Al Jazeera Bemoans Iran’s Attacks on Gulf Arab States

With its constant attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors, the Islamic Republic of Iran turns those neighbors, who had tried hard to remain aloof from Iran’s conflict with America, into sworn enemies of Iran, and what’s worse, from the point of view of Al Jazeera, the propaganda mouthpiece of its owner, the Emir of Qatar, Iran’s targeting of all six of its Gulf neighbors — Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman — hitting with thousands of missiles and drones their oil and gas production facilities and refineries, electrical plants, desalination plants, and airports, that only pushes those Gulf Arab states closer to Israel.

Iran’s ill-considered policy of hitting Gulf Arab states was, in Tehran’s calculation, going to make those states pressure the Americans to stop the war. That hasn’t happened. Instead, the Gulf Arabs now want America not to end the war prematurely, but “to finish the job” so that Iran can never again threaten its neighbors. More on how Iran has turned itself into the common enemy of America, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states, can be found here: “Iran’s strikes on the Gulf: Burning the bridges of good neighbourliness,” by Sultan Al-Khulaifi, Al Jazeera, March 7, 2026:

When the United States and Israel launched their coordinated assault on Iran in the early hours of February 28, 2026, an operation Washington has named “Operation Epic Fury”, the Gulf states did not cheer. They watched with dread.

That is not quite true. We know that behind the scenes, the Saudi crown prince had for months been urging President Trump to attack Iran. He must have watched not with dread as American and Israel launched their initial attack, but with quiet satisfaction.

For years, they had invested enormous diplomatic capital in preventing precisely this moment. They had engaged Tehran, maintained embassies, and offered repeated assurances that their territories would not serve as launchpads against the Islamic Republic.

That Iran’s response has been to turn its missiles on these same neighbours is not only a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions, but is also a profound moral and legal failure that risks poisoning relations for generations to come.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states did not arrive at this crisis as Iran’s enemies. They arrived as reluctant bystanders, having spent years threading a needle between Washington and Tehran with deliberate, often thankless, care….

I disagree with the writer, Sultan Al-Khulaifi. For years the Gulf Arabs have been alarmed as they watched Iran create a “Shi’a crescent” extending from Iran to include Shia militias in Iraq, Shia Houthis in Yemen, Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even Hamas, though its membership was Sunni, was provided aid by Iran, that treated Hamas as an “honorary Shia” member because it was hellbent, like Iran, on destroying the Jewish state.

Every missile fired at Dubai or Doha or Riyadh shifts the narrative, pulls the Gulf states deeper into a conflict they sought to avoid, and weakens the very actors most capable of mediating a way out. This is a strategic miscalculation of the first order. The interest of the wider region lies in preventing Israel from emerging as the unchallenged hegemon of the Middle East, a scenario that becomes more likely, not less, the more Iran pushes its Arab neighbours out of their potential role as honest brokers and into the arms of a deeper security alignment with Washington. Iran, in targeting the Gulf, is not resisting the new regional order; it is inadvertently constructing it.

What Sultan Al-Khulaifi chooses not to say is that these Gulf Arab states are not just moving closer to Washington, but also closer to Jerusalem. The UAE and Bahrain were already linked to Israel in the Abrahamic Accords, and their support for the Jewish state has only deepened as it becomes obvious that Israel is the single most effective military power, even more than the United States, against Iran. Saudi Arabia, which for months before the war broke out had behind the scenes been urging Trump to attack Iran, has clearly been appreciative of the IDF’s destruction of so many ballistic missiles and drones that Iran will no longer be able to launch on Saudi oil production facilities. The UAE too, having endured more Iranian ballistic missile attacks even than Israel, is grateful to the Jewish state for doing such damage to Iran’s store of ballistic missiles, its ballistic missile plants, and its missile launchers. Among the Gulf Arab states, Qatar was the closest to Iran, which is why the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members — especially the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain — blockaded Qatar between 2017 and 2022, accusing it of supporting Iran-backed groups and fostering closer ties with Iran, which they viewed as a threat to regional security.

Even if the war with Iran were to be halted tomorrow, and no more missiles or drones were launched by Tehran at the Gulf Arab states, it would take many years for the bad blood between the Gulf Arabs and Iran to subside. Iran — the Shi’a and non-Arab outlier in a Sunni Arab sea — will be shunned by its neighbors unless it agrees to pay for all the damage it has inflicted on the Gulf Arab states, which as of now exceeds $100 billion. I don’t think Iran will ever agree to that.