Mar 11, 2026 13:28 pm IST

Opinion | 'We Protect America, Not Vice Versa': Inside Gulf's Growing Frustration With Trump

Arab states are increasingly waking up to the bitter truth that the US compromised the region's safety for Israel's war goals, despite millions of dollars spent on security arrangements.

Aditi Bhaduri Aditi Bhaduri

Soon after Operation Epic Fury began, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, Saeed Khatibzade, who was visiting India to participate in the Raisina Dialogue, announced that Iran and the Gulf states had been engaged in back-channel talks when the joint Israel-US attacks on Iran began. The messaging was clear. The assaults were, in part, to sabotage these talks; they began also when Iran had been negotiating with the US over its nuclear programme through Omani mediation. 

For decades after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran - which, by the way, the Arabs have always called an "Iranian revolution", dismissing claims of it being "Islamic" - the security architecture of the Gulf countries has been developed as a counter to Iran and to pre-empt its export of the 'revolution' to their lands. The primary fear has been the toppling of the monarchies in these countries. Saudi Arabia, for instance, had admitted that it had invested millions in exporting Wahhabism across the world, primarily as a counter to the Shiite political Islam that Iran was exporting. 

The Birth Of The Carter Doctrine

Intra-Gulf relations were transferred, as were the relations between the Gulf countries and the US. America's reliance on Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two largest energy powerhouses in the region, was replaced by the Carter Doctrine. In 1980, the then US President, Jimmy Carter, unveiled it in his State of the Union address, which declared that the US would use military force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf. 

In 1981, the Gulf monarchies joined forces to form the Gulf Cooperation Council. Since then, the security architecture of the region has been anchored in the Carter Doctrine, which made the US the net security provider in the region. 

While the Shiite threat remained, with Iran forming its axis of resistance through the creation of proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, and, much later, the Hashed al Shabi, or armed Shiite militias in Iraq, yet another threat arose over the last decade. 

The Arab Spring, which brought back political Islam on the Arab map and led to the rise of Sunni........

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