An Inflection Point for the Gulf

According to U.S. President Donald Trump, “the biggest surprise” of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has been Tehran’s drone and missile attacks on countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Key transport hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha have shut down, strangling a significant part of global aviation, tourism, and trade. How are the Gulf states planning to keep their people safe and get travel and trade back online? Will they try to respond with force? And, longer term, how do the events of the past week shift their geopolitical choices? Firas Maksad, a geopolitical risk expert focused on the Gulf states, and Mina Al-Oraibi, the editor in chief of The National newspaper in the UAE, joined FP Live to share their sense of how the region’s leaders are rethinking regional alliances amid their most tense moment in a generation. Watch the full interview here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/05/... 0:00 Intro 2:24 The mood in the Gulf 4:49 Iran’s plan is backfiring 7:49 The Gulf response On the go? Listen to FP Live as a podcast at https://link.chtbl.com/foreignpolicyl... or wherever you get your podcasts. FP Live is Foreign Policy's forum for live journalism that brings leading foreign-policy experts and thinkers together to analyze the world's biggest events. Visit http://foreignpolicy.com/live for the full conversation and more live journalism from Foreign Policy. Subscribe to Foreign Policy's Youtube Channel:    / @foreign-policy   Visit http://foreignpolicy.com/ to read the latest global news and analysis from FP. Follow Foreign Policy: X -   / foreignpolicy   Instagram -   / foreignpolicymag   Facebook -   / foreign.policy.magazine   LinkedIn -   / foreign-policy-magazine   TikTok -   / foreignpolicymagazine