Leila Nezirevic
Source: Al Mayadeen English
Amid fears of wider war and shifting global influence, Arab states are repositioning their approach to Tehran — signaling a move toward regional power management that reduces reliance on Washington and prioritizes stability through dialogue.
This is not a sudden friendship or ideological convergence. It is a calculated move toward self-reliance: a recognition that long-term stability depends on engaging Tehran as a partner in regional management rather than treating it solely as a rival.
In a landscape marked by the risk of wider conflict and the limits of external influence, Arab governments are increasingly taking responsibility for shaping their own security environment.
Several factors are driving this shift. The risks of escalation — from Yemen to Gaza and beyond — have made confrontation a dangerous and unpredictable strategy. Simultaneously, regional actors are reassessing the reliability of external powers in guaranteeing security. Shifting global influence, including the rise of non-Western powers and the relative retrenchment of traditional patrons, has created openings for more autonomous decision-making.
The emerging pattern is pragmatic and incremental rather than dramatic. Engagement with Iran is being pursued not as an ideological endorsement but as a strategic tool: a way to mitigate conflict, stabilize borders, and assert regional agency. From Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, Arab capitals are quietly signaling that managing the Middle East’s balance of power is increasingly a task to be handled from within, rather than imposed from without.
A war that no one wants
Recent weeks have seen renewed speculation about possible US military action against Iran. Yet behind the rhetoric, regional actors are wary.
Paul Rogers, the UK’s leading global security expert and emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University, describes the moment as precarious but uncertain.
“We're in really something of a tipping point,” he tells Al Mayadeen English, noting that while there are forces in Washington advocating action, “the Americans, I think, are being cautious.”
Rogers points to competing currents inside the US administration. “Certainly some people within the Trump administration, and certainly within the Pentagon, would like to see some sort of action against Iran,” he explains. But he also emphasizes that there are voices warning “against the dangers of going to war with Iran at the present time.”
For Arab governments, the issue is not abstract. They do not believe any new conflict would remain limited.
Mouin Rabbani, senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, is blunt about the calculations underway in Gulf capitals. These states, he argues, “do not believe that the U.S. or Israel have credible plans for a short, sharp war, that will enhance rather than destroy regional stability, and that the likelihood of the war spreading to their own territory damaging their own economy… is very high.”
This fear of uncontrollable escalation is central. Unlike previous decades when external powers could stage limited interventions, today’s regional security environment is deeply interconnected. Energy infrastructure, shipping lanes, financial hubs, and expatriate populations all sit within reach of rapid retaliation.
Rogers underlines how quickly events could spiral. Even limited exchanges, he warns, could produce dramatic economic consequences, particularly if energy flows are disrupted.
Speaking with Al Mayadeen English, he notes that “there's no doubt at all that oil and gas supplies would surge in price,” especially if tensions affected the Strait of Hormuz.
The Gulf states understand that their own prosperity — and domestic stability — depends on preventing precisely such scenarios.
From rivalry to risk management
The current engagement trend should not be mischaracterized as an overnight transformation. As Rabbani cautions, it is simplistic to describe Arab states and Iran as “historically rivals” in absolute terms.
“Iran had very close relations with a number of the Gulf States" in the past, he said.
What we are witnessing now, he suggests, is less a dramatic reconciliation than a reversion to pragmatic diplomacy shaped by present realities.
Those realities include war fatigue, economic diversification agendas, and a desire for sovereign regional decision-making.
Rabbani emphasizes that Gulf states aligned with Washington are actively “counseling Washington against either launching a new war against Iran, or supporting a new Israeli war against Iran.”
This is not a shift driven by ideological sympathy. It is grounded in national interest. “They don't want any single power to be hegemonic in the Middle East,” Rabbani explains, “whether it's Israel or Turkey or Iran or anyone else.”
Saudi Arabia’s recalibration illustrates the logic. The Chinese-mediated normalization agreement between Riyadh and Tehran signaled that Gulf leaders are willing to pursue dialogue independent of traditional Western brokerage. The move was not anti-Western, but it was undeniably autonomous.
Rogers sees structural changes reinforcing this trend. “The relative significance of the United States is falling,” he observes. While Washington retains immense military power, its economic leverage and political authority are increasingly contested.
Many in the region, Rogers says, are beginning to look beyond an exclusively Atlantic framework. There is “a sense that the United States is, to put it bluntly, not all that it is cracked up to be, except in the area of military power.”
For Arab states, this translates into diversification: stronger ties with China, pragmatic engagement with Russia, and renewed dialogue with Iran.
