Israel’s existential conflict may bring economic hardship but for Gulf states there’s no going back

So it is with the current military campaign by the US and Israel against Iran, a month after it began.

The conflict appears to have a very different character depending on where you are in the world.

For Israel, too, there is an enormous snake – the nexus of terror in which Iran has attempted to envelope the entire region, of which the head lies in Tehran.

As the war opens up on the Lebanon front, this is nothing less than an existential conflict.

Israel is determined to end once and for all the genocidal impulses of the regime and its proxies, which were ultimately responsible for October 7, and now intent on creating a nuclear bomb to make good on its repeated promise to wipe out the Jewish state.

In Jerusalem, the message is one of iron-willed determination to press on given what’s at stake. More than three-quarters of Jewish Israelis support continuing the war, and a significant share believe Israeli society could endure it “for as long as it takes”, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. Still, many ordinary Israelis feel drained after being subjected to an unending air campaign by the enemy like nothing else in the country’s history.

Benjamin Netanyahu and his commanders maintain a judicious flexibility that remains unaffected by feverish speculation over a ceasefire.

All scenarios are catered for: should there be a pause in the fighting, that presents opportunities too.

Over in the US, within the White House the ever unpredictable and often contradictory rhetoric of Donald Trump has created a small industry of commentators interpreting the true meaning of his words.

More widely there is concern over the cost of the war and the possibly prolonged global energy shock as Iran exerts its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

For now, outside the left, it appears to be a price the general public is willing to pay – the MAGA crowd are generally backing the Stars and Stripes, as they usually would in war.

But the distant threat from Iran may be outweighed for the American public if it hits them in their pocket.

Netanyahu’s advisers know his close alliance with Trump has limits, if a prolonged war fuels alarm for the Republican Party as the November mid-terms draw nearer.

The view from Europe is of a war that imperils what seems to have been widely seen as a tolerable status quo ante as regards Iran and its proxies.

In Paris and Brussels the well-heeled diplomats still long for the unlikely restoration of the JCPOA, and the hope that jaw-jaw rather than war-war could resolve the threat of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic and kick the can of that apocalyptic threat down the road indefinitely.

The real enemy for these Eurocrats is not Tehran but the rude orange man whose tariffs and blustering talk are inimical to their 20th-century notions of politesse and prosperity, while Israel remains in their minds the “shitty little country” a French diplomat blamed for 9/11 in 2001.

In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer struggles to find a politically balanced position that reconciles the need to maintain some semblance of relations with the US while refusing to provide military support.

Some Iranian opposition sources say they are disappointed by what they see as the British public’s reaction, arguing that “more attention should be focused on helping Iranians living under the regime rather than on concerns about tightening household finances only just four weeks into war”. At the extreme, in Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez seeks to save his skin amid plunging poll numbers by demonising Israel and pulling the ambassador out of Tel Aviv.

The differences make little odds in Jerusalem, where the view is that the continent as a whole is a bystander in this war. There are exceptions, but in gaming terms, some European countries are dismissed as an NPC, or non-player character. Never mind.

But that degree of denial is not available to the Gulf states, whose rulers now see this war as one for the survival of the economic prosperity that underpins their rule.

The risk analysis which made the terror, scheming and apocalyptic invective of the Islamic Republic tolerable was vaporised when the first missiles landed in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia too has been a target, potentially rejuvenating the long-running negotiations with the kingdom to bring them as the biggest prize of the Abraham Accords, which had been an open secret in the region before October 7. Sources based in the Gulf are divided. “Some suggest that Saudi Arabia’s opposition to Israel can at times seem more pronounced than its rivalry with Iran,” says one source in the region; the trajectory ahead will be closely watched.

But for the Saudis, even a wounded regime in Tehran can no longer be tolerated. Behind closed doors, the Crown Prince and his advisers have been on the phone to Washington insisting that they finish the job. Though signalling in public a need for diplomacy, Mohammed bin Salman is said to have urged Donald Trump not to cut short the war against Iran, arguing that the US-Israeli campaign represents a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. Even the once fanciful notion of a pipeline running through from the Gulf across the Kingdom and on into Israel to the Mediterranean has been revived as a way to ensure the Islamic Republic can never again use the Strait of Hormuz to hold world oil to ransom.

Whatever the coming weeks and months bring, the region has changed irrevocably. In 1973, almost the entire Middle East was united against Israel, as war and oil shock combined into a global crisis.

Now history is not quite repeating itself but there are striking similarities, except, out of pure self-interest, most nations are uniting alongside Israel, and it is Iran that is the common foe.

The war may pause but the driving forces behind it will not be laid to rest until the regime is no more.