LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now let's turn to an expert on the Middle East, including the Gulf, H.A. Hellyer. He is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense in London and the Center for American Progress. H.A., welcome to the program.
H A HELLYER: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
FADEL: Thank you for being here. So as you heard there from our correspondent speaking from Bahrain, Arab Gulf states say they do not want more with Iran. What specifically do these countries want to see happen, given that they're in the line of Iran's counterattacks?
HELLYER: So what they would want and what they think they're going to get, I think, are rather different things. They don't want to be targeted by Iran in the aftermath of any strikes that were to take place by the United States or by the Israelis. I think that they know that they are in the firing line irrespective of, frankly, what they do over the coming period, in the same way that they were when the war began earlier this year. They lobbied quite hard against having this war take place in the first place. They made it clear to the Iranians that they weren't interested in supporting the U.S. or the Israelis in that war. It didn't matter. It didn't mean that they weren't targeted. They were targeted, and they fully expect to be targeted if this happens again.
So what they would like is to lobby, as much as possible, the United States to not launch a new war. It's their region. They're the ones that are going to have to suffer the consequences. But I think that there's a resignation in the - in most of these capitals now that the United States will proceed irrespective of the wishes of those capitals, because the calculations...
FADEL: Well...
HELLYER: ...Have little to do with their security and what Donald Trump thinks is in the best interest of his own administration.
FADEL: Well, given that, I mean, the Gulf states have historically hosted U.S. military bases, thinking that would serve as a form of protection. But now these are targets, along with their civilian infrastructure. So how are Gulf allies thinking about those bases now?
HELLYER: So I should point out they're not all American bases, right?
FADEL: Right.
HELLYER: I think that in most Gulf countries, the United States has agreements that allow them to station troops in these...
FADEL: Right.
HELLYER: ...Different places.
FADEL: But there is a...
HELLYER: But there aren't...
FADEL: ...Presence which...
HELLYER: ...Bases in...
FADEL: ...Is being targeted.
HELLYER: ...All of the GCC. There's absolutely a presence. The presence is less of an issue than the fact that, on a wider level, all of these Gulf states are part of a regional security architecture that is underpinned by the United States. And that's why they're being targeted by the Iranians. It's not about whether or not strikes took place from those bases or from those forces. It's about the fact that they're part of that architecture.
FADEL: So are these...
HELLYER: And I think that the Gulf states more generally...
FADEL: Yeah.
HELLYER: ...Are now wondering, OK. Is this really in our interest? The regional security architecture simply does not work. It is not protecting us. It is not defending us from these sorts of strikes. On the contrary, we're being put into the line of fire. So - and I think this is why you have these discussions around the R4, which brought, you know, the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Turks and the Pakistanis together - the Mecca Pact, which is the same but not with the Egyptians.
There are these different discussions taking place in the region about how to form a regional security architecture that is not dependent on the United States in the same way, that does not uphold Iran's axis approach or, indeed, Israel's project of regional paramountcy at all - that it's about rooting regional security in the interests of the region itself.
FADEL: H.A. Hellyer is a fellow with the Royal United Services Institute. Thank you so much for your time and your insights.
HELLYER: Thank you.
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