Why is Iran Striking the Arab Gulf Countries?
There’s no effective way to start this article. One could narrate the historic animosity of the Islamic Revolution to the US and Israel; its aid to resistance movements throughout the region; and how the fight between the “reformists” and “hardliners” in Iran are centered on Iran’s regional standing. Instead, I turn to a quote from Dr. Fatima Smadi’s Hamas and Iran: From Marj al-Zuhour to the Al-Aqsa Flood regarding the first meetings between the IRGC and Hamas movement leaders during their deportation to South Lebanon’s Marj al-Zuhour in a 1992-1993:
“‘The Iranians,’ [Mujtaba] Abtahi1 says—he keeps a photographic archive from that period—’dealt with educated leadership. The Marj al-Zuhour camp included 20 university professors, more than 60 engineers, and 25 doctors, from different age groups. They saw frankness and boldness in expressing positions, even those that ran contrary to the Iranian view.’
Abtahi, one of the first to arrive at Marj al-Zuhour, was surprised by what the martyr Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi (may God have mercy on him), who headed the media committee in the deportees’ camp, told him: ‘Stay where you are and do not come any closer.’
‘I remember their caution—they believed we were unbelievers and polytheists, and they thought we worshipped Imam Ali; some of them were even unwilling to extend a hand to greet me. But later we formed a bond of brotherhood.’
After the initial meeting between Abtahi and the deportees had been tense, they began competing with one another to host him in their tents.”2
For Arabs and westerners alike, our knowledge of Iran is constrained by propaganda, often sectarian and imperialist in nature. Generalizations, sectarian misconceptions, and simplified understandings of Iran are common worldwide. With regards to anti-Iran stances in that era, years of war between Iran and Iraq - an attritional war fueled by the US and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to degrade both countries’ capabilities - contributed to a negative widespread Arab stance against Iran and its leadership. Nevertheless, Iranian support to Hamas and other resistance movements fighting Israel in the region has been largely unwavering, and continued contact between the leadership of Hamas and Iran has nullified the often sectarian misconceptions painted against Iran as seen above. This will be my introduction, serving as a warning against simplified understandings of Iran and its people; a slippery slope I hope to not fall into.
The importance of understanding Iran aside, the post-October 7th period is characterized by Israel realizing that it can not only genocide the Palestinians of Gaza and get away with it; it can wage a war against an entire region. Netanyahu’s allusions to a “super-Sparta” only underscore that Zionism has reached a stage where it deems itself as capable of overturning an entire region by its sheer military power. Previously, Zionism imagined itself as a “super-Athens” of sorts; a regional hub where normalization and hi-tech endeavors with the West and Arab gulf countries would cement its continued existence in the region while slowly eating up Palestinian land and subjecting the Palestinians of Gaza to a blockade and “mowing the lawn” campaigns aimed at degrading the capacity of Palestinian resistance.
US Bases in the Arab Gulf Countries:
In order to understand why Iran is bombing the Arab Gulf countries, we need to link the aforementioned disjointed facts with a little bit of history. Previously, the US used Al-Dhahran air base in Saudi Arabia intermittently and Bahrain hosted the US Navy’s Middle East Force since 1948 – the year of the Nakba and the visit of the USS Rendova in Bahrain, marking the rise of the US as a superpower in the post-WW2 global order. During the visit of the USS Rendova, Bahraini notables rejected a tea party onboard the ship in protest of the US recognizing the Zionist entity. In the contemporary timeline, the Arab Gulf countries have hosted permanent bases for US troops since Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991. Backed by fatwa3 of ulema4 like Ibn al-Bazz and Ibn Uthaymin, the sheikhs of the Gulf reasoned that Saddam’s regime was not a Muslim regime; it was, in fact, a regime marked by infidelity and ruled by a tyrant. Therefore, relying on the US to fight Saddam became religiously acceptable as it was not used against a “brotherly Muslim ruler.”
However, these bases have continued to act as central nodes in the US’s aid to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the two aggressions against Iran, comprising the Arab security umbrella of Israel and the US. In a 2017 lecture by Dr. Khaled Odetallah, he describes the history Al-Udeid base, the largest American base located in Qatar, as a central logistics hub and a forward headquarters of the US army’s CENTCOM, tracing it to the legacy of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003; the British use of al-Habanniyeh airbase during the times of the Kingdom of Iraq as a “policing measure” to quell anti-colonial uprisings across the region; and the primitive use of air warfare during Italy’s invasion of Libya in 1910-1911. In this context, the British tradition of treating air warfare as a standard counterinsurgency policing measure became the norm again due to two primary factors: the normalization of death during the genocide of Gaza, and the proliferation of cheap and disposable drone technology during our era.
