By Shimon Sherman, JNS
Saudi Arabia has 40 upgraded F-16 fighters — but not one has seen use in this war
Since the outbreak of the 2026 war between Iran, and the US and Israel, a conspicuous strategic reality has emerged.
The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain — have insisted on maintaining a policy of absolute military passivity.
The policy of avoiding offensive action against Iran has been sustained in the face of numerous daily attacks against the GCC.
Across the Gulf, Iranian waves of drones and ballistic missiles have struck critical energy infrastructure and inflicted a tangible human toll. Iranian strikes hitting residential buildings, hotels and airports have killed at least 16 civilians across the region while wounding well over a hundred more.
Why the military passivity?
Ariel Admoni, a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, observed that it has not softened Iran’s attacks on the GCC states.
Aviram Bellaishe, vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, says the Gulf states are fighting to contain the war, not expand it.”
Gulf nations possess highly funded militaries equipped with some of the most advanced offensive hardware in the region.
Saudi Arabia maintains the Middle East’s highest-funded military apparatus, with an estimated defense budget of $80.3 billion in 2024, more than double Israel’s and vastly exceeding Iran’s expenditures.
The Royal Saudi Air Force operates a massive strike fleet composed of some 400 modern warplanes.
Riyadh’s offensive readiness has been actively honed since 2015 during operations in Yemen, where it extensively deployed precision-guided munitions.
Furthermore, the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force commands a deterrent arsenal that includes a vast array of intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
The United Arab Emirates possesses similarly formidable strike capabilities.
The UAE’s aerial platforms are integrated with sophisticated standoff weaponry, including the Black Shaheen long-range cruise missile, granting Abu Dhabi significant deep-strike potential.
Qatar also maintains a modern strike force featuring a diverse mix of warplanes armed with deep-strike weapons.
Bahrain has heavily modernized its air force to include a fleet of nearly 40 new and upgraded F-16s, equipped with advanced anti-ship and standoff munitions.
Beyond offensive air power, the Gulf states have integrated multi-layered air defense systems that successfully passed their operational test during the early weeks of the current war.
These systems include some of the most advanced air defense platforms in the world, including the American-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries and Patriot PAC-3 systems.
The UAE Ministry of Defense reported that interception rates against incoming projectiles exceeded 90%, despite the close proximity of the country to Iranian launchers, which significantly reduces the reaction time necessary for a successful interception.
Bellaishe says: “The right question is what the Gulf states are protecting. And what they are protecting is not honor, it is the future” — the protection of the trillion-dollar domestic investments that underpin the GCC’s economy.
For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the current decade is defined by campaigns to diversify their economies away from hydrocarbon dependency.
Over the past several years, the Gulf states have invested heavily in expanding tourism and bringing in foreign capital.
These initiatives have been supported by broad marketing campaigns to transform the Gulf’s historic association with war, poverty and human rights abuses into a general image of luxury and success.
In 2025, Saudi Arabia’s non-oil activities generated 52% of its GDP and accepted a record 122 million tourists.
The transformation of the Persian Gulf into an active war zone is fundamentally incompatible with sustaining these sectors.
The eruption of the war will likely do long-term damage to the Gulf’s carefully cultivated image of prosperity, scaring away foreign investment and tourists.
Finally, the constriction of the oil economy, the closure of the Hormuz Strait and the devastation of the Gulf’s ports, airports, LNG facilities and refineries are damaging the natural resource-based economy, which has been underwriting the Gulf’s economic diversification effort.
Compounding this economic fragility is the prospect of an Iranian state collapse. While the Gulf states view Tehran’s expansionism as a severe threat, Bellaishe noted that “they fear what replaces it even more.”
A total collapse of the Iranian government would create a massive security vacuum involving a population of 90 million.
Questions over who would control nuclear infrastructure or the remnants of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are “planning nightmares sitting on the desk of every Gulf defense minister every morning,” Bellaishe observed.
The Gulf’s stated preference is not a fallen Iran, but rather a “weakened, deterred and predictable” neighbor, a regime under sufficient duress to alter its behavior, but intact enough to prevent an unmanageable regional vacuum.
“We need to remember that this current regime was problematic for the UAE or Saudi Arabia, but for Qatar and Oman, it was very beneficial,” he said.
Admoni explained that Qatar and Oman have historically “leveraged Iran as a geopolitical asset” to expand their global profile as mediators. “When the EU or the US wanted to talk with Iran, they approached Qatar and Oman.”
A primary factor influencing Gulf restraint is the apparent desire of the US to limit the number of actors launching offensive operations.
This was illustrated when Trump reversed course on encouraging Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters to enter the conflict, indicating that he would not like to see them join the fight because it would get “too complicated.”
Gulf leaders also face deep uncertainty regarding Washington’s long-term political commitments in the Middle East. Admoni noted that this ambiguity serves as a primary deterrent to Gulf military involvement.
“I think their assessment of Trump is that he will lose interest in a week or a month,” Bellaishe said.
“They don’t want to attack a neighbor who, in a week or a month, will be back in the saddle, and they need to communicate with.”
Counterbalancing these incentives is the intense public pressure mounted by factions within the US political establishment.
On March 9, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham publicly demanded Gulf military involvement and questioned the justification of US-Saudi defense partner- ships.
Graham stated, “Americans are dying, and the US is spending billions to dislodge the terrorist Iranian regime. Hopefully, GCC countries will get more involved as this fight is in their backyard,” before concluding, “If not, consequences will follow.”
Impact on Israel-Gulf relations
The war has demonstrated that Israel is a militarily dominant power and that Jerusalem and the US operate as a highly integrated regional defense network, making Israel an indispensable partner for Gulf states seeking to intercept incoming Iranian munitions or to strengthen ties with the US.
However, this strategic reliance clashes directly with intense domestic backlash, Bellaishe observed.
“Israel has become a more essential security asset at exactly the moment it has become a nearly unbearable political liability.”
Public support for Arab-Israeli normalization has suffered a verifiable collapse, driven by the prolonged war in Gaza and the subsequent regional escalation.
In Saudi Arabia — which is not a party to the Abraham Accords — positive views of the Abraham Accords plummeted from 41% at their inception in 2020 to just 13% by 2025, according to polling data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Because these closed-door strategic needs and public-square political realities are fundamentally irreconcilable, the architecture of Gulf-Israel relations is evolving.
The era of highly publicized diplomacy and televised normalization ceremonies is likely to be replaced by a strategy of quiet accumulation.
To avoid the domestic political costs associated with public summits, regional cooperation is being driven underground.
Bellaishe observed:
“Every public summit that forces each leader to declare openly what he only agrees to privately adds a political cost” to the Gulf states.
Any public declarations of ties will generate “free legitimacy for the Turkish-Qatari axis,” creating a problematic reality where “everything Israel gains by saying publicly that it has a relationship with Riyadh, Riyadh loses,” Bellaishe said.
