Ceasefire or Pause? The Gulf Held Hostage
April 10, 2026
Image by khalid kwaik.
The ceasefire offered a much-needed breather for the Arab Gulf states. Donald Trump’s threat to attack Iranian civilian infrastructure could have unleashed a human catastrophe across the region with the potential to spiral into an uncontrollable conflagration.
Trump’s shift from threat to ceasefire appears deliberate. In my view, it was part of the phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, April 5. Netanyahu was likely reluctant, possibly seeking to delay any ceasefire long enough to allow Israel to strike economic targets inside Iran. Trump, however, cornered by his deadline threat, seems to have pushed back. As inferred in his comments in the April 6 press conference, Trump might have boasted about his support for Israel, reminding Netanyahu that “if we didn’t do that… Israel would’ve been extinguished.”
By all indications, Netanyahu had little choice but to comply, accepting a halt to attacks on April 7—just minutes before Trump’s ultimatum expired.
The real question now is not whether the ceasefire will hold, but how—and when—Israel will move to break it, whether against Iran, Lebanon, or Yemen. I wrote the previous sentence just hours before finalizing this article. Shortly thereafter, Israel committed massacres launching unprecedented attacks blowing up residential towers murdering more than 250 civilians throughout Lebanon. As in Gaza, the reality is undeniable: ceasefires are reduced to one-sided compliance allowing Israel to violate it with total impunity.
Nothing in this episode suggests that the Israel-first grip on American foreign policy has weakened. The subordination of U.S. policy in the Middle East to Israeli strategic priorities did not begin with Trump. It took shape under Lyndon Johnson and was entrenched during the Nixon years, when Henry Kissinger surrendered American Middle East peace policy to Israel. In the decades that followed, neoconservative and Israel-first pundits expanded that doctrine, steering the U.S. into wars that served Israeli interests only. The invasion of Iraq, under a pretense fabricated by Israel-first American Zionists, stands as a clear example. Today’s confrontation with Iran follows the same trajectory.
What distinguishes this war from previous made-for-Israel wars, it is not contained. The stakes are global. The Gulf is not a peripheral theater, but a lifeline of the world’s energy supply and a cornerstone of global economic stability. Entire economies depend on its oil, and global markets depend on its uninterrupted flow. To hold the Gulf hostage in Netanyahu’s war against Iran is, in effect, to hold the global economy hostage.
Netanyahu’s fixation on Iran is not new. For three decades, he has cried wolf that Iran is perpetually on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. The irony is inescapable: Israel, refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its nuclear facilities, while it cries foul invoking existential threats from a country that has been under IAEA Additional Inspection Protocol for decades.
Meanwhile, Trump’s threats to expand the war to target civilian infrastructure exposes the vulnerability of the Arab Gulf states. They rely on U.S. security guarantees, yet remain, more than the U.S. and Israel, geographically and economically exposed to the outcome of a war they did not choose. In practice, they are not bystanders, they are on the frontline.
More alarming still, when Trump nonchalantly threatened to obliterate Iran’s civilization, he showed little understanding of what civilization is, and no concern for likely retaliation against his supposed Gulf allies in a war with no credible exit strategy. While retaliating against civilian infrastructure in countries that were not directly involved in the war would be unwanted, it is equally naïve to expect that states hosting military bases for the aggressor can remain insulated from its consequences.
Trump’s threat to send Iran back to the stone age is a page from an Israeli playbook. Targeting civilian infrastructures has long been an integral component of Israeli military canon. For Israel, power plants, water systems, roads, ports, and communication networks are not indirect casualties—they are the intended targets. Israel’s wars always aim to impose systemic pressure on entire societies by dismantling the conditions necessary for civilian life.
The above was evident in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and traces back to earlier wars with Egypt and Syria. In Gaza, the infrastructure has been systematically destroyed: roads torn apart, water and sewage systems dismantled, power grids disabled, and universities and hospitals reduced to rubble. This is not conventional warfare. It is the calculated destruction of a society’s foundations to force political outcomes through collective pressure.
Israel wanted Trump to deliver Iran as part of this strategy.
Under such conditions, Gulf states risk finding themselves abandoned after bearing the economic brunt of the conflict, left to contend with a prolonged and antagonistic relationship with a historic and permanent neighbor. Whether under the current Iranian government—or even in the unlikely event that Netanyahu succeeds in his regime change obsession—there is little reason to expect a stable or friendly future. In either case, it is the Gulf states that will carry the enduring burden of living next to Iran, not the United States, and certainly not Netanyahu.
Trump’s true dismissive views of his Gulf allies and their religion were made evident in his Easter message. In his April 5 Easter message, where he invoked “Praise be to Allah” in a derisive manner, underscored a broader disregard for the cultural and religious sensibilities of his Gulf allies. This was not a lapse in judgment; it reflected a deep-rooted willingness to weaponize religious language to inflame the hateful sentiment of his political base. For Gulf nations, whose societies are deeply rooted in Islamic identity, such language from their benefactor in this war should not be dismissed lightly.
In the end, the Arab Gulf is not merely caught in the crossfire; it is the war’s primary theater—a buffer zone for Israel, a staging ground for U.S. forces, and a cost bearer for a conflict it neither initiated nor controlled. When Israel restarts another war, as its history suggests it will, the direct impact will not be borne in Washington or Tel Aviv. In this context, Gulf Arab states must begin to think independently and act strategically—particularly by reassessing their alliance with the U.S., which has repeatedly shown a clear disposition to use their land to launch wars on behalf of a third party: Israel.
This latest conflict should serve as a “bellwether,” warning against being drawn into a catastrophic war designed by and for Israel, and the resulting risk of having their infrastructure, economies, and long-term stability held hostage by the wars of others on their territories. It would leave them to bear the consequences of Netanyahu’s aggression against their neighbors long after the architects of these hostilities have moved on.
