WHEN world leaders met for the UN General Assembly in September 1991, a period of unchallenged American hegemony in the Middle East seemed at hand. The Pentagon had just waged a swift war to expel occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait. American diplomats were preparing to host the Madrid conference, the first direct talks between Israel and a group of its Arab neighbours. With the Soviet Union on its last legs, America looked ready to shape a new order in a
WHEN world leaders met for the UN General Assembly in September 1991, a period of unchallenged American hegemony in the Middle East seemed at hand. The Pentagon had just waged a swift war to expel occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait. American diplomats were preparing to host the Madrid conference, the first direct talks between Israel and a group of its Arab neighbours. With the Soviet Union on its last legs, America looked ready to shape a new order in a turbulent region.
What followed instead was 35 years of disorder, as America lurched from one martial folly to the next. The latest, Donald Trump’s war with Iran, was meant to be over within days but is now entering its eighth month. It has imposed enormous costs on his closest Arab allies, and on the rest of the world. To the grandees gathered in New York this week, America does not look like a solution to the Middle East’s woes: it is a source of them.
This will be one of the war’s lasting consequences, no matter when or how it ends. Though America will not leave the Middle East, it will have to step back from its role as the pre-eminent power. Its allies have lost faith, its voters are exhausted and its strategists will need to confront growing crises elsewhere. No one is poised to fill its role, least of all the Arab states. That will make for messy times ahead—yet in the long run, the end of the American era may not be a bad thing.
For now, though, the goal is simply to reach the end of the war. America and Iran held three hours of indirect talks at the UN on September 22nd, with Qatari envoys passing messages between the two. It was their first such parley since June. Mr Trump called it “very productive”. Then again, he also reiterated his threat to “annihilate” Iran in his address to the assembly.
In private, diplomats were less effusive about the talks. They offered a chance for both sides to reiterate their positions, but the format was hardly conducive to a breakthrough—and the positions remain far apart. Iran wants America to return to the “memorandum of understanding” (MOU), the short-lived deal signed in June. Mr Trump would prefer to scrap the MOU, which was only meant to be a 60-day interim accord, and negotiate something new.
The American president also held a summit with officials from Gulf states, along with Turkey and four other Arab countries. Again, messages were mixed: he cited “a lot of momentum” towards a deal, and also warned that he might bomb a nuclear site in Iran. Meanwhile, both sides continue their economic war. Iran has attacked at least five tankers in the Strait of Hormuz over the past week. On September 23rd America imposed sanctions against foreign firms that refuel or service Iranian planes, which will, in effect, bar Iran’s airlines from flying abroad.
While the war in Iran drags on, the one in Yemen has escalated. This month the Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group, abandoned a 2022 ceasefire with their Saudi-supported foes. They seized a chunk of Yemen’s south-western coast. That gave them a firmer grip over Bab al-Mandab, the waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, where they were already striving to impose a blockade on Saudi vessels.
The Houthis also resumed attacks on Saudi Arabia itself. On September 15th the kingdom said it intercepted a drone near Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Four days later a Houthi missile hit a fuel tank at Riyadh’s airport, their first attack on the Saudi capital in years. Separately, Iraqi militias struck the kingdom’s most important oil pipeline, knocking it out of service for more than a week (it resumed operations on September 22nd).
Yet none of this sent oil prices to catastrophic levels—the main lever by which Iran hopes to pressure Mr Trump into a deal. The price of Brent crude climbed to $109 a barrel after the Houthi offensive and the pipeline attack, only to fall back. It was below $100 as The Economist was published. But that figure does not tell the whole story: wider energy markets are in rough shape. The price of “dated” Brent, for delivery in a few weeks, broke $130 a barrel this month. Refined products are scarce, with diesel now averaging $6.52 a gallon in America, a record high. But Mr Trump seems unmoved, even as fuel prices threaten his Republican Party with a drubbing in November’s midterm elections.
Trump’s hope over experience
America, for its part, still hopes economic pressure will compel Iran to yield. Its two-month blockade of Iranian shipping is causing chaos. With its ports idled, Iran is struggling to redirect trade via overland routes: hundreds of lorries are stuck in days-long queues at the borders. The rial has hit one record low after another. Inflation is near triple digits. Grounding Iranian airlines will disrupt the country’s pharmaceutical supply chains.
Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, has acknowledged the depths of the crisis. Muhammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, grumbles about hardliners who reject diplomacy. Yet like Mr Trump, the regime is willing to endure more pain. Neither side can swing the war decisively in its favour.
The view in Washington, Tehran and the Gulf is that it will drag on until the end of the year. Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, has told the Americans not to rush back into the MOU. He would prefer that they maintain their blockade and seek a new deal. Most Gulf states share that view (Qatar and Oman are outliers). Iran is in no hurry to make a deal that might lower oil prices and give Mr Trump a pre-midterm boost. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase, a bank, have given up trying to forecast what happens next. “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” they wrote on September 17th.
