Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf, and Israeli officials.
After private grumbling at the start of the war that they were not given adequate advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complaining the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region, some of the regional allies are making the case to the White House that the moment offers a historic opportunity to cripple Tehran’s clerical rule once and for all.
Officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there’s a dramatic shift in Iranian behavior, according to the officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The push from the Gulf nations comes as Trump vacillates between claiming that Iran’s decimated leadership is ready to settle the conflict and threatening to further escalate the war if a deal is not reached soon.
All the while, Trump is struggling to rally public support at home for a war that’s left more than 3,000 dead across the Mideast and is shaking the global economy. Yet the U.S. leader is sounding increasingly confident that he has the full support of his most important Mideast allies — including some that were hesitant about a new military campaign in the lead-up to the war.
“Saudi Arabia’s fighting back hard. Qatar is fighting back. UAE is fighting back. Kuwait’s fighting back. Bahrain’s fighting back,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday evening as he made his way to Washington from his home in Florida. “They’re all fighting back.”
The Gulf countries host U.S. forces and bases from which the U.S. has launched strikes on Iran, but have not joined the offensive strikes.
Gulf allies support the war to varying degrees
While regional leaders are broadly supportive of the U.S. efforts now, one Gulf diplomat described some division, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE leading calls to increase military pressure on Tehran.
The UAE has emerged as perhaps the most hawkish of the Gulf countries and is pushing hard for Trump to order a ground invasion, the diplomat said. Kuwait and Bahrain also favor this option.
The UAE, which has faced more than 2,300 missile and drone attacks from Iran, has only grown more irritated as the war grinds on and the salvos threaten to tarnish its image as the safe, pristine, and monied hub for trade and tourism of the Mideast.
Oman and Qatar, which have historically served as intermediaries between the long economically isolated Iran and the West, have favored a diplomatic solution.
The diplomat said Saudi Arabia has argued to the U.S. that ending the war now won’t produce a “good deal,” one guaranteeing security for Iran’s Arab neighbors.
The Saudis say an eventual war settlement must neutralize Iran’s nuclear program, destroy its ballistic missile capabilities, end Tehran’s support for proxy groups, and also ensure that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be effectively shutdown by the Islamic Republic in the future as it has during the conflict. About 20% of the world’s oil flowed through the waterway before the war.
Achieving those goals would require a sharp course correction by the theocracy that has been in charge of the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution or its removal.
Senior Emirati officials, meanwhile, have become more pointed in their rhetoric toward Iran.
“An Iranian regime that launches ballistic missiles at homes, weaponizes global trade and supports proxies is no longer an acceptable feature of the regional landscape,” Noura Al Kaabi, a minister of state at the UAE’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a column published Monday by the state-linked, English-language newspaper The National. She added: “We want a guarantee that this will never happen again.”
The White House declined to comment for this story about the deliberations with Gulf allies. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday underscored that the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies are in sync about Iran.
“They are religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future,” Rubio said of Iran in an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And all of their neighbors know that, by the way, which is why all of their neighbors have been supportive of the efforts we’re conducting.”
