America's bases didn't stop the missiles

After failing to secure a decisive political outcome through military action, the Trump administration has turned to what it calls an intensified campaign of economic pressure. The objective is clear: isolate Iran from the global economy by targeting not only Tehran but also the countries, banks, shipping companies and commercial networks that continue to do business with it. The campaign raises a question that goes far beyond the Iranian economy: what price will America's regional partners pay for Washington's confrontation with Tehran, and what do they receive in return? The UAE's decision last month to suspend all trade, commercial exchange and financial transactions with Iran, announced after Abu Dhabi said two ballistic missiles targeting maritime navigation fell into the sea, brings this question into particularly sharp focus. Tehran denied firing them. For decades, Dubai has served as one of Iran's principal commercial windows to the world. Iranian merchants, banks, shipping companies and trading houses have formed part of Dubai's economic landscape, and before the war the UAE was among Iran's largest trading partners after China. Severing or substantially reducing these links will undoubtedly hurt Iran. It will also cost the UAE. Businesses will lose customers. Shipping companies will lose cargo. Warehouses, banks, traders and thousands of individuals connected to the commercial relationship will suffer losses. Who compensates them? There is little reason to believe the United States intends to reimburse Gulf states for the commercial opportunities they sacrifice in support of its sanctions policy. Washington's calculation is that access to the American financial system and the benefits of its strategic partnership are sufficient compensation. That assumption may increasingly be challenged. The recent war has exposed an uncomfortable reality for the Gulf states. The United States maintains major military bases across the region and has long presented itself as the ultimate guarantor of Gulf security. Yet those bases did not prevent Gulf countries from coming under attack. Nor did American military power spare the region from the economic consequences of war, the disruption of shipping and the threats to critical energy infrastructure. If the United States cannot fully protect the Gulf states from the consequences of a war involving Iran, and cannot compensate them for the economic losses, why should regional security remain overwhelmingly dependent on an external power? Outsourced regional security cannot provide security. That is the lesson of this war. This does not mean the Gulf should abandon the United States. America will remain an important military and economic power in West Asia for the foreseeable future. Nor should regional states replace dependence on Washington with dependence on another external power. The emerging tripartite defense arrangement involving Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, the Makkah Pact, therefore deserves serious attention. Although the full text and operational mechanisms are not yet publicly available, its political significance is considerable. The three countries bring different but complementary strengths. Saudi Arabia possesses enormous economic resources and occupies a central position in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Türkiye has a large and capable military and a substantial defense-industrial base. Pakistan brings one of the largest and most experienced armed forces in the Muslim world, along with technological and strategic capabilities that add an important dimension to regional deterrence. More importantly, all three have a direct stake in regional stability. The pact should be viewed not merely as another military alliance but as a potential step toward greater regional ownership of regional security. Yet a warning is necessary. A new security architecture cannot simply be another name for an anti-Iran coalition. Such an approach would reproduce the very divisions that have made West Asia one of the world's most militarized regions. Iran is part of the region and cannot be excluded from the geography of its own neighborhood. It is a major regional state with a long coastline on the Gulf and direct control over one side of the Strait of Hormuz. No durable security arrangement for the Gulf can permanently ignore this. The strait is the choke point. Almost a fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade passes through a waterway whose security concerns Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf alike. The war has shown that Tehran can disrupt this artery and impose costs far beyond its own borders. The logical conclusion is that Iran should share responsibility for stability rather than obstruct it, and should have a stake in it. The future regional order should evolve in stages. First, regional states must strengthen their own deterrence capacity, through intelligence cooperation, military coordination, air and missile defense, maritime security and defense-industrial cooperation. The Makkah Pact and other regional initiatives can support this. Second, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf states need a structured dialogue, with standing mechanisms to address maritime security, missile threats, terrorism, economic cooperation and crisis management. Third, and most ambitious, should be an inclusive regional security framework in which Iran is eventually a participant rather than a permanently isolated adversary. That inclusion would carry conditions. Iran would have to assure the Gulf monarchies that it will not interfere in their internal affairs. Its reliance on armed partners across the region, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, has run its course and has added only to the region's tensions. Tehran should now press the Palestinian cause alongside Arab and other Muslim states rather than through forces of its own. Iran is part of the region and cannot be excluded from the geography of its own neighborhood. - Asif Durrani This is not a call for naivety. The mistrust created by decades of confrontation and the devastation of the recent war cannot disappear overnight, and dialogue cannot substitute for deterrence. But deterrence and diplomacy are not opposites. A region that can defend itself is better placed to negotiate peace. A region that permanently excludes one of its most important powers will remain vulnerable to recurring confrontation. The argument has an economic dimension too. Washington may succeed in closing one of Iran's principal commercial gateways. But traders have historically proved adaptable. Routes can be redirected through Türkiye, Iraq, Oman, Pakistan, Russia and the Caspian region, and Central Asian states connected through Eurasian transport networks could become part of alternative commercial corridors. Iranian goods may become more expensive to transport and harder to finance. But making a country poorer is not the same as making it politically compliant. The real danger is that economic warfare, instead of producing capitulation, convinces Tehran it has little to lose by escalating. The most durable future for West Asia lies neither in American withdrawal nor in permanent American dependency. It lies in regional ownership, credible deterrence and inclusive diplomacy. That means recognizing a difficult but unavoidable truth. There can be no lasting security architecture for West Asia without finding a place for Iran within it, and no place for Iran within it without reciprocal guarantees of non-interference. The writer is a former Special Representative of Pakistan for Afghanistan. He served as Pakistan's ambassador to the UAE and Iran.