Gulf states fear a fiercer Iranian retaliation if the US strikes Iran again after the midterms, Manama talks show
Gulf governments fear being drawn into a war they did not choose if the United States strikes Iran again after Tuesday’s midterm elections, with ministers at Bahrain’s Manama Dialogue warning that a second round could be more dangerous than the first.
Gulf Arab governments are bracing for a war they fear they did not choose, as warnings grow that the United States could strike Iran again shortly after Tuesday’s midterm elections and face a fiercer Iranian retaliation than in the last round of fighting. That anxiety dominated the annual Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain over the weekend, where ministers, policymakers and security officials weighed what another round of war would mean for the countries that host American forces — and for the energy, water and transport systems on which the whole region depends.
The immediate trigger is the language used by United States President Donald Trump, who has said he could launch what he called “another little Operation Epic Fury” after the midterms, referring to the US-Israeli operation that began on 28 February. Reuters reported on Monday that four European officials believe the United States has amassed enough forces and assets in the region to attack Iran at short notice, possibly as soon as this week. A fifth European official, who has close contact with Gulf leaders, was blunter still, telling Reuters: “War is coming. Nobody is in favour of this war.”
For the Gulf states, the danger is not only the strike itself but what follows it. In the last round of fighting, Iranian missiles struck United States military bases and Gulf energy facilities, exposing what Reuters described as a vulnerability at the heart of Washington’s decades-old security architecture in the region: bases built to protect Gulf partners could instead make those partners targets. Iranian officials have told Reuters that Tehran has drawn up detailed retaliation lists, including undersea communications cables and military bases, some of them covert, alongside energy infrastructure, desalination plants, communications networks and highly visible targets in Gulf cities.
That prospect was stated plainly at Manama. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told the conference that another round of fighting would be more dangerous and destructive than the last, adding: “It will lead to nowhere.” Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the President of the United Arab Emirates, said his country found itself “drawn within a crisis that we worked diplomatically very hard to try to avert”, and that the UAE was “clearly seeking a political off-ramp”. He warned that Washington and Tehran remained far apart, and that if those differences were not narrowed, the region had to worry about the worst-case scenario — a warning the Financial Times also reported from the same conference.
The Japan Times, reporting the same Manama discussions, noted that Trump has repeatedly said the United States and Israel would “finish the job” in Iran, while ruling out fresh strikes before Tuesday’s elections but leaving open the possibility of renewed attacks while peace talks remain deadlocked. That sequencing — no strikes before the vote, but no promise after it — is exactly what has put Gulf capitals on edge, because it leaves them preparing for a decision taken in Washington on a timetable they do not control.
What a new strike might hit is also becoming clearer in the reporting, though it remains based on officials speaking anonymously rather than on any published American plan. Two of the European officials cited by Reuters said any American attack would likely target Iranian nuclear sites, including research and development facilities, among them a site known as Pickaxe Mountain linked to Iran’s nuclear programme. The same officials cautioned that military action would probably only weaken Tehran’s capabilities rather than destroy them — a limitation that matters, because a strike that fails to end the programme could still trigger the full retaliation Gulf states fear.
Iran cannot match the United States and Israel militarily, and the reporting from Manama does not suggest otherwise. Its strategy, as described by three delegates to Reuters, is increasingly one of attrition: make American forces expensive to defend and sustain, turn the Gulf states hosting them into pressure points, and present any American retrenchment as evidence that Washington cannot protect its partners. Emile Hokayem, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which organises the Manama Dialogue, told Reuters that what Tehran really cares about is the departure of United States forces from the region, and that its message to Gulf powers is aimed at driving that wedge.
Bahrain, the host of the conference, illustrates how layered those fears are. Reuters noted that for Bahrain, fears of Iranian threats sit on top of an older sectarian and historical faultline, with some Iranian hardliners again invoking Bahrain as Iran’s “14th province” despite Tehran having abandoned its territorial claim in 1970. One delegate anticipated the worst-case scenario outright, expecting that the United States would soon strike Iran and that Iranian retaliation would follow against civilian infrastructure across the Gulf.
Diplomacy has not stopped, and it is the thread Gulf states are still pulling. Reuters reported that senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan held talks with Iranian officials in Tehran last month, with Saudi Arabia saying the effort was intended to “prevent the return of military escalation”, while Qatari officials held meetings in Tehran and Doha over the weekend to avert renewed war. Those efforts sit alongside the Qatar-mediated talks in Doha on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which have produced a draft proposal now being circulated — but the Manama warnings suggest that, for now, the diplomatic track and the military timetable are running in parallel, and neither has yet displaced the other.
What happens next therefore turns on the days immediately after Tuesday’s vote. One possibility is a diplomatic breakthrough in the Doha track that gives Washington and Tehran a reason to hold off, with a phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a return to broader talks. Another, which Gulf officials plainly fear, is a short and intense campaign beginning as early as 4 November, the day after the elections — a date cited in separate reporting based on senior Gulf Arab officials — followed by Iranian retaliation against bases and infrastructure in the Gulf. A third possibility is continued delay, with threats held over the talks as leverage. None of these outcomes is confirmed by any official American announcement, and readers should treat the strike timing and targets as reported assessments, not as a declared plan. What is confirmed is the mood in Manama: Gulf governments do not want this war, they are preparing for the worst, and they are pressing, publicly and privately, for a political way out before the post-election window opens.
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