Why Is Iran Attacking Its Neighbors?
Gulf states like the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have all been dragged into the conflict
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. The man who ruled Iran for 35 years, funding terrorist groups and turning proxy warfare into a regional operating system, was killed in a joint US–Israeli strike on Saturday.
Parts of the Middle East celebrated. Iranians climbed to rooftops. A doctor in Rasht, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, said it was “one of the best nights, if not the best night, of our lives.”
The region may be genuinely relieved that Khamenei is gone. But this is not The Wizard of Oz. There is no “ding, dong, the witch is dead” moment just yet. The retaliation came fast, it came wide, and it is already pulling in countries that had nothing to do with the original strike — threatening to turn a war between the US, Israel, and Iran into something much larger.
Why Dubai?
In the first hours after Operation Epic Fury launched Saturday morning, Iran did something it has never done before: it struck the Gulf states directly. Not symbolically. Not through its proxies. Not a warning shot. Iranian ballistic missiles and drones hit the Fairmont Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah, Dubai’s luxurious artificial island. Set the Burj Al Arab — the iconic sail-shaped hotel that has become a symbol of Dubai itself — on fire. Damaged Dubai International Airport. Struck the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Targeted Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — the largest American base in the region. Hit Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman.
Twelve nations. In 36 hours.
The question everyone is asking: Why? Why civilian targets? Why Dubai?
The reason is strategy, not recklessness. In Tehran’s worldview, America is the Great Satan — and those who host it share its guilt. Iran’s military calculus has always been to impose costs on whoever welcomes American power. The Gulf states are the platforms from which the United States projects force in the region. Hit them hard enough, and they pressure Washington to stop. “The Iranians are responding by spreading the pain across the region and seeking to impose costs on US allies and partners who host US forces and bases,” said Dana Stroul, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Dubai also built its entire identity on being safe. A haven for Iranian businesspeople, Russian oligarchs, American executives, and everyone in between. The UAE has long served as a back channel for Iranian capital, one of Tehran’s most important economic lifelines even through sanctions. Striking Dubai sends a message: nowhere is safe anymore.
The wedge that wasn’t
For years, Gulf states played a careful double game: host American bases, buy American weapons, and quietly normalize relations with Iran to avoid becoming a battlefield. Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a landmark reconciliation deal brokered by China in 2023. The UAE deepened trade and diplomatic ties with Tehran. Qatar mediated between Washington and Tehran on nuclear talks — hosting the most recent rounds just days before the strikes began.
None of it helped.
“For the first time in history, all the GCC states were targeted by the same actor within 24 hours,” said Sinem Cengiz, a researcher at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center. “Their long-standing nightmare scenario has happened.” The GCC — the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic alliance of six Gulf monarchies — had spent years trying to keep this war from their doorsteps.
Here is the bitter strategic irony. Before the strikes, Iran had a genuine opening to divide Washington from its Gulf partners. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan had all publicly refused to allow their airspace to be used for strikes on Iran. They were lobbying the Trump administration against military action. Diplomatically, they were closer to Tehran’s preferred outcome than to Washington’s.
Iran bombed them anyway.
The Saudi foreign ministry condemned the Iranian strikes as “cowardly” — pointedly noting that Riyadh had kept its airspace closed to the US military. The rapprochement that took years to build was reduced to rubble. In striking the region, Tehran has driven every Gulf state and, indirectly, Israel into the same corner. The wedge Iran could have exploited, it chose to detonate instead. Now everyone is on the American side.
Gulf states are caught between two impossible options. Fight back and risk escalation with a cornered, still-dangerous Iran; or stay quiet and look exposed at home, with their citizens watching missiles fall on their skylines in real time.
“Gulf countries cannot know how far US security guarantees will hold in the next phase — when America pulls back, leaving them exposed to an unhinged Iran on their doorstep,” said Yasmine Farouk of the International Crisis Group.
Iranian proxies are still standing
Iran built a web of armed groups across the region for exactly this scenario. The “axis of resistance” — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, affiliated militias in Syria — was always Tehran’s insurance policy. Degrade Iran itself, and the tentacles keep moving.
And now Hezbollah has entered the fight. In the early hours of Monday, the group launched rockets and drones at Haifa, declaring it was avenging “the blood of the supreme leader of the Muslims, Ali Khamenei.” Israel responded with a devastating air assault on Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon, killing at least 52 people, according to the Lebanese government. The Israeli defense minister vowed Hezbollah would pay a “heavy price” and declared its leader a “marked target for elimination.” Lebanon’s government — caught in the crossfire — immediately banned Hezbollah’s military activities. It is unlikely to stop them.
The Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen supported by Iran, signaled readiness for “any necessary development.” In Iraq, the Iranian-backed militia group Kataib Hezbollah announced it would “soon begin attacking American bases in response to their aggression.”
The proxies were always the long game. Even as Iran absorbs strikes, its distributed network can keep bleeding American forces and regional partners for months.
Now Europe is in it
This is where the conflict stops being regional.
Iran struck a British base in Cyprus, a member of the European Union. It attacked French military assets in the UAE. Trita Parsi, an Iranian-American analyst with close ties to the regime, laid out the reasoning: Iran “has no red lines left and will go all out in seeking the destruction of US regional bases and high American casualties.”
On Europe specifically, Parsi was direct: “Iran is well aware that this is an attack on an EU state. But that seems to be the point. Tehran appears intent on not only expanding the war into Persian Gulf states but also into Europe... For the war to be able to end, Europe too has to pay a cost, the reasoning appears to be.”
France and Britain pledged to help defend regional partners. French President Emmanuel Macron called the escalation “dangerous for all” and said it “must stop.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK had “no role” in the strikes but added: “Our forces are active and British planes are in the sky today as part of coordinated regional defensive operations.”
Europe did not choose this war. Iran is pulling it in anyway.
Forever war?
Before the strikes, Vice President Vance told The Washington Post there was “no chance” this would turn into a years-long war. “The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen.”
He pointed to last June’s 12-day war targeting Iran’s nuclear program as a model: clean, defined, and quick.
But on Monday evening, the State Department issued a travel advisory urging Americans in 14 Middle Eastern countries to “depart now” due to “serious security risks.” That is not the language of a quick, clean operation. The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas flows — is now effectively closed. Iran has attacked tankers transiting the corridor, and the disruption is already spiking energy prices and rattling freight markets worldwide. Six American service members dead as of Monday afternoon is not a clean ending. Twelve nations in active conflict, European assets struck, proxies mobilizing, and no day-after plan evident in Washington — none of that is a clean ending.
Senator Lindsey Graham declared the moment a turning point anyway.
“The mothership of terrorism is sinking. The captain is dead. The largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, is close to collapsing,” Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
Graham is already thinking past the conflict to the regional realignment that Khamenei’s Iran always blocked.
“When this regime is down I will work my ass off with Democrats to build on what Biden tried to do: to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel,” Graham said. “We can’t do it until the terrorist regime in Iran is replaced, and we are very, very close.”
He is not wrong about the logic. The Abraham Accords, which President Trump negotiated during his first term, normalized relations between Israel and four Arab states. Saudi–Israeli normalization — the biggest prize in regional diplomacy — has been elusive for years, with Iranian pressure on Riyadh a central obstacle. An Iran that no longer funds proxies, threatens Gulf monarchies, or poisons regional integration could genuinely reshape the Middle East.
That is a real argument for toppling the regime.
The big if
But here is the problem with that argument: it requires the regime to actually fall.
Iran is not a hollow state. It has government and security structures that do not depend on one man. President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a prerecorded message that a new leadership council was already at work. The foreign minister, Abbas Aragachi, said a new supreme leader would be named within “one or two days.”
“Iran’s policy here is endurance,” said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group. “If this becomes a war of attrition, the US and Israel are more likely to blink first than Iran.”
Tehran has absorbed sanctions, assassinations, cyberattacks, and military strikes before. Every round of external pressure has historically consolidated internal control, not loosened it. The streets of Tehran are largely deserted — not in protest, but because people are sheltering from airstrikes while checkpoints have gone up across the city.
Some Iranians are still celebrating. But celebrating quietly, indoors, for fear of what comes next.
The immediate picture
A peaceful Middle East is imaginable on the other side of a genuine regime collapse and democratic transition in Iran. That possibility is real, and it is worth naming.
But that day is not today.
Today, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Oil markets are rattled. Twelve nations are in active conflict. American service members are dead. European assets in the Middle East are burning. Gulf cities that built their entire identity on being safe are watching missiles fall past their skyscrapers. And no one — in Washington, the Middle East, or Europe — can say what comes next.
The “mothership of terrorism” may indeed be sinking.
The question is how much of the world goes down with it.
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Thank you for this Elise. Reading this all I can think about is the people caught in the crosshairs. I wish nothing but peace for them knowing that is a big ask.
I live in Israel. I really appreciate this article. It's spot on. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the hopeful ending that the regime is sinking will prove right. But we've tried this force regime change thing and its never worked. Not really. Not ultimately. There's a book I found very helpful to understand this called "Losing the Long Game" by Philip H. Gordon, if you're interested in seeing more of how the U.S.'s attempts to upend regimes in the past really hasn't worked. I found it very insightful, anyway.