This is not the first time America has bumbled into a Middle Eastern quagmire. Over the past few decades it has tried just about every sort of military intervention in the region. It sent an enormous ground force to overthrow a dictator in Iraq, used air power to topple one in Libya, armed Syrian rebels and supported a Saudi-led coalition that went to war in Yemen in 2015.
Some of these succeeded at regime change but left chaos in their wake. Others failed outright. None produced an outcome beneficial to American interests. Still, the consequences were limited. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a disaster for Iraqis, who were plunged into years of sectarian bloodletting. By removing Iran’s main regional foe, it freed the Islamic Republic to build its clout in Syria and Lebanon. But it had little immediate effect on America’s closest allies in the region.
This war has been different. Outside Iran, the direst consequences have fallen on America’s Gulf allies. Most will see their economies contract in 2026. They have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in forgone oil-and-gas sales, vanished tourist revenue and damage to infrastructure. They had hoped the MOU might allow them to get back to business in the fourth quarter. Instead they are quietly debating whether to once again postpone big events, from tech conferences to Formula 1 races.
Beyond the Gulf, the war has also triggered an energy shock felt around the world. And it has been uniquely unpopular among Americans. It took four years for 60% of them to call the invasion of Iraq a mistake. Mr Trump’s war in Iran reached that mark in less than two months.
All of these factors will constrain America’s future role in the region. Start with its allies. They have had sharp disagreements before: the Saudis urged George W. Bush not to invade Iraq in 2003, and Gulf states were unsettled when Barack Obama urged Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian dictator, to step down in 2011 (presumably, so was Mubarak). Those disputes might have led them to question America’s judgment, but its commitment and its capabilities were never in doubt.
A whiter shade of red
Then came Syria. When Mr Obama failed to enforce his “red line” against Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013, America looked indecisive; when it ultimately failed to overthrow the Syrian dictator, it looked weak. Doubts grew further after a string of Iranian-backed attacks against Gulf states—a strike on Saudi oilfields in 2019, a deadly drone attack in Abu Dhabi in 2022—elicited little response. Mr Trump wrecked whatever trust remained by starting the very Gulf war that America had long sought to deter.
No one in the Gulf is ready to openly discuss the future of American bases in the region (see map). “This is absolutely not the time for such a conversation,” says one diplomat. Talk of closing some bases, many of which Iran has struck during the war, or even shrinking them, would make America look like it was abandoning allies at their time of peril. But the war is likely to spur America away from maintaining big, permanent facilities.
Its naval base in Bahrain was a rare “accompanied” post in the Middle East where troops could bring their families. It is unlikely to return to its previous size, with close to 10,000 people. Before the war Qatar was ready to spend $10bn to upgrade al-Udeid, the base outside Doha that serves as the regional headquarters of America’s central command. It is still willing to invest the money; whether the Americans want it is unclear.
Officials in several countries say they hope to negotiate new rules around how those bases might be used. They have already begun to impose ad hoc limits: Saudi Arabia scuppered an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in May when it barred American warplanes from its air space. Elsewhere in the region, America is already on its way out. It finished withdrawing from bases in Syria this spring, and those in Iraq are due to be emptied by the end of September (both plans predate the war).
Its foes will have a say as well. Imagine a worst-case scenario: Mr Trump’s war with Iran leads to a nuclear-armed regime able to exercise a veto over Hormuz traffic. In that case, America would struggle to sustain bases in the littoral Gulf states. At the other extreme, if the regime falls, there would be less need for them: a Middle East without the Islamic Republic would be one far less hostile to American interests.
However the war ends, Iran will not be America’s only threat. Its era of maximum interventionism in the Middle East coincided with a stretch of relative calm elsewhere. Europe was mostly at peace; China was a rising power, not yet strong enough to challenge America in the Pacific. The “pivot to Asia”, first proposed by Mr Obama, became a recurring joke in Washington: each pivot was a 360-degree turn. Yet the world looks far more dangerous today. The Pentagon can ill afford to tie up one-fifth of its aircraft-carriers in the Gulf or burn through hundreds of scarce interceptors and guided missiles fighting Iran.
Domestic politics will offer a further constraint. Not since Lyndon Johnson escalated America’s role in Vietnam has a president so thoroughly wrecked his term with a foreign war. Mr Trump’s would-be successors will take note. J.D. Vance, the likely front-runner for the Republican nomination, is a vocal sceptic of Middle Eastern wars. So are several of his possible Democratic opponents. Add to that worsening views of Israel: a Pew poll in May found that 62% of Americans had a negative view of the Israeli government, up 19 points from 2022. The pro-Israel consensus that helped shape American policy in the Middle East is fading.
