For more than a decade, Washington has repeatedly returned to the same proposition, albeit in different forms: the United States must free itself from the Middle East and its seemingly endless troubles, concentrating its political, military and economic resources on containing or confronting China. Recall Barack Obama’s talk of a “pivot to Asia” during his presidency. He meant East and Southeast Asia, particularly the regions surrounding China, not the Middle East. Subsequent administrations in Washington pursued much the same course. A prominent example was the 2022 US National Defense Strategy, which formally identified China as the United States’ principal strategic competitor and its military’s primary “pacing challenge”.
This policy—or, more precisely, this preference in American strategic thinking—reveals an important reality. The United States no longer sees itself as possessing the kind of power it enjoyed in the 1990s, when it could deploy enormous forces in the Middle East while maintaining overwhelming superiority elsewhere, virtually unchallenged. The reasons are varied. They may include the financial and military exhaustion of the American empire, as well as the growing strength of its industrial, financial and military rivals. Even if we assume that American capabilities have not diminished since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its competitors, particularly China, have grown at an extraordinary pace and acquired the capacity to challenge it.
Yet the conclusion commonly drawn from this reality in American political circles may be fundamentally mistaken. The prevailing argument is that Washington must abandon the Middle East if it hopes to rein in China. Developments over the past three years, however, may have demonstrated to Washington that the Middle East is not a competing priority in its confrontation with China. In many respects, it forms part of the strategic rear supporting that very confrontation.
The 38-day war with Iran exposed this American miscalculation more clearly than ever.
Thirty Years of Trying to Leave the Middle East Behind
Philip Gordon, a former senior official on the US National Security Council, identifies a recurring pattern across successive American administrations in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. Bill Clinton wanted to concentrate on the economy but ended his presidency entangled in Iraq and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. George W. Bush entered the White House promising a more restrained foreign policy, only to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama announced his “pivot to Asia”, but the Arab Spring, ISIS and Iran’s nuclear programme drew him back into the Middle East. Joe Biden also intended to downgrade the region’s importance, until the events of 7 October 2023 overturned his calculations.
The issue, then, is not simply Washington’s enthusiasm for, or habit of, intervening in the Middle East, nor its commitment to protecting longstanding allies. Such commitments are not acts of altruism. Rather, whenever the United States has attempted to reduce its presence in the Middle East, one of the very networks of interests it had hoped to downgrade has forced itself back onto Washington’s agenda. These include energy, the nuclear balance, protecting Israel as a strategic security outpost, and safeguarding the enormous flows of capital from the Gulf monarchies into the American economy.
Those in Washington who advocate an unconditional withdrawal from the Middle Eastern quagmire are not entirely wrong. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost trillions of dollars, while the model of large American military bases in the Gulf has become increasingly vulnerable in an era of ballistic missiles and inexpensive drones. The war with Iran has likewise diverted American military attention from other regions, consumed valuable resources, depleted stocks of certain precision-guided munitions and increased direct military expenditure.
But these arguments describe the quagmire without addressing the network of American interests embedded within it—or whether those interests can actually be replaced or abandoned.
Middle Eastern Oil Is Not Just for America
One of the foundations of the argument that the Middle East no longer matters is the American shale revolution. The United States now imports considerably less oil from the Persian Gulf. Consider Donald Trump’s speeches. During the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, he repeatedly insisted that America does not need Middle Eastern oil. In one respect, he is right: in 2025, only 8% of American crude oil imports came from Gulf countries.
But figures on paper do not capture the full complexity of economic relationships. Treating this number as decisive is deeply misleading. Why? Because oil is a globally traded commodity. A supply crisis in the Gulf drives up petrol and diesel prices in the United States, intensifies inflation and puts pressure on America’s allies—even if not a single barrel of Gulf oil is shipped directly to American ports. The recent rise in American petrol and diesel prices illustrates precisely this vulnerability.
The essential point is simple: reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil imports does not mean independence from global energy prices.
There is another, even more important consideration. Washington’s Asian allies—the very countries expected to stand at the centre of America’s strategy for containing China—remain heavily dependent on Middle Eastern energy.
According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, approximately 54% of China’s crude oil imports came from the Middle East in 2024. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates accounted for a substantial share of this supply. In the first half of 2025, 89% of the crude oil and condensate passing through the Strait of Hormuz was destined for Asian markets, with China, India, Japan and South Korea together accounting for 74% of these flows.
These figures reveal an essential dimension of America’s confrontation with China and the logistics required to sustain it. If Washington abandons the Middle East to concentrate on China, it risks destabilising precisely the energy networks upon which its Asian allies depend—the very countries Washington expects to play a central role in its strategic competition with Beijing.
Japan and South Korea are major American allies, India is a central pillar of Washington’s preferred balance of power in Asia, and China itself is among the largest consumers of Middle Eastern oil. For this straightforward reason, the Middle East and its many quagmires cannot be treated as unrelated to America’s competition with China.
