2026/06/10
As things stand today Trump seems desperate to end the war with Iran (and perhaps move on to his next target, Cuba (Opens in a new window)) ahead of the US midterm elections. Since Tehran is in much less of a hurry, and they have the upper hand with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz by which they keep the world economy hostage, the upcoming agreement will likely favour them.
Iran’s long-term strategic goal and current maximalist demand is the total US withdrawal from the region. This is unlikely to be part of the coming agreement, but with the damage they inflicted on US bases (Opens in a new window) in the region and Washington’s diminishing public support for Middle East involvement, to a lesser extent this will be a probable practical outcome of the conflict either way.
The likely US concessions towards Iran currently involve the relaxation of sanctions, including some energy sanctions allowing Iranian oil back into the global market, and the partial release of Iranian frozen assets that are estimated to worth around 100 billion dollars (Opens in a new window).Â
The New Gulf
This would put the Gulf States into an extremely uncomfortable security situation. These countries now increasingly see the US as an unreliable ally at best, and even as a security hazard. The question they are currently asking is “why is the US here exactly?”. At the same time American voters have been asking this for decades, and another failed war will make these voices even louder. The US’s general strategic plan of withdrawing from its previous position as “global police” will likely find new supporters.Â
Iran established a precedent that it can bomb Gulf States, close the Strait of Hormuz and be rewarded for it. This runs the risk of emboldening Tehran to become more assertive. The Gulf monarchies will need to adapt to this new environment. They have only a handful of places they can look for who has the means to help with their security.
One of that is Israel. That comes with extreme baggage because of their never-ending conflict with the Palestinians. This has become even more significant because of the country’s increasingly violent actions since October 7th. Besides, the Gulf would have a good reason to view them as an amplified US: unreliable, aggressive, and more of a security risk than a guarantor.
Another potential is Russia, but they are Tehran’s closest partner. From the Kremlin's perspective, Iran is an irreplaceable geopolitical buffer and an arms supplier. Moscow cannot offer Riyadh or Abu Dhabi security guarantees against Tehran without blowing up its own war effort in Ukraine.
There is China. Beijing wants to buy oil from the region, but it has no capability or willingness to project hard power to protect the Gulf. Part of its foreign policy is calculated ambiguity. They will not pick Riyadh over Tehran when they need both for their energy security.Â
Then there are European states that might provide weapons and some sort of diplomatic protection, but European defence manufacturing has the bad reputation of being slowed down by regulations, and political conditionality. The Gulf cannot wait years for a French or German air defence battery that might get blocked by a parliament over human rights concerns.Â
There is one country that ticks all the boxes: Ukraine
They are the only ones with the technology and experience to combat Iranian missiles and drones. At this moment, it is a perfect match. Kyiv needs money and new partners to guarantee its survival after US betrayal, and with an often slow and indecisive Europe. Money which the Gulf States are very happy to provide for what they urgently need, and Ukraine has: weapons, expertise, and the incentive to deliver them fast.
No military on earth has more practical experience downing Iranian-designed loitering munitions than Ukraine. By early 2026, Russia had launched over 54,000 Shahed drones against the country’s infrastructure. To counter and adapt to these challenges they built the most sophisticated, low-cost counter-drone ecosystem in the world.
Kyiv is currently the global superpower of low-cost, high-velocity asymmetric warfare. They have spent years perfecting first-person view (FPV) and automated interceptor drones designed to ram and down loitering munitions at a fraction of the cost of a traditional missile.
Beyond the drones themselves they are world leaders in Electronic Warfare (EW) and Algorithmic Command and Control. They use battlefield-tested signal jamming that can drop swarms of drones without firing a single bullet, and use AI-assisted target recognition operating on decentralized networks.
What the Gulf is buying
Gulf procurement has generally focused on prestige platforms like F-15s, Patriot systems, and Littoral Combat Ships, optimised against high-end ballistic threats. The drone proliferation has exposed a critical gap: legacy interceptors costing millions per unit are being deployed against threats that cost under $3,000 to manufacture at scale.
The asymmetry is obvious. Ukrainian interceptor drones run between $800–$3,000 per unit (Opens in a new window). Zelenskyy stated in March 2026 that Ukraine could supply up to 1,000 units per day to international partners.
