Despite the fragile ceasefire, the question for the Gulf has continued to shift towards what comes next. Writing for Arab News, Faisal J. Abbas offered a clear articulation of where Riyadh stands, describing it as a position firmly oriented toward preventing the resurgence of war and achieving the unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and after which, structured discussions with Iran should resume quickly. This is further reflected in the decision to allow the Iranian ambassador to remain in Riyadh while ultimately requiring the military attaché to leave, which should also be noted as a statement in itself. This is alongside full support for Pakistani mediation and consistent calls between Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, both signals that communication channels were never fully closed. However, a more ambitious analysis of Saudi thinking came from Tamer Ajrami, writing for Middle East Monitor, who reported that Riyadh is floating something close to a ‘Gulf Helsinki Act’, which is a framework meant to extend beyond bilateral Saudi-Iranian deals and encompass the wider Gulf and European Union, being built around three practical building blocks: security and non-aggression, economic cooperation and stable energy flows, and verification and implementation. It was argued that Saudi Arabia is stepping forward to lead this collective track, not out of fondness for peace mediation but rather because the cost of the ongoing chaos has become higher than the cost of a deal. Washington is importantly absent from this architecture because, as Ajrami argues, it has already failed.
The GCC’s more immediate task is now rebuilding the defences that the war ultimately exposed. Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, reporting for Arab News, placed the scale of what occurred in stark terms, describing more than 7,000 Iranian attacks and a Strait of Hormuz closure entering its seventy-fifth day. A UN Security Council resolution asserting the international nature of the waterway (proposed by the GCC and following the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) was vetoed by Russia and China last month, a decision that has been described as inexplicable given that China alone receives a third of its oil from the Gulf. There is hope, however, following the China-US summit in Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reported that Beijing has said it is not in favour of militarizing the Strait. Bahrain has now resubmitted the draft resolution with newfound confidence that it will pass. Beyond the resolution, GCC states are pursuing four parallel tracks: improving missile and drone defences, prioritizing connectivity and alternative supply routes, strengthening alliances with Pakistan, Türkiye, and Egypt, and preparing legal cases against Iran for reparations.
Despite the public pursuit of parallel tracks, not all GCC states are moving in the same direction. Writing for The New Arab, Paul Iddon traced the deepening alignment between the UAE and Israel as Israel recently deployed its Iron Dome, Iron Beam, and Spectro-drone detection systems to help bolster the UAE's air defence systems. Hence, some are describing the UAE as ‘Israel's frontline state’ against Iran. Other analysts have noted that the UAE’s OPEC exit is a stronger signal than its Israeli ties, signalling that Abu Dhabi is charting an independent path, because if there was one issue on which Gulf states were genuinely united, it was oil. A hardline Iranian lawmaker this week made Tehran’s position plain, describing the UAE as a hostile base. The UAE’s positioning has been a difficult reality, with recent criticisms stemming from the UAE’s diplomatic advisor, Anwar Gargash’s usage of ‘collective international will’ as the guarantor of freedom of navigation. This is because the UAE has struggled with its own contradiction in employing the logic of international law, involving the hosting of US military assets employed in the war on Iran, the conducting of its own strikes on Iranian territory, and maintaining patterns of conduct in Yemen and Sudan that have attracted findings of war crimes and enforced disappearances.
The war's consequences, meanwhile, only continue to spread. Writing for the Middle East Institute, Intissar Fakir documented a cascading food crisis that has come from a decrease of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz by nearly ninety percent. Traditionally, the Strait has handled roughly a third of the global fertilizer trade, causing the price of urea to double, and more than forty-one million people across the Sahel are acutely food insecure just as planting season begins. Another far-reaching consequence is presented in an analysis by The Doha Institute, which argues that the war may prove the most powerful accelerant yet for the global shift to renewable energy, not for environmental reasons but increasingly strategic ones. Energy infrastructure has become a direct instrument of conflict, and centralized fossil fuel supply chains have been exposed as strategically unreliable. Despite the ceasefire pausing the war, the transformations the war has set in motion will not and have not paused with it.
Source: This briefing was first published Arabia Concise on 19 May 2026. It was prepared by Santiago Ferbel-Azcarate, with support from the commonspace.eu editorial team, drawing on reporting from Arab News (Riyadh), Middle East Monitor (London), The New Arab (London), Middle East Institute (Washington D.C.), and The Doha Institute (Doha).
