Gulf leaders meet Trump with two fears: more war and less US protection

US President Donald Trump’s Gulf Arab allies will meet him in New York on Tuesday as he weighs whether to “annihilate” Iran’s regime. They talked him out of a major escalation once before. This time, they fear being drawn deeper into the war just as Washington looks for a way out.

In early August, Trump said he called off a major attack on Iran at the behest of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, whose leaders believed a deal with Tehran was within reach. More than a month later, no such deal has emerged, oil prices remain high and the US midterm elections are approaching.

The US president told Axios on Thursday that he faced a “big decision” on the war and wanted to hear directly from Gulf leaders. Their challenge is to give him a way forward that protects them from further attacks without drawing them deeper into the war.

“Trump’s planned meeting with (Gulf leaders) could be one of the most important diplomatic meetings of this phase of the conflict,” Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran analyst at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, wrote on X. “The central question for Washington will be how they view the choice between renewed escalation and a diplomatic off-ramp.”

Last month, a coordinated appeal by Gulf leaders helped persuade Trump to hold fire. Now they meet as the war widens and Iran’s proxies target Saudi energy infrastructure from Yemen and Iraq, raising the specter of a global energy shock.

Saudi Arabia faces what may be its most far-reaching security threat since the 1991 Gulf War, even as Trump shows little appetite for intervening directly on its behalf and Washington discusses a longer-term reduction in its military presence in the Gulf. It is a test of the US-led security bargain that took shape after that war: Gulf states host American forces and buy US weapons, counting on Washington to help deter threats.

Whether Trump intends to act on his threat to “annihilate” the regime remains unclear. He has reasons to think twice: US missile stockpiles are severely depleted, while another escalation in an already unpopular war could hurt Republican candidates in midterm elections just weeks away.

If the US escalates militarily with Iran, Gulf states could once again bear the brunt of Tehran’s retaliation, which they have little appetite for. Riyadh already faces a two-front assault, while Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait continue to face major disruptions to trade due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE, meanwhile, has stepped up engagement with Iran. The two sides agreed on the need to “turn the page,” according to Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president. But Gargash has warned that trust could take decades to rebuild and said dialogue must be paired with deterrence.

Gulf leaders will only be able to persuade Trump if they speak with “one united voice” and bring him “very, very specific asks,” Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University, told CNN.

Beyond Trump’s next move on Iran, Gulf leaders face a longer-term fear: a diminished US military presence in the region.

Senior Pentagon officials have privately made clear they want to scale back the US military’s troop presence in several Gulf countries as part of a broader effort to shift more of the defense burden onto regional partners, three sources familiar with the discussions told CNN earlier.

For Gulf governments, even discussing a US military drawdown while attacks spread across the region risks handing Iran a victory and leaving them more exposed.

“This is not the time to have these conversations at all,” an official familiar with Saudi thinking told CNN, adding that this has been conveyed to the Trump administration. “The Gulf Cooperation Council is really trying very hard to project a united front against Iran.”

Just two weeks into the Iran war, Trump questioned why the US should shoulder so much of the burden of protecting Gulf energy routes as Iran began pummeling Gulf states in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes.

“You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all,” Trump said in March, referring to the US’ military presence in the Gulf.

For the official familiar with Saudi thinking, talk of a reduced US military footprint serves Tehran’s interests. “The Iranians want headlines like the one that came out about the US drawing down or withdrawing from Kuwait,” the official told CNN, referring to a Wall Street Journal report in late June that the US military was considering reducing its presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iran has long cast US bases in the Gulf as a threat on its doorstep. Throughout the war, Tehran has repeatedly demanded their closure, and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has turned the argument on Gulf leaders, saying the bases have made their countries targets without delivering the security Washington promised.

“By now they must have realized that the United States’ claims of providing security and peace have been nothing more than a lie,” he said in a March statement.

For Bader Al-Saif of Kuwait University, the war is testing something larger than the future of US bases. The 1991 Gulf War made the region a proving ground for American dominance at its global peak. Now, he said, the Gulf is a “test case” for a shift in the opposite direction.

“We’ve had three decades of a US-led order. That order is over,” he said. “Does that mean the new order is not going to have the US? No. But it’s going to have a different type of relationship between the US and the Gulf.”

For Riyadh, the limits of that changing US relationship were put to a stark test this month. Attacks on Saudi oil facilities and export routes threatened to choke off supplies, drive up global oil prices and raise the cost of gasoline for Americans.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have struck Saudi oil facilities and declared a blockade of ships traveling to and from Saudi ports through the Red Sea. Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also been accused of attacking the kingdom’s East-West pipeline, a crucial route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked Trump to strike the Houthis, the president declined, CNN reported earlier. The decision came less than a year after Washington signed a defense agreement with Riyadh and designated Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally, though the US continues to provide Saudi forces with intelligence and targeting support.

The Saudi episode captures the dilemma Gulf leaders may bring to Trump on Tuesday: they want American help against impending attacks, but fear another major escalation with Iran could make them less secure.

Most Gulf governments would prefer stability to another round of war, wrote Citrinowicz. That doesn’t mean turning away from Washington, he said: “American power is indispensable, yet relying exclusively on Washington carries risks of its own.”

For Al-Saif, that case should begin with something less ambitious than a sweeping peace deal: freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, potentially in exchange for limited relief on Iranian oil sales and access to goods. Gulf leaders need specific demands, he said, before a war of attrition becomes “the new norm for the Gulf.”

But even a narrower bargain may be hard to reach. In August, Gulf leaders allegedly told Trump a deal with Iran was close; this time, Qatar’s own assessment as mediator sounds far less hopeful.

At a conference in Abu Dhabi this month, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majid Al Ansari cast doubt on the prospects for a deal. Iran could withstand a long war, he said. Washington may hope further pressure weakens Tehran, while Iran may hope the conflict changes the political calculus in the US. For now, both sides may see more to gain by waiting.

Even if they return to talks, Al Ansari sees no clear agreement that both would accept as a win. “What is the desired outcome for both parties in this war?” he asked. “If anyone can answer that, I am willing to pay a million dollars – from my own money.”

CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Zachary Cohen, Mostafa Salem, Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood contributed to this article.