A West Asia security rethink amid America’s role

As the United States and Israel-led war against Iran enters its second month — with conflicting viewpoints from Washington DC and Tel Aviv on what the aims of this conflict are and under what conditions they intend to seize their respective military operations — regional countries in West Asia are re-thinking their security future. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz along with Iran’s ‘scorched earth’ policy of striking any targets across the Persian Gulf even remotely attached to American interests is leading to demands for a strategic reset.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s view that he and his team were surprised that Gulf states were targeted by Tehran as a response to the U.S.-Israel military strikes has surprised many. For a long time, Iran has said that if it was targeted and the regime’s collapse made a state aim, the conflict would become regional. However, regional security has always been a minefield as far as interests are concerned; some tough questions and issues will have to be navigated, the trailers of which are visible today.

Pakistan’s attempts to claw its way back in

Pakistan’s attempt to insert itself as a mediator between Iran and the U.S. has, as expected, ruffled feathers in India. For Islamabad — or more accurately Rawalpindi, given self-anointed Field Marshal Asim Munir’s central role in the country’s political direction — the access it has built with Mr. Trump over the past year provides it an opportunity to further strengthen this relationship. However, more importantly, this is also an opportunity for Pakistan to reorient itself toward West Asia’s Islamic identity, as it was often on the peripheries of this identity due to its long-standing economic troubles.

The Iran conflict has provided Pakistan’s leaders the rare opportunity to break through some of these shackles; its position as the only Muslim-majority country with a nuclear weapon, is one in demand as of today. The fact that Pakistan hosted the Foreign Ministers of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, last week, as a consortium, and attempted to leverage its access to Tehran as a neighbouring state highlights its exploration of new security arrangements that are more rooted in regional and Islamic cooperation.

Stirrings within the Gulf

Countries such as Kuwait, which has also been on the receiving end of Iranian aggression, have gone ahead and even criticised constructs such as the Arab League. Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah in an address to other Arab Foreign Ministers, has said that the League has struggled to address the fast-moving challenges being faced.

The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar have also met to commit to deepened security cooperation. Until a few years ago, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were fundamentally at odds, with Riyadh imposing an economic blockade on Qatar over regional geopolitical differences. Today, everyone in the Arab construct, from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and Bahrain, is looking to side-step their own intra-Gulf differences, of which there are many, to manage these immediate challenges. Many of these Gulf states had built insurance ecosystems with Iran, either through economic cooperation, or in Saudi Arabia’s case, a very public détente brokered by China in 2023, bringing the Shia and Sunni seats of power to a level of normalisation for the first time since 2016.

But these “new” regional security ideations will continue to have fundamental problems. For example, while Iran’s actions are shaping responses today, Israel’s display of unfettered dominance of air power from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf will also create anxieties. Israel’s strike against Hamas in Doha, Qatar, in 2025, was a testament to this thinking. In addition, the Arab state’s relationship with the U.S. will also come under the spotlight. While security cooperation is expected to increase, the Gulf states may have to be operationally more agile and unilaterally active instead of exclusively banking on the U.S.

The U.S. has fallen short

From the 2019 drone attack on Saudi oil facilities by the Houthis to the current conflict, direct American involvement in protecting the Gulf states has clearly not been sufficient. Recent comments by the White House that the Trump administration could ask its Gulf partners to commit finances to help cover the cost of the conflict with Iran raise further questions about what the U.S. role in regional security will be. A high level of American energy self-sufficiency means that Mr. Trump has actionable leverage. However, more than the supply of oil and gas, it is the management of international pricing that remains hugely volatile.

After this war, the West Asian security architecture will face hard questions. Beyond the role of the U.S., can a fool-proof system be created without Iran’s buy-in? Will hedging security demands to Asian countries, including India — the main buyers of oil and gas — in the coming decades, be a successful tactic in matters of security? Can the Gulf act unanimously to pursue a common security aim despite internal fractures?

Hard questions await in the aftermath of a war reshaping West Asia as we have known it since the Second World War.

Kabir Taneja is Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation Middle East