Oman’s foreign minister Badr Albusa‘idi, may be the only hero in this tragic war between the United States and Israel and Iran. Diplomacy has become the first casualty of this conflict. Despite coming from a lineage of diplomats and having been affronted twice during his effort to mediate a peaceful outcome between the United States and Iran for more than nine months, Albusa‘idi’s belief in the dividends of diplomacy has not been shaken.
However, Oman’s diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have been repeatedly undermined. The first instance was when Israel attacked Iran on June 13, 2025, a little over a year after Israel’s de facto declaration of war on April 1, 2024, when it bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus. Ongoing negotiations between Iran and the US regarding Iran’s nuclear program had been scheduled in Oman on June 15, 2025. However, Israel, utterly averse to the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories it has occupied since 1967, appeared determined to preclude the United Nations-sponsored conference on Palestinian statehood in New York set to begin on June 17 and began strikes on Iran less than a week before that date. Setting a precedent, the conference was to be co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, with a desired outcome of an agreement on steps towards the recognition of a Palestinian state. Due to the hostilities, the conference has yet to be re-scheduled.
US and Israeli attacks in the midst of diplomatic negotiations
Israel and the US launched a second joint attack on Iran on February 28, 2026, days before the US had scheduled talks with Iran about its nuclear program. During last year’s assault, President Donald Trump was militarily piggy backing off Israel’s military gains, declaring himself impressed with the Israeli Defense Forces’ precise hits on both military and civilian targets, and even calling Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war hero.” He was clearly seduced by the opportunity to gain kudos by joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war. This year, in what could be termed the second war against Iran, the two allies – Israel and the US and their leaders PM Netanyahu and President Trump have acted in concert from the start.
Albusa‘idi, “dismayed” by the onset of hostilities while talks were ongoing, declared that they had made “significant progress” and had a good chance of success. He accused Israel and America of launching an unlawful strike “against the peace that had briefly appeared really possible.” Jonathan Powell, Britain’s national security adviser who was said to have attended the final stages of the nuclear talks, made a similar assessment. The next round of talks was to be conducted by a technical team and would likely have excluded the other negotiators – foremost Jared Kushner – whom Netanyahu saw as likely to defend Israel’s interests. These circumstances may have impacted on his decision to start the war some analysts say “he always wanted.”
The day after the initial air strikes on Tehran, PM Netanyahu exulted that the current “‘combination of forces’ — for which many that US participation, has allowed us to do what I have been hoping to do for 40 years. After attacking Egypt jointly with Britain and France during the Suez War in 1956, this has been the second time Israel has bombed another country in unison with an imperial power. In this context PM Netanyahu went to great lengths to emphasize his “historic” partnership with President Trump. Neither of the two leaders seem to have given serious consideration to the legal issues pertaining to the attack. According to Luis Moreno Ocampo, founding chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the war on Iran amounts to a crime of aggression under international law.
As for the goals PM Netanyahu wants to achieve by engulfing Iran in war, he has repeatedly referred to the destruction of its nuclear program and ballistic missile project (including the decimation of its existing missile and nuclear stockpiles), as well as to create the conditions for the potential fall of the Islamic Republic.
Echoes of the Weapons of Mass Destruction justification for Iraq invasion
For his part, President Trump in his State of the Union address on February 24, 2026, made just days before the US launched a war against Iran, also referred to the nuclear program. Trump, without evidence, said that Iran would soon build a long-range missile able to hit the United States. In an eight-minute video which informed American citizens that they were now at war with Iran, Trump defined his objective “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
Ever since Sir John Chilcot investigated the run-up to the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the war itself, concluding that the war had not been a last resort and that the British intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction was flawed, President Trump’s claims are embarrassingly reminiscent of those made by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair prior to the invasion.
Referring to the “quintessential preventive war” in living memory, notably the 2003 US intervention in Iraq (jointly with Britain), Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, points out that prevention was conveniently conflated with pre-emption, which requires imminent danger and is perceived as legally permissible. The American constitution reserves the right to declare war exclusively to Congress, but its recent attempt to curtail the White House’s power to extend the Iran war failed. Stevenson argues that opting for lethal force when there is time for diplomacy is needlessly destabilising and tends to end in failure.
The US’ involvement in two offensives against Iran over the past months during two previous negotiations – not to mention a prior cyberattack during George Bush’s presidency – will likely have compromised any trust Iran ever had in American mediation. According to Iranian newspaper Jam-e Jam, Iran’s distrust towards America’s intentions and policies constitutes a fundamental principle of its foreign policy. This distrust has its roots in events such as the Central Intelligence Agency-orchestrated coup against the democratically elected government of Muhammad Mosaddegh who had nationalized the oil industry in 1953 in a drive towards establishing Iran’s economic and political sovereignty; providing Saddam Hussein with dual-use technologies for weapons manufacturing during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and staying silent after thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians were killed by chemical weapons used by Iraq. (Iran was the only country in the region to have suffered from WMD.)
