On the latest episode of The New Region's GeoSpace podcast, host Mohammed A. Salih sat down with Randa Slim, distinguished fellow and Director of the Middle East Program at the Stimson Center, to discuss how Gulf states are repositioning themselves following the Iran war, the fractures emerging within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) bloc, and what the conflict revealed about the limits of US security guarantees in the region.

Slim identified two distinct camps within the GCC, organized around what she described as a "deterrence versus accommodation dilemma" vis-à-vis Iran. The UAE, she said, has chosen to "double down on the US-Israel axis." At the same time, Saudi Arabia has drawn a different lesson from the war — concluding that Iran "is here to stay" and that Washington cannot be relied upon as a security guarantor.

The divergence, according to Slim, was illustrated by the aftermath of the ceasefire. When the Iranian foreign minister called his counterparts in the five GCC states that had come under attack, "the only Arab foreign minister who took his call was the Saudi foreign minister."

On why the UAE bore the brunt of Iranian attacks, Slim pointed to the depth of Emirati-Israeli ties since the Abraham Accords. "It's seen as a base from which Israel operates against them," she said, describing how Iranian military circles now view the UAE "as a threat to them and to their security, as equal as an Israeli threat."

Slim argued that the war has definitively punctured the Gulf's long-held sense of exceptionalism. "They are realizing that they can no longer insulate their region from what happens around them," she said, noting that geography leaves Gulf states unable to move their airports, energy infrastructure, or desalination plants away from the reach of Iranian missiles.

The erosion of US security guarantees, she added, has been building for years — from the 2019 Iranian attack on Saudi oil infrastructure at Abqaiq, to the Houthi strike on the UAE in 2022, to the Israeli attack on Doha in September 2025. "Despite the fact that they have all these US bases, all these security guarantees, even Qatar has discovered that its major non-NATO ally status has not conferred any kind of security guarantees," she said.

On the question of a Saudi non-aggression pact with Iran modeled on the 1975 Helsinki Act, Slim said the war has "crystallized and accelerated" the push for greater Gulf autonomy. "They have to be the primary actors, not clients, in shaping this new regional order," she said.

She warned, however, that intra-GCC fragmentation remains a serious obstacle. "It's partly egos of leaders," she said, but also a structural failure — the GCC has never developed "the kind of conflict resolution infrastructure that ASEAN has."

On China and Russia, Slim said the war has opened significant opportunities, particularly for Beijing. "China did not dream of, or did not think these opportunities were achievable in the short term," she said, though she noted China has yet to shift meaningfully toward a security role in the region, remaining for now "mostly economically coded."