While Trump continues to promote a fictional narrative he concocted together with his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, boasting of a decisive victory over Iran, its complete destruction, its return to the Stone Age, the elimination of its nuclear capabilities, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, analysts and experts agree that the reality is quite the opposite. They maintain that Trump promotes this narrative to save face and mask the defeat he has suffered regarding all the war objectives he declared since the start of the conflict on 28 February 2026. Trump’s manipulation of the situation peaked when he announced he had accepted Iran’s request to return to the negotiation table to submit to his conditions and surrender to his demands. Political reports, however, reveal that Iran rejected the negotiation table, seeing it as pointless after it was twice betrayed at that very table. Iran responded to mediation efforts but presented a memorandum outlining 10 conditions for ending the war, foremost among them the complete withdrawal of the US from the Middle East.
Today, I stand before this fundamental condition, hoping for its fulfilment, not only to address Iran’s demands but also to shed light on a new reality across the Arab Gulf region, a reality underscored by numerous experts and analysts. There is a growing awareness across the Arab Gulf States that the US was invited into the region some four decades ago to establish military bases to defend and protect those countries, not to use their territories and bases there to attack other countries in the Middle East and wage wars against them.
On the ground, however, what happened since 28 February tells a different story. Allied with Israel, the US waged brutal attacks against Iran, targeting its military capabilities, infrastructure and civilian facilities. These attacks were launched from US military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar with no consultation or coordination with the host countries, no assurance of their approval or pledge to protect them in case they subject to Iranian retaliation. The result as witnessed by the whole world was that these countries have been subjected to a wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks aimed at American military facilities and bases, in addition to deliberate targeting of their airports, critical facilities, and infrastructure, along with threats to strike oil refineries and export facilities, natural gas liquefaction plants, and even seawater desalination plants that supply them with fresh water.
The Arab Gulf countries found themselves party to a war they were never consulted about or had any say in. Stripped of the American protection over which they had relied when they accepted to host US military bases on their territories, they stood to pay a very high price from their security and stability extending beyond material damage to threatened safety. This prompted millions of foreign workers and thousands of international institutions that had based themselves in the Gulf to pack and leave back home.
What are the implications of all this, and what do observers and analysts have to say about policies the Gulf States would likely adopt to reshape their security, stability, and future? On this critical matter, I today cite the analysis broadcast by Frum Report on 7 March 2026 under the title: “Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait are done paying for a war they never approved”. David Frum, who hosts a YouTube series, is a ++The Atlantic++ staff writer and former George W. Bush speechwriter. Following are highlights from the 7 March show:
“Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar are actively considering withdrawing from their existing contracts with the United States and cancelling their future investment commitments in America.
“The seven principal sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf region represented 43 per cent of the total capital deployed by State investors worldwide in 2025 for a combined outflow of USD126 billion in a single year… Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, are not simply military partners of the US in a narrow security sense. They are massive structurally embedded economic partners whose sovereign funds are woven into entire sectors of the American economic fabric: commercial, real estate, technology companies, infrastructure projects, private equity and investment funds across the country.
“These are the same countries that are now, according to multiple verified sources, considering the withdrawal that nobody in Washington appears to have anticipated when this operation was planned. To understand precisely why they are considering it, you need to understand what this operation has cost them in concrete, measurable terms since it began. Since 28 February, these four countries have been transformed into active Iranian target zones. Not because any of them officially participated in operations against Iran… But because they host American military infrastructure and serve as strategic anchors of Washington’s regional architecture, they have absorbed the consequences of a conflict they did not initiate and were not consulted about before it was launched.
“The scale of what they have had to absorb is staggering… In the UAE, 35 drones successfully penetrated the country’s multi-layered defences, causing material damage that the Emirati Defence Ministry itself was forced to acknowledge publicly. Fires in Dubai, structural damage near the Burj al Arab, explosions in Abu Dhabi… A fire broke out in an Amazon Web Services data centre in Dubai, that may represent the first time in modern history that a major cloud infrastructure facility has been damaged in an active conflict context… In Saudi Arabia, the Ras Tanura refinery was struck and taken offline. This is not a peripheral industrial facility… Ras Tanura is one of the largest petroleum processing complexes on Earth; a crown jewel of Saudi Aramco’s production architecture and a critical node in global energy supply chains. In Qatar, the consequences were immediate and globally felt. Qatar Energy was forced to completely suspend its liquefied natural gas production following the strikes. Qatar is the world’s largest LNG exporter. It became the energy lifeline of Europe after the severance of Russian gas supplies. The suspension of its production triggered a historic price surge on global gas markets. Natural gas prices in Europe jumped 66 per cent in a single week.
“Beyond energy, the aviation dimension tells its own story. More than 70 per cent of all flights into the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain remained cancelled in the days following the initial Iranian operations. Dubai International, the world’s largest airport by passenger volume, handling approximately 95 million travellers per year across roughly 8,500 weekly flights, was effectively shut down. Stock markets in Qatar and Saudi Arabia collapsed in the immediate aftermath. Exchanges in the UAE and Kuwait suspended trading entirely rather than allow uncontrolled price discovery in conditions of extreme uncertainty.
“That is the economic bill from the first week of a conflict these governments did not choose, did not plan for, and were not warned about in advance… Why are these governments actually considering withdrawing their investments from the United States? What is the precise economic and strategic reasoning that leads a country from absorbing Iranian strikes on Monday to threatening American investment withdrawal by Friday? For these Gulf States, the current crisis threatens their economic model.
“Let us examine with genuine analytical precision what happens across three realistic scenarios if this withdrawal actually materialises:
“The first and most probable scenario in the near term is a partial withdrawal serving primarily as a political signal. Gulf governments suspend certain forward investment commitments, freeze contract signatures that are pending but not yet concluded, redirect some sovereign fund flows toward non-American destinations.
“The second scenario involves a more significant and sustained reallocation of sovereign fund capital away from American assets. This is where the financial consequences become measurable in ways that affect American households and businesses rather than just diplomatic relationships.
“The third scenario, a complete rupture of military procurement contracts, is the least probable in the near term, but carries the most symbolically devastating implications if it were to occur.
“There is one additional dimension that cannot be ignored… China has a profound strategic interest in exploiting this precise moment to deepen and formalise its economic relationships with Gulf… A sustained deepening of Gulf-China financial integration at the expense of Gulf-America financial integration is almost certainly not what Washington was calculating when it made the decision to launch operations without consulting its regional partners.”
Watani International
17 April 2026