The pursuit of regional hegemony rather than the risk of nuclear weapons
PM Netanyahu’s current war on Iran is about securing regional hegemony rather than the threat of nuclear weapons. Unlike Israel, Iran has proven that it is prepared to live without the bomb. Iran stuck to the agreement painstakingly negotiated between it and the Permanent Five +1 members of the UN Security Council (USA, UK, France, China, Russia, plus Germany) and the European Union in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In 2018, Netanyahu convinced President Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA – ostensibly because the Israeli leader wanted to fulfil his dream to drag the US into his war on Iran which he could not fight alone. Presumably with respect to the aborted agreement, a week after the start of hostilities earlier this year German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who called the attack a “politically disastrous mistake,” reasoned that it was “a truly avoidable, unnecessary war, if its goal was to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.” Iran’s leaders – and many of their counterparts in the region – will have taken notice that had they built nukes instead of negotiating limits to their nuclear program, they would not have been attacked. Across the region, the race for procuring the bomb is likely to accelerate.
Hitting the Gulf’s soft underbelly
Unsurprisingly, following the joint assault Iran struck US assets in the Arab Gulf states, later targeting sea and airports as well as energy infrastructure such as Qatar’s main liquefied gas complex and the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned aluminium company. It did so because those states are home to US military bases – Al-Udeid air base in Qatar being the largest – and to exert pressure on the US to stop the war. Even though Iran had left no doubt that it would strike US interests in the Gulf if it were attacked, as late as three weeks into the war President Trump again professed surprise that Iran had acted upon its threat. After a fortnight of fighting, political analyst Fawaz Gerges pointed out that the strategic dilemma the Gulf Arab states face is balancing the immediate threat of Iranian attacks against the far greater risk of being drawn into a war led by the US and Israel. Thus far, Gerges argued, their crisis management has centred on defending their sovereignty and signalling red lines without entering a war they have neither started nor control.
Embarking on its most recent war of choice, Israel has shown no consideration for the regional stability of the Gulf Arab states. Israel was certainly aware that its attack on Iran would have cascading effects on the Gulf states. There is a widespread belief in the region that Israel is concerned to keep the Arabs weak and divided in order to pursue its expansionism in the region. Antagonism has doubtlessly increased. The current excessive and indiscriminate use of force and residents’ expulsions from parts of Lebanon which may lead to civic strife and state collapse is often cited as an example. Eighteen years of Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon, beginning in 1982, are still seared in popular Lebanese memory. By requesting that Lebanese Christian leaders no longer offer shelter to Shiite Muslim refugees who fled Israeli bombardments, Israel seeks to reinforce sectarian divisions where they had been transcended. For the first time in Lebanese history, monasteries have offered protection to Shiite families. Christians and Druze have been allowed to remain in the evacuation zone as defined by Israel, but Shiites are to be expelled. Calls by Israeli zealous citizens to build settlements there (“Tel Aviv started like this too”) were already made prior to the war (“Lebanon is ours!”), and have been followed by politicians such as finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s suggestion to change Israel’s borders now. He maintains that the Litani river “must be our new border with the state of Lebanon, like the Yellow Line in Gaza.” In a similar vein, defense minister Israel Katz said that all houses in Lebanese villages near the Israeli border will be demolished “like in Rafah and Beit Hanoun.” Four days later, on April 9 Israel launched its largest wave of strikes on Lebanon since the start of the month-long war against Hezbollah, most likely to put in jeopardy the two-week ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran the day before which he had opposed. Densely packed residential areas far from the zones of the capital’s south that are under Israeli evacuation orders were shelled. More than 254 people were killed — including 153 in Beirut and its southern suburbs — and more than 700 wounded, according to Lebanon’s state-run civil defence service.
Even while the Gulf Arabs are being confronted with and suffering the ramifications of a war they never wanted to be involved in, President Trump has nonetheless raised the prospect of them contributing to the costs, if not to the fighting, of the US and Israel’s war with Iran. For the last twenty years, they have been keen to develop alternative sources of trade, such as services, and tourism to lessen their dependency on hydrocarbon exports. As noted by Albusa‘idi, “plans to become a global hub for data centres may need to be revised.”