Retrenchment is not retreat. America will retain interests in the Middle East. Counter-terrorism is a rare topic on which everyone can agree: when Islamic State menaced the Levant, even America and Iran found themselves fighting on the same side. A less engaged America might still carry out attacks on al-Qaeda and other groups. It will continue to sell weapons to allies, negotiate trade deals and sponsor peace talks. Military aid to Israel will probably endure for years, even though some polls show a plurality of Americans opposes it.
What will change is the idea of America as the region’s security guarantor and problem-solver—that “we call Washington anytime we have a problem”, as one Gulf official puts it. Recent events in Yemen offer a glimpse of what that means.
Mr Trump has not only rebuffed multiple requests from Prince Muhammad to launch air strikes in Yemen. His representatives also spoke in Oman with Houthi envoys, who promised to abide by a 2025 ceasefire and refrain from attacking American ships in the Red Sea. The latter might be a uniquely Trumpy flourish: it is hard to imagine other presidents cutting side deals with designated terrorists. But the reluctance to get involved will outlast him.
No one outside the region can fill the void. Europe is too weak. Asked for help by Saudi Arabia, Britain has offered a single aerial-refuelling tanker. Russia has neither the means (it is bogged down in Ukraine) nor the will (it has offered help to the Houthis, largely to spite America). It sees itself as a beneficiary of regional turmoil, not a candidate to end it. China has no recent experience of serious military operations beyond its borders.
That leaves regional countries, the strongest of which are its three non-Arab states. Iran has its missiles and proxies, while Israel has the Middle East’s most capable army. In a sense, they are mirror images: strong enough to disrupt a regional order, not to build one. The third is Turkey, a military and diplomatic power that is also a growing arms exporter. It has intervened decisively in conflicts before. The rebels who eventually overthrew Mr Assad spent years under Turkish protection; Turkish troops repelled a warlord who sought to seize the Libyan capital in 2019. But the Turks are viewed with suspicion by Iran, Israel and many Arab states.
In the short term, the region will probably cleave into blocs, as Arab states will align themselves with non-Arab powers. Long-term stability will require them to play a bigger role. To do that they will need better armies, stronger alliances, and that most elusive of things: co-operation.
There are some early signs that they recognise the need for change—at least the stable, rich ones in the Gulf. Take their armies. Gulf states have spent decades buying expensive American military kit. Not all of it has been useful for the wars they wound up fighting.
As their shopping lists change, they will look for new suppliers. Iran has demonstrated the value of a ballistic-missile programme. Saudi Arabia cannot buy them from America, but it has already obtained missiles from China (and may have used them against the Houthis this month).
Everyone in the Arab world is eager to buy drones from Turkey, a leading producer. Earlier this year the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed a ten-year deal to purchase Ukrainian drones. The deal includes a co-production clause: they will build new factories to manufacture them. That fits with a growing push, in the UAE and elsewhere, to produce weapons at home.
They are also casting about for new allies. Since July Saudi Arabia has announced both a mutual-defence agreement, with Pakistan and Turkey, and a maritime alliance to secure the Red Sea with more than a dozen countries. As military pacts go, these are vague and aspirational. The maritime coalition, for example, includes Bangladesh, which is 5,000km away and lacks a substantial blue-water navy. But they show the direction of travel. There will be more of these ad hoc coalitions. Some will be short-lived. Others might endure.
To strive, to seek, to find
Most of all, Arab states will need to agree on what sort of region they want. Before October 7th it was common to hear Gulf officials speak of a “new Middle East”, one more focused on making money than waging war. It was a lovely idea, but an implausible one in a region full of intractable conflicts and inept governments. Today Saudi Arabia and the UAE cannot even work together in Yemen, despite the Houthis posing a danger to both.Neither the Arab League nor the Gulf Co-operation Council, a club of six petro-monarchies, has grown into useful institutions.
Such shortcomings were an inevitable consequence of the American era in the Middle East. America and its regional allies never shared a lofty agenda. There was no liberal-democratic project to bind them together, as in Europe after the second world war. Nor did America foster the sort of economic growth it pursued in Asia. It wanted simply to keep the oil flowing, protect Israel and maintain its bases (later it would add smashing jihadists to the list). None of these goals required Arab states to be capable or prosperous; in fact, some were easier if they were not. That was fine for its allies, which cared mostly about the preservation of their regimes.
It achieved all of those—for a time. But today its bases have been battered, its oil tankers are under attack and its closest ally, Israel, has been at war for three years. Even if Mr Trump had not rashly broken it, what America built over the past 35 years was not durable at all: too many of the region’s states were weak, divided or failed ones. Without their longtime guarantor to fall back on, perhaps they will now have to build something better themselves.
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