Arab Nations’ Era of Accommodating Iran Is Over

By Ahmad Sharawi

Friday, March 13, 2026

 

Tehran is lashing out at its Arab neighbors as the U.S.-Israeli strikes intensify, making clear it is willing to inflict maximum harm and damage to the Persian Gulf states, expanding the battlefield and dragging them into the storm. Since the conflict began, Iran has launched more than 2,500 missiles and drones toward Gulf states, targeting everything from cities to energy infrastructure to economies, which now serve as collateral in Iran’s confrontation with the U.S. and Israel.

 

For years, many Arab governments convinced themselves this moment would never arrive. They hedged and tolerated aspects of Tehran’s regional activities. Yet, the strategy has failed. Saudi Arabia normalized relations with Iran in 2023, but its oil infrastructure is now being targeted. The United Arab Emirates serves as a hub for Iranian sanctions evasion, yet it too faces missile and drone attacks. Qatar and Oman host Iran’s proxies, but they have not been spared either.

 

Iran has long preferred to shift the cost of confrontation onto its Arab neighbors. In 2019, Iran struck Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility. The attack briefly knocked out roughly half of the kingdom’s oil production and sent shock waves through global energy markets. Tehran has long relied on proxies to fight its battles on Arab soil. These include militants linked to a failed coup attempt in Bahrain in 1981 and the Houthis’ missile and drone barrages against Saudi and Emirati cities. The American presence in the Gulf has also been a target. In 1996, an Iran-backed network carried out the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen.

 

Iran has not hidden its ambitions when it comes to the Arab world. Tehran’s officials have boasted that the regime controlled four Arab capitals — Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa — and have portrayed Gulf states as weak regimes and forward bases of American power. In 2008, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander warned that “all the cities of the Persian Gulf are within range of Iranian missiles” — a reminder that in Tehran’s strategic thinking, the Gulf monarchies are leverage points in its confrontation with Washington.

 

Today, Tehran is widening the battlefield, turning Arab states themselves into the front line of its war with Washington. Whether this is out of weakness — dragging the region into the storm as pressure mounts — or to punish Gulf states for their ties with the United States, the region will remain unstable as long as the Islamic Republic survives.

 

​Yet many Persian Gulf governments have not reached that conclusion. They still insist that regime change in Tehran should not be the goal, preferring a quick end to the conflict instead. The fear is that a post-regime Iran could descend into civil war, produce a refugee crisis, or empower an even more radical successor controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. The Gulf states see a weakened but stable Islamic Republic as preferable to regional chaos.

 

It is not required that Gulf governments openly call for regime change in Tehran. That task can be left to Washington and Jerusalem. But the policy that has guided Gulf diplomacy for years — maintaining trade, financial channels, and diplomatic engagement with the Islamic Republic while hoping tensions would remain manageable — has collapsed. The alternative should be a shift from hedging to isolating Iran diplomatically and economically.

 

Tehran itself offered a reminder of why hedging no longer works. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s recent apology for its attacks on neighboring countries rang hollow. On the same day he expressed regret for the strikes, Iranian forces launched 27 more attacks — the highest daily total since the war began. This is a regime that cannot be trusted. Left unchecked, it will keep setting the region ablaze. As long as it survives, future conflict is inevitable, and Arab states will again find themselves in the crosshairs.

 

Washington should make clear to its Persian Gulf partners that neutrality is no longer a strategy. Preventing future attacks will not come from accommodating Tehran but from isolating it. This means dismantling the financial hubs that Iranian operatives use to evade sanctions. It also means restricting the commercial channels that sustain Tehran’s economy and expelling Iran’s proxies who operate under the diplomatic fiction of mediation. Gulf governments should align themselves with those confronting Tehran’s aggression — hedging will only ensure that Arab cities remain the battlefield.