How did we reach a stage where the Arab political and economic gravity is centered in the GCC countries? The Oil Boom of the 1970s and the eruption of the Lebanese Civil War resulted in Bahrain taking Lebanon’s place as the offshore financial and economic hub of the region as the rise in Gulf capital was recycled into banking and real-estate that created a shared interest between the national bourgeoisie of Arab states and the oil-rent Gulf Arab economies.5 This, of course, is coupled with the reduced standing of Egypt in its post-Camp David period. In the 1990s and the onset of the new millennium, the UAE took Bahrain’s place to this day. This shifted to Gulf countries eventually overtaking large swathes of Egypt’s economic sectors, for example, as Adam Hanieh notes in Lineages of Revolt. Neoliberalism in the Arab region was only possible due to the inflows of Gulf capital and the proliferation of defeat of every sovereign state project. Today, Iranian strikes on GCC countries and US bases assume a dual nature: one prong is aimed at depleting the US military infrastructure in the region, and therefore the US capacity to wage war on Iran, the other works to create political and economic pressure necessary to stop the war as it threatens an entire socio-economic paradigm built by the US and Israel since the collapse of the USSR.
12 Day War: Revisited
Perhaps one of the most important lessons learned by Iran during its engagement with Israel during the 12 Day War in June of 2025 was the fact that it was not enough, due to a combination of sheer distance; military logistics; and the Israeli/US military infrastructure in the region; to strike deep at the heart of the Zionist entity. Instead, a gradual attrition strategy is required. As such, the targeting of GCC countries and the threats of an energy crisis worldwide underscore the gradual attrition strategy that Iran has learned in the 12 Day War. By targeting US radars, air defenses, and (maybe) GCC energy flows, Iran seeks to destroy an entire regional infrastructure supported by the US since, at the very least, the 1980s when the US strategy shifted to increasingly tie its political soft power and military hard power, and by extension Israel’s interests, to the Gulf in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the creation of the GCC in response to it.
The global dimensions of this war, by virtue of the positioning of the Gulf as a main energy producer and exporter, is not lost on anyone. As such, the Abraham Accords between Israel and a number of GCC countries were just a formality in the US’s “strategic consensus” strategy adopted after the Islamic Revolution. In addition, prolonged targeting of the GCC risks destroying the center of political and economic gravity acquired by the Arab Gulf countries as both rely on the relative stability of the GCC juxtaposed to the rest of the “chaotic” Arab region.
It is no wonder, then, that the stocks market of Abu Dhabi closed for two days and then re-opened to huge sell-offs in UAE stocks. Crude Oil has suffered as a result of the War on Iran, with prices of barrels reaching upwards of 96 USD per barrel, projected to increase as the IRGC keeps the GCC countries destabilized enough to not produce oil. No amount of release of strategic oil reserves, or media stunts by the Trump Administration, can produce a long-term solution to the rise of oil prices and the ripple effects it will have on the economics of the world.
The longer the War on Iran goes, the more the GCC has to suffer the consequences of it. The entire region is on the cusp of a break with its neoliberal past that centered the Gulf as the heavyweight economic and political powerhouse of the Arab region, conditioned on the prolonging of this war to the point that GCC economies cannot bear it anymore. This has both massive implications and opportunities for the states of the region, especially for the likes of Turkey; Egypt; and Iran, to recalibrate both their domestic and foreign affairs in line with the changing events.
For the GCC countries, their recalibration of their domestic and foreign postures at this event is too late. Based on a strictly self-interest-seeking paradigm, the GCC should have reconsidered their ties with and integration into the US-Israeli economic and military infrastructure sewn on the clothes of the dead children of Gaza, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and South Lebanon. The Israeli strike on Doha in September of 2025 should have been enough of a wake-up call for this recalibration. However, the allure of rising to become senior partners of US imperialism – on an equal footing with Israel – has blinded the GCC countries to the fact that they will be in Iran’s cross-fire. The window of opportunity for the GCC to maneuver, and perhaps rethink its posture in the region, has now been foreclosed.
