ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – The Persian Gulf nations are building up their own defenses and finding routes around the Strait of Hormuz, officials said, as they confront a U.S. war against Iran with no end in sight and in which they have borne the brunt of Tehran’s retaliatory attacks.
As the Trump administration seeks to impose an economic stranglehold on Iran, a tactic with little precedence of success, officials from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar said at a conference in Abu Dhabi this week that “strategic autonomy” is essential for nations in the Gulf.
Those nations, which have long relied on the United States as their top security partner, have diversified some partnerships since February, when they became the targets of Iranian drones and missiles, turning to countries including South Korea, Ukraine and Turkey for military assistance.
“Strategic autonomy does not mean strategic isolation,” said Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the president of the UAE. “Our long-standing and trusted partnerships, in particular with the United States, remain an essential part of our security and an important source of strength. The two are complementary, not contradictory.”
Gargash, speaking at the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi, his nation’s capital, said Iran “remains our neighbor, and at some point we will have to find a way to restore what can be restored.”
“Geography gives us no alternative to engagement,” he added. “But we must distinguish clearly between rebuilding a necessary and functional relationship with Iran and rebuilding the trust that has broken. The first is necessary. The second will be far more difficult.”
Balancing act
The remarks by Gargash and other officials underscored the balancing act that Washington faces as it seeks to impose maximum economic pain on Tehran while not harming its closest neighbors, whose own economies and populations are deeply intertwined with Iran.
In recent weeks, the U.S. and Iran have traded limited strikes, with the U.S. military on Saturday saying that it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships.
The Trump administration has signaled that an intensive new military campaign is unlikely, and that the president’s preference is to use a naval blockade and a bevy of sanctions to impose leverage in hopes of exacting concessions, including agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
But experts have cast doubt on the idea that U.S. economic pressure will force the Iranian regime to capitulate.
Iranian officials have acknowledged the pain of recent sanctions on their economy. But instead of being more willing to negotiate, they have ramped up strikes and bellicose rhetoric.
The main threat facing the region is “normalization” of the crisis, Majed al-Ansari, spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar and an adviser to Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said on Monday.
“It is no longer seen as a temporary crisis with a start and an end date,” he said at the forum. “It is more and more seen as a new normal.”
“Operation Economic Outcast” – the sanctions regime that the Trump administration announced last month – might not work, he said, nothing that the Iranian regime has long withstood sanctions and that new pressure conversely could lead to more national unity.
When it comes to ending the war, he said, there is also a “narrative problem,” because “if the other party’s narrative succeeds, then strategically, they have failed … therefore, it makes more sense for them to continue.”
At this point, it appears that neither the U.S. and Israel nor Iran are willing to be seen as having failed, he said. That creates a major obstacle, he said, to determining “a desired outcome for both parties” to declare the war over.
In that context, al-Ansari said: “Having international forces in the region, having a strategic alliance in the United States, is very important, but it is not enough. Self-sufficiency when it comes to security is the only way forward.”
The war, officials and experts at the forum said, has highlighted the Gulf region’s key role in the world economy, noting that food, fuel and fertilizer prices have risen globally because of blocking of cargo vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
In the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, officials have been able to use ports outside of the Strait of Hormuz to continue to export oil and import other goods.
The nations of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, which do not have land borders that allow them to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, have suffered more acutely.
With a single drone, al-Ansari noted, Iran was able to take out about 70 percent of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas supply – which represents 20 percent of the world’s overall LNG supply.
‘There are limits’
One of the biggest lessons of the war so far is about “the limits of sea power,” said retired Vice Adm. John W. “Fozzie” Miller, who served as the commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Despite the successes of the U.S. Navy, he noted, in destroying substantial Iranian targets on shore and at sea, “ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles continue to find their way out of Iran and into the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Despite the success we have seen, we understand that there are limits as well,” Miller said, comparing the situation to Somali pirates using small ships to seize massive cargo ships, hold them hostage and demand ransom.
“From a military standpoint, we have to look out and really think about what can be done,” he said, noting that the threat exists not just in the Strait of Hormuz, but also in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is increasingly under attack by Houthi rebels.
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