Doha, the quiet capital of Qatar, is usually known for public safety and manicured malls. So the panicked scenes there on Monday after Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at an American military base near the city were unlike anything its residents had seen.
Smoking and blackened shrapnel fell from the sky. Interceptors that collided with the missiles and exploded midair were visible from The Pearl Island, a man-made land mass filled with high-end apartments. Shoppers heard loud booms, and screamed and sprinted for cover in the Villaggio Mall, where gondoliers ply an indoor canal.
Lynus Yim, a 22-year-old tourist from Hong Kong who was visiting the mall, said he thought there had been a terrorist attack until he ran outside and saw the missiles. “I thought that I might not make it through yesterday, because I’ve never been in a situation like that,” he said by phone a day after the attacks.
The operation was telegraphed by Iran and no one was killed. Still, the attack that Iran launched in response to the American bombing of its nuclear sites on Sunday was a nightmare for the Gulf states, which include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.
Despite years of efforts to build bridges with Iran, curry favor with President Trump and establish their capitals as business-friendly havens in a volatile Middle East, they have found themselves sucked into a conflict that they have sought to avoid.
“It leaves the Gulf in a really uncomfortable spot,” said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East geoeconomics lead at Bloomberg Economics. “Their absolute worst fear came true: They were caught in the middle of an escalation between Iran and the U.S.”
Gulf foreign ministers gathered in Doha on Tuesday for an emergency meeting to discuss the attack. The six countries all rely on the United States as their security guarantor, and host tens of thousands of American military personnel and several major American bases.
There has not been a war on their lands since Saddam Hussein, the former leader of Iraq, invaded Kuwait in 1990, and their governments have cultivated reputations as safe destinations for international tourists and investors. But the monarchs that rule the Gulf states have long feared and attempted to counter security threats from Iran, even as they cultivated ties with their neighbor.
Qatar and Oman have particularly friendly relations with Tehran. After the attack, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to the emir of Qatar and expressed “his regret,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, said in a news conference on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have had more antagonistic relationships with Iran, and went as far as severing diplomatic ties in 2016. The Emirati government has an especially complex position, as it is wary of the security threat posed by Iran but is also one of its largest trading partners.
Those tensions have sometimes led to confrontations, such as in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the Emirates waged a disastrous bombing campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi militia in the 2010s.
The Gulf states are fearful that Iran could obtain a nuclear weapon, although they have called for the country to be dealt with through diplomacy rather than military action. There is also a sectarian dimension to the divide. Several of the Gulf royal families, who are Sunni Muslim, are wary of Shiite-majority Iran exporting its revolutionary ideology to the Shiite citizens among their populations to foment unrest.
“We have been living next to Iran for years and for centuries,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist. “We know how difficult Iran is.”
Last week, when Saudi, Bahrain and Emirati officials met with a bipartisan delegation of U.S. congressional representatives, they mentioned that one of their biggest worries was that Iran-backed militias could target the U.S. forces based in their countries, said Representative Jimmy Panetta, Democrat of California.
Such a scenario would draw attention to the heavy American military presence that Gulf rulers host — a sensitive issue for their citizens. But it would also mean that their region becomes “essentially a pawn, or the arena for these tensions to play out,” Ms. Esfandiary said.
With the help of American defense systems, all but one of the missiles shot at Qatar were intercepted. Hours later, the emirate announced that it had helped Mr. Trump broker a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.
“We hope for this issue to be contained as soon as possible and for this chapter to be behind us,” Sheikh Mohammed said during the news conference.
But the attack highlighted the vulnerability of the Gulf countries, despite their wealth and security ties with the United States. Warning sirens sounded across Bahrain and the airspace over Dubai, one of the world’s biggest aviation hubs, was closed.
“For decades we’ve been calling out that this is a possibility that we’ve tried to avert,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University.
The attack on the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar evoked memories of an Iran-backed drone assault that hit energy facilities in Saudi Arabia in 2019, briefly knocking out half of the kingdom’s oil production. That attack, which took place during Mr. Trump’s first term, is often cited by Saudi officials as the moment when they realized that American protection only went so far, pushing them to reach out diplomatically to Iran. The countries re-established relations in 2023.
The Emirates and Bahrain have also been warming to Iran and the attack in Qatar is unlikely to derail that rapprochement.
“Reaching out to Iran, no matter what, is the policy, is the strategy, is the future course,” said Mr. Abdulla.
At the same time, the attack has underscored the Gulf countries’ reliance on the United States — a dependency with which their rulers are not entirely comfortable.
Just a few years ago, Saudi and Emirati officials spoke about a multipolar world and the necessity of developing a more independent foreign policy as they contemplated an American retreat from the Middle East. Now, it is clear that the United States is “back in the region in the strongest way possible,” Mr. Abdullah said.
“I think we are stuck with the unipolar world,” he said. “There are competing emerging powers, but it is still pretty much Washington that calls the shots.”
Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sanjana Varghese from London and Arijeta Lajka from New York.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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