The Gulf’s Geopolitical Predicament Cannot Be Solved. It Can Only Be Managed
The five-day pause on attacking Iran’s electricity plants announced by US President Donald Trump has been widely welcomed as a respite from the relentless bombing campaign. But a permanent settlement—”the complete and total resolution” in Trump’s own words—will remain elusive. The fundamental problem is not one of military tactics or diplomatic timing. It is structural, rooted in a power asymmetry that has defined the region for centuries. Iran is simply too large, and its Arab neighbours too small and divided, for the Gulf to find a stable equilibrium on its own.
The numbers tell a story that no amount of military hardware can overcome. Iran is a unified state of over 90 million people, heir to a continuous civilisation stretching back millennia. The Arab Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman—are six separate kingdoms, each with its own interests, rivalries, and vulnerabilities. Their combined population is less than that of Iran. Their territory is fragmented. Their military capacities, despite massive investment, remain individual and uncoordinated. Persia is a unified state; the Arab Gulf is a collection of principalities. This asymmetry is the foundational reality of Gulf security.
The Gulf Arabs have therefore long looked to external powers to balance Iran. That reliance—principally on the United States—has made Gulf security hostage to the political mood swings in Washington. When America is committed and present, the balance holds. When America withdraws or sends mixed signals, the Gulf Arabs tremble. This is not a sustainable foundation for regional stability.
To understand the present, one must look at the past. The Islamic Republic did not invent Iranian assertiveness; it inherited it from the Shah and intensified it. Mohammad Reza Shah had already demonstrated Iran’s hegemonic instincts before the revolution. On the eve of the British withdrawal from the Gulf in 1971, he seized the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the nascent United Arab Emirates—a land grab that remains a festering grievance today. He claimed Bahrain as Iran’s fourteenth province until international pressure forced a tactical retreat. He deployed thousands of troops to Oman’s Dhofar province to crush a left-wing insurgency, not out of altruism, but to establish Iran as the Gulf’s indispensable security arbiter. He built the most powerful military force in the developing world, positioning Tehran as a regional gendarme with American blessing.
The Islamic theocracy that overthrew the Shah in 1979 has been even more vigorous in pursuing regional hegemony, but in opposition to Washington rather than in partnership with it. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replaced Persian nationalism with Shi’a revolutionary ideology, but the instruments—proxy forces, interference in neighbours’ affairs, projection of military power—differed little from the Shah’s playbook. The difference lay in ferocity and religious fervour. The ambition to dominate the Gulf has endured regardless of whether Tehran was governed by a monarchy or a theocracy. Both, however, made a similar mistake: in focusing on external adventures, they exacerbated domestic unrest. A popular slogan from Iran’s recent protests captures this contradiction perfectly: “No to Gaza, No to Lebanon… my life is for Iran.”
The conservative Gulf Arabs responded to the 1979 revolution by establishing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, an alliance designed to pool resources against the Islamic Republic. But the GCC has barely limped along, hobbled by internal divisions, petty rivalries, and a fundamental inability to act collectively. In a telling paradox, the Gulf Arabs turned to Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein to contain revolutionary Iran. Eight years of the Iran-Iraq War kept Iran at bay, but at a staggering cost in lives and treasure. And the counterweight proved double-edged: the same military machine that blunted Iran’s revolutionary fervour rolled into Kuwait in 1990. The Arab shield had turned on those it was meant to protect.
American intervention expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 but did not resolve the underlying structural imbalance. It merely replaced Iraqi protection with a direct American military presence on the Arabian Peninsula. A brief debate about a “Gulf NATO” never took off. The Arabs also encouraged radical Sunni forces to fend off the Shia threat from Tehran. That strategy backfired spectacularly on September 11, 2001, when the very forces they had nurtured turned their fury on the United States.
After 9/11, the United States made a fateful decision that would reshape the region for decades. It chose to destroy the Iraqi state, disband the Ba’athist military, and tear down the Sunni bulwark that had contained Iran for eight years. The consequences were immediate and devastating. Tehran was handed the geopolitical windfall it had spent eight years fighting to prevent. Iran’s Shia allies now ruled in Baghdad. The land route from Tehran to Beirut became a physical reality. Iranian proxies strutted across the region, from Damascus to Sana’a. The Gulf Arabs were left staring at an Iranian sphere of influence stretching from the Zagros mountains to the Mediterranean. The rise of Iranian power also drove a quiet rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf Arabs, adding a new and complex strategic wrinkle to an already tangled web.
