My Dear Gulf Brothers And Sisters…

You have been punished for a war started by your defender without your knowledge. How is your anxiety and emotional vigilance now? They were supposed to maintain stability and guarantee security but they started the war.

Their hostile relations with Iran go back to the CIA-backed coup that empowered the Shah in 1953. Later, the so-called concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and support for militant groups leading to sanctions and conflict.

The regional countries are so dependent on them and is almost the sole provider of sophisticated defense systems. Saudi Arabia is the biggest military spender in the Gulf followed by the UAE. Almost all the Gulf states consistently spend a greater share of their GDP on the military than the global average. On the other hand, Iran’s arms purchases have been relatively small since it was under a wide-ranging UN arms embargo influenced by the US who has maintained these embargoes since 1979 through punishing unilateral sanctions.

The defender harvested the maximum benefit from this situation for many years and was responsible for 43% of the exports of major conventional weapons worldwide between 2020-2024 amounting to US$276 billion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research institute (SIPRI), 35% of the defender’s exports were to Europe 33% to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 12% of total arms exports.

Is Iran a ‘real’ threat?

The defender’s domestic intelligence and security service has listed a diverse set of threats, including attempted terrorist attacks and kidnappings, espionage and foreign influence operations, cyber-attacks, sanctions evasion, and illicit procurement of sensitive technology. So, the need to curb Iran’s influence and ensuring regional stability.

Ask yourselves, don’t the defender at its major non-NATO ally doing most of the things to others too?

Whilst the ally can possess nuclear weapons with a policy of deliberate ambiguity, Iran is unfit. Reason is to protect national security and maintaining regional stability. Isn’t the military presence (about 800 military base sites across more than eighty foreign countries) and “unilateral” actions of the defender and its ally (DAIA) on 28^th February a primary threat to stability and a “root cause” of regional turmoil? And is defence or retaliation in a hostile environment an aggression and threat to stability? Don’t Iran have the a right for self-defence?

On concerns over internal instability within Iran – due to economic crisis and social unrest – could spread and cause a broader humanitarian and security crisis in the region, was it not due to the damning unilateral sanctions.

Iranian attacks on neighbouring countries and support for proxies violate international laws but DAIA have far more violations and who started the war?

Have we asked ourselves who created the repeated security crises and regional tensions and supplied the weapons?

The war has caused global stock markets to drop, rising energy prices raising risks of global recession, disruptions to supply chains, increased inflation and affected tourism.

Now, brothers and sisters, ask yourself, do you feel safe and stable after years of supplying oil (pricing it in the defender’s currency), buying weapons and support for the defender’s foreign policy? Have you assessed their credibility and reliability as a security partner when they have no military obligation to defend Saudi?

Don’t forget, there have been attempts at de-escalation through the 2023 China-brokered rapprochement with Iran. It represents a major shift in Tehran’s national security policy – a strategic recalibration in Iran’s approach to regional order in the face of the ally’s rise as regional hegemon – anchored in mutual pragmatism. Don’t assume today’s opportunities will still be available tomorrow?

I fully understand having undergone prolonged periods of tension you tend to develop psychological defense mechanisms and sensitive to any sign of a threat. Then, any political agreements will remain superficial, governed by suspicion, and easily undone by the next crisis.

Try a shift in societal perception. Look at your national interests, security and economic stability with strategic and political maturity over ideological alignment. Evaluate the actors through the lens of practical consequences and not through creating perceptions of instability created by DAIA.   It’s not about moral legitimacy but which policies safeguard Gulf stability.

Would you continue the blind trust on security and stability or transition towards a “materially contingent” partnership that focuses on tangible values to achieve Vision 2030? Will there be attention if you don’t have oil?

Ask yourself, who seeks to reshape the regional balance of power in its favour?

Is normalisation still applicable with a country that is ‘not normal’, after 7^th October 2023, last year’s 12-day confrontation and the current war? This “warm peace” has substantially boosted its defense exports to Arab nations, rising to 12% of its total defense exports in 2024, up from 3% in 2023.

In late 2025, a Strategic Defense Agreement (SDA) was signed, supposedly to fortify deterrence across the Middle East. Considering the war now, who benefits the most when Saudi has to share the burden to defray the defender’s costs?

What happened to diplomacy and the “President of Peace” who once boasted about opposing the war on Iraq.

Military power imposes temporary realities but lasting peace requires social legitimacy. 

And Europe, do take note. There’s additional strain on your economy, which is already coping with inflationary pressures, industrial slowdown and the gradual transition toward renewable energy and also the war in Ukraine.

If the defender is really concern about Iran’s nuclear capability, why walk away from the UNSC’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and re-imposed damning sanctions and use of force and direct assaults on Iranian assets and personnel rather than diplomacy.

We worry about Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and the murderous cult of the Ayatollahs but in the meantime, hundreds of thousands have been killed, injured, maimed and orphaned with impunity in the Middle East.

The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF), themed “A Spirit of Dialogue”, focussed on creating a framework of cooperation to address economic imbalances, fragmentation and development where economic progress should be shared and prosperity should reach further than it has. Will this war achieve it?

The West would like to see a different sort of Iranian regime, stable and predictable. Now compare it to the president of the defender and you can include impulsive in it too. The director of the National Intelligence, said that the defender’s intelligence community had assessed that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following the 12-day attacks last year… you can include credibility too.

The potential security partner against common threats is increasingly viewed as the principal belligerent in the region. Stoking instability and driving resentment and this war also does nothing to address the two-state solution.

The painful reality is rationality does not exist in their vocabulary and a zero-sum logic of deterrence is still being pursued. Iran has miscalculated.

What say you…

 

Saleh Mohammed