Politics
The Gulf’s Delusion: Why “Destroying Iran” Will Backfire
The Gulf is asking for a war it cannot win and a peace it cannot survive. Across Western and regional media, Arab Gulf states are no longer merely supporting US strikes on Iran. They are urging Washington to go further: not to stop short, not to settle for deterrence, but to fundamentally degrade—or even eliminate—the Iranian regime as a threat.
Why the Gulf Wants Iran “Destroyed”
To understand the Gulf’s position, one must take its fears seriously. For years, Iran has developed what Gulf policymakers see as a uniquely destabilizing model of power: not conventional military dominance, but networked influence through proxies, missiles, drones, and maritime disruption. Recent attacks have reinforced this perception. Gulf states now face not just a rival across the water but a threat embedded across Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon and increasingly within their own borders. The war has taken the shine off the glittery capitals. These states, for decades, relied on the US as a counterforce. However, the ongoing war has badly exposed the limits of US power in and beyond the Gulf to achieve its objectives through military means.
This has produced a shift in thinking. Diplomacy, once seen as a way to manage Iran, is now viewed as insufficient. The logic emerging in Gulf capitals is blunt: as long as Iran retains its capabilities, it will remain dangerous. Temporary ceasefires merely reset the cycle. This explains why Gulf officials are pushing Washington not to end the war prematurely. As reported, they are urging the US to ensure that any outcome “goes beyond a ceasefire” and permanently degrades Iran’s military and strategic capacity.
More strikingly, behind closed doors, the message appears even clearer. Reports suggest Gulf leaders have encouraged the US to “continue hitting the Iranians hard” and not stop short of neutralizing the regime’s ability to threaten them.
There is also a deeper, structural fear: vulnerability. Despite vast wealth and advanced weaponry, Gulf states know they cannot defend themselves against sustained Iranian retaliation. Iran has already demonstrated its ability to strike oil infrastructure, ports, and cities across the region. From this perspective, the logic of escalation is straightforward: if Iran is too dangerous to live with—and too powerful to deter reliably—then eliminating its capacity altogether appears, at least conceptually, to be the only path to long-term security. Simply put, it is a logic born not of confidence, but of fear. Ultimately, the fear is blinding Gulf states to what might follow the destruction of Iran. It will not bring stability. If the Iraq War served any lesson, destruction of states and societies can only bring instability on a much wider scale than what the present war represents.
The Reality the Gulf Is Ignoring
The problem is not that Gulf states misunderstand the threat from Iran. It is that they misunderstand Iran itself. Iran is not Iraq in 2003. It is a far larger, more complex, and more resilient state. Even after weeks of sustained US-Israeli strikes, more than significant portions of its military capability remain intact, and it continues to project power across the region.
More importantly, Iran’s strength is not reducible to its military hardware. It lies in its political structure, strategic depth, and ability to absorb and adapt to external pressure. Decades of sanctions and confrontation have not weakened the system; they have hardened it. This is where Gulf strategy begins to drift into delusion. The assumption underlying calls to “destroy” Iran is that such an outcome is both achievable and stabilizing. Neither is true.
First, the idea that external force can collapse the Iranian state ignores historical experience. The United States has struggled to stabilize far weaker states after military intervention. Iran, with its size, population, and institutional depth, presents a vastly more difficult challenge.
Second, even if Iran were severely weakened, the outcome would not resemble the orderly removal of a threat. It would more likely resemble fragmentation: competing factions, armed groups, and localized conflicts spilling across borders. In other words, the Gulf is imagining a future in which Iran disappears as a problem. The more plausible future is one in which a fragmented Iran multiplies into many problems.
A Strategy That Undermines Itself
This is what makes the Gulf’s current position not just risky, but self-defeating. By pushing for maximalist objectives—total degradation or regime collapse—Gulf states are narrowing their own strategic options. If the United States cannot deliver such an outcome—and there is little evidence it can—they will be left in a worse position than before: more exposed, more dependent, and with fewer diplomatic channels. There is also a fundamental contradiction at the heart of their approach.
Gulf economies depend on stability: uninterrupted energy exports, secure shipping lanes, and investor confidence. Yet the strategy they are supporting—prolonged war against Iran—directly threatens all three. Even limited Iranian retaliation has already disrupted shipping and targeted critical infrastructure.
Finally, there is the question of agency. Gulf states are advocating a war whose outcome they do not control, fought by a partner whose commitment may not be indefinite. If Washington recalibrates—as it has in past conflicts—the Gulf will be left to manage the consequences of a confrontation it helped escalate but cannot sustain on its own. In that sense, the strategy reflects a deeper structural weakness: the inability to reconcile dependence on external security guarantees with the realities of regional power politics.
The Gulf’s current trajectory is not just about Iran. It is about the kind of regional order that will emerge from this war. If escalation continues, the most likely outcome is not the elimination of Iran as a strategic actor, but the normalization of a more violent, unstable Gulf, one in which infrastructure is routinely targeted, shipping is perpetually at risk, and the line between state and non-state conflict continues to blur. In such a region, wealth will not guarantee security. Nor will military procurement substitute for strategic autonomy.
The deeper irony is this: in trying to escape the shadow of Iran, Gulf states may be helping to create a region in which that shadow becomes longer, more fragmented, and far harder to manage. The choice they face is not between living with Iran and destroying it. It is between managing a powerful adversary or unleashing a disorder that no external power, however strong, will be able to contain.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affair
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