Trump’s Iran threat renews Gulf fears of a war it didn’t choose

A building that was damaged by an Iranian drone attack, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Juffair, Manama, Bahrain, on March 1. | REUTERS

Reuters

Nov 3, 2026

MANAMA, Bahrain – U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to strike Iran again confronts America’s Gulf allies with a stark prospect: another war decided in Washington in which the U.S. bases built to protect them could instead make them targets for harsh Iranian reprisal.

Iranian missiles that struck U.S. military bases and Gulf energy facilities in the last round of fighting exposed a vulnerability at the heart of Washington’s decades-old security architecture. Rather than deterring Tehran, America’s sprawling regional footprint gave Iran fixed targets and the Gulf states hosting them pressure points it can exploit.

That prospect dominated discussions among ministers, policymakers and security officials at the annual Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain over the weekend, as governments weighed what another round of war could mean for U.S. forces and the countries that host them.

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