U.S. Shifts to Backup Role as Gulf States Lead Own Defense Operations

The United States as Guarantor of Last Resort

The 2026 Iran war produced a result no previous Middle Eastern crisis had managed: Gulf states, working alongside Turkey and Pakistan, carried both the diplomatic and security burden themselves, leaving Washington positioned as guarantor of last resort rather than manager of first resort. That distinction matters because it allows Washington’s stated strategic priorities to survive the next crisis instead of being displaced by it.

Additional reference context is available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/26/united-states-middle-east-iran-gulf-uae-saudi-last-resort/.

Every administration since Barack Obama’s first term has promised to deprioritize the Middle East. Obama and later Joe Biden turned their focus toward the Indo-Pacific. Donald Trump has centered his strategy on the Western Hemisphere first and the Indo-Pacific second. Yet each was pulled back into crises it could not avoid. The 2026 war broke that pattern.

The operational division of labor that emerged is clear. Doha, Riyadh, and Islamabad handled direct diplomacy with Tehran, work no U.S. administration can conduct with credibility. Pakistan, bound to Saudi Arabia through a defense pact signed five months before the conflict, provided conventional military backing that allowed Riyadh to treat deterrence as a regional responsibility. Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have since proposed a consortium to manage the Strait of Hormuz without U.S. ownership. Washington’s remaining role centers on deterring existential threats, maintaining naval presence within reach, and supplying the weapons that underpin everyone else’s deterrence.

The contrast with 2015 illustrates how much has changed. When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was being finalized that May, many Gulf Cooperation Council rulers skipped Obama’s Camp David summit and sent deputies instead, widely read as a protest over a nuclear deal Washington handed them rather than shaped with them. In May 2026, Trump said he held off on fresh strikes because Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates asked him to give negotiations more room. That moment marked the Gulf’s arrival as an independent diplomatic actor. When the war threatened to escalate beyond control, the Gulf, Turkey, and Pakistan built the diplomatic off-ramps that helped Trump end it.

Gulf states no longer require Washington to mediate with Tehran. Saudi Arabia opened its own direct channel in 2023, after a decade of U.S.-led diplomacy that excluded it. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were never primarily concerned with uranium enrichment percentages. Their grievance centered on the JCPOA solving the single problem Washington cared about while ignoring Iranian missiles, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ proxy networks, and sanctions relief flowing toward Hezbollah and the Houthis. When Biden revived the same closed-door track in 2021, the Gulf was briefed rather than consulted, pushing Riyadh toward Beijing to broker instead.

Chinese mediation did not prevent Iran from striking Saudi Arabia when the war began in February, with Tehran’s missiles and drones hitting Saudi pipelines and airbases. What it did provide was direct access to Tehran for the difficult work of de-escalation. Reports described Qatar offering to curb its own gas output if Iran spared the Ras Laffan complex, and the UAE releasing billions in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for being left alone. Both governments denied these accounts, but their plausibility suggests GCC capitals are negotiating directly with Tehran.

Economic imperatives drive this urgency. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and comparable national strategies depend on a stable Gulf that can attract capital and tourism as these nations diversify from oil revenues. Ending the war became a priority for Gulf governments because a Gulf that manages Iran on its own terms needs less of Washington’s attention, which is the precondition for any U.S. pivot elsewhere. As one analysis noted at foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/26/united-states-middle-east-iran-gulf-uae-saudi-last-resort/, this realignment reflects a fundamental shift in how regional security is being constructed.

The Gulf states have not achieved a unified Iran policy. The UAE has demanded reparations from Iran for damage to its critical infrastructure, and its dispute with Riyadh over oil policy became sharp enough that Abu Dhabi walked out of OPEC mid-crisis. Qatar and Oman advocated for dialogue with Iran throughout the fighting. Saudi Arabia expelled Iranian diplomats in March after repeated strikes while keeping its 2023 channel open and backing Pakistani mediation to end the war. Yet together these divergent positions produced something no single player could have managed alone.

Gulf states have also held firm against Trump’s effort to extract a political trophy from the conflict. He pressed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, and Turkey to join the Abraham Accords as the price of ending a war they did more than he did to conclude. Riyadh’s response was unambiguous: no normalization with Israel without real movement toward Palestinian statehood. Islamabad’s was sharper, calling the idea incompatible with its own principles.

The interests of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and Pakistan diverge enough that Iran’s integration into a new regional order will have limits. Riyadh can accept an Iran that negotiates directly with it rather than through Washington, backed by substantial U.S. military hardware and a Pakistani defense pact. The UAE absorbed more missiles and drones during the war than any other country including Israel. That exposure, more than diplomacy, pushed Abu Dhabi toward accommodation rather than escalation by the war’s end. The UAE also has the most to gain economically from Iran’s integration, given its trade ties and Dubai’s decades as a financial hub for Iran-linked businesses, creating appetite for economic engagement with Tehran alongside continued security distrust.

Turkey cares less about Iran’s economic integration than about containing Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq, where the two have long backed opposing sides. Ankara’s enthusiasm centers on being a co-architect of the new order rather than welcoming a Shiite rival into it. Pakistan’s limits are structural. Islamabad shares a long and often violent border with Iran through Balochistan while managing rivalry with India. It is also bound to Saudi Arabia by a defense pact that functions partly as a hedge against Iran, a commitment that leaves Pakistan unable to champion Iran’s full integration without diminishing its value to its wealthier patrons across the Gulf.

Together these interests describe an order that absorbs Iran economically while keeping it at arm’s length militarily. That ceiling is what makes a smaller U.S. role so attractive. Yet the militaries taking on this burden still depend on American parts, munitions, and training to keep functioning. Washington can shrink toward guarantor of last resort because Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and Pakistan are each independently and collectively committed to keeping Iran’s reentry plausible without letting it dominate the region. It only requires them to keep managing Iran themselves, which the war showed they are willing to do.

A regional order that gives Tehran a seat at the table on terms its neighbors control beats trusting a guarantor that started a war it could not finish and stuck the Gulf with the bill. The enmity between Tehran and Washington is 47 years old, and deterrence, sanctions, and back channels have never dissolved it. Whether the region can sustain what the war forced it to build will decide if Washington ever gets the strategic homecoming it keeps promising itself.