For several years, Gulf states have been widening the circle of their international partnerships. The logic was straightforward: keep the US as the principal security partner, while building deeper economic ties with China, India, Europe and the rest of Asia.
The Iran war has meant that strategy needs a review. When the crisis turned military, the US quickly returned to the centre of the regional security equation. Its military reach, intelligence capabilities, early-warning systems and naval and air presence were difficult to match. Whatever may have changed in the wider international order, no other outside power can yet provide the Gulf with the same combination of security capabilities.
That, however, is only half the story. The war did not reverse the economic changes that had already taken place. China remains central to Gulf energy and trade. India’s role is growing quickly. Europe still matters in investment, technology, defence and commerce. The region’s economic relationships are now far more dispersed than its security relationships.
In a sense, the Gulf became economically multipolar before it became multipolar in security. That distinction matters because it explains much of the strategic tension facing the region today. The issue is not whether Gulf states are moving from Washington to Beijing. They are not. Nor is there much evidence that they want to.
The harder task is to maintain a close-security relationship with the US while expanding economic and technological relationships elsewhere, without allowing one set of ties to narrow the choices available in another.
The scale of the economic shift is already clear. China-GCC trade exceeded $288 billion in 2024. Trade between India and the Gulf states reached almost $179 billion in the 2024-2025 financial year. Europe, meanwhile, remains one of the region’s largest trading and investment partners.
Energy points even more clearly eastwards. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the statistical and analytical agency within the US Department of Energy, 89 per cent of crude oil and natural-gas condensate passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the first half of last year was destined for Asian markets.
For the Gulf, Asia is no longer simply one option among several. It has become fundamental to economic growth. The result is an unusual strategic arrangement. Much of the region’s security still depends on Washington, while much of its future economic growth is tied increasingly to Asia.
That arrangement is manageable in normal times. War makes the contradictions much more visible. The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was a reminder of how central the Gulf remains to the global economy. Before the conflict, more than 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products passed through the strait each day. When those flows fell sharply, the consequences were felt well beyond the region.
Yet the episode also revealed an uncomfortable truth for the Gulf itself. Strategic importance does not necessarily translate to strategic protection. Sometimes it creates the opposite. Ports, energy facilities, maritime routes and logistical networks are valuable precisely because the global economy depends on them. That also makes them attractive pressure points in a conflict.
A powerful security partner can reduce these risks, but it cannot remove them. The US can offer deterrence, intelligence, air and missile defence, naval power and military support. It cannot ensure that every port remains open, every energy installation operates without interruption, or every shipping route remains unaffected in wartime.
This is why the Gulf’s security debate needs to move beyond the traditional question of who provides security guarantees. A more important measure is how well the region can absorb disruption when protection is incomplete. How quickly can infrastructure recover? What happens when a maritime route is closed? Are there alternatives when an energy facility or transport hub is hit? Deterrence still matters. So does resilience.
Technology makes the picture more complicated. For much of the past two decades, Gulf states could keep their main international relationships in relatively separate compartments. The US provided security. China bought energy and expanded trade. Europe supplied investment and technology. India became an increasingly important economic partner. Those boundaries are not always easy to maintain.
Artificial intelligence, advanced computing, semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, communications networks, satellites and data are as much part of modern security systems as they are economic assets. That is where competition between the US and China could become especially difficult for middle countries, not only in the region but around the world.
The pressure may not come as an explicit demand to choose one side. It is more likely to appear in technical forms: conditions on access to advanced chips, cybersecurity standards, restrictions on certain platforms, data-sharing requirements or limits attached to technology partnerships. These choices are not easily reversed.
Changing a supplier is one thing. Replacing a communications network, cloud system or data architecture after years of investment is quite another. Decisions made today can lock countries into particular technological ecosystems for a long time. This may prove a more serious test of Gulf strategic autonomy than trade ever was. It also highlights the potential limits of diversification as a strategy.
A country may reduce its dependence on one partner and still remain highly dependent overall. Security may come from one power, technology from another, markets from a third and supply chains from a fourth. The dependence has not disappeared. It has simply been divided between different actors.
Effective strategic autonomy, therefore, is not about having more partners. It is about retaining choices when those partners disagree. That requires more than diplomatic flexibility. It requires capabilities of the Gulf’s own: stronger air and missile defence, better maritime security, more resilient infrastructure, secure digital networks, national industrial capacity, alternative trade and energy routes and supply chains that can withstand political or military shocks.
Some of these capabilities make little sense if built by each Gulf state separately. Air defence, early warning, maritime security and infrastructure protection all become more effective when regional co-operation is deeper.
The familiar question of who might replace the US in the Gulf, therefore, misses the point. China has every reason to want a stable Gulf, but it has not become an alternative security guarantor. India’s interests are growing, but New Delhi has shown little desire for deep military involvement in the region. Europe can contribute, particularly in defence and maritime security, but it is not positioned to take over the American role.
There is no obvious replacement. Nor does the Gulf need to make finding one the centre of its strategy. The more realistic course is to keep the American security relationship, widen other partnerships where Gulf interests require it and reduce the vulnerabilities that come with excessive dependence on any one outside actor.
The Iran war did not usher in a post-American Gulf. If anything, it underlined how important the US remains when the region faces a serious military crisis. But it also showed that the Gulf’s international relationships have already moved beyond the old model in which one power occupied the centre of almost everything.
The region has more partners, more economic weight and more room for manoeuvre than it did two decades ago. What it does not yet have is complete freedom of action. That will depend less on how many capitals Gulf states can work with, and more on whether they can continue to make their own choices when those capitals want different things.
A more multipolar world gives the Gulf that opportunity. Turning it into genuine autonomy will depend on what the region builds for itself.
