The GCC states are staring at a reality they did not quite plan for.
In retaliation for the illegal war waged by the United States and Israel against it, Iran has been striking numerous American bases all over the Middle East. They have also attacked a French naval base in the UAE and reports of strikes on British bases in Cyprus have also been circulating. However, the foreign bases in Gulf states continue to take the hardest hits from Iran.
Bahrain, the smallest of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, with a population of just over 700,000 citizens, has borne the brunt of the Iranian retaliation. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain has come under relentless attacks. Iran has also tracked the movement of US personnel in Bahrain and struck them in their hotel rooms.
The Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar has met a similar fate, with Iranians maintaining a constant barrage of missile and drone strikes on the facility, which typically hosts 10,000 American troops. Satellite images show extensive damage to the airbase.
The relentless attacks have led to a complete halt in Qatar’s liquefied natural gas production at the world’s largest export facility following drone attacks. Qatar has also been forced to shut down its metal production.
Similarly, the Ali Al-Salem Airbase in Kuwait continues to be targeted several times a day. Photos and videos show plumes of smoke billowing from the facility as it continues to reel under the barrage of Iranian strikes that have occurred since February 28.
Furthermore, Kuwait is the only GCC country to have announced deaths among its personnel. In a statement on Tuesday, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defence said four of its soldiers had been killed in Iranian strikes so far.
The attacks on the United Arab Emirates have covered a wider geographical area. Four of its seven emirates have been hit so far. Several naval assets have been struck in the capital Abu Dhabi as well as an apartment where Israeli officials operating in the country had taken residence. Iran has also struck Jafza port, the flagship free zone of DP World, which is owned by the Epstein associate Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.
A US consulate in Dubai was struck with a Shahed-136 suicide drone on Tuesday. Other targets include the civilian airport in Dubai as well as a suspected CIA facility in the glittering emirate. The emirates of Ras Al-Khaimah and Fujairah have also been targeted in the Iranian retaliatory strikes.
Iran targeted a CIA station in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. In comparison to the other four states, however, Iranian strikes in the biggest GCC state and Oman have been relatively subdued.
Tehran maintains that its strikes on US military bases in the region are justified on the grounds that those facilities are being used to conduct operations against Iran. It insists that foreign bases are its only target in these countries. “If the countries of the region are looking for a solution, they should shut down the US bases in their countries,” an Iranian official told the national broadcaster IRIB. “It is our legal right to hit US bases in the region, and they will continue to be our target.”
While attempting to fend off the incoming projectiles, most of these states are running out of interceptors. “The UAE has now burned through a significant chunk of an interceptor stockpile that took years to build — in 48 hours,” one analyst wrote on Twitter. According to a Bloomberg report, “Qatar’s stocks of Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use.”
Qatar and the UAE have made requests to the US to help replenish their stocks, but they are not getting any help from their supposed benefactor in a desperate hour. “The US is ‘stonewalling’ requests by some Gulf states to replenish their air defence interceptors as pressure mounts on them to join the US and Israel in their war on Iran,” Middle East Eye reported on Tuesday.
Unwilling and unable to defend its Arab vassals, the US wants them to join in the attacks against Iran! Attempting to punch above their weight, the UAE and Qatar have issued bombastic statements about potentially targeting Iran. However, it is hard to see how they will do so. With the United States as their sole supplier, the Gulf states do not possess any weapons that the Iranians are not already dealing with from the American and Israeli assault. Even the launch bases will be no different. They bring nothing new to the table to take the Iranians by surprise or to pose them a new challenge.
However, attacking Iran would make them belligerents and give Iran the pretext to go after their national assets. It will no longer need to restrict its actions to the foreign bases and can go, if it wishes, after their oil and other resources.
The relatively constrained attacks that Iran has launched until now have already ripped away the façade of peaceful little oases of endless shopping and leisure that these states have projected to the world. Flights have come to a complete standstill, schools and offices have gone remote, and fear of projectiles is keeping people inside their skyscrapers as uncertainty reigns. If things continue at this rate — and there is nothing to suggest they would not — the expatriates would be soon selling their assets and moving back to their home countries, thereby crashing the booming real estate market. With fuel production halted and under constant risk of attack, fleeing immigrants and tourism grinding to a halt, the smaller GCC states could soon be staring at a bleak future, one devoid of the garish ostentation that has become their leitmotif.
Talking to people in these states I got the sense that very few of them thought they would see days like these. They had bought into the sales pitch of the land of perpetual milk and honey and Bugattis on roads paved in gold that these states have sold for the past several decades. The Iranian response has come as a rude shock to the vast majority.
In such a desperate scenario, the only course of action that suits the GCC states is to beg Uncle Sam for a ceasefire deal with Iran and hope things return to normal. Having promised Trump and his unscrupulous family and friends vast investments in Arabian real estate, AI data centres, and scam coins provides decent leverage that they can now put to use. They can also threaten, if they have the spine for it, to pull the trillions of dollars of funding in the US they promised Trump when he last visited the Middle East. Money is one language that Trump and his merry band of grifters understand.
C. Palestine will be Free
