BRUSSELS—The United States’ relationship with its European allies took center stage at the recent NATO Summit in Ankara, as US President Donald Trump shifted between criticizing and praising European allies. Yet the presence at the summit of leaders from another region spoke to how a different, if less visible, relationship is developing in important ways.
Increasingly, Gulf security and Euro-Atlantic security are fused to the extent that it is difficult to explain one without the impacts on the other. As leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—participants in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative—gathered in Ankara for the NATO Summit, the central question was not whether the Gulf would move away from Washington following the Iran war. Instead, it was how Gulf countries would address growing security gaps while maintaining the United States as the core of their security architecture.
The war with Iran and the continued stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, which shows no signs of resolution amid this week’s escalation in fighting, have accelerated a trend that was already underway: The Gulf, Europe, and NATO allies are deepening their cooperation. It’s easy to understand why, as Europe’s stability and energy security are increasingly tied to the Gulf, while Gulf states are looking to diversify, not replace, their security partnerships as they pursue a more assertive strategy of multi-alignment.
Some observers have argued that Gulf states might increasingly pull away from the United States, since they have suffered the worst of Iranian retaliation during the war. The Ankara summit points to an alternative outcome—less a departure from US centrality in the Gulf’s security architecture and more the emergence of a new security equation: US protection remains at the core but is supplemented by stronger cooperation with Europe, Turkey, and other middle-power partners. For Gulf states, the aim of this new equation is to address the vulnerabilities and gaps in infrastructure protection and maritime security that were exposed by the war with Iran.
A multi-alignment strategy
Gulf states are pursuing an assertive multi-alignment strategy with partners from Europe, Turkey, Ukraine, South Korea, and Pakistan because it is practical: capabilities and hardware arrive faster, financial terms are less complex, and they rapidly fill the security gaps the Iran war exposed. These include counter-drone systems, training, maritime security, critical infrastructure protection, and other technology-sharing arrangements that can fill the gaps where US systems take too long, are too costly, or where technology sharing is prohibited.
Europe’s big opening in the Gulf after the war can be understood in this context. European proposals and concrete tracks for cooperation are gaining traction when they come with financing, technical expertise, and concrete defense deliverables.
The same logic has applied to other middle powers rising in the Gulf. Ukraine’s hard-won counter-drone expertise against the same Iranian drone technology used by Russia has acted as a real force multiplier for the Gulf’s defense posture. Kyiv has deployed two hundred counter drone specialists across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, signed ten-year defense agreements with all three, and offered inexpensive interceptors against Iranian drones that Gulf states were previously downing with four-million-dollar Patriot missiles. South Korea’s Cheongung-II air defense system recorded its first combat intercept defending the UAE, and Seoul provided replacement interceptors within days. Pakistan’s manpower and 2025 mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia brings an ambiguous form of extended deterrence. And Turkey’s massively produced and lower-cost defense systems fill gaps where Washington may be too slow or restricts its technology transfer, including counter-drone systems purchased by Saudi Arabia and Qatar during the war. All of these point to the same goal: Gulf multi-alignment is about assembling a wider network of different capabilities and partners to meet both urgent and long-term needs.
This argument echoes what I heard at a recent dialogue the Atlantic Council convened in Brussels with Germany’s Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung think tank, the UAE’s Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud Al-Faisal Institute for Diplomatic Studies. The urgency of bringing Gulf security and Euro-Atlantic security into the same conversation reflected a growing recognition that trade routes, energy security, drone threats, and regional crises now connect the Gulf, Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean more directly than before. The message was not that the Gulf is realigning away from Washington, but that overreliance on the United States alone has become too risky and too slow for the pace of regional threats.
The war also showed that other partners were not able to deliver. China could not capitalize despite its economic weight in the Gulf, and the Iran war exposed the limits of its security and diplomatic relevance at a moment of crisis. Russia also did little to press Iran to halt attacks on Gulf partners while aligning closer with Tehran. The war acted as a sorting mechanism, and Gulf multi-alignment in this case was not indiscriminate, but rather a well-calculated selection of partners who can deliver.
But despite the multi-alignment push, if anything, the war strengthened the US position and the reality that no other country can provide the same level of deterrence, logistics, crisis response, and security protection to the Gulf. Despite frustrations with US restrictions, delays, or changing political priorities between administrations, Gulf states will still see Washington as the core of the Gulf security architecture.
Gap-filling without fragmentation
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is not emerging from the war as a more cohesive and united bloc. If anything, the environment under the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and on-and-off fighting may sharpen intra-Gulf tensions that were already on the rise before the conflict, including Saudi-UAE tensions. This matters because Gulf states are unlikely to address their security gaps through a unified GCC framework. Rather, GCC states will continue diversifying their regional and foreign policies at different speeds, often via quicker bilateral agreements that may advance one state’s interests at the expense of another’s.
NATO allies can be expected to show greater willingness to help the United States with the burden of securing the Gulf. With Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates represented at the NATO Summit, maritime security, counter-drone measures, and defense investment are likely to remain center stage in country-to-country deals.
This is why the Middle East, the Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the future of the US role in European and Gulf security can no longer be dealt with in silos. Trade routes, energy security, drone and missile threats, and regional crises are increasingly interconnected.