After a month of condemnations by Gulf countries of Iranian attacks against them, the United Arab Emirates’s ambassador to Washington published an op-ed last week laying out what the Gulf hoped to see with the war’s end.

“A simple ceasefire isn’t enough,” Yousef Otaiba wrote in the Wall Street Journal two days after US President Donald Trump announced that talks with Iran aimed at ending the war were advancing. “We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, terror proxies and blockades of international sea lanes.”

The remarks were uncharacteristically clear and detailed for a senior official from the Gulf countries, which had largely tiptoed around the war in its first few weeks, presenting themselves as victims of powers beyond their control rather than full-throated supporters of the US-Israeli campaign against an Iran they have long viewed warily.

Though transparency on Gulf positions remains in short supply, the last several days have seen a marked shift in signals emanating from many of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, seemingly hardening demands that the war only end with Iran fundamentally denuded of the ability to threaten the region again, even if it means the continuation of fighting.

Their conditions, which are not uniform, are being framed as non-negotiable. “We cannot allow Iran to hold the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and the global economy hostage,” Otaiba wrote.

The turn appears to be driven by the harm the war has generated to the Gulf countries’ economies, with energy facilities unable to operate freely, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz choking off trade and the image of the GCC — Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — as a hub of stability for global business and tourism shattered.

There are no comprehensive official figures yet quantifying the economic damage to Gulf states since the Iranian attacks, but reports and statements point to disruptions in trade, rising costs, and potential impacts on production.

The shift has coincided with Trump’s pursuit of negotiations aimed at ending the war, which are not guaranteed to meet Gulf demands, though it’s unclear to what degree, if any, the newly bellicose stances are being animated by concerns over the talks.

And though the UAE has offered sharper conditions than most others, messaging in much of the Gulf remains muddled between calls for a ceasefire and hints at the need to keep fighting, limiting the effect those stances may have on how the war eventually ends.

Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, the main export route for Gulf states to the rest of the world, primarily for oil and gas.

Since the US and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has largely shut the channel, laying mines and threatening any ship attempting to pass through without its okay.

The disruption severely hampered not only oil exports but also the import of industrial materials and even food, much of which Gulf states rely on due to limited agricultural capacity caused by harsh climatic conditions.

The primary impact, however, has been on oil. A transit route for roughly 20 percent of global oil consumption and large volumes of natural gas, the strait’s closure has had worldwide repercussions. Oil prices have surged from $60 per barrel before the war to over $100, while gas prices in Europe have risen by 60%.

The ongoing closure, now entering its second month, is deeply worrying for Gulf states, whose economies depend on the steady export of oil and gas. Its importance to the world economy has allowed them to portray demands that the war’s end guarantee the strait remains open as an issue stretching well beyond their interests alone.

“Almost a month into this war, the assumption that the flows of strategic goods through the Strait of Hormuz could be taken for granted… has been exposed as collective strategic myopia,” Mohammed Al-Hashemi, a senior figure at the Qatar Leadership Center, wrote in al-Jazeera recently, describing the artery as “the single point where global order faces its greatest vulnerability.”

Gulf countries have largely refrained from publicly detailing the economic damage, likely out of concern that doing so could further unsettle investors.

However, commercial companies have issued statements pointing to significant harm caused by the closure. For example, Aluminium Bahrain BSC, which operates the world’s largest aluminum smelter, announced in mid-March that it had shut down three production lines — accounting for 19% of its total capacity — due to shortages of raw materials following the halt of imports through the strait.

Two weeks earlier, the company had already warned of export difficulties due to the blockage.

Abdullah al-Junaid, a Bahraini journalist who spoke to The Times of Israel from Manama, said Iran must be forced to relinquish control over the Strait of Hormuz in any arrangement.

“This is an international shipping lane,” he said. “If Iran refuses to maintain its neutrality, regional and international forces must enforce it.”

However, he expressed skepticism over whether the United States would be able to ensure this outcome.

