The next phase of US policy in the Middle East

In January, I argued that the United States was not retreating from the Middle East but was executing a deliberate shift, transferring security responsibilities to regional allies while reorienting toward the Indo-Pacific. The past several months have confirmed that forecast. The American departure is no longer a vague intention. It is an operational reality reshaping the region.

The clearest proof came on 12^th August when Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi confirmed that American troops will complete their withdrawal from Iraq by September 30, 2026, ending a presence dating to the 2003 invasion. Al-Zaidi declared 1^st October will mark a new era of full Iraqi sovereignty. The United States and Iraq have emphasised that ties will now run through economic and security cooperation rather than direct military commitment.

The American approach to Iran validates this pattern. In early August, Washington and Israel planned a joint strike against Iran, but President Trump called off the operation at the last moment, citing requests from Iran and other regional states to pursue diplomacy instead, conditioned on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and curbing Iran’s nuclear program. This is not indecision; it is deterrence without escalation, restraint that minimizes direct American entanglement while still containing Tehran.

Israel and the UAE are deepening military cooperation in parallel. In May, Israel deployed Iron Dome batteries to the UAE to help defend against Iranian missile and drone attacks, the first time the system defended an Arab state, made possible by the Abraham Accords. The two countries have also established a joint fund to acquire and develop new weapons systems, Israel supplying technology and the UAE financing it, a regional arrangement that further reduces the need for direct American intervention.

Saudi Arabia is hedging rather than simply aligning. On 23^rd July, Washington announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the kingdom, potentially including a US-built enrichment facility. That reading did not survive the week: a day later, Trump declared the deal “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, ruling out enrichment outright. Riyadh has long conditioned normalisation with Israel on a credible path to Palestinian statehood, a position hardened by the Gaza war, so tethering a technical nuclear pact to that political demand left the agreement in limbo, and taught Riyadh that even signed accords with Washington remain negotiable after the fact. That trust deficit helps explain why, on 7^th August, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, a mutual-defense pact combining Saudi capital, Turkish defence technology, and Pakistani military and nuclear deterrence, with Egypt floated as a possible future member.

Kuwait and Bahrain show the same hedge-and-anxiety pattern on a smaller, more exposed scale. Both absorbed some of the heaviest blows of the February-to-April war: Iranian missiles struck Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base and forced a temporary relocation of American units to a makeshift base on Bubiyan Island, while Iranian strikes on Manama hit buildings near the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and pushed Bahrain to impose a nighttime maritime curfew. Along with Qatar and the UAE, the two kingdoms form what regional defense planners call the Gulf’s “core four,” hosting more than half of all US troops in the Middle East. Yet that record of exposure has not translated into reassurance. Even before the war ended, the Pentagon was reportedly weighing a reduction of the US troop presence in Kuwait, and Kuwaiti officials are increasingly worried that what began as a wartime evacuation could quietly become permanent. When reporters asked President Trump on 3^rd August whether a drawdown would also hit Bahrain, he declined to say either way.

For two states that have anchored American power projection in the Gulf since the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait, that silence is itself a data point: the redefinition of America’s role is not only happening to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it is unsettling even the hosts of its most established bases.

Gaza illustrates the same preference for containment over resolution. Israel rejected the US-backed 15-point roadmap on August 9, insisting it would not withdraw until Hamas fully disarmed. Airstrikes have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians since the prior ceasefire, yet Washington has not intervened forcefully, prioritizing de-escalation over a costly commitment to lasting peace.

The Indo-Pacific pivot underscores where American priorities now lie. The Pentagon is reverting the name of Indo-Pacific Command back to Pacific Command, has downgraded the Quad to the foreign-minister level, and a senior official has renewed calls for Asian allies to spend more on their own defense. The Middle East is no longer Washington’s central theater.

Pakistan is a clear beneficiary. The Makkah pact formalises its role as a regional security provider, building on its existing Saudi defense ties, while its mediation between Washington and Tehran has enhanced its diplomatic weight.

Reports suggest the Pentagon now trusts Pakistan as a security partner more than India. Reduced American oversight has given Islamabad room to expand its influence.

This restructuring carries real risk, and nowhere is it starker than in Kuwait and Bahrain. Both absorbed heavy collateral damage in February’s war: Iranian missiles and drones struck American and Kuwaiti forces and Kuwait’s international airport, while Bahrain’s Juffair district, home to the US Fifth Fleet, came under direct fire, part of a broader wave that Al Jazeera reported as retaliation for US strikes on Iran. Neither state has the financial heft or defense-industrial base of Saudi Arabia or the UAE to build a parallel security architecture. Kuwait’s ratification of a modest defense pact with Pakistan and Bahrain’s continued dependence on hosting the Fifth Fleet look less like hedges than admissions that both have nowhere else to turn, leaving them exposed on the frontline of a shifting order.

The deeper paradox is that all of this is unfolding under American patronage, not despite it. Washington is arming the UAE and Israel, financing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions, blessing the Makkah pact, and brokering the Gaza roadmap, even as it withholds troops and firm guarantees.

That is precisely what makes the project riskier than Washington admits. Iran war showed how fast a strike on Iran can spill across every Gulf capital at once. A Middle East with a lighter American footprint, but no settled hierarchy among Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, and a wounded but unbowed Iran, is not obviously more stable. Removing the umpire does not end the contest for regional leadership; it intensifies it, and such vacuums are rarely filled by orderly balancing. They are filled by proxy wars and contested spheres of influence, the same dynamics that turned Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen into battlegrounds for other states’ rivalries.

The evidence still points to a calculated American exit: Iraq, restraint on Iran, the Israel-UAE alliance, Saudi hedging, the exposure of Kuwait and Bahrain, and the Indo-Pacific pivot all move the same direction. But calculated is not costless. Washington is trading the certainty of its own primacy for a multipolar Middle East it hopes, rather than guarantees, will hold together. If regional capitals read this as disengagement rather than delegation, the region will not settle into orderly division of labor; it will fracture into competing bids for hegemony, with smaller states caught between.

The American era in the Middle East is not ending. It is being outsourced, and the invoice, payable in instability, proxy conflict, and diminished American leverage, may not come due until long after the last convoy leaves Iraq.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.