In the marble-floored atria of a five-star hotel in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, military officers in full regalia mingled with ambassadors and political analysts last weekend, swapping business cards and chatting over plates of tiramisù infused with Arabic coffee.
The smiles and the warm handshakes at the gathering — the Manama Dialogue, an annual security conference — belied the grim topic underpinning much of the conversation. The possibility that the United States might, within days, reignite its war with Iran, prompting a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones on the very city where they were meeting, hung over the event like a dark cloud.
As President Trump weighs a renewed attack on Iran sometime after the midterm elections on Tuesday, Gulf Arab officials fear that their countries — which host American military bases, Western companies and valuable oil and gas facilities — will be the hardest hit, as they were after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February. They also fear that the fighting will be worse this time around.
The Iranian and American positions on a potential deal to stave off a crisis are still “far apart,” Anwar Gargash, a senior official from the United Arab Emirates, told the conference audience. “If these positions are not bridged, then we have to worry about the worst.”
The U.S. military carried out limited strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, according to U.S. officials. Still, Mr. Trump told Fox News on the same day that “there’s a very good chance we make a deal.”
American and Israeli military officials have drawn up an expanded list of targets to strike, including energy infrastructure and other sites vital to the Iranian economy. Iran has warned that it would retaliate fiercely, targeting critical infrastructure and underwater communications cables in the region.
The Gulf countries are already bruised, working to repair energy infrastructure and radar systems that were damaged in the last round of attacks and coping with major economic disruptions. And while their governments operate advanced air defense systems and have worked to harden their defenses, they are constrained in their ability to fend off attacks by a global shortage of missile interceptors.
Saudi Arabia is also preparing for the possibility of a war on several fronts, as the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen fire near-daily volleys of missiles and drones at the kingdom, targeting airports and oil facilities.
The energy-rich Gulf countries have long marketed themselves to tourists and investors as safe havens in a volatile Middle East. Now, some citizens and residents are stockpiling water and cash, or preparing “go bags” full of emergency essentials to grab if they need to flee their homes. Others have changed their travel plans to return home as soon as possible, worried that they could be stuck outside the region if missile and drone attacks force countries to close their airspace.
While a preliminary cease-fire was reached in June — followed by several months of limbo and intermittent bursts of fighting — people in the Gulf fear that it is now “just a matter of time” before their countries get dragged back into a full-blown war, said Khalid Al-Jaber, executive director of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, a research institute in Qatar.
“The scary part this time is that the war is going to be worse than before,” he said. “It’s going to be bigger. It’s going to be much harder for everyone.”
The past few days have been marked by a flurry of diplomacy and calls for de-escalation among President Trump’s closest Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, which sent its defense minister to Iran last week to make the case for peace. Qatar has been leading an effort to reach a deal between Iranian and U.S. officials before it is too late, and in recent days Iranian officials have signaled that those negotiations have made some progress.
While Mr. Trump has said he would not attack before the midterm elections, he has hinted that all bets are off after that.
As a result, the elections have become a grim marker of time for people across the Gulf Arab states, many of whom know little about the American electoral system or the candidates running for office.
Instead, they know that before the midterms are over, they can reasonably expect their lives to continue as normal. They can drive to work and go to the mall, peruse Netflix on their phones and tend to their gardens with plentiful desalinated water.
After then, nobody knows what will happen.
“We are extremely worried,” Badr Abdelatty, Egypt’s foreign minister, said at the conference in Manama. “We have to push very hard in order to prevent the escalation. We are very confident that the second round will be more dangerous, more destructive, and it will lead to nowhere.”
Donald Blome, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told the audience at the conference that diplomatic channels between the United States and Iran were still active, even as the United States was “prepared to go in another direction.”
The event ended on Sunday, after which many of the attendees departed the region as quickly as possible.
Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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