Kuwaitis face the war's fallout while Gulf unity frays

In Kuwait City, officials describe a worry that rarely makes it into the broader conversation about Gulf security. Their country absorbed more than 1,200 Iranian drones and missiles in the first seven weeks of the war with Iran, second only to the United Arab Emirates. Yet Kuwaiti leaders avoided unilateral moves and insisted on working through the Gulf Cooperation Council. At the same time, many of the Kuwaitis met in recent weeks felt their security picture was getting harder at exactly the moment US attention was drifting elsewhere. They have hosted American forces since their liberation thirty-five years ago and rarely press Washington for attention, a restraint that has often left them overlooked. That is why US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in June landed as such an important signal.

That mix of loyalty and anxiety captures where the Gulf stands eight months after the Iran war began. Every Gulf state has been targeted by the same country, but each is emerging from the conflict with different conclusions about how to protect itself and deal with Tehran. The UAE faced more than 2,800 Iranian drones and missiles in those first seven weeks; Qatar, fewer than three hundred. Those uneven experiences have reinforced Abu Dhabi’s preference for a conclusive outcome and Doha’s and Muscat’s preference for mediation. They have also deepened doubts across the region about relying indefinitely on any single outside guarantor.

The war did not create these differences. It accelerated them. The bloc’s biggest earlier fault line was the 2017 Gulf crisis, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain blockaded Qatar, unraveling internal trust and eroding the council’s institutional utility. The war in Yemen recalibrated the Saudi-Emirati relationship as the two supported competing factions. On Israel, the members split long ago: Bahrain followed the UAE into the Abraham Accords, Saudi Arabia declined, while Oman and Kuwait continue to reject normalization.

For people in the region, the question is less about diplomacy than about whether the tools they depend on will actually work. Weeks of missile and drone attacks exposed vulnerabilities Gulf officials have warned about for years. Buying more interceptors only goes so far when new weapons keep getting cheaper, easier to acquire, and simpler to launch. The harder task is building defenses that are affordable and can scale as quickly as the threat. When American delivery timelines fall behind operational needs, Gulf states shop elsewhere. Washington often reads this as hedging, but officials in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City saw it as a practical answer to immediate needs, not strategic realignment. In Abu Dhabi, the Emirati leadership cares less about balancing between partners than about building sovereign capacity through defense companies such as EDGE, the conglomerate launched in 2019 to boost domestic production. That explains its emphasis on co-developing capabilities with countries such as South Korea.

Meanwhile, the Mecca Agreement, signed in August, shows how these differences now reach into security itself. The pact among Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan has effectively translated into collective defense commitments, with Pakistani forces already on the ground and Turkey ready to deploy troops pending parliamentary confirmation. The UAE was not included, just as it has distanced itself from earlier proposals for a “Middle East NATO” and the Red Sea coalition, reflecting its reluctance to join any bloc framed against a single country and its recent tensions with Riyadh.

These observations emerged from a closed-door October 1 Track II dialogue in Abu Dhabi, convened by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, followed by meetings with officials, diplomats, and analysts in Kuwait City. The argument is laid out in an Atlantic Council dispatch, Washington should stop expecting the Gulf to speak with one voice (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/washington-should-stop-expecting-the-gulf-to-speak-with-one-voice/), which draws on those conversations. Gulf alignment with the United States was never in doubt in any of them. What officials and experts questioned was whether US policy has caught up with a multi-speed Gulf in which members routinely take different positions on Iran, defense cooperation, and regional diplomacy.

Talk of China filled few of those conversations. Very little suggested anyone wants Beijing to replace the United States as the Gulf’s main security partner. Most officials have moved past that debate and care instead about whether existing relationships can deliver capabilities at the pace the threats demand. American influence is not fading quickly. Gulf forces still rely on US hardware and remain tied into the integrated air and missile defense network built under US Central Command, which held up remarkably well against Iran’s mass attacks. But frustration with Washington’s own machinery came up often: vacant ambassadorial posts, a weakened interagency process, and export restrictions, cited as symptoms of a system that struggles to move at the speed Gulf partners now expect.

Kuwait illustrates why a shared threat does not produce a shared response. The country faces one of the toughest environments in the Gulf, with contested waters shared with Iran and an unstable border with Iraq, where Iran-aligned armed groups have grown more aggressive toward Kuwait in recent months. Its exposure grows as the US posture shifts. Damage to American facilities struck in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, plus the completed US withdrawal from Iraq this year, point to a leaner American presence near the very groups Kuwait worries about. At home, fiscal strain, heavy oil dependence, and severe social tension over civil rights and the revocation of citizenship for thousands of people leave far less room for error than its larger, wealthier neighbors enjoy.

None of this means the GCC is becoming irrelevant. It remains arguably the best-functioning forum for coordination in the Middle East. But Washington should give it the same room for internal disagreement it already gives the European Union, whose members disagree constantly on China, migration, energy security, and defense spending yet still operate within a shared framework. Working through the council where interests align, and bilaterally where they do not, would be a start. Procurement belongs in the second category: shortening the path from request to delivery for air and missile defense and counter-drone systems, and treating co-development as a strategic investment. Consultation on shared Iranian threats should continue through the GCC, with partners brought in early and collectively rather than briefed after the fact, especially on the missiles, drones, and proxies the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action left out.

The single takeaway from Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City is that Gulf states are not drifting away from the United States, though many wonder whether Washington has registered how much the Gulf itself has changed. The cohesion of a decade ago is probably gone for good. Gulf states are becoming more selective about their security, more willing to build capabilities outside traditional frameworks, and more comfortable going their own way when national interests call. Whether the next crisis finds them acting together, or apart, may be the question that decides it.