The Gulf states US base debate, long treated as theoretical, is now live, and the circumstances that produced it deserve more scrutiny than the headlines are giving them. The Washington Post reports that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain are now unified in their frustration with the Trump administration, following months of conflict and continuing missile and drone strikes by Iran and its proxies. Three officials and a former US diplomat told the paper that some of these governments have begun to debate the utility of continuing to host large US military installations on their territory.
The consensus read is that this is about diplomatic pique, allies venting frustration but ultimately staying put. That read may be too comfortable.
When Partners Start Asking the Question
The Gulf states US base debate is not the same as a withdrawal. Qatar and Bahrain host large US bases; Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait remain deeply dependent on Washington as a security partner and arms supplier. Nobody is about to ask US forces to leave. But the fact that the question is being asked at all is worth dwelling on, because it marks a shift in the framing inside Gulf capitals.
‘Trump started this war,’ one Gulf official told the Post, speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘And we are paying the price.’ The same official described anger with the United States as being at its highest point since the US and Israel attacked Iran in February.
Firas Maksad, director for the Middle East and North Africa practice at the Eurasia Group, told the Post that Gulf allies feel they were ‘unnecessarily entangled’ in a war that Trump is now struggling to resolve. Trump’s Iran policy, Maksad said, is frequently described within Gulf leadership circles as ‘erratic’ and ‘unpredictable.’ Anna Jacobs, a fellow with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said there has been ‘diminished trust’ of the US since the start of the war, and that US allies believe the country’s ‘conduct in the region is making them less safe, not more safe.’
A mutual defence agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan last week was characterised by a senior European official as ‘a signal to the US.’ That is worth taking seriously. These are not neutral bystanders signalling displeasure; these are the countries that Washington most needs onside for any durable regional settlement.
The Arms Sales Paradox
Here is where the conventional narrative gets awkward. Even as Gulf frustration mounted, the Trump administration was accelerating its weapons transfers to the same partners it was alienating. In March and May 2026, the administration invoked emergency provisions of the Arms Export Control Act to expedite the sale of more than $30 billion in munitions and air and missile defence equipment to Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, bypassing the congressional review processes that would ordinarily apply, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The administration, in other words, was simultaneously deepening the security relationship and generating the very instability that relationship is meant to manage.
The paradox is not lost on Gulf governments. Arms sales do not buy strategic patience indefinitely, particularly when the buyer’s policy is described by partners as producing more risk, not less.
What Gulf Capitals Actually Wanted
Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University and a fellow of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, offered the sharpest verdict on the June Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran. ‘The MOU was a joke,’ he said. The agreement failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal or Tehran’s support for proxy forces. ‘Those terms were not terms of our liking,’ Al-Saif said, ‘and that’s why it died out sooner than later.’
The senior European official told the Post that Gulf capitals had not been ‘totally against’ the war at the outset. The thinking in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh was that a quick, definitive victory could be beneficial. That calculus began to shift in the lead-up to the first round of US-Iran talks in April, when it became clear that the Iranian regime would neither fall nor reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Into this already fraught dynamic, Trump suggested in May 2026, during a call with Arab leaders and in subsequent social media posts, that joining the Abraham Accords should be ‘mandatory’ for a number of Arab and Muslim countries as part of his proposed deal to end the war, according to the Brookings Institution. Presenting a contentious normalisation framework as a condition of peace, to governments already questioning Washington’s reliability, is the kind of move that accelerates exactly the Gulf states US base debate that the administration presumably wants to close down.
The consensus may be underweighting how much the combination of strategic inconsistency and diplomatic pressure is reshaping the calculus inside Gulf capitals. Analysts cited by the Post judge that these dynamics are unlikely in the near term to significantly reorder the region. The near term, however, has a habit of becoming the medium term faster than analysts expect, particularly when partners have already begun to explore their options.
