Gulf allies are quietly starting to break with Washington

For decades, Washington treated the Gulf monarchies as the immovable pillars of American power in the Middle East. The U.S. military presence there evolved into a vast, interconnected web of bases and infrastructure stretching across Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

These states hosted U.S. troops, bought American weapons and aligned themselves with Washington’s regional priorities. In return, they expected the ultimate prize: protection under the American security umbrella.

That bargain is now fraying — and perhaps breaking.

The most important geopolitical shift in the Middle East today is not happening in Tehran, Tel Aviv or Ankara. It is happening quietly inside the royal courts of the Gulf sheikhdoms, which are reassessing whether the U.S. is still a reliable security guarantor or merely a power that uses their territory while leaving them exposed to retaliation.

President Trump’s Iran war has accelerated this reassessment dramatically.

When the U.S., in concert with Israel, launched war on Iran earlier this year, Gulf Arab states cooperated. American warplanes operated from bases on their soil. Trump singled out Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE as “excellent” partners while deriding NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners for refusing to participate.

But the praise concealed a deeper problem: The Gulf states discovered that supporting American military operations carried potentially catastrophic costs for them, as their energy facilities and desalination plants became targets of Iranian reprisals. Gulf rulers watched as the U.S. deployed enormous military resources (including Aegis-equipped destroyers and advanced interceptors) to shield Israel from Iranian retaliation while Gulf states absorbed the payback for enabling American strikes.

That experience appears to have fundamentally altered their calculations.

Another turning point came recently when Trump announced “Project Freedom,”........

© The Hill