Commentary & Analysis

The confrontation between the United States and Iran has forced a reassessment of the assumptions underpinning the Middle East security order. For the Gulf states, the objective has remained constant and shared: preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and containing the threats posed by its regional activities. What has shifted is confidence that reliance on Washington alone can deliver that objective. Recent attacks against the GCC states have demonstrated that the threat facing the Gulf extends well beyond a direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran, and that the U.S. broader strategy toward Iran has not, on its own, produced an effective outcome for Gulf states still absorbing Iranian strikes.

This has produced a strategic issue in the region. Gulf states continue to see the United States as an essential security partner and have no interest in replacing that relationship. At the same time, there is now a real conviction that regional security arrangements need to be strengthened in their own right, not as an alternative to Washington, but as a complement to it. The result is a dual-track policy already visible in the region's expanding defense relationships.

In Saudi Arabia's case: the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Pakistan and its extension into the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Turkiye, alongside a deepening bilateral relationship with the United States that produced a Strategic Defense Agreement, Major Non-NATO Ally status, and a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in the span of a single year is a perfect example. These are not competing tracks. They are the same strategy in both directions at once, because the lesson has been learned that Gulf security cannot depend on a single external actor or on the policy choices of a particular U.S. administration.

The question this raises is therefore not whether Gulf states should choose between Washington and regional partnerships. The evidence is clear that the answer is both. The question instead is what would make the U.S. side of that equation as resilient as the diversification already underway on the regional side.

The rhetorical commitment is not in question. At the June 25, 2026, U.S.-GCC Ministerial Meeting in Manama, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced in the joint statement what he called the “enduring U.S. commitment to GCC security,” and foreign ministers from all six Gulf states reaffirmed their “strong commitment to the U.S.-GCC strategic partnership,” language that echoed the July 16, 2022, Jeddah summit, where former U.S. President Joe Biden affirmed that Washington “stands ready to work jointly with its partners in the GCC to deter and confront all external threats to their security,” naming the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb explicitly.

Nor is the material commitment in question. On September 4, 2026, the U.S. State Department approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Saudi Arabia at an estimated total cost of $5.75 billion: roughly $5 billion in Joint Direct Attack Munitions – Extend Range (JDAM-ER) and $750 million in AGT-1500 Engines, following a nearly $2 billion package approved in July 2026. Both were justified in near-identical language: strengthening the security of a Major Non-NATO Ally and improving “interoperability with systems operated by U.S. forces and other Gulf Region partners.”

What is still missing is the step that would convert this pattern of political statements, arms packages, and Major Non-NATO Ally designation into something that is sustainable in the long-term. This is where the case for a formal U.S.-GCC security framework differs from a simple call for more American commitment.

A U.S.-Saudi mutual defense treaty was under serious negotiation during the Biden administration, packaged together with irreversible steps toward a Palestinian state based on the two-state solution, a Saudi civil nuclear agreement, and steps toward Saudi-Israeli normalization, which would have been required to reach the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate. That calculation collapsed following the war in Gaza. The Trump administration has not revived that treaty track. Instead, it has pursued the relationship at an executive level that does not require Senate approval, as many question whether Democrats in the Senate would ratify a treaty negotiated by the Trump administration in the current polarized environment, regardless of its content. Riyadh understands the Senate arithmetic as well as Washington does and has made clear that any permanent treaty would still require tangible movement on the Palestinian issue, a condition that remains unmet.

It is important to note that a binding framework would not replace the Mecca agreement or the broader push toward collective GCC defense capability. It would do the opposite: give Gulf states genuine security and stability under the American relationship. This also reframes the debate around the Mecca agreement itself. It has been read by some as a verdict on the unreliability of U.S. guarantees, and by others as evidence that Gulf states are quietly hedging away from Washington. Neither reading fully holds up against the record: the same states building the Mecca framework spent the same year signing a Strategic Defense Agreement and investing in new American arms commitments. What the record actually shows is not hedging away from the United States, but hedging against the specific vulnerability that a policy-level relationship, however well resourced, is not a guarantee. A formal framework addresses that vulnerability directly, without requiring Gulf states to unwind any of the regional diversification they have good reason to keep building.

None of this should be mistaken for a case that regional security arrangements are a stopgap to be discarded once Washington formalizes its commitments. The military, technological, and institutional depth of the U.S.-Gulf relationship cannot be replicated by regional arrangements alone, but the reverse is also true: no American framework, however binding, replaces the value of Gulf states possessing independent deterrence and response capability against missile and drone attacks, infrastructure strikes, maritime disruption, and proxy actions that do not always rise to a level that would trigger a U.S. response. A formal U.S.-GCC framework is a complement to that collective capability, not a substitute for building it.

In sum, for the Gulf states, the lesson is increasingly clear. The existing security architecture cannot be taken for granted. The United States remains a critical partner, but recent experience has reinforced the need for greater national capacity-building, stronger regional cooperation, and more diversified strategic partnerships. The objective is not strategic separation from Washington, but greater strategic resilience. The Middle East is consequently moving toward a more complex security order in which U.S. power will remain important but will increasingly operate alongside stronger regional capabilities and overlapping partnerships.

Amnah Mosly is a Researcher at the Gulf Research Center