The urgency sharpened after Gulf leaders met in Jeddah for their first in-person gathering since GCC states became a front in the wider U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, with Reuters reporting that the summit focused on Iranian missile and drone attacks that damaged energy, civilian and military infrastructure across the six-member bloc.
Why GCC joint defence is no longer optional
The phrase “collective security” has often appeared in Gulf communiques. The Hormuz crisis has turned it into a practical test.
GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi said leaders reaffirmed that the security of member states is indivisible and that any attack on one member state is an attack on all. They also backed the right of member states to defend themselves individually or collectively under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.
That language matters because the threat is no longer theoretical. The crisis has affected airspace, energy flows, shipping insurance, investor confidence and domestic resilience planning. Senior UAE official Anwar Gargash bluntly criticized the bloc’s wartime posture, saying its political and military position was “the weakest in history.”
The most immediate military priority is an integrated early warning network against ballistic missile threats. Gulf leaders called for faster completion of a joint missile warning system, while regional reporting from The National said missile defenses had been called into action during weeks of Iranian strikes that also damaged water and energy sites.
Hormuz turns infrastructure into security policy
The Strait of Hormuz is not just a shipping lane. It is the pressure point where Gulf defense, global energy markets and regional diplomacy meet.
The GCC rejected what it called Iran’s illegal measures to close the strait, obstruct navigation, threaten maritime security or impose transit fees. Leaders called for safe navigation to be restored and for conditions in the waterway to return to their pre-crisis state before Feb. 28, 2026.
The stakes are global. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz averaged 20.9 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025, equal to about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption and one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade.
That dependence explains why the Jeddah summit linked military integration with railways, electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, water interconnection and strategic reserves. In a crisis, Gulf resilience depends not only on interceptors and patrol ships, but also on whether member states can reroute energy, move goods, share water and keep supply chains functioning.
The diplomatic track remains uncertain. A senior Iranian official said Tehran had proposed reopening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and ending the U.S. blockade of Iran before nuclear talks resumed, but Reuters reported that President Donald Trump rejected the proposal as Washington continued to demand terms preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Older warnings show the defence gap has been years in the making
The current GCC joint defence debate did not begin with the Hormuz crisis. It is the latest stage in a long-running effort to turn Gulf cooperation from political language into operational capability.
In 2013, GCC leaders approved a unified military command, a step later described by the Foreign Policy Research Institute as an effort to establish a credible joint defense force capable of coordinating air, land and maritime forces under one structure. The ambition was clear, but implementation was slowed by national priorities, divergent threat perceptions and command-and-control sensitivities.
The missile-defense challenge also has a long history. At the 2015 Camp David summit, Gulf states and Washington renewed their commitment to a regional ballistic missile defense capability, but Reuters warned at the time that a Gulf missile shield would take years and require deeper trust, sensitive weapons transfers and intensive U.S. training.
More recently, U.S.-GCC defense working groups tried to push the same agenda forward. A 2024 U.S.-GCC statement on integrated air and missile defense and maritime security said the sides were working through multilateral mechanisms to develop early warning and regional air-defense capabilities.
From communiques to command systems
The gap between those older commitments and today’s crisis is the core problem. Gulf states have modern weapons, advanced air forces and deep security partnerships. What they still need is a shared operational picture, faster intelligence exchange, interoperable command centers and clear rules for collective response before the next missile, drone or maritime disruption arrives.
That is why the Jeddah summit’s most important message may not be its condemnation of Iran, but its recognition that infrastructure, logistics and military integration now belong in the same security conversation. A Gulf railway, electricity interconnection, water network and strategic reserve system are not side projects. They are part of deterrence.
The Hormuz crisis has made one point difficult to ignore: GCC joint defence will remain incomplete unless it can protect both territory and systems. The next phase will show whether Gulf leaders can turn shared vulnerability into shared capability.