After counting on the American security umbrella for decades, the Gulf Arab states have experienced acute vulnerability. Countries such as the United Arab Emirates, which took part in the NATO-led operation to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya 2011, are likely to be resentful at America’s apparent disregard for the war’s spillover into the Gulf countries. Despite its developing arms industry and what Iran alleges is America’s use of military bases in the UAE, the latter seems to have little reason or appetite to join the fray. However, a month into the fighting it has signalled that it would be willing to participate in an UN-sanctioned coalition seeking to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by military means. Its closure has exposed the severe vulnerability of not just the Gulf Arab states but of the global economy. The weaponization of the Strait forms the nucleus of a strategy that includes missile and drone attacks and is seen by Iranians as providing them with coercive leverage. In fact, by disrupting this key waterway, Iran has used a most conventional but highly effective weapon – in contrast to the US’s military’s use of combat-untested Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) and advanced HELIOS laser systems.
One reason for the UAE to join the so-called Abraham Accords in 2020 was its expectation that by recognizing Israel, its security partnership with the US and a new official one with Israel was to deepen and that it would have ‘Washington’s ear’. Other states in the region which thus far have been reluctant to join the Accords will have noted the apparent irrelevance of the agreement in the current circumstances. However, at this stage it is far from clear whether further expansion of the Accords will be off the table for years or whether it will occur as a result of this war. Gulf leaders will also have understood that one reason for President Trump’s encouragement for them to participate in fighting Iran was motivated by his desire to gain legitimacy for his unpopular war at home.
At the onset of the war, the Gulf states opposed the war partly because they felt that a severely weakened Iran would upset the regional balance of power. (This view seems to have changed in the course of Iran’s sustained attacks on their key infrastructure, leading to a recalibration.) What is more, it will not have escaped their attention that by collaborating with Israel in this war, the US is enabling the only non-Muslim majority state in the region to realise its hegemonic ambitions, having provided it with the means to continue and expand its occupation of Arab land and the wholesale destruction of Gaza. In the early days of the war, there was reason to speculate that due to shared anxieties over this war Saudi Arabia and the UAE may end their feud over spheres of influence in Yemen that greatly intensified in December 2025. However, it soon emerged that the war on Iran reflected and even exacerbated their divisions and rivalry for regional supremacy and influence in neighbouring countries and beyond the region.
Thus, Dubai’s influential Deputy Chief of Police and Public Security Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, without naming Saudi Arabia, was dismissive of the countries in the regions, suggesting that the ‘West’ and Israel were more reliable partners and that the Gulf states should expand their cooperation with Israel. Noting that members of the GCC had relied on arms from “advanced countries” to defend themselves against Iranian missiles – possibly hinting at his country’s access to Israel’s technical know-how and intelligence sharing – he called on them to reassess their alliances. Stoking sectarian sentiments by reviving Arab stereotypes of ‘Persian’ aspirations for domination, he argued that Arab unity was a charade and bemoaned the low level of strategic alignment with other Arab states, above all the republics. He sounded resentful that they had failed to come to the Gulf Arab States’ help in their hour of need.
The war has also undermined the fragile détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia and may have nurtured the Saudi fantasy of becoming the dominant power in the region. According to The New York Times investigations, the leadership perceives the duumvirate’s campaign against Iran as a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East.
Partly due to President Trump’s threats to attack Iranian power plants which would provoke Iran’s counterattack on the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia has become impatient and disillusioned with President Trump’s erratic handling of the war. Prior to the start of the war and warning Trump of its consequences for the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia anticipated that if the Israelis were carrying it out, American involvement would guarantee a more secure outcome. During Trump’s latest visit in May 2025 to several Gulf states, Saudi Arabia committed to a US $600 billion investment in the United States, hailed by the US embassy in Riyadh as “strengthening strategic partnerships for economic prosperity” – only to find itself having to deal with the disastrous fallout from this war. Like its neighbours, Saudi Arabia was alarmed at President Trump’s announcement that he may decide to destroy Iran’s power plants. After announcing that it would be up to other states to reopen the Strait of Hormuz blocked by Iran, there is concern among the Gulf states that President Trump might simply ‘walk away’ from the war without an agreement with Iran. It has already hit desalination plants in Bahrain and Kuwait. If such a plant were to be struck in a city like Riyadh of nearly eight million people, it would be a huge undertaking to evacuate them.
The dearth of diplomacy
In light of Oman’s sincere investment in diplomatic solutions prior to the onset of war, Albusa‘idi was understandably indignant that such initiatives were not given due consideration. Negotiations were conducted while the sound of war drums could already be heard in the distance.
The American negotiators have scarce knowledge of the region and the science of nuclear power, and their diplomatic skills and experience are limited. Thus Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of Iran research for Israel’s defence intelligence agency, has recently argued that “US negotiators appeared to struggle to fully grasp the technical and strategic implications of this offer [to use only low-enriched uranium].”