The economic damage is not limited to the disruption of exports and imports, but also includes direct harm from Iranian attacks on industrial zones.

In early March, the Saudi Defense Ministry announced that a refinery belonging to Saudi Aramco, a state-owned oil firm, had been hit by Iranian drone strikes. While the ministry said there were no casualties and only minimal damage, the company later temporarily halted production and began exporting via an alternative route — through the Red Sea instead of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran seemingly started attacking the Gulf in hopes that those countries would pressure the US for a ceasefire. Now that that strategy has backfired, Tehran seems increasingly focused on simply hitting the region’s oil and gas powers where they may be hurt most, putting pressure on energy supplies while also adopting a strategy of tit-for-tat strikes in retaliation for hits on its industrial infrastructure.

On Saturday, a day after Israeli and US strikes on steel facilities in Iran, the United Arab Emirates announced that an aluminum plant on its territory had been hit in an Iranian missile attack.

The statement did not detail the extent of the damage but said several workers were wounded. On the same day, heavy damage to two ports in Kuwait was also reported in Iranian attacks.

On Monday, Trump reiterated his threat against Iranian energy infrastructure, warning that if a deal did not open Hormuz, the US would “conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!) which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched’.”

The comment came hours after Iran struck a Kuwaiti desalination and power plant, though Tehran blamed the attack on Israel.

‘Won’t be blackmailed’

The economic toll has pushed Gulf states toward a more hardline stance against Iran. The New York Times reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been urging Trump to continue the war, fearing that halting it now would leave Iran in control of the strait.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are nearing a decision to join the war against Iran, amid attacks that have hit their economies. The reports have not been confirmed by official sources in either country.

Publicly, the UAE has largely been seen as taking the lead on articulating the Gulf’s increasingly tough tone.

“The UAE has publicly expressed the need for diplomacy, but also the end of the threat that it believes Iran poses in the region,” Taufiq Rahim, a UAE-based researcher and senior fellow at New America Institute, told The Times of Israel.

The UAE’s stance seems to mark a change from earlier in the war, when UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh told NBC in an interview that Abu Dhabi was not interested in the war and had sought diplomatic negotiations with Iran. The UAE was not setting conditions for ending the war, she said then.

The more bellicose messaging has come not only from the ambassador but also from the highest levels of the Gulf state.

On March 22, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan made the country’s direction clear in a post on X, writing: “We will never be blackmailed by terrorists,” in response to claims that the UAE now faces heightened risks due to its policies toward Iran.

The statement marked one of the most forceful public remarks by the UAE since the start of the war.

We will never be blackmailed by terrorists https://t.co/gMSjGOII8V — عبدالله بن زايد (@ABZayed) March 22, 2026

We will never be blackmailed by terrorists https://t.co/gMSjGOII8V

— عبدالله بن زايد (@ABZayed) March 22, 2026

Anwar Gargash, a senior UAE official, wrote on X the following day that beyond a ceasefire, the Emirates sought “sustainable security in the Arabian Gulf” — meaning not just an end to attacks, but additional conditions on Iran, such as halting the production of ballistic missiles and drones that are currently impacting not only Israel but neighboring states as well.

Rahim backed this position. “The recent op-ed by the UAE’s ambassador in The Wall Street Journal was clear about the conditions,” he said.

But there has been a marked lack of clarity from other Gulf countries regarding their terms for ending the war or keeping it going, potentially muddying their influence.

A regional official familiar with Saudi thinking told CNN last week that the country wanted to see Iran’s missile program degraded “as much as possible.”

But though reports indicate Riyadh’s support for pushing the war, and perhaps even a willingness to enter the fighting, a senior Saudi official told the network that the kingdom “remains supportive” of a peaceful resolution.

And while Qatar says it wants an immediate end to the war, it has also said that the war should end with fundamental changes to the region’s security infrastructure.

Rahim also said he believed that ultimately Iran’s government would need to accept the terms of a “US-led security architecture” — effectively ending its posture as a force opposing Gulf states and the United States, with broad economic and security implications.

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