Gulf states must rethink trillion-dollar defence in light of US-Iran war, says report

Gulf states are going to have to reconfigure their trillion-dollar defences given the damage inflicted on their economies and the questionable continued value of US bases in the face of Iranian attack, according to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The report says that in the weeks before the 8 April ceasefire, 12 regional states, overwhelmingly in the Gulf, faced 4,670 Iranian one-way attack drones and more than 1,400 ballistic missiles. Nearly half were aimed at the United Arab Emirates. Although the vast majority were repelled, one estimate of the damage to energy infrastructure cited by the report is put as high as $58bn (£43bn).

Iran would portray either a reduction or complete withdrawal of US forces from the region as “a strategic success and vindication of its steadfastness, but also use it to embarrass the Gulf states about their decades-long courtship of US protection”.

The report says the war also highlights another “uncomfortable truth for the Gulf states: not only has their trillion-dollar acquisition of US weapons not translated into US protection at the crucial time, but their respective militaries are also not adequately prepared for the new kind of attritional air war to which they are being exposed”.

Despite huge investment in mainly US armaments, the report identified significant shortcomings: “overwhelming reliance on US-supplied air- and missile-defence systems and munitions; a failure to achieve regional defence integration; a shortage of minesweeping capability; limited retaliatory options; and the prohibitive costs stemming from an overdependence on expensive, high-end systems to take down relatively inexpensive drones and missiles”.

The report is neutral on whether the divided Gulf states should seek a new non-aggression pact with Iran, but notes that the US-Iran war has shown longstanding defence and security partnerships with the US “have failed to ensure adequate protection against Iranian aggression”.

It adds: “If anything, US military bases and defence partnerships with the US have provided Iran with another pretext for attacks against the Gulf states.”

Public opinion on the US in the Gulf has also been shifting, it says, “from security provider to strategic liability”.

Any reduction or withdrawal of US forces from the Gulf region would be portrayed by Iran “as a strategic success and vindication of its steadfastness” and would also be used “to embarrass the Gulf states about their decades-long courtship of US protection,” the report notes.

The study comes after Chris Murphy, the Democrat senator and member of the senate foreign relations committee, said a debate was under way in the US military about the value of seeking to rebuild the damaged US bases in the Gulf.

Murphy said the Gulf state leadership “want us to rebuild” and “to keep a presence in the region”, but asked: “What good is it to have a base in the region to protect American interests if within 24 hours of a hot war starting, it is wiped off the map?

“We would be criminally incompetent as stewards of taxpayer dollars if we were to rebuild bases that are blown up within hours of the next war starting.

“So clearly, we are going to have to have a smaller footprint in the region, and the limiting principle on the footprint that we rebuild will be ‘what can we protect?’ because we clearly cannot protect the scope of our footprint today and if we can’t protect it, it is useless.”

Murphy suggested that, at the very least, the US may need to relocate its bases in the eastern Mediterranean further away from Iranian missiles.