Iran’s Strategies
Many people have rightfully noted that Iranian strikes on the Zionist entity have not been at the same intensity as it was during the 12 Day War. There are three plausible scenarios that can explain this in conjunction with the gradual attrition strategy adopted by Iran.
Scenario A: Striking at the Periphery to Pave the Way for Striking at the Core
Due to the US-Israeli military infrastructure in the region, it would be more advantageous for Iran if it cleared out the periphery of the Zionist entity in order to pave the way for an intensified campaign against it. It would ensure that the US is operationally blinded due to loss of radar equipment; unable to intercept the missiles coming to the entity’s way due to munition shortages and/or destruction of air defense equipment; and strategically unable to protect its assets in the region or Israel. Iran, then, could strike deep within settlements; bombing army bases and centers of economic importance. Hezbollah joining the war against Israel would seek to expend Israeli military resources to their breaking point. In this scenario, Iran would only stop if it guarantees itself a new strategic paradigm vis-a-vis the American-Zionist project in the region – ensuring that no further attacks against it can be waged in the short and medium terms.
Scenario B: Economic Arm-Twisting
Through the shut-offs of the Strait of Hormuz and the destabilization of the oil-rent economies of the Arab Gulf, Iran seeks to draw the entire world into the war against it, making it bear the full cost of their reluctance, or rather their rejection, to stop the US-Israeli onslaught against it. This would include disrupting energy flows and encouraging capital flight of western investment in the Arab Gulf countries and vice versa – shocking the world into leveraging its powers to put brakes to the US and Israeli aggression with no compromises given by the Iranian state. The GCC countries contribute to 30% of the world oil production, expected to rise to 40% in 2050. That is no small number, and continued disruptions in the supply chains could throw the world into a recession and an energy crisis in conjunction with the aforementioned to-and-fro capital flights.
Scenario C: Striking at the Periphery to Pave the Way for Striking at the Core + Economic Arm-Twisting
This scenario is fairly simple, as it combines both military pressure and economic instability in order to rein in the US and Israel and establish a new strategic environment conducive to Iran in any post-ceasefire deal. This scenario would ensure that Israel is in no strategic capacity to further act against Iran in the region, limiting its freedom of movement in the region while establishing new rules of engagement between itself and the US in order to prevent another aggression against it. Furthermore, and included in all scenarios, if Iran succeeds and includes Hezbollah in the post-ceasefire arrangements, it would ensure that: (1) South Lebanon is no longer under Israeli occupation; (2) rebuilding efforts in Lebanon would commence in full-swing; (3) Hezbollah’s presence is not threatened by Israel nor the Lebanese government and rival political forces backed by the US.
Uncertain Futures
The scenarios and strategies put forward in this piece are constantly ever-changing to both the tactical and strategic windows of Iran as well as the US-Israel war machine. Events are unfolding by the minute, and it is hard to predict whether any of the three scenarios will happen, or to figure out how the post-ceasefire reality would commence. My hope, then, is to provide the reader with a general knowledge necessary for understanding why Iran is striking the GCC countries with a backdrop of the geopolitical reality as well as the political economy of neoliberalism and war in the region. There’s only one thing to be guaranteed with regards to the future: that it will be vastly different from the present reality we are living today. The continued survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the demolition of the US-Israeli military infrastructure would strike a blow to imperialism and its ambitions for the region. Moreover, it would put a dent into the Greater Israel plan as the Zionist entity would not enjoy the freedom of military and political maneuvering it has today, while the old economic and political order of the region would be upended. It is this future that I hope would unfold, as continued US-Israeli dominance would spell the most devastating blow to hopes of liberation in our region.
Prominent Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) member.
Smadi, Fatima. (2024). Iran Wa Hamas: Min Marj al-Zuhour Ila Toufan al Aqsa, Ma Lam Yurwa Min Al-Qissa [Hamas and Iran: From Marj Al-Zuhour to the Al-Aqsa Flood, the Untold Story], p. 164-165. Doha: Al-Jazeera Centre for Studies & Arab Scientific Publishers, Inc.
A fatwa is a declaration of “consensus” issued and vouched by religious leadership regarding a certain issue.
Ulema are religious scholars.
Corm, Georges. (1985). Al-Tanmiya al-Mafquda: Dirasat fi al-Azma al-Hadariyya wal Tanmawiyya al-Arabiyya [The Missing Development: Studies on the Arab Civilizational and Developmental Crisis], p. 272. Beirut: Dar al-Tale’a.