Gulf allies furious U.S. failed to warn of Iranian attacks, ignored regional concerns

The Persian Gulf has become a shooting gallery, and the countries that live there are furious that Washington didn't tell them it was coming. Officials from two Gulf nations have lodged a sharp complaint with the Trump administration: they received no advance warning before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28, leaving their governments scrambling to defend themselves against the Iranian retaliation that followed. Now, as waves of drones and missiles rain down on their territory, these longtime American partners say they feel abandoned—left to fend for themselves while American firepower concentrates on protecting Israel and U.S. troops.

The scale of the Iranian response has been staggering. Since the war began, Iran has fired at least 380 missiles and more than 1,480 drones at five Arab Gulf countries, according to an accounting based on official statements. At least 13 civilians have been killed across those nations. In Kuwait, six American soldiers died on Sunday when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port, more than ten miles from the main Army base—a shipping container-style building with no defensive systems, according to the husband of one of the slain soldiers. The operations center was part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa.

Gulf officials have made clear their frustration goes beyond the immediate toll. They say the U.S. ignored their warnings that escalation would devastate the entire region, and they are angry that American military resources have not been deployed to defend them adequately. One official described his country's stock of interceptor missiles as "rapidly depleting." The complaint is not merely diplomatic theater: these nations sit directly in Iran's crosshairs, filled with American troops, energy infrastructure, and civilian targets. They are well within range of Iran's short-range missiles, and the disruption to oil flows has global consequences.

The Pentagon has acknowledged the problem in closed-door briefings with lawmakers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week that the U.S. will not be able to intercept many of the incoming drones, particularly the Shahed model. When pressed on why the U.S. appeared unprepared for waves of one-way drones targeting sites outside conventional military bases, neither official offered a substantive answer. A U.S. official familiar with the security posture in the Gulf said plainly that the U.S. lacked widespread capabilities throughout the region to counter such attacks at locations beyond Iraq and Syria. Drone strikes this week hit the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, causing a limited fire in Riyadh, and struck near the U.S. consulate in Dubai.

The White House has pushed back against the criticism. Spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that Operation Epic Fury has reduced Iranian retaliatory ballistic missile attacks by 90 percent and that President Trump remains in close contact with regional partners. She framed the strikes as necessary to eliminate a threat to the country and its allies. But the official reactions from Gulf governments have been notably muted, even as public figures with close ties to those governments have been openly critical. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, told CNN on Wednesday that this is "Netanyahu's war" and that the Israeli prime minister somehow convinced Trump to support his views.

The frustration reflects a deeper anxiety about what comes next. Bader Mousa Al-Saif, a Kuwait-based analyst at Chatham House, said the U.S. appeared to have underestimated the risk to its Gulf allies, believing American troops and Israel would be the primary targets. "I don't think they saw that there would be as much exposure to the Gulf," he said, describing the lack of a defensive plan as evidence of "U.S. short-sightedness." The disparity in air defense capabilities has not gone unnoticed either. Israel has had relative success intercepting Iranian strikes, while Gulf nations with less robust systems have struggled—and U.S. officials have been puzzled that these allies show little appetite for launching their own counteroffensive against Iranian targets.

Elliot Abrams, who served as special representative for Iran and Venezuela during Trump's first term, acknowledged that both U.S. officials and Gulf allies knew Iran possessed the capability to strike significantly. "The neighbors knew it and were afraid of it," he said. But it was unclear whether Iran would actually follow through, given what it stood to lose. Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, captured the core concern: while Gulf countries want to see Iran weakened, they are deeply worried about the economic damage, the instability, and the open-ended nature of the conflict. "What comes next?" Ratney asked. "The countries of the Gulf will have to bear the brunt of whatever that is." That uncertainty, combined with the sense that they were neither consulted nor adequately protected, has opened a rift that could widen if the pattern continues.