Money and Technology Matter Too
But oil is only part of the story. The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council collectively hold more than $5 trillion in sovereign wealth fund assets. What does this have to do with the United States? A substantial share of this wealth is invested in American financial markets, including equities, bonds and other assets. And the story does not end there. The Gulf’s sheikhs, emirs and monarchs have also invested hundreds of billions of dollars in American data centres, artificial intelligence, technology and infrastructure.
According to a Reuters report, the United States was the world’s largest destination for state-owned investment in 2025, with Gulf sovereign wealth funds playing a significant role. A substantial share of these investments flowed into digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence and data centres—sectors that form an important part of America’s security strategy in its future confrontation with China.
These are precisely the areas in which Washington considers competition with Beijing decisive. Recall Trump’s meetings with technology and AI executives, and his repeated remarks about how the future balance of global power will depend on mastery of artificial intelligence and data infrastructure.
Now suppose the United States decides to free itself from the Middle East and its troubles. If the Gulf states conclude that Washington is no longer a reliable security partner, America’s immediate problem will not simply be the loss of a few missile-damaged, half-destroyed military bases. Washington will also have to worry about the future direction of Gulf capital, technology investments, digital infrastructure and long-term contracts.
The Abraham Accords’ “Imaginary Division of Labour”
The Abraham Accords represented Washington’s proposed solution to these contradictions. They were never merely a project to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states. From the outset, the United States sought to build a broader set of security and economic arrangements around them. These included the Negev Forum, US–Gulf Cooperation Council cooperation on air and missile defence, the I2U2 grouping of the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and India, and subsequent plans to connect India to the Gulf, Israel and Europe. Official US documents explicitly called for the creation of an “integrated regional security architecture” and the deeper integration of Israel with its neighbours.
If we were to summarise the ultimate objective of the Abraham Accords in a single sentence, it would be something like this: Washington wants to stay out of the Middle East’s troubles by delegating the region’s security to Israel and its economy to the Gulf states.
On paper, such a plan does not seem entirely fanciful. Israel possesses intelligence, nuclear and military superiority, while the wealthy Gulf monarchies provide capital, energy and economic connectivity. The United States, acting as the principal guarantor and coordinator, would oversee this security arrangement.
But just as figures on paper do not reveal the whole picture, this proposed division of labour looks straightforward only on paper. From its inception, the central flaw in this architecture has been its failure to address two fundamental and deeply complicated questions: Iran and Palestine.
Iran Cannot Be Bypassed
The 38-day war demonstrated the fragility of the three pillars of the Abraham Accords project: normalisation, investment and collective defence. As long as Iran retains the capacity to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, energy infrastructure, military bases and Gulf countries with missiles and drones, the Abraham Accords will remain a fragile proposition.
But the more important lesson of the 38-day war is that “solving the Iran problem” is not synonymous with killing Ali Khamenei and the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic’s military and security establishment. The war was intended to reduce Iran’s ability to disrupt the project of a new Middle East. Instead, it inflicted devastating blows on American bases, consumed ammunition stockpiles and blocked energy transport routes.
The outcome of the two wars with Iran so far is that the Iran question can neither be ignored nor necessarily resolved through a “limited war”. Washington appears to have only two options: launch a third, full-scale assault and succeed in installing a client government in Tehran, or redesign the Abraham Accords architecture in a way that somehow accommodates Iran. The first option would be extraordinarily costly, but the second may prove even more difficult than an all-out war. Why? Because it involves numerous actors and would require finding a formula through which the Islamic Republic could coexist with Israel while resolving disputes over its nuclear programme, missiles and the rules governing regional security. Something close to impossible.
There is little doubt that Washington’s present predicament is a nightmare. But the only cure for a nightmare is to wake up and confront reality. If the United States continues to believe that it can simply bypass the Iran question, the architecture it hopes to establish will ultimately collapse.
China Comes First, but the Middle East Will Not Go Away
The two wars with Iran have demonstrated that the United States cannot return to the model of the 1990s, when it could respond to Middle Eastern crises by dispatching an aircraft carrier. That model is no longer sustainable militarily, financially or politically. Yet the prevailing assumption in Washington—that America can simply set the Middle East aside and devote itself freely to China—is equally naïve.
Confronting China requires a wide range of preconditions: stable energy supplies, particularly for America’s Asian allies; open maritime routes and American control over them; Gulf capital and investment; networks of military bases and logistical access; and hundreds of other requirements. Some of the most important of these are inextricably bound up with the Middle East.
There is little doubt that China is the central question in American foreign policy. But the Middle East is a crucial presence at every stage of that question—at its beginning, throughout its development and in its eventual outcome. Attempting to manage the Middle East as Washington did after the collapse of the Soviet Union would be a deadly poison for the United States. Yet America remains so deeply dependent on the region’s economy, energy, capital, geography and partners that it cannot simply walk away.
The real question for Washington is no longer whether to choose China or the Middle East. It is how to establish a less costly presence in the Middle East—one that does not consume the resources needed to compete with China, but also does not sacrifice the strategic rear on which that competition depends. And it is precisely here that Iran reminds Washington it cannot be ignored.