Seeing some tweets about how Iran has imposed a new deterrence equation on Israel and the region. That seems like a whole lot of motivated reasoning.
First, let's be clear about how much of a reversal this represents for Iran's strategic doctrine: instead of its Arab proxies protecting Iran from attack, Iran is now trying to bail them outโand inviting attacks on its own territory as a result.
Second, in four past rounds of fighting (going back to April 2024), Iran was unable to deter Israel because its missile barrages failed to cause strategic damage. It could not impose costs significant enough to change Israeli behavior.
Indeed, as @NicoleGrajewski and others have written, those attacks arguably invited further conflict rather than deterred it. The salvos overnight do not seem any different. Iran's act of "deterrence" wound up causing more damage to Iran than to the country it sought to deter.
The tools that have been more successful over the past few monthsโat compellence, rather than deterrenceโhave been the ones aimed at Gulf states and global energy markets. But to use those tools now (or in the future) risks collapsing the entire ceasefire.
The "equation" here relies on Donald Trump to restrain Israel. It doesn't seem viable at all in the long term, unless Iran is prepared to risk endless escalatory cycles that would ultimately be very damaging for Iran itself.
Every time anyone from Saudi or the Gulf posts their traditional attire/culture they get thousands of attacks. If itโs Southern Saudi dress itโs โactually Yemeni.โ If itโs Northern itโs Levantine. If itโs Western itโs Egyptian. If itโs Eastern itโs Persian.
The ultimate conclusion is that Gulf Arabs are apparently not allowed to claim any culture or history if there is any similarity with anyone. As if shared traditions between neighboring societies is some rare phenomenon.
Whatโs interesting is that this standard applies nowhere else. Tea originated in China yet nobody argues it isnโt part of Indian culture. No one argues coffee is not part of Italian culture.
The fez is shared across multiple countries and nobody insists it can only belong to one of them. The kaftan exists from Morocco to Central Asia in countless local forms and nobody treats that as a problem.
But when it comes to the Gulf, every similarity is evidence that the culture belongs exclusively to someone else.
The underlying assumption is this: Gulf Arabs are only allowed the image of the poor Bedouin wandering the desert. There is no shame in that image, but nobody has the right to reduce an entire people to a single archetype.
Anything sophisticated, diverse, artistic or historically rich must have been borrowed from somebody else. The possibility that Gulf Arabs developed rich traditions of their own, shaped the cultures around them, or may even be the source of some shared regional traditions is treated as unthinkable.