Where does the regional balance go from here? The US, Israel, and the Gulf Arabs have clear objectives. They want a credible defanging of Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities. They want Iran to relinquish its proxy forces and stop meddling in Arab internal affairs. They also seek the internationalisation of the Strait of Hormuz to guarantee freedom of navigation. Iran, for its part, has its own set of demands, articulated with increasing confidence. It insists on its right to develop nuclear and missile technologies as sovereign prerogatives. It wants guarantees against future American military action, an end to US bases in Arabia, compensation for wartime damages, and a veto over the governance of the Hijaz, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
This brings us back to the central, intractable problem. Iran is too strong to be ignored, but not strong enough to exercise unilateral dominance. The Gulf Arabs cannot balance Iran on their own and will continue to depend on the United States for security. No other power—not Russia, not China, let alone Europe or India—can replace Washington as the ultimate security guarantor of the Gulf Arabs. The Europeans have neither the military capacity nor the political will. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. China is focused on its own neighbourhood and is unwilling to project power far beyond its shores. India has the aspirations but not yet the capability.
This structural reality imposes a grim logic on the region. Notwithstanding the flicker of hope offered by Trump’s five-day pause, the tragic cycle of the impossible balancing between Arabia and Persia is likely to continue. The Gulf’s geopolitical predicament is not a problem that can be solved, in the sense of achieving a final, stable resolution. It is a condition that can only be managed—just barely, and with a great deal of luck. The United States will remain the indispensable power, but its commitment will fluctuate with the whims of its presidents. The Gulf Arabs will remain divided, unable to speak with one voice. Iran will remain ambitious, driven by a deep historical sense of its own importance.
The five-day pause is welcome, but it is not a breakthrough. The underlying structural imbalance remains. The Gulf’s geopolitical predicament cannot be solved. It can only be managed, and even that management will require constant vigilance, a clear-eyed understanding of the region’s history, and a willingness to live with uncertainty. For the Gulf Arabs, for Iran, and for the external powers that have made the region their battleground, the lesson is sobering: some problems have no solutions, only degrees of containment.
Questions and Answers
Q1: What is the fundamental structural problem that makes Gulf security so precarious?
A1: The fundamental problem is the power asymmetry between Iran and its Arab neighbours. Iran is a unified state of over 90 million people with a continuous civilisational history, while the Arab Gulf is divided among six separate kingdoms. The combined population of the GCC states is less than that of Iran, and they cannot balance Iran on their own.
Q2: How does the article describe the continuity of Iranian ambition across both the monarchy and the Islamic Republic?
A2: The article argues that Iran’s ambition to dominate the Gulf predates the 1979 revolution and has endured regardless of the regime in power. The Shah seized islands, claimed Bahrain, and projected military power to establish Iran as the “Gulf’s indispensable security arbiter.” The Islamic Republic intensified this ambition but with religious fervour. Both regimes, however, exacerbated domestic unrest by focusing on external adventures.
Q3: What were the unintended consequences of the Gulf Arabs’ strategies to contain Iran?
A3: The article identifies two major backfires:
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The Gulf Arabs turned to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to contain Iran. The eight-year Iran-Iraq war kept Iran at bay, but the same Iraqi military then invaded Kuwait in 1990.
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The Gulf Arabs encouraged radical Sunni forces to fend off the Shia threat from Tehran. That strategy backfired on September 11, 2001.
Q4: Why does the article argue that no other power can replace the US as the Gulf’s security guarantor?
A4: The article states that no other power has the combination of military capacity and political will. Europe lacks both. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. China is focused on its own neighbourhood and unwilling to project power far beyond its shores. India has aspirations but not yet the capability. The US remains indispensable.
Q5: What is the article’s concluding assessment of the Gulf’s geopolitical predicament?
A5: The article concludes that the Gulf’s geopolitical predicament “cannot be solved. It can only be managed.” The structural imbalance between a unified Iran and a divided Arab Gulf is permanent. The US will remain the indispensable power, but its commitment will fluctuate. The Gulf Arabs will remain divided. The cycle of “impossible balancing” is likely to continue indefinitely, with only temporary pauses and degrees of containment.
