Will the Gulf States Join the War?

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**Firas Maksad** (0:14)
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**Ravi Agrawal** (0:33)
Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.
So I'm recording this on day six of the war in the Middle East. It's late on Thursday, the 5th of March. Israel and the United States are stepping up their attacks on military facilities across Iran. Tehran is continuing to retaliate, although its missile attacks have sharply reduced in quantity. The first days of this conflict have really been about missile math. Basically, which of these two things will happen first? Will the United States and Israel run out of interceptors and leave the region vulnerable? Or will they first destroy Iran's ability to launch missiles? At this point, it seems Iran's ability to attack is being degraded, but this is by no means over. And to be clear, this is not just about missiles. Certainly, they can cause the most damage, but this is also about drones. Iran's Shahid drones can cost as little as $20,000 a piece, and the United States has sometimes been using very expensive interceptors, like the Patriot system, to stop them. Those interceptors can cost millions of dollars per use. So the longer this war goes on, the more the costs mount, for the United States, for Israel, and for all the countries in the region suffering from Iran's attacks. What's clear now is that regime collapse hasn't happened after the killing of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. As Vali Nasr was telling us in our previous episode, there were indeed contingency plans. Iran is still attacking. The striking thing, though, is it has actually attacked the Gulf countries more than it has attacked Israel. And that's the topic I want to focus on today. Countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates have become the economic powerhouses of the Middle East. They have spent years building themselves into global hubs for business, finance, and aviation, all premised on one thing, stability. And it is a stability backed by the United States. Most of these countries have US military bases. So Iran is attacking them in large part to pressure the United States. Key airport hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha have come to a standstill. And these were airports that served not just the Middle East but the whole world. If these trade and financial hubs ever felt like a bubble, that feels punctured this week. So how are these oil rich Gulf States viewing the events of the last few days? Will the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia join the fight against Iran? Will they question their relationships with the United States? Interestingly, the Gulf States were lobbying the White House where they have great connections to prevent this war, perhaps because they feared exactly this scenario, that Tehran would regionalize a conflict. The Gulf States have always been what we call geopolitical swing states, so the question is whether the events of the last few days make them more swingy, as it were. And I should say these countries are of course not a monolith, so we're going to discuss the differences between them as well. My guests on this episode are two of the sharpest analysts of the region, Mina Al-Oraibi is the Editor-in-Chief of the UAE newspaper The National, based in Abu Dhabi, and Firas Maksad is Managing Director of the Middle East and North Africa Practice at the Eurasia Group. Let's dive in.
Mina, I'm going to start with you. You're quite literally in the thick of things right now. Iran has reportedly attacked the UAE as much as Israel over the last few days. What is the mood on the ground?

**Mina Al-Oraibi** (4:42)
Actually, they've attacked the UAE more than Israel in terms of percentage of projectiles. It's 50% of what Iran has sent out to the region, to seven different countries. 50% of that came towards the UAE. However, thank goodness for good defense systems and good planning because over 90% of what has been sent, I would say over 95% from missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones have been intercepted. How's the mood? The mood is one of resilience. It's been really interesting to see how people reacted. In the first couple of days, people were quite shaken. And then as people got to know more, one first about the defense systems and the sort of protection that is there, but also the government was very quick in communicating with people, letting people know how many exact drones, where the locations were, to be felt that they were getting information enough, but also there was some concern in the first couple of days about grocery shopping and would there be enough supplies? And that's all been addressed and people have been seeing that actually day to day life is okay. Doesn't take away from the fact that this has been a shock for many people in sense of the amount of strikes that Iran has put forward and also the fact that the UAE, along with the other Gulf countries here, were, was actually pushing for peace, was saying that they would be against the war, did not allow their bases to be used, that did not spare them. I think the biggest surprise for many people is that even Oman in Doqom port was targeted by the Iranians. Of course, Oman had been the mediator, Oman has very close ties to Iran. And so this idea that the Iranians were going to go out after every single one of the Gulf Corporation Council members has been quite a surprise. But the mood in the UAE, I'd say, is one of resilience and a sense of actually, this is the ultimate test. And so far, they're passing the test quite well.