Viewed through a realist, balance-of-power lens, it has always made little strategic sense for the smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable Persian Gulf Arab monarchies to pursue a highly confrontational approach toward Iran, their far larger and more populous neighbor of some 90 million people. Iran's demonstrated ability to devastate their critical infrastructure and inflict enormous economic damage, as this Reuters investigation documents (👇), underscores just how costly and untenable such prolonged confrontation is for them. Historically, smaller states neighboring much larger regional or global powers have generally pursued one of three strategies: bandwagoning with the stronger power, maintaining strict neutrality (think Finland or Singapore), or counterbalancing it through alliances. The GCC was established in the 1980s in large part to pursue the third approach, strengthening cooperation among its members while relying on the United States as their external great-power security guarantor. Yet this arrangement has exposed serious strategic liabilities for them. American conventional military superiority did not provide immunity from Iranian attacks or effective protection when they occurred. Nor did dependence on Washington give these Persian Gulf Arab monarchies a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their most fundamental security interests. Trump went to war despite many of their objections, exposing them to precisely the devastating conflict they had sought to avoid. Of course, the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies have legitimate security concerns and threat perceptions regarding Iran. But the cycle of confrontation they entered with Tehran, and the war Trump and Netanyahu subsequently launched, have proven enormously destructive to their interests while doing little to resolve the underlying challenges posed by Iran. The UAE under Mohammed bin Zayed is a particularly striking case. Abu Dhabi has embraced some of the most hawkish approaches toward Iran while pursuing an overall aggressive regional posture, seeking to punch far above its geopolitical weight through interventions as far afield as Libya and Sudan. Yet the ongoing wars have really demonstrated the limits and vulnerabilities of the Emirati approach. The larger strategic lesson is that lasting security for these states cannot rest on confrontation with a much larger, more powerful neighbor or on the assumption that Washington can indefinitely shield them from the consequences. A broader regional accommodation with Iran, grounded in mutual security arrangements and getting to some sort of geopolitical equilibrium, offers an alternative to this cycle of confrontation. That is the central question the war is forcing the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms to confront: whether their existing alliances and strategies are actually making them more secure, or instead exposing them to dangers they have little ability to control. These are the strategic dilemmas created by Trump and Netanyahu’s profoundly self-defeating war.