.

The Iran War Changes the Equation

The ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran exposes the limitations of the regional security system more dramatically than previous conflicts.

For decades, Washington’s Arab allies relied on American military superiority as the ultimate guarantee against external threats. Iran’s ability during the present war to impose substantial costs on American military installations has complicated that assumption.

A recent Pentagon inspector-general assessment found that Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures at U.S. facilities across the Middle East and destroyed numerous American aircraft and drones. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that direct

U.S. Defense Department costs had already exceeded $38 billion by August 2026, with potentially billions more being spent each month if the conflict continues.

The lesson for the Persian Gulf Arab states is not that Iran poses no threat. Tehran has supported armed non-state organizations, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and Arab governments have legitimate concerns about Iranian power and regional ambitions.

But treating Iran exclusively as an enemy has not produced regional security either.

Iran is a large state of roughly 90 million people occupying one side of the Persian Gulf and possessing substantial military capabilities, energy resources, and geopolitical influence. No durable Persian Gulf security system can simply exclude it.

The war therefore creates an opportunity for the Gulf Arab states to reconsider their overwhelming security dependence on the United States and move toward a regional system in which neighboring states assume greater responsibility for their own collective security.

There are already signs of movement in this direction. At the 166th ministerial session of the Arab League Council in September 2026, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty called for comprehensive Arab security arrangements involving greater defense coordination, crisis-response mechanisms, and implementation procedures. He proposed building on the 1950 Arab Treaty of Joint Defence while respecting the sovereignty of individual Arab states.

That proposal is important. But an exclusively Arab security architecture is insufficient.

From Arab Security to Regional Security

What the Persian Gulf ultimately requires is a regional, rather than merely Arab, security arrangement incorporating both the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran.

There are precedents for adversarial states negotiating institutional frameworks around shared interests. In August 2018, after two decades of negotiations, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The agreement did not resolve every dispute among the five governments, but it demonstrated that states with conflicting interests could nevertheless construct rules governing security, sovereignty, resources, and economic cooperation.

The same logic should apply to the Persian Gulf.

The GCC states and Iran share an overwhelming interest in avoiding perpetual warfare. China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Europe, and the United States likewise have enormous stakes in the stability of Gulf energy production and international shipping.

The institutional challenge is therefore to transform these overlapping interests into a security framework capable of restraining individual states—including Iran—from threatening their neighbors while simultaneously reducing incentives for external military domination.

In a 2013 study coauthored with Stephen Hill, I proposed a three-tiered diplomatic approach toward U.S.-Iranian rapprochement and the eventual establishment of a Persian Gulf Security Alliance (PGSA). The basic logic of that proposal remains relevant.

A PGSA could bring together Iran, the GCC states, and the United States around common security interests. China, Russia, India, and Pakistan could participate in negotiated roles as well. Their inclusion would help prevent such an organization from becoming—or being perceived as—another Western military alliance directed against Iran, China, or Russia.

Such an arrangement would not require Gulf states to trust Iran, nor Iran to trust the United States. Successful security institutions rarely begin with trust. They create procedures through which states possessing competing interests can communicate, negotiate, monitor commitments, and gradually reduce the danger of miscalculation.

The Persian Gulf at a Crossroads

The strategic environment of West Asia has changed dramatically since October 2023 and even more sharply since the outbreak of direct warfare involving Iran.

Iran cannot realistically be removed from the regional balance of power. Tehran considers recognition of its sovereignty, its civilian nuclear program, its missile capabilities, and an end to what it views as a continuing American-Western policy of coercion to be fundamental national-security issues. Washington and the Arab Gulf states, meanwhile, have their own security concerns about Iran that any negotiated regional architecture would have to address.

Doha, Qatar. © 2018 Juan Cole.

A regional security organization would also serve American interests. As Washington increasingly focuses strategic resources on competition with China and Russia, participation in an inclusive Persian Gulf arrangement could preserve an American role in regional security without requiring perpetual military primacy or exclusive reliance on bilateral patron-client relationships.

For the Arab Gulf states, the stakes are even greater.

They face the difficult transition from oil-dependent rentier economies, pressures for more responsive governance, dependence on foreign labor, limited domestic industrial and agricultural capacity, rapidly growing technological demands, and the transformative—and still uncertain—effects of artificial intelligence.

Perpetual regional warfare makes confronting these challenges vastly more difficult.

The current war should therefore be understood not simply as another episode in the long confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States. It should force a larger reconsideration of the political and security architecture of the Persian Gulf.

For decades, Gulf security has rested primarily on American military power and bilateral protection arrangements. The present conflict demonstrates the vulnerabilities of that system.

The alternative is neither Iranian domination nor American withdrawal. It is the gradual construction of a regional security framework in which Arab states, Iran, and major international stakeholders accept institutional restraints and recognize that their long-term security is ultimately interdependent.

The Persian Gulf states are at a crossroads. Another generation of militarization, intervention, and regional confrontation is possible. But so is a different security order built around diplomacy, regional responsibility, and negotiated coexistence.

The latter will be difficult to construct.

The alternative may prove considerably more costly.

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