Amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to avert a wider conflict in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel are prioritizing their own interests as regional tensions between the US and Iran continue to rise.
Throughout this past week, the uncertainty over potential US military action against Iran continued to shape strategic steps across the region.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both close US allies who also maintain ties with Tehran, said they won’t allow their airspace be used for any attack, regardless of the origin.
Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty — whose country has thawed ties with Iran but is yet to reach a full diplomatic level — spoke to his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi as well as to US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to “work toward achieving calm, in order to avoid the region slipping into new cycles of instability.”
Meanwhile, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and some 10 US guided missile destroyers, capable of launching attacks from the sea, arrived in the region, the shipping tracking site MarineTraffic noted.
The Iranian state-owned news media organization Press TV announced that with the beginning of next week, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces will start live-fire exercises in the same waters, the Strait of Hormuz, which links Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations meanwhile posted on X that “Iran stands ready for dialogue based on mutual respect and interests — BUT IF PUSHED, IT WILL DEFEND ITSELF AND RESPOND LIKE NEVER BEFORE!”
In line with that, Ali Shamkhani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, worte on X that a “‘limited strike’ is an illusion.”
He stated that “any military action by the United States — from any origin and at any level — would be considered an act of war and the response would be immediate, all out, and unprecedented, targeting the heart of Tel Aviv and all those supporting the aggressor.”
For Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, the latest decisions by US President Donald Trump indicate that economic relief and reintegration remain possible, “but only after Iran accepts permanent and verifiable constraints on its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes alongside shifts in its regional behaviour,” she wrote in an op-ed on the think tank’s website.
Israel has not yet built its defenses back up
Tensions between the US and Iran have been mounting since Tehran’s brutal crackdown on protesters beginning in December 2025. According to the latest death tally by the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran, 6,479 deaths have been confirmed, including 6,092 protesters and 118 children (as of Friday night, January 30). Also, more than 42,450 people have been arrested, the NGO said.
According to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the country’s arch enemies, the United States and Israel, are responsible for the unrest.
For Israel, a potential US strike risks an Iranian counterstrike on its territory, Pauline Raabe, a political scientist at the Berlin-based Middle East Minds think tank, points out.
“Against the background of the upcoming elections in Israel, the Israeli government supports the current call for moderation,” she told DW.
Following the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the ensuing two-year war in Gaza, and the 12-day-war in June 2025 between Israel and Iran, during which the US carried out strikes on nuclear targets across Iran, Israel is yet to rebuild the full scope of its defense mechanisms, Raabe added.
Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst on Israel with the International Crisis Group, an independent organization working to prevent wars, confirms this.
“Missile interceptors have not been replenished enough,” Zonszein said.
Despite this, she doesn’t believe that Israel could tell Trump to not strike Iran.
“And yet, there are different factors as to why I think right now such a strike would not be ideal for Israel,” she told DW.
For years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been sounding the alarm over the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons.
“But Israeli officials would be happy with a deal that resembles the Libyan model,” which involved Libya abolishing its nuclear program, Zonszein said.
Also, in her view, it is no secret that Israel supports a regime change in Tehran.
“But for now, Israel is just making sure that it’s prepared for whatever Trump will decide,” she said.
Mounting concerns in the Gulf states
The political strategy of the other regional neighbors in the Gulf is meanwhile driven by different interests, Eckart Woertz, director of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (GIGA) in Hamburg, told DW earlier this month.
“The Gulf states have a vested interest in maintaining stability in the region even by means of authoritarian structures,” he said, adding that the political elite of the Gulf states apparently prefers to rely on the familiar old regime rather than getting involved with a new, potentially unknown faction.
Pauline Raabe in turn believes that the Gulf states will continue to exert maximal diplomatic pressure on both sides as they fear that violence could spiral out of control as a result of an attack.
“It could mean that they themselves could become targets of Iranian attacks,” Raabe said, noting that the US bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain could be among the first targets of possible Iranian airstrikes. “This worries the Gulf states as they would have war in their own backyard.”
