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WASHINGTON — For the better part of three decades, Pentagon officials across multiple administrations have sought to persuade oil-rich Arab monarchies in the Gulf to build out their militaries and push back against provocations by more powerful neighbors — first Iraq, and then Iran.

The initiative — codified as formal policy under the Obama administration and since adopted in Trump's national security and national defense strategies — aims to reduce the US military's role as the primary defender of Gulf states to that of a supporting role so that Washington can shift focus to the Asia theater. It has made only limited headway, but there are some signs the current war with Iran may be changing that.

Reports this week that the UAE’s Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) separately carried out their own airstrikes on Iranian soil in retaliation for missile and drone attacks appeared to mark a new step in the Pentagon's push to convince Gulf states to defend themselves.

The quiet retaliatory strikes, first reported by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, marked the first time the two Gulf countries overtly targeted Iran, despite absorbing intermittent but lethal drone and missile attacks by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies in recent years.

Saudi Arabia also recently carried out strikes on Iraqi soil, targeting Iran-backed Shiite militias for the first time.

Alignment, not alliance

The level of coordination between the UAE and Saudi Arabia with the United States ahead of the Gulf states' strikes in Iran remains unclear.

At the outset of the conflict, Saudi Arabia and the UAE said they would not allow their territory or airspace to be used to stage attacks on Iran. But after Tehran began launching surface strikes at both military and civilian facilities across all six GCC countries, that calculus shifted, current and former Western officials said.

Behind the scenes, top brass at US Central Command (CENTCOM) urged Gulf military leaders to strike back to establish deterrence. Kuwait did so as early as March, targeting Iraqi territory in response to projectile attacks, according to a well-placed source who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

“No Gulf state wanted this war,” said April Alley, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Arab counterstrikes, Alley told Al-Monitor, suggest “that red lines were crossed and that they were willing to take the risk of signaling to Tehran that they are also willing to impose costs independently of the US."

Al-Monitor has reached out to the Saudi and Emirati embassies in Washington for comment.

In past years, Iranian projectile attacks in the Gulf have led to disputes with Washington over who should retaliate and how — a gap Iranian strategists have long sought to exploit.

After the unprecedented Iranian cruise missile and drone barrage that blew up Saudi Aramco refining facilities at Abqaiq and Khurays in 2019, Trump declined to authorize US military strikes into Iran in response and publicly shifted the responsibility to Riyadh, frustrating top Saudi officials.

In recent years, Emirati officials have rarely failed to remind their American counterparts that when Houthi drones hit Abu Dhabi in a lethal January 2022 attack, US CENTCOM offered only a belated response: dispatching a single Navy destroyer.

But Pentagon officials in recent weeks have said Iran's strategy to drive a wedge between the US and Gulf states has largely backfired during the current war.

“In the long term, by attacking Gulf states they’re hardening them against any future relationship with the current regime,” a former senior military official familiar with US strategic planning told Al-Monitor.

What’s more, Riyadh’s retaliatory airstrikes in Iran appear to have worked. While the UAE has borne the brunt of Iran's attacks, the rate of Iranian drone attacks on Saudi Arabia dropped sharply after the RSAF strikes in Iran in April, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Most of the subsequent aerial attacks on the kingdom emanated from Iraq, suggesting the responsibility of proxy militias rather than core IRGC units.

Pentagon officials have both publicly and privately signaled approval. “The Gulf states have stepped up incredibly,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on March 19.

Iran's strategy of attacking neighboring Arab nations, Hegseth said, "has brought countries, who maybe would have not been as all-in as they are today, squarely into our orbit, and we're proud to be defending with them,” specifically naming the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

New paradigm?

It remains too early to tell whether Arab strikes on Iran alone indicate a commitment to move away from full dependency on the United States and toward a more distributed regional defense approach.

But the Pentagon's victory lap may be premature for other reasons.

Despite having expelled five Iranian diplomats amid persistent drone attacks in March, Saudi Arabia has not fully severed formal relations with Tehran since reestablishing them under Beijing’s mediation in 2023.

Since the mutual exchange of blows, Riyadh has signaled interest in de-escalation with Iran, revealing a gap with the Emirates' more aggressive retaliatory posture toward Tehran.

Last week, a Saudi ultimatum to restrict the US military from using its airspace led President Trump to abruptly reverse his authorization for a US Navy mission to guide and defend commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

The IRGC responded to the US Navy operation by striking an Omani tanker and the port of Fujairah in the UAE. Saudi officials concluded that further escalation was not in their interest, two well-placed Western sources familiar with the thinking in Riyadh told Al-Monitor.

“It seems that the core frustration of Riyadh, and indeed most Gulf states, has been the lack of consultation, clarity and predictability of the US campaign,” Alley told Al-Monitor

On Thursday, The Financial Times reported that the kingdom's leadership has been exploring the possibility of a non-aggression pact between Arab countries and Iran modeled after the 1975 Helsinki Accords between the West and the Soviet Union.

The framing is significant. The Helsinki Accords were designed to reduce the likelihood of escalation with a more powerful adversary that cannot be fully defeated, and entailed fostering economic ties.

That suggests Riyadh is pursuing its own interests to lock in de-escalation with Iran, rather than acting in lockstep with the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign.

The proposal has the support of several EU states, The FT reported, but it remains unclear where the United States stands on the idea.