The five-day pause on attacking Iran’s electricity plants announced Monday by US President Donald Trump has been widely welcomed. But a permanent settlement — “the complete and total resolution” in Trump’s words — will remain elusive. It is hard to square the circle of power asymmetry between Iran and its Arab neighbours that lies at the root of Gulf insecurity. Iran is simply too large, and its Arab neighbours too small, for the region to find a stable equilibrium on its own. 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 political mood swings in Washington.

The numbers tell the story. Iran’s 90 million people dwarf the 27 million citizens of the GCC states. Persia is a unified state; the Arab Gulf is divided among several kingdoms. Iran’s ambition to dominate the Gulf has endured regardless of whether Tehran was governed by a monarchy or a theocracy. For nearly 150 years, that ambition was constrained by Great Britain, the world’s pre-eminent power from the early 19th to the mid-20th century, operating from the Indian Subcontinent. The Raj protected the weaker Gulf states while maintaining a working relationship with Tehran. The decline of Britain, its withdrawal from the east of Suez, the independence granted to Gulf kingdoms in 1971, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 together marked the demise of the old regional order.

The Islamic Republic did not invent Iranian assertiveness — it inherited it from the Shah and intensified it. Mohammad Reza Shah had........

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