The Gulf turns to Europe on defence without an EU strategy

Summary

Chantal Hohe, a visiting researcher at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center, published a commentary on 27 September 2026. She writes that the 2026 Iran war has turned the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states into a direct front line. As a result, she argues, they are turning more towards Europe on defence. According to the author, every Gulf state except Oman has formed defence-industrial partnerships with Türkiye based on air systems and technology transfer. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia with Pakistan and Türkiye, and joint UAE–South Korea projects, are part of the same trend. Hohe stresses that neither the 1989 EU–GCC Cooperation Agreement nor the strategic partnership agreements now in preparation contain a binding defence clause.

Because of this gap, the relationship is run by individual member states rather than the EU: France sells Rafales, Germany supplies Rheinmetall systems, and Italy and Spain chase their own contracts. According to the author, coordination at EU level exists only in the ASPIDES and ATALANTA naval operations. Hohe argues that Gulf air defence networks already combine American, French, Russian and Chinese systems with interoperability gaps, and that adding European systems without coordination could make the problem worse. For the Gulf, the real currency is technology transfer and co-production rather than arms sales. Europe, for its part, offers a way to diversify without the political cost of Chinese or Russian equipment and without dependence on an increasingly erratic relationship with the US.