New Gulf pipelines bypass Hormuz, but gaps remain

The pipelines worked. Since Washington and Tehran agreed to a truce in April, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have struggled to make their chosen security strategies deliver, but on the infrastructure front the region’s two largest economies have quietly built functioning workarounds to the contested Strait of Hormuz. That operational record, and the gaps around it, now shapes what the bloc can attempt next.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have concentrated on unilateral projects expanding their existing pipelines. Saudi Aramco has taken up ship-to-ship transfers, a method proven earlier by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company off the coast of Oman. QatarEnergy has applied the same technique to its liquefied natural gas off the UAE coast. On getting critical supplies into the region, Saudi Arabia has followed the UAE’s lead in coordinating logistics with Oman, while building onward linkages to Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. These are real, functioning delivery channels. What they have not produced is the long-term, viable new normal the monarchies hoped would guarantee security for residents and stability for their economic agendas.

The shortfall extends across the bloc’s security infrastructure. At a Jeddah summit in April, Gulf leaders re-emphasized their joint missile-warning programs, but those systems, announced previously, are still not operational. Subsequent summits of military officials and interior ministers, along with a joint exercise in July, reflect longstanding forms of GCC coordination rather than new capability. Deals on drone and missile defense technology have instead proceeded bilaterally, with the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and other states. Individual governments continue exercising purchasing rights to U.S. interceptors, but pooling or surging Gulf-wide air-defense resources toward targeted countries is not happening. Saudi Arabia, contending with Houthi drone and missile attacks, has turned to its Mecca Pact partners Türkiye and Pakistan for defensive support, augmented by new French and British deployments.

Geography explains part of the divergence. As Bloomberg economist Ziad Daoud pointed out, Gulf states with no access to the Red or Arabian Seas have seen a sharp drop in oil revenues, or natural gas in Qatar’s case. Saudi shipments of crude across the East-West pipeline kept export revenue largely stable, at least before disruptions in the Red Sea, while the UAE and Oman boosted income from the previous year.

Meanwhile, the commentary by Sam Worby and Andrew Leber of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that these setbacks paradoxically raise the odds of greater GCC cohesion in the conflict’s next stage. In April the authors had predicted that intra-GCC tensions would block major regional initiatives such as joint air-defense coordination or a united diplomatic front. The resumption of fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia has since generated new urgency for a proactive Gulf approach.

Foreign policy execution has also had to be revised. The UAE leaned into its relationship with Israel and voiced frustration with Gulf states taking a more conciliatory line toward the Iranian threat, drawing security dividends in the form of Israeli air-defense assistance and access to more advanced U.S. microchips as an explicit reward. But once Washington’s strategy seemed increasingly adrift, Abu Dhabi quietly reopened diplomatic channels with Tehran, denied reports of secret meetings between the Israeli and UAE leaders during the war, and condemned settler attacks on European diplomats visiting the West Bank. Saudi Arabia offered only selective support for U.S. operations against Iran while keeping a diplomatic channel open, signed the Mecca Pact, and pursued ties beyond the Gulf. Its airstrikes in Sanaa, meant to deter Iran from opening a second front on the kingdom’s southern border, achieved the opposite: the fighting has disrupted the Saudi new normal, forcing cancellation or postponement of high-profile events designed to tout the kingdom as an economic hub. And while Mecca Pact partners sent defensive help, neither can act as a capable external partner coordinating on the ground in Yemen, something the Saudis have lacked since pushing the UAE out late last year.

Private sniping has given way to public consensus, with the two states emphasizing their “deep-rooted fraternal relations.” Unconfirmed reporting suggests the UAE has renewed support for armed factions it backed before last winter’s falling out. With eased Omani-Emirati tensions, Qatar’s Emir Tamim calling for greater GCC-wide cooperation, and Kuwait and Bahrain’s economies dependent on it, the stage is set for alignment. The clearest near-term indicator would be increased Emirati investment in countering the Houthis in Yemen, perhaps in exchange for Saudi flexibility on an autonomous South Yemen aligned with Emirati interests.

The authors see two practical buckets of cooperation: a coordinated GCC framework for acquiring and developing air defenses, including partially shared or collaboratively funded in-region manufacturing capacity, and shared use of new export routes around Hormuz, with Kuwait already asking to utilize the Saudi and Emirati pipeline expansions. Above all, GCC unity would be a valued, if not essential, asset for negotiating an exit from the simmering not-war, not-peace that has prevailed since April. In the absence of a comprehensive U.S.-Iran agreement, the Gulf will need to act together to generate relief from the immense costs this war has imposed, and whether the still-dormant missile-warning systems ever come online will say much about how far that cooperation can go.