Iran is indicating that it expects its Arab Gulf neighbors to recognize Tehran as the region’s dominant military power while reducing their reliance on the United States, which has provided security guarantees to Gulf monarchies for decades.
Since the outbreak of the war between Iran, the United States, and Israel in February, Iranian officials have coupled military action with messaging directed at the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), portraying Tehran as the main power in the region.
“Peace in our region can only be sustained when comprehensive and inclusive, with no outside interference,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X on July 1.
Araghchi made the remarks while reposting a statement from U.S. Central Command announcing a regional security dialogue involving military leaders from all six GCC members and six more Arab countries.
“Has CENTCOM brought security or insecurity to our region?” Araghchi asked. “The answer is clear.”
A week later, on July 9, Iran launched attacks targeting Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan after U.S. strikes on Iran’s southern coast that Washington said were in response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the war began in March, Tehran has closed the strategic waterway through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies pass. Iran is now seen as seeking permanent control over the narrow shipping lane.
Iranian officials have consistently deemed the U.S. military presence in GCC countries “a liability” and urged Gulf Arab states to pursue a regional security framework centered on cooperation with Tehran rather than reliance on outside powers.
Tehran also used the funeral of slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to send symbolic messages to Gulf nations.
Araghchi said Iran was pleased to receive representatives from “our loyal Arab brothers” after delegations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman attended the funeral. “This historic commemoration will remain an everlasting memory in the course of our shared relations,” he wrote.
While the Saudi delegation paid respects before the caskets of Khamenei and his family members, Iranian officials recited a Quranic verse describing the seventh-century Battle of Badr, in which a small Muslim force defeated a much larger army. Observers questioned whether the reference was intended as a compliment, a taunt, or both, suggesting it was unlikely to have been random.
Senior regime officials are more assertive in describing Tehran’s view of the regional balance of power.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser on international affairs to Iran’s supreme leader and a former foreign minister, addressed Gulf Arab states directly in a post on X in June.
“Your survival is mere crumbs from this table,” he wrote. “In redrawing the major equations, there is no place for the small ones at the table; they are deleted,” he added. “Their strategic lives are hostage to Tehran’s ceiling of tolerance.”
More recently, another former foreign minister and current parliament member, Manouchehr Mottaki, demanded that Qatar share the revenues it has earned from selling the natural gas extracted from the world’s largest gas field the two countries share under the Persian Gulf waters.
“Qatar owes us not $12 billion, but $400 billion,” he told an Iranian state broadcaster. “That is our share of the revenue from gas sales from the joint gas field with Iran.” Doha and Tehran are negotiating over $12 billion in frozen Iranian funds deposited in Qatari banks.
Tehran’s military actions, official statements, and symbolic gestures suggest that it is increasingly presenting itself as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and urging neighboring Arab states to adjust to a regional order dominated by Iran.
