The Gulf countries didn’t start the war. Yet they’re paying a terrible price. In battered infrastructure and the erosion of a carefully manufactured illusion of stability. What has unfolded since end-February is a brutal audit of decades of strategic choices made by the Gulf monarchies.

Within forty-eight hours of the opening strikes on Iran, every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had taken retaliatory hits. The missiles and drones didn’t just target US bases; they tore through airports, hotels, energy installations, ports and all the fragile markers of prosperity cities like Dubai had spent decades burnishing and flaunting.

For decades, these monarchies were secure in the knowledge that the trade they had made with Washington gave them an unassailable security cover. They hosted US bases, bought US weapons, aligned strategically with the US in the firm belief that they had purchased deterrence and security. The war has shattered that illusion.

Iran’s justification was brutally simple. If US planes take off from your soil, your soil is part of the war. Iran couldn’t afford symmetric warfare, so it would hit where it hurt; civilian infrastructure was not going to be spared.

The strikes have taken a heavy toll: nearly $200 billion in lost output across the six GCC nations in the Persian Gulf. Their tourism industry is bleeding hundreds of millions every day. Their oil flows are badly hit by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The insurance costs of shipping are insupportably high. GDP contraction is an unfolding reality. In other words, this is a systemic collapse of their defence–diplomacy–development 3D model.

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