FPRI:
After months of delay, the U.S. Department of Defense released the Missile Defense Review (MDR) in January 2019. The document will guide American missile defense initiatives and programs during the coming decade. As the MDR makes clear, missile defense has become a key point of bilateral cooperation between Arab militaries, their counterparts in the United States, and a critical component of the broader U.S.-Gulf Arab effort to address concerns about Iranian missile development.
For the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), this means fielding more capable missile defense along with more precise “left of launch” capabilities to strike Iranian missiles before they are fired. The Islamic Republic has, in turn, sought capabilities to defeat improved Arab and American capabilities. These dynamics portend continued tensions in the Gulf and suggest reciprocal, tit-for-tat missile developments in the region.
The Trump administration has, like many of its predecessors, tried to fully integrate the GCC militaries into a collective security organization, loosely modeled on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In a recent speech at the American University in Cairo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the GCC, Egypt, and Jordan to reach agreement on the Middle East Strategic Alliance, a security partnership geared towards common defense from Iran.
