This war is only a few days old, and it is very quickly becoming very different from the last short sharp affair in June 2025, when Israel and the US collaborated to defang Iran’s nuclear and missile programme. The critical difference has been Iran’s decision to target not only Israel, but both US and civilian assets in multiple Gulf states. Arab states. Neighbours.
This completely changes the calculus of the war.
This time, Iran went wide. Within hours of the first US Tomahawk missiles impacting Tehran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unleashed a multi-directional barrage across the Persian Gulf, targeting US military bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. This was not a panicked reaction. It was clearly planned, and it has produced some of the most strategically significant, and diplomatically damaging, consequences of the entire conflict.
More importantly, it was not only US military assets. Iran also struck civilian targets in every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, hitting multiple international airports and at least three active ports, crippling international travel and disrupting oil shipments. Iran maintains it was targeting US military assets only, but this is difficult to claim given that damage was suffered at Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port; international airports in Kuwait and Abu Dhabi; the Fairmont Palm Hotel on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, and the outer façade of the Burj Al Arab.
The scale of Iran’s non-Israeli targets surprised everyone. According to official statements from the targeted states, the UAE alone absorbed 137 missiles and 209 drones on the first day of the campaign. Bahrain reported 45 missiles and nine drones against its territory; Qatar confirmed 44 missiles and eight drones targeted at Al Udeid; and Kuwait said its air defences engaged 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones (these figures are from the weekend; they have since increased).
The choice of attack assets was itself deliberate. Iran paired ballistic missiles – harder to intercept, with higher terminal velocity – with cheap Shahed-136 loitering munitions costing roughly $30,000 each. The combination forces defenders to expend high-value Patriot interceptors, worth millions of dollars apiece, against the drones, while the missiles exploit the depleted defence windows. It is the same asymmetric cost logic that has made drone warfare so disruptive globally, applied at an unprecedented regional scale.
Extremely expensive
It also indicated that the Iranians understood something for which the US was not prepared. Israel is astonishingly well defended against missile attacks; its Iron Dome and associated systems (including new laser missile defence wizardry) have been upgraded and hardened continuously over decades of defending itself. It is extremely expensive to penetrate. US bases and other targets in the Gulf states have little by way of these sorts of shields. In other words – sitting ducks.
Has it worked in Iran’s favour?
Militarily, the honest answer is: partially. Iran has successfully demonstrated that US forces in the Gulf are not invulnerable; that the air-defence umbrella across multiple countries simultaneously has limits; and that the economic consequences of regional conflict – market closures, flight suspensions and shipping disruptions – are immediate and severe.
The psychological impact on Gulf capitals should not be underestimated. As NYU Abu Dhabi professor Monica Marks put it, seeing Doha and Dubai bombed is “as strange and unimaginable as seeing Charlotte, Seattle, or Miami bombed would be for Americans”.
But analysts at the Atlantic Council and elsewhere are already arguing that Iran has made a serious strategic miscalculation. The Gulf states had, until these strikes, maintained studied neutrality. They had refused to allow their territory or airspace to be used for offensive operations against Tehran. Qatar had been actively mediating between Iran and the US.
That neutrality has now been violently upended, and the diplomatic goodwill it represented has evaporated. By targeting civilian infrastructure – airports, hotels and residential zones – Iran has alienated precisely the regional powers whose acquiescence it needed most.
For Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, Iran’s salvos have created what analysts are calling an impossible dilemma. Retaliating militarily risks being perceived as fighting alongside Israel – a deeply uncomfortable political position domestically and across the wider Arab world.
Remaining passive while their cities are struck repeatedly undermines the foundational promise of Gulf governance: that these states can deliver security and stability to their populations and their investors.
Profound
Saudi Arabia has already signalled it will “take all necessary measures” to defend itself, including the option of direct response. Qatar – which had the most to lose from abandoning its mediator role – stated it reserves the right to “respond directly, proportionate to the nature and scale of this blatant aggression”. Analysts at the Gulf International Forum expect the region to shift decisively towards building independent deterrence capabilities rather than relying on alliance-based diplomacy – a profound long-term realignment regardless of how the current conflict resolves.
The deeper damage may be reputational. Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi have spent two decades constructing their identities as stable, investable hubs in an otherwise volatile region. Those brand propositions depend entirely on a perception of security that Iran’s missiles have now publicly shattered. On what should have been a peak winter-tourism Sunday, Dubai’s highways were empty, its beaches deserted, its airport silent.
Iran demonstrated, with cold precision, that the Gulf’s gleaming skylines are within range. Iran was not popular with its neighbours before the war. Now it has vastly increased the distrust quotient it must manage, and it has signalled a willingness to do massive damage to the entire region.
Whether that demonstration translates into strategic leverage remains to be seen.
[Image: Javad Esmaeili on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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