Gulf states set to urge Trump to avoid any escalation with Iran

Fiona MacDonald, Zainab Fattah and Mirette Magdy, Bloomberg News on Sep 22, 2026

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Gulf Arab states are set to urge U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid any escalation of hostilities with Iran at a meeting on Tuesday, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-member bloc including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have been coordinating ahead of a gathering with Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, said the people, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters.

The GCC states are keen to end a conflict that’s seen their territories and ships attacked by thousands of Iranian missiles and drones, and which is causing their economies either to contract or slow significantly, largely due to the ongoing disruption to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

There are still divisions among Gulf Arab governments over how to deal with Iran and its insistence that it has the right to control shipping in the critical waterway for energy supplies. Yet they hope there’s progress in the meeting with Trump toward ending a war that the U.S. and Israel began in late February.

Trump’s position is unclear and he has vacillated throughout much of the war — now almost seven months old — between threatening Iran with more bombing and saying he wants to reach a deal. Over the weekend, he told Fox News he may be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in New York this week, though there’s been no indication from the Americans or Iranians that it will happen.

Iran has long said it won’t restart talks with the U.S. until it lifts a naval blockade, an operation that’s preventing the Islamic Republic from exporting oil and importing key goods. Iranian inflation has accelerated to almost 90% partly because of the U.S. measure, and the rial has tumbled on the black market. But Iran’s leadership is yet to back down.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it’s prepared for a “long war,” according to a report from the Islamic Republic News Agency.

“If our national interests require us to fight, we must fight,” IRNA reported an IRGC spokesman as saying. “If our national interests require us to negotiate alongside the war, we must negotiate.”

The U.S.-Iran standoff has pushed up energy prices. Brent crude is up 63% this year to around $100 a barrel, while diesel prices have hit a record in the U.S. That’s contributed to a rise in inflation and government bond yields globally. Americans are firmly against the conflict, which is set to hurt Trump and his Republican party at midterm elections in early November.

Hostilities are far less intense than at the height of the war in March and early April. Yet the GCC countries are still being attacked by Iran whenever there’s a flare up and their energy tankers are regularly targeted in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

This month, Saudi Arabia has come frequent attack from the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group based in Yemen.

The GCC economies have taken a hit. According to Bloomberg surveys, states from the bloc will make up five of the nine worst-performing economies this year. Qatar’s gross domestic product will shrink 12%, while Kuwait’s will drop 11%. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have slowed sharply and will barely grow this year, the surveys forecast.

GCC states had tried to warn Trump against starting the war, saying it would cause chaos across the region. After it erupted and Iran retaliated, some of those countries took a more hawkish stance, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE striking the Islamic Republic and its proxies at certain points.

Yet, with Iran showing plenty of resilience and retaining the ability to counter strike against neighboring states, Arab governments have reverted to a more diplomatic stance.

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, on Sunday described the conflict as an “earthquake” for the region.

“Lasting security cannot be built through repeated cycles of escalation and retaliation,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum in New York. “We have to act together responsibly as a region.”