But hardware is only part of the equation. Layered drone defence requires trained operators, integrated command structures, and real-time coordination between sensors, interceptors, and electronic warfare. Operator training alone takes weeks, full integration with radar networks and digital situational awareness takes even longer. This is why Gulf-Ukraine cooperation has shifted from procurement to doctrine transfer: not just buying equipment, but acquiring the underlying model for fighting and sustaining a drone war.
The 10-year defence partnerships being finalized with Qatar and the UAE are built around joint production and technology localization - manufacturing lines both inside the Gulf and in secured facilities in Ukraine. Over the first half of 2026, Zelenskyy secured equivalent strategic agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, with more than 200 Ukrainian specialists already embedded across the region integrating Ukrainian systems into Gulf airspace.
This helps Ukraine secure independent, long-term defence financing and stable revenues for its domestic arms industry outside of Western aid packages. It turns Ukraine into a critical security exporter for a region vital to Europe's energy stability.
That being said, the Gulf monarchies will adapt to the fragmented world system, and likely to diversify their defence investments beyond Ukraine.
The structural vulnerability
The primary risk for Kyiv is ensuring that the highly sensitive electronic warfare and AI algorithms shared with Gulf partners don't leak back to Russia. The UAE and Saudi Arabia still maintain deep financial and diplomatic ties with Moscow. The risk of cutting-edge Ukrainian defence systems migrating through Gulf intermediaries back to Moscow or Beijing is a massive vulnerability that Kyiv's export controls will have to police vigorously.
Where does this put Ukraine beyond the Gulf?
Kyiv’s power and leverage on the global stage has been slowly but surely growing in the past years. Ukrainians instinctively realized that to survive they need to become indispensable for as many global actors as possible. This strategy is proving to be successful. The Gulf States are only the newest addition to their portfolio.
For Europe, the picture is clear. They guarantee security and deterrence on its eastern flank, and an advanced local arms industry with the only battle hardened, experienced, and determined military on the continent. Ukrainian intelligence and arms technology has become essential for Europe to protect itself against Russia.
With the US the headlines and general sentiment suggest that Kyiv’s position is weakening because of Trump’s personal animosity (Opens in a new window) towards Zelenskyy and Ukraine as a whole, but the picture is more nuanced beneath the surface.
Powerful US tech companies - like Palantir and SpaceX - are using the Ukrainian battlefield as a testing ground to perfect their products. The US military, arms industry, and intelligence community treats the country very differently than the Trump administration. For them, it is essential to learn from the Ukrainian military, and have access to their intelligence on the ground, while US arms industry players are highly keen to provide weapons to Ukraine for testing, to sell, and to import technology to modernise their own capabilities.
Ukraine’s European future
It’s a vital interest for Brussels to integrate Ukraine.Â
European countries and the EU have invested so much in the Ukrainian military and made it so strong that they need Kyiv as an ally. The most obvious way to achieve that is to have it join the EU.
If Ukraine would not be granted EU membership, European capitals would run the risk of Kyiv becoming a wildcard, starting to assert its military powers independently, looking after only its own interest, even when it clashes with the EU. With all the resources, production, and a battle hardened military it could cause unnecessary headaches for European states. Their fear is that it may easily become like Turkey on steroids.
Similarly, it cannot let Ukraine be conquered. It would be a strategic nightmare having to face an emboldened Russia boosted by Ukraine’s resources. In many ways Europe is “trapped” on a path to support and integrate Ukraine.
The ball is on Brussels’s turf. Full membership under the current circumstances seems almost impossible, with a large part due to the veto system on many fields, especially on foreign policy. It was originally designed with six member states in mind, and already makes common decision-making slow and ineffective, sometimes even nearly impossible - as Hungary demonstrated in previous years. Every new member would only increase the risk of inertia.
The EU has two ways of countering this, and it already started moving down on both.
One is the abolishment of the veto. This will be the more difficult task. No country - especially the smaller nations - would be happy to give up their veto. This will unavoidably lead to conflicts between member states and Brussels.
The other is to create a multi-speed Europe, and an “outer layer” where the many countries who have been waiting for decades like Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, or countries with internal reservations like Norway, UK, or Iceland could join.
This latter is an essential move to strengthen the EU, and keep these countries incentivised in joining and getting more and more intertwined with the EU even before it can reform itself to become ready for new members.
Sources used:
Gulf International Forum - Ukraine’s Drone War is Reshaping Gulf Defense (Opens in a new window)
Date
June 10, 2026
Topic
Ukraine
