From Iran’s perspective, they’re all complicit in the US’ massive first strike even if the role that US military infrastructure in their countries allegedly played was only indirect in the sense of providing radar or just logistical support, with this perception and its response thereto being totally predictable.
Andrew Korybko
Prior to the joint US-Israeli campaign
against Iran, there was a belief among the Gulf States that hosting US
forces strengthens their security by deterring hypothetical attacks by
Iran, yet that thinking was just discredited over the past few days
after Iran launched strikes against all of them. The pretext was that US
military infrastructure on their territories allegedly played a role in
attacks against it, but regardless of whatever one thinks about that,
the fact is that hosting US forces actually made them less safe.
At
the time of this analysis’ publication, none of the Gulf States have
retaliated against Iran, but it can’t be ruled out that one, some, or
all of them are planning to do so. If more than one of them goes to war
against Iran, which they all might be reluctant to do due to how
vulnerable their energy and civilian sites are, then it’s possible that
Saudi Arabia would take the lead as the core of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), their regional integration group. They’d obviously
coordinate this with their shared US ally.
The UAE might opt out of coordinating military action with Saudi Arabia due to the recent revival of their rivalry,
but in any case, the point is that Saudi Arabia would still attempt to
reaffirm its self-assumed role as the regional leader by rallying the
smaller countries under its aegis. Intra-GCC feuds aside, another
commonality between these countries apart from their shared US ally and
economic dependence on resource exports is the optics of Iran’s attacks,
which might be perceived by them as a Persian-Arab War.
They’ve
been rivals for centuries, but their competition took on a sectarian
dimension after Iran’s 1979 revolution and subsequent efforts to export
its then-new governing model throughout the region, particularly in Arab
states with significant Shiite populations. Likewise, these same Arab
states’ consequently common cause with Israel vis-à-vis Iran led to some
in the Islamic Republic considering them traitors to the faith, thus
further worsening mutual perceptions and associated tensions.
This
contextualizes why they decided to host US forces as a deterrent, but
the security dilemma that had already set in between them and Iran led
to the latter perceiving this as a means of better defending themselves
ahead of the retaliation that would follow a speculatively planned
massive first strike. Iran then began identifying targets on their
territories and ensuring that it could still hit them after surviving a
massive first strike, which ultimately came last weekend, albeit without
their direct participation.
Nevertheless, from Iran’s
perspective, they’re all complicit in what just happened even if the
role that US military infrastructure in their countries allegedly played
was only indirect in the sense of providing radar or just logistical
support. Iran’s aforesaid perception and its response thereto in this
context were totally predictable, yet the Gulf States were already so
tethered to the US that none of them wanted to risk its ire by asking
its forces to leave once regional tensions worsened in the run-up to the
ongoing war.
They’re therefore all paying the cost of their epic
miscalculation that hosting US forces strengthens their security when it
actually guaranteed that they’d be targeted once Iran was hit by the
massive first strike that their shared American ally and its Israeli
partner were planning for years. This is a lesson that the US’ allies in
Europe and Asia should keep in mind in case it ever sends similar clear
signals just like it did vis-à-vis Iran that it’s preparing for a
massive first strike against Russia and China respectively.