Gulf Arab states are telling the US that any deal with Tehran should do more than end the war, and must permanently curb Iran’s missile and drone capabilities and ensure global energy supplies are never again “weaponised”, four Gulf sources said.
US President Donald Trump has extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, or face the destruction of its energy plants.
But the big question confronting Gulf policymakers is no longer how the Iran war ends, but what kind of regional order follows, the four Gulf sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Gulf officials, whose countries have been repeatedly fired on by Tehran during the US-Israeli war on Iran, have told Washington in private meetings that the Islamic Republic has left them no diplomatic “off-ramp”, the sources said.
The officials want any deal to lock in enforceable restraints on missile and drone attacks on energy and civilian assets, threats to oil and shipping routes, and proxy warfare, the sources added.
Any agreement must rewrite the rules of engagement by providing guarantees that the Strait of Hormuz is never again used as a tool of war and Gulf states must be written into the architecture of what comes next, they say.
“The real challenge is not persuading Iran to stop the war, but ensuring the Gulf is not left exposed to the same dynamics that made it possible in the first place,” Ebtessam Al‑Kerbi, president of the Emirates Policy Centre, told Reuters.
Yousef al‑Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, has framed the war not as a crisis to be frozen but as a test of whether Iran can still hold the global economy hostage afterwards.