Gaza’s catalytic effect
If there is one immediate catalyst accelerating Arab-Iran engagement, it is the ongoing devastation in Gaza. Rogers argues that “the impact of Gaza, the huge loss of life, and the concern among many ordinary people in the Arab-speaking world at what is happening” has reshaped regional dynamics.
The crisis has complicated normalization processes and heightened public scrutiny of governments’ foreign alignments. Arab leaders must now navigate a political landscape in which public opinion is far more sensitive to perceived regional injustices. Engagement with Iran, in this context, becomes part of a broader recalibration of regional posture.
Rabbani frames it in strategic terms: Gulf states increasingly oppose the emergence of any hegemonic order. The war on Gaza has reinforced their concerns about long-term regional dominance by any single actor. The result is not an alliance system but a balancing strategy — one that includes Tehran.
Sanctions, resilience, and regional architecture
Another under-examined dimension of this shift concerns Iran’s domestic evolution under decades of sanctions. Rabbani offers a nuanced assessment: sanctions have “clearly constrained Iran in important respects,” particularly economically. Yet they have also “compelled Iran to invest heavily in domestic production, domestic military industry, and domestic technology.”
The contrast with some oil-rich neighbors is striking. “Saudi Arabia, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't even produce bullets of its own,” Rabbani says, whereas “Iran is on the verge of completing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Iranian scientific technological community is really light years ahead of that of its neighbors.”
For Arab states seeking long-term stability, this reality shapes strategic calculations. Iran is not a transient actor nor one easily isolated from regional equations. It is a deeply rooted power with indigenous capabilities and extensive regional networks. The emerging logic, therefore, is integration rather than exclusion.
Rabbani believes a regionally led security architecture that includes Iran is not only possible but already taking shape. “We've already begun to see the outlines of that,” he says, pointing to normalization processes and mutual commitments to non-interference.
He suggests that Tehran is “increasingly adopting a posture” that limits direct involvement in certain domestic arenas, while Gulf states are becoming “increasingly less inclined to want to meddle in internal Iranian affairs.” Such reciprocal restraint could form the foundation of a new regional order — one built not on alliances against a common enemy, but on mutual recognition of sovereignty.
Beyond Washington’s shadow
Are we entering a post-US Middle East?
Rabbani resists simplistic narratives. The United States remains deeply engaged militarily. Yet engagement is not the same as uncontested leadership. The lesson many regional capitals draw from recent years is not necessarily that Washington is disappearing, but that it may not always prioritize their security in a crisis.
The attacks on key Saudi energy infrastructure in 2019 left lasting impressions. So too did the limits of US responses to cross-border threats. As Rabbani puts it, there is a belief that in the event of a wider war, “the U.S. is not going to prioritize the defense of its Arab allies.” This perception — whether entirely accurate or not — encourages regional self-reliance.
Rogers adds another dimension often overlooked in geopolitical analysis: climate change. “We're now in the early stages of potentially very dangerous climate change,” he warns, arguing that environmental pressures will shape Middle East stability over the next decade.
Water scarcity, heat extremes, and economic strain demand cooperative frameworks. Rivalries consume resources; coordination preserves them. In this context, engagement with Iran is not merely diplomatic theater — it is a strategic necessity.
A fragile but consequential opening
None of this guarantees permanence. Rogers cautions that much depends on internal political dynamics across the region. The Middle East remains fluid, with multiple “imponderables". Yet even cautious analysts acknowledge that improved Saudi-Iranian relations, if sustained, would be “good news for the region.”
The broader shift is not about affection or alignment. It is about risk management in a volatile environment. Arab governments increasingly judge that confrontation with Iran would endanger their economic ambitions, destabilize domestic politics, and entangle them in conflicts not of their making. Engagement, by contrast, offers space for de-escalation in Yemen, for diplomatic maneuvering in Syria and Iraq, and for a more balanced regional security architecture.
The transformation underway is subtle. There are no grand summits proclaiming a new order. Instead, there are reopened embassies, quiet security dialogues, economic discussions, and shared caution about external escalation.
For decades, Middle East geopolitics was defined by binary alignments: pro- or anti-Iran, pro- or anti-West. That binary is eroding. In its place emerges a more multipolar regional logic — one in which Arab states seek to manage their own political and security relations without exclusive reliance on external patrons.
Whether this trajectory deepens or falters will depend on events in Gaza, Washington’s next moves, and internal political balances across the region. But for now, the trend is unmistakable: engagement with Tehran is no longer taboo in Arab capitals. It is a strategy.
In a region long shaped by confrontation, that alone marks a profound shift.
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