From Najaf to Hormuz: The forty-seven-year road that brought Iran’s revolution to the Gulf’s doorstep

A missile fired from Iranian soil struck the United Arab Emirates on March 16, 2026. It was not a stray consequence of a distant war. It marked the culmination of a project that began in a Paris suburb in January 1979, when Ruhollah Khomeini boarded a plane for Tehran carrying a doctrine never intended to stop at Iran’s borders.

To understand why Gulf states have spent this year defending their territory from Iranian fire, and why the region is now rewriting its security architecture in response, it is necessary to trace the full arc. Forty-seven years is a long time. Yet the direction has barely changed.

1979: A Doctrine Built for Export

Khomeini returned from 14 years of exile, most of them spent in Najaf, Iraq, carrying with him the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, or the guardianship of the jurist. The theory placed a cleric above parliament, above the presidency, and above any ballot box.

Yet it was never framed as a purely domestic arrangement. Khomeini described the Iranian revolution as the first stage of a wider Islamic awakening; one he expected Shia communities elsewhere to join.

The Shah he replaced was no democrat. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi jailed and tortured his opponents. But the Shah’s Iran, sustained by oil revenue that funded students studying medicine and engineering abroad after the 1953 nationalization dispute, possessed functioning institutions and established regional relationships. Khomeini inherited that capacity and redirected it. Revolution, rather than reconstruction, became Iran’s principal export.

1980s to 2015: The Proxy Ring Tightens

Gulf states did not initially perceive Iran’s ambitions as a missile threat. They experienced them as networks. Tehran helped establish Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, it built and armed Shia militias there. It supported Bashar al-Assad throughout Syria’s civil war. From 2015 onward, it armed the Houthis in Yemen, placing a Tehran-aligned force directly on Saudi Arabia’s southern border.

Each move followed the logic Khomeini had established in 1979: build power through ideological proxies rather than diplomacy and treat the Gulf monarchies as illegitimate obstacles rather than sovereign neighbors. For three decades, UN Security Council resolutions concerning Iran, from Resolution 1696 in 2006 to Resolution 2231 in 2015, focused almost entirely on the nuclear file. Beneath that scrutiny, Iran’s regional proxy strategy continued to expand, largely without consequence.

2026: The War Reaches Gulf Shores

On February 28, 2026, US and Israeli strikes on Tehran killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.  Iran’s response did not remain confined to Israel. Within weeks, Iranian missiles and drones had struck Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, while Tehran moved to restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. On March 9, Iran’s Assembly of Experts named Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as the new Supreme Leader. In his first public statement, he urged Gulf states to close the US military bases on their territory and warned that Iranian forces would continue targeting them for as long as those bases remained.

This was not a rupture in Iranian policy. It was the logic of 1979 laid bare. A leadership installed by an unelected clerical body, guided by a doctrine that has always treated the Gulf as contested ground rather than a region of sovereign neighbors, finally brought the consequences of that doctrine home in the form of live fire on Gulf cities.

The Gulf response was swift and unified. On March 11, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2817, condemning Iran’s attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan, and affirming their right to self-defense. Bahrain introduced the resolution on behalf of the GCC. It passed by 13 votes to none and attracted 135 co-sponsors, representing a scale of international support that Gulf diplomacy has rarely assembled so quickly.

Six Months In: A Leader Who Will Not Show His Face

Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since being injured in the strikes that killed his father. He governs through written statements and Telegram posts. In August, he called on Gulf nations to unite against what he termed their “real enemy.” He asked whether outside powers would have dared threaten Gulf territory had the region stood united under Tehran’s banner. His message asks Gulf states to regard Iran as their protector rather than as the source of the missiles that struck their cities only five months earlier.

It is the same rhetorical maneuver Khomeini employed in 1979: present Iran’s revolutionary leadership as the authentic voice of regional Muslim interests while portraying Gulf governments as illegitimate obstacles. Nearly half a century later, a Supreme Leader who has never shown his face in public is still making the same claim.

What Gulf States Are Building Now

The most consequential change this year may not be military. It may be architectural. Analysts tracking the diplomacy surrounding Resolution 2817 describe Gulf states as moving to construct their own security frameworks and reduce their reliance on external guarantees. That would mark a departure from four decades of Gulf security policy built primarily around US bases and bilateral defense agreements.

Iran’s new Supreme Leader is now explicitly demanding the removal of the same bases that Gulf states are reconsidering, but for entirely different reasons. Tehran wants them removed because they constrain its regional reach.

Gulf capitals, by contrast, are asking whether those bases, and the strategies built around them, protected their cities in February and March. These are not the same questions, and the answer to the second need not be the answer Tehran seeks to impose on the first.

The line from Najaf to Hormuz is clear, and Gulf readers should keep it in view as Iran’s internal leadership continues to evolve. The doctrine Khomeini carried home in 1979 was never merely a domestic arrangement for governing Iran. It was a regional claim, dressed in theology, that treated the sovereignty of the Gulf states as negotiable.

Forty-seven years, a war, and a hereditary succession later, that claim has not softened. It has simply passed into new hands. Gulf states, meanwhile, are now openly asking who should hold responsibility for their own security.

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