Tehran’s warning to Gulf states is not really about sanctions. It is about who controls the last working energy corridor in the region, and whether Iran can use that threat to keep its neighbours on the sidelines while the US tightens the economic vice.
On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, delivered what amounts to an ultimatum wrapped in diplomatic language. Any country that joins Washington’s economic war against Iran will be considered an enemy. Any country that participates in restricting Iranian trade will face “seismic” retaliation. And if Gulf neighbours align with Trump’s pressure campaign, Rezaei warned, not a single drop of oil would leave the region, including through alternative export routes outside Hormuz. That last line is the one that matters most. It is a direct reference to Bab-el-Mandeb, the southern Red Sea chokepoint that Saudi Arabia has been using to export oil since Iran shut Hormuz in February. Tehran is telling Riyadh, the UAE, and Kuwait that the back door it has been using is also vulnerable.
Why Is Iran Drawing This Line Now, With New US Sanctions Due on Monday?
The timing is not coincidental. The Trump administration is set to announce what it has called its most crushing economic operation yet against Iran, with new sanctions landing today. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already issued the framework: “You’re either with us or against us,” with a specific call on China to stop buying Iranian oil. Iran’s response, delivered before the sanctions even land, is to pre-empt the coalition Washington is trying to build. Rezaei described a three-stage approach: negotiate with countries being pressured to join the economic war, then warn them, then strike their interests if they comply. That sequencing is a deterrence signal more than a military threat, but in the current environment the gap between those two things is narrower than it used to be.
Iran’s President Pezeshkian added his own framing on Sunday, arguing that the US had predicted Iran would collapse under the pressure of war the way Venezuela collapsed under sanctions, and that the prediction had failed. That comparison carries weight inside Iran, where the government has spent months managing a population absorbing the dual costs of military conflict and economic squeeze. But it also carries risk, because the Venezuela comparison is not entirely inapt. Venezuela’s oil production collapsed under sanctions. Iran’s oil exports, still flowing primarily to China, have held up better, but the ceiling on how long that lasts is not infinite.
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Would Gulf States Actually Join Washington’s Economic War?
This is the question Rezaei’s warning is designed to answer before anyone asks it. The honest answer is: probably not formally, and almost certainly not publicly, but the pressure from Washington is real and increasing.
Gulf states are in a structurally impossible position. They host American military installations, depend on US security guarantees, and have significant trade and investment relationships with Washington. They also cannot change their geography. Iran is next door. The UAE restored diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2022, then imposed a trade embargo last week after blaming Iran for a missile attack that Tehran denies. Saudi Arabia normalised ties with Iran in 2023 through Chinese mediation. Both calculations were made because permanent confrontation with a neighbouring power has costs that occasionally outweigh the benefits of alignment with a distant patron.
What Rezaei’s warning does is raise those costs further. A Gulf state that openly joins US sanctions risks Iranian retaliation against its own energy exports, through Bab-el-Mandeb or directly. A Gulf state that refuses risks American frustration at a moment when Washington’s patience with regional freeloading is visibly thin. The UAE is already caught between a trade embargo it imposed and diplomatic channels it has not closed. Saudi Arabia is managing the Houthi blockade on one front and the Mecca pact on another. Neither country is in a position to absorb a new confrontation with Tehran.
What Does Iran Actually Mean When It Threatens Bab-el-Mandeb?
The threat to alternative export routes is the sharpest element of Rezaei’s warning and the one that deserves the most analytical attention. Iran does not control Bab-el-Mandeb the way it controls Hormuz. The Houthis do, and Tehran’s relationship with the Houthis is real but not unlimited. What Iran is signalling is that if Gulf states join the economic war, the Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, currently framed as a separate conflict, will be reframed and escalated as part of a coordinated Iranian response. That is a significant upgrade in threat level. It means the Houthi blockade stops being a proxy grievance about Yemen and becomes an instrument of Iranian economic warfare directly tied to Gulf states’ choices about sanctions.
The analyst Hamidreza Azizi described this as an emerging offensive doctrine built on two elements: preemption, where Iran acts before a threat fully materialises rather than waiting for it to; and disproportionate retaliation, where the cost of any action against Iran is priced high enough that potential participants recalculate before committing. Applied to Gulf states, that doctrine says: do not wait until you have formally joined the US economic coalition to find out what Iranian retaliation looks like.
Five Things Worth Watching
- Whether Monday’s US sanctions specifically target any Chinese entities, which would force Beijing to choose between Iranian oil and American financial system access, a choice it has successfully avoided making for months.
- The UAE’s next move after its trade embargo. If Abu Dhabi escalates further or publicly aligns with Washington’s sanctions push, it tests whether Iran’s Bab-el-Mandeb threat is real or rhetorical.
- Any signal from Saudi Arabia about whether it is coordinating its Red Sea security response with Washington or keeping distance. Coordination would put Riyadh squarely in Rezaei’s firing line.
- The Oman-Iran talks on Hormuz navigation, which continue despite the sanctions pressure. If those talks collapse after today’s US announcement, the path back to any diplomatic resolution narrows significantly.
- Global oil inventories, which Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute described last month as already severely depleted during the ceasefire period. A further disruption to Red Sea exports, on top of Hormuz being closed, would move prices in ways that make a prolonged conflict economically unsustainable for everyone, including Washington.
The Bottom Line
Iran’s ultimatum to its neighbours is a recognition that the economic war Washington is trying to build depends on coalition, and coalitions require countries to say yes. Tehran is making the cost of saying yes visible before anyone commits. Whether that changes Gulf states’ calculations depends less on the threat itself than on how seriously they read the Bab-el-Mandeb warning. If the Houthis escalate Red Sea attacks on Gulf tankers in the days after today’s US sanctions land, the answer will be clear: Iran has decided that preemption is now the operating doctrine, and the Gulf states caught in the middle will have very little room left to stand on.
