CHATHAM HOUSE Why are Middle Eastern governments lobbying against a US attack on Iran? Threat perceptions have changed. Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt all wish to avoid a war that would bring even more upheaval to the region. Expert comment Published 19 February 2026

 CHATHAM  HOUSE

Why are Middle Eastern governments lobbying against a US attack on Iran?

Threat perceptions have changed. Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt all wish to avoid a war that would bring even more upheaval to the region.

Expert comment

Published 19 February 2026 —

4 minute READ

Image — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following their meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 3 February 2026. (Photo by TUR Presidency/ Murat Cetinmuhurdar / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Galip Dalay

Senior Consulting Fellow, Turkey Initiative, Middle East and North Africa Programme

Not long ago, most leaders in the Middle East were frustrated with the US for not taking a firmer stance towards Iran. Many regional elites were furious with the Obama administration for pursuing diplomacy with Tehran, adopting an accommodating stance, and prioritizing a nuclear deal, which culminated in the short-lived JCPOA.

The reason was clear: Iran was widely viewed as a major threat to regional stability. 

Between 2003 and 2023 its influence had grown across the region. In the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, Iraq came increasingly under Tehran’s influence, alongside Iran’s long-standing alliance with Syria (under the now deposed Assad regime), and its considerable clout in Lebanon wielded through Hezbollah. Conflict in Yemen saw Iran’s influence in the country deepening through its alliance with the Houthis. Iran, therefore, had created a powerful network of state and non-state allies across the region, commonly referred to as the ‘Axis of Resistance’.

This Iran-centric network was previously a highly potent way for Tehran to capitalize on conflicts and instabilities and deepen its influence. Arab leaders feared this network: King Abdullah of Jordan portrayed it as an emerging ‘Shia Crescent’, following the Iraq invasion.

Yet today, with a real prospect of US military action against Iran, regional states are pursuing energetic diplomacy to dissuade the US from attacking. Oman, Qatar, and Turkey have all ramped up their efforts to mediate. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also advocated for de-escalation and diplomacy. What explains this striking reversal?

Switching threat perceptions

Iran’s power and ambition across the region is diminished, and the prospect of an Iran-centric order has receded. For Middle Eastern leaders, the threats have changed: the greatest risks are now an expansionist and aggressive Israel, and the chaos of a potentially collapsed Iranian state.

The Axis of Resistance, once a powerful network, is increasingly transforming into a resistance without an axis. It has been severely damaged since Hamas’s cross-border attacks of 7 October 2023, the war in Gaza, and a sequence of Israeli military campaigns.

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Hezbollah has been degraded in Lebanon by relentless Israeli attacks. Assad has been toppled in Syria. The Iraqi Shia militias and Houthis in Yemen are under increasing pressure. Iran itself has been weakened by the damage to its network, the 12-day war with Israel, and the US strike on its nuclear facility. That, in turn has diminished the Iranian threat to regional states.

Conversely, Israel’s expansionism and unpredictability have grown, and increasingly alarm countries in its near neighbourhood. 

Its September 2025 attack on Doha in particular indicated a willingness by Israel to breach commonly held understandings about regional security and the US security umbrella, amplifying the Gulf’s threat perception emanating from Israel.  

The prevailing view across the region is that they have overestimated the Iranian threat, and underestimated the Israeli one. The less the region’s leaders perceive a threat from Iran, the more they will feel threatened by Israel and seek to counterbalance its power.

How to deal with Iran

The changing nature of regional states’ threat perceptions informs their strategy towards Iran. Broadly speaking, there are three main policy approaches: regime change, containment, and policy-based pushback.

The US and Israel remain wedded to the first two approaches. There were indeed times when some regional states favoured elements of these approaches too. As late as 2018, during Trump’s first term, the US tried to midwife the stillborn Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), commonly known as the Arab NATO, composed of the six Gulf states plus Egypt and Jordan as a bulwark against Iran.

But in the post-7 October context, the regime change and containment policies hardly find any receptive ears amongst the Arab states.

Regime change, through a war, is viewed as highly dangerous. There is no organized, nation-wide, popular and credible opposition in Iran, and the regime and state are so intertwined, any regime collapse raises the prospect of a state collapse – or a regime that metamorphizes into something even more militarized. 

The repercussions of a state collapse would far exceed what the Middle East has experienced as a result of conflict in Iraq, Syria, or Yemen, whether in the form of instability, migration, radicalism, the proliferation of armed groups, or regional spillover. 

And Iran’s demographic composition, with its sizeable ethnic minorities concentrated in specific areas of the country, heightens fears that the country could become internally fragmented. 

Plus, it is widely believed among regional leaders that an Iran knocked out of the equation will embolden Israel to attempt to reshape the region in its image – something that is an anathema to most regional states. 

Trump’s lack of clarity regarding the scale and aim of any military option further heightens regional fears about the implications of a potential military strike.

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Containment of Iran was one of the central elements of US-backed regional initiatives, such as the Abraham Accords, which were premised on the idea of an order built on Arab-Israeli cooperation within a US-centric framework.

This containment logic was probably more applicable to Israeli policy than to the Arab-Gulf states. But Arab-Gulf countries increasingly dismiss the strategy. In the Middle East, containment-based policies have seldom achieved the intended outcomes. They failed to contain and instead contributed to increased regional polarization and fragmentation.

Given the high cost and danger linked to the first two options, regional states have increasingly adopted the policy-based approach towards Iran. That means opposing and pushing back against certain Iranian policies rather than seeking regime change or a broad containment. In the ongoing US–Iran dispute, Tehran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missiles, and regional network and policy are the core elements.

Regional states oppose a US strike on Iran as a means to resolve these issues – but are concerned by them too. Opposition to Iran’s proxy network is a common policy position that unifies most regional countries. Similarly, these states do not want to see a nuclear Iran, although they do not believe this is likely to happen anytime soon.

Iran’s opposition to regional diplomatic track

Conscious of regional concerns about the core elements of the US-Iranian negotiations, Tehran has a limited appetite for a diplomatic approach that involved not only the US and Iran but also regional states, as proposed by Turkey.  Another possible reason for Iran’s opposition to a broader diplomatic track is that, if diplomacy fails in a bilateral negotiation, Iran can blame the US’s bad faith: whereas a wider format might see regional states assign part of the blame to Iranian intransigence. 

Turkey’s foreign minister also proposed a step-by-step negotiation process, in which the sides address one issue at a time rather than seeking a comprehensive package deal, to make negotiations and concessions easier for Iran to digest. 

For the Iranian government, there is no good scenario. Each policy option is fraught with hazards, especially given the recent brutal and bloody crackdown on protestors. The regime is probably living on borrowed time and is relying on the absence of an organized popular opposition to cling to power.

Despite this, regional leaders believe the US must give regional diplomacy a real chance. The alternative is a devastating war and another catastrophic cycle of conflict.

Such diplomacy is the least bad option. If it produces results, it would powerfully showcase regional ownership of regional crises. After decades of seeing its future shaped by external powers, the Middle East is in dire need of showing such ownership.