A Critical Analysis of Gulf Power Illusions in the Light of the 2026 Iran War

by Hichem Karoui

Executive Summary

In April 2024, Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla published The Gulf Moment and the Making of the Khaleeji State through Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, arguing that the Arab Gulf States (AGS) had entered a golden age of unprecedented influence, constituting a new center of gravity in the Arab world. He proclaimed the ‘Gulf Moment’ was ‘here to stay for the foreseeable future’ and posited the UAE as an emerging middle power whose momentum was unstoppable.[1] Less than two years later, on 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, unleashing a chain of events that has shattered every foundational assumption of “The Gulf Moment thesis.”[2] Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the depletion of Gulf air defense interceptor stocks, and the exposure of the Gulf states as hostages to a war they opposed have revealed a fundamental truth: fiscal capacity is not a substitute for harder forms of power, and wealth without strategic autonomy is merely a gilded vulnerability.

This paper is a systematic critique of the thesis of Abdulla and the intellectual framework of which has informed much of the Gulf foreign policy thought in the last twenty years. It states that the worst mistake of the Gulf elite was not just to overestimate their own strength, but to completely misjudge the essence of power and regard economic indicators and international ratings as alternatives to a real comprehension of the depth of its strategies, national military forces, and balanced relations in the region. The 2026 war has shown that the Abraham Accords, far from being a form of “Realpolitik”, were a strategic failure in that they involved the Gulf in the Israeli-Iranian conflict without offering adequate security in return. A true Realpolitik approach would have required engaging Iran and Turkey as permanent regional powers deserving accommodation, rather than treating them as threats to be contained through reliance on a distant superpower.

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[1] Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, “The Gulf Moment and the Making of the Khaleeji State,” Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, April 5, 2024 :   https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/gulf-moment-and-making-khaleeji-state

[2] “US and Israel launch pre-emptive attack against Iran,” Reuters, 28 February 2026,

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-launched-pre-emptive-attack-against-iran-2026-02-28/