TEHRAN – The old American playbook in the Middle East has completely shed its diplomatic veneer. Arab capitals are not treated as sovereign partners; instead, they have been strategically downgraded to regional shock absorbers designed to absorb the geopolitical, economic, and military blows meant for Tel Aviv and Washington.
The “Abraham Accords,” aggressively marketed as a dawn of regional integration and mutual security, have definitively revealed themselves as a mechanism of subcontracted instability.
Following the disastrous U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran in 2026, the strategic map was irreversibly altered. Despite enduring an all-out attack, Iran emerged with strategic supremacy.
Tehran successfully blocked the Strait of Hormuz to hostile actors and managed the vital chokepoint, absorbed the strikes, and ultimately dictated the operational terms of the subsequent ceasefire. In response to this profound collapse of its regional gendarme, a panicked Washington has resorted to open extortion, lashing out at its own Arab allies in blind frustration.
Mafia diplomacy
Oman has spent more than half a century acting as America’s quiet, reliable diplomatic bridge in the Persian Gulf, frequently hosting the delicate negotiations necessary to maintain regional balance.
Yet, when Muscat engaged in pragmatic talks with Tehran to jointly manage shipping and to restore order to a global energy crisis, the White House responded with naked verbal aggression.
Trump casually threatened to annihilate the sovereign nation. Speaking at a cabinet meeting, he declared, “Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up.”
This was a brutal demonstration of mafia diplomacy. The phrase “blow them up” dismantled decades of diplomatic theater, proving that Washington views Arab states in the Persian Gulf not as independent allies, but as geopolitical hostages.
The Doha bombing and Hegseth’s threat
Qatar received an equally jarring reality check regarding the true cost of American partnership. On May 26, an explosive leaked report surfaced via Saudi-owned Al-Hadath reporter Sareh bin Aishoubah detailed a tense phone call between U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Infuriated by Doha’s refusal to expel Hamas political officials and its insistence on American flexibility toward Iran, Hegseth is said to have resorted to explicit blackmail aimed directly at the Qatari royal family.
Hegseth reportedly snarled, “Remember, if President Trump had not intervened last time and stopped Netanyahu’s fundamental plan, you and your tribe would not be in this world right now. If the Qatari government is ungrateful for President Trump’s favor, we will have no reason to stop Netanyahu from doing what he normally does.”
This alleged horrific threat carried the heavy weight of recent bloodshed. Just months prior, on September 9, 2025, Israel fired ten precision missiles into a government residential complex in Doha’s West Bay Lagoon district.
The strike targeted Hamas political leaders who were meeting specifically to discuss a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, ultimately killing a Qatari security official and five others.
While Washington claimed plausible deniability, it is militarily impossible for Israeli warplanes to strike the capital of a major non-NATO U.S. ally, flying through airspace monitored by CENTCOM from Qatar’s own Al Udeid Air Base, without American facilitation. The message, which was also received during the 2026 war on Iran, was unmistakable: hosting American bases offers zero protection; it only transforms sovereign soil into a zone of permitted Israeli aggression.
The Kushner grift and Emirati vulnerability
Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf originally believed they could purchase insulation from this chaos. They funneled billions into Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, an investment fund managing $6.16 billion, 99 percent of which is derived from foreign nationals, predominantly the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
Despite objections from their own financial advisors, Arab leaders paid this multi-billion-dollar tribute as a protection fee to guarantee access and safety in Washington.
The return on this staggering “investment” has been pure humiliation. Kushner secured his $2 billion anchor investment from the Saudis and assumed his role as U.S. special envoy for peace, yet he delivered a catastrophic regional war and explicit military threats against the very nations paying his management fees.
The United Arab Emirates stands as the premier cautionary tale of this dynamic. Abu Dhabi signed the Abraham Accords under the illusion that normalization would yield an ironclad security umbrella.
Instead, by embedding Israeli military and intelligence assets within its borders, the UAE compromised its national security and alienated its permanent neighbor, Iran.
While trade with Israel crept to $3.2 billion in 2024, the UAE placed its critical $28 billion annual commerce with Iran at severe risk. The UAE spent $4.5 billion on American THAAD missile systems, effectively paying a recurring tribute to Western defense contractors, only to find its critical infrastructure targeted by retaliatory drones.
The UAE was forced into a state of fiscal hemorrhage, spending 20 to 30 times more on interceptors than the cost of incoming fire, a ruinous equation that preserves Israeli security at Arab expense.
The historic crossroads for Riyadh
The desperation driving Washington’s current diplomatic posture stems from a reality it cannot publicly admit: the total strategic failure of its aggressive campaigns against Iran.
Because the U.S. can no longer protect commercial shipping or dominate the battlefield, it is attempting to salvage its fractured hegemony by legally binding Arab sovereignty to a sinking Israeli security framework.
Trump’s recent insistence that the expansion of the Abraham Accords must be “mandatory” for nations such as Saudi Arabia is an admission of weakness, a desperate attempt to force compliance where persuasion has failed.
Saudi Arabia now faces a definitive choice at a narrowing historic crossroads. Riyadh cannot simultaneously chase the illusion of Western protection and maintain illusions of strategic autonomy.
The regional lessons are stark: the UAE has forfeited its security and business model, Qatar has faced Israeli bombardment and reported threats from the Pentagon, and the U.S. President has casually threatened Oman with annihilation.
The Abraham Accords are capitulation documents that turn sovereign Arab wealth into Israeli-American slush funds and Arab lands into a buffer zone for foreign wars. For Saudi Arabia, stepping into this trap signifies “Game Over” for independent Arab statehood and the final surrender of its future to a collapsing American order that has already proven it will burn its allies to save itself.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: tehrantimes.com