Citrinowicz disputed the idea that Iran’s nuclear program presented an imminent threat, noting that the previous “cautious, calculating” leadership (meanwhile decimated) signalled in negotiations that it was prepared to significantly dilute the country’s stock of enriched uranium, a critical component in the development of nuclear weapons.
Albusa‘idi poses the question whether “might it be possible, perhaps in the context of a regional non-aggression treaty, to secure a substantive regional deal on nuclear transparency?” Such a treaty could long have been reached within the framework of the Arab Peace Initiative (API) which could have been used as a basis for negotiations. The API, Saudi Arabia’s brainchild which has been approved by 22 Arab states, offers diplomatic and trade relations with Israel in return for the latter’s withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories as stipulated in Security Council Resolution 242 (1967).
Although Iran had not publicly endorsed the API – and is unlikely to do so any time soon after the latest US-Israeli attacks – some Gulf states have interpreted its lack of opposition to the initiative at the Arab Islamic summit in Riyadh in 2023 as tacit approval. Failure to negotiate implementation of the API in the aftermath of the fifth Gazan war was a missed opportunity to attain some sort of comprehensive regional peace agreement. Instead, the current war has sown long-lasting enmities at a time of shifting regional dynamics such as the cautious rapprochements via trade and diplomatic relations between the Gulf states and Iran. If built upon and expanded, the détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, widely ignored by ‘Western’ countries because it was negotiated by China and not in Israel’s interest, could have contributed to creating stability in the region.
After ending diplomatic dialogue midway twice within a span of less than a year to resort to force to resolve the conflict with Iran, after over a month of brutal air raids that had hit 12,000 targets by April 4, President Trump once again refused to give negotiations the space they tend to require. He threatened that if the Strait of Hormuz were not immediately opened, his forces were to blow up “all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).” Attempting to ease the tensions somewhat, on his recent official visit to Germany in late March, the Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara‘a pitched his country and its land routes as a safe alternative to counteract disruptions to supply chains and energy flows from the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The shutdown of the Strait has placed the only superpower on the defensive in an unprecedented way. It has left President Trump more anxious than the enriched uranium Iran allegedly still possesses. He professed “not [to] care about” it because it is “so far underground.” Three weeks into the war President Trump, concerned about losing support among his key constituents due to high petrol costs, threatened to stop supplying weapons for Ukraine in order to pressure European countries, which had thus far steered clear of the war, to join a “coalition of the willing” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Thus, the current two major wars over Ukraine and Iran have become linked, and an end to either looks ever more distant.
Accepting Trump’s blackmail and refraining from insisting that reopening of the narrow waterway form part of peace negotiations with Iran, about thirty-five signatories have agreed on forming a coalition to ensure navigation at the Strait of Hormuz “after the fighting has stopped”.
It has not been made clear whether the precondition for such an enterprise would be an end to Israel and America’s attacks on Iran or whether a peace agreement needs first to be in place. Because it will be regarded as a siege and an attack on its sovereignty by Iran, such a formation of a coalition armada is likely to prolong the war – this time with the Europeans and some Gulf states involved. By April 7, it was less clear whether such a deployment will still be necessary. After warning that he might eliminate Iran’s civilization, the American president agreed to suspend attacks for a fortnight if Iran were to ensure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz so that fresh negotiations could proceed. He boasted that his threat “got them to the bargaining table and they haven’t left.” However, a peace agreement had not materialized during talks in Islamabad on April 11.
As became clear soon after the beginning of hostilities, the current conflict does not merely involve the US and Israel in its confrontation with Iran. It has morphed into a multi-front war against all five members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ (Iran, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah in Yemen, Hamas, and various militia groups in Iraq) which is also threatening the economic viability of the Gulf. If Iran were to target the strait of Bab al-Mandab, a narrow shipping route at the southern end of the Red Sea, Ansar Allah would almost inevitably be involved. Israel is fighting another major war against Hezbollah and is in the process of re-occupying southern Lebanon that may lead to the country’s break up. Its war against Iran cannot be seen in isolation from consolidating its control in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. Moreover, it has used positions it occupies in southern Syria to stage attacks on Lebanon; Syria is worried about the conflict’s spillover across its borders. With no end in sight, the war threatens to become a historic tragedy of immense proportions.
Gabriele vom Bruck has conducted extensive field research in Yemen and has published on elites, religious movements, gender, consumption, photography and memory and history. She taught Social Anthropology with reference to the Middle East at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. She is the author of Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition and Mirrored Loss: A Yemeni Woman’s Life Story.
