Six months ago, when US and Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes on Iran under the codename Operation Epic Fury, the expectation in Washington was swift and decisive: take out the regime’s leadership, cripple its military, and force Tehran to the negotiating table. Instead, the war has become something nobody planned for. A relentless, shapeshifting conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions, shut the world’s most important oil corridor, and produced no winner.
Last week made that painfully clear. After a month of uneasy silence, the fighting came back. On Sunday, US forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, saying Tehran was preparing to seed the waterway with sea mines. Iran fired back at US targets in Jordan. On Tuesday, American strikes hit a fishmeal factory on Qeshm Island, a ports authority tower in Sirik, and, according to Iranian officials, a home in the village of Kuhestak where a wedding was taking place. Two people were killed. By Wednesday, Iran was firing missiles at Gulf neighbours again.
The conflict that began on February 28 has already gone through more phases than most wars manage in years. The opening strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and targeted Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. Iran responded by firing hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones across the Middle East, at Israel, at US military bases, and at Gulf capitals that had no part in starting the fight.
Then came diplomacy. A Pakistan-brokered ceasefire in April led to the most high-level US-Iran talks since 1979, held in Islamabad. They collapsed over the nuclear question, the one point, as Trump himself put it, where agreement proved impossible. The US imposed a naval blockade. Then, in a surprise to many, both sides signed the Islamabad Memorandum on June 17, a framework for ending the war, giving the two countries 60 days to work out final terms. On June 28, strikes stopped.
It lasted ten days. On July 8, Iran resumed attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, asserting sovereignty over the waterway and catching US officials off guard. The war entered its current phase: no deal, no decisive military outcome, no clear path forward. Just an intermittent exchange of strikes that flares up, dies down, and flares again.
The Gulf states have worked to stay outside this conflict and have spent six months discovering that restraint offers no guarantee of protection. The UAE Ministry of Defence said it intercepted an Iranian drone over its territorial waters, condemning the attack as a “dangerous escalation.” Since February, it has tracked and intercepted 174 ballistic missiles and 689 drones. Two supertankers were struck by unknown projectiles on August 31 inside the US Navy’s supposedly cleared southern corridor, a reminder that even the routes Washington has declared safe remain contested.
The International Maritime Organisation reported in April that around 20,000 mariners and 2,000 ships were stranded in the Arabian Gulf. Six months on, those numbers have eased somewhat, but the human cost continues to accumulate: sailors anchored in a war zone, fishing communities living under the sound of strikes, civilians caught in the crossfire of a conflict they did not choose.
For decades, Gulf states operated under a clear assumption: hosting US military bases, maintaining open channels with Washington, and avoiding direct confrontation with Iran was enough to guarantee stability. The Iran war has challenged that assumption in ways that will shape Gulf foreign policy long after the last strike is fired.
Yet the region has not been passive in the face of that challenge. While the disruption to the Strait of Hormuz has created short-term pressure on trade flows, shipping costs, and investor sentiment, the region’s fundamental economic strengths, substantial sovereign wealth reserves, strong fiscal buffers, and diversified growth strategies, have provided a buffer against the immediate shock.
If anything, the conflict has sharpened and accelerated priorities already in motion. The case for alternative export routes, stronger domestic defence capabilities, and deeper international partnerships, already central to Gulf strategy, has been reinforced rather than undermined. Throughout the crisis, Gulf states have maintained their preference for diplomacy, supporting ceasefire efforts and keeping communication channels open across multiple fronts.
What this war has made clear is that security partnerships must be deeper, more reciprocal, and less dependent on a single guarantor. The UAE’s investment in its own defence capabilities, diversified economic partnerships, and engagement across both Eastern and Western blocs reflect a clear-eyed reading of a world in which no outside power can fully determine the Gulf’s security on its behalf.
The deeper problem is that neither side has a strategy capable of forcing a resolution on its own terms. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, installed after his father was killed on the war’s opening night, has nothing to gain politically from appearing to back down. A regional diplomat described the current deadlock as reflective of both countries’ domestic priorities: the midterm elections for Trump and Republicans, and the internal crises within Iran.
What remains is the Oman channel, quiet diplomatic conversations aimed at finding some form of de-escalation that neither side has to call a defeat. It has not produced a breakthrough. It has not collapsed either. Somewhere between those two outcomes is where this war lives right now: too costly to continue without purpose, too politically charged to end without conditions that neither side is ready to meet.
