Donald Trump’s “fecklessness in the face of Iranian aggression has dealt a serious blow to Arab confidence in the US as a protecting power”, according to Adam Ereli, a former American ambassador to Bahrain, as quoted by Al-Monitor on October 1.

Ereli made the remark amid reports that the US president is attempting to intensify ‘Arab Nato’ talks in the wake of the September 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities—blamed on Iran by Riyadh and Washington, but attributed to Houthi rebels in Yemen by Tehran.

Over recent weeks, the US State and Defense Departments have reportedly gathered a bloc of Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that form the Middle East Strategic Alliance (Egypt exited the alliance last year). And, in Washington last week, the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official, hosted the countries in the alliance in an attempt at organising the group’s security element, urging “whole of government cooperation across economic, security, energy and political spheres”.

But Gulf countries are said to be growing wary of relying on the Pentagon for protection following Trump’s decision not to respond militarily to the attacks on Saudi Arabia, and there is “no sign that GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] can function as a coherent security organisation”, Ereli was further cited as saying. The GCC was left ineffective after a political dispute led to a Saudi-led blockade being imposed on Qatar in 2017. It has still not been lifted.

The fact that Egypt stepped back from committing to the Middle East Strategic Alliance remains a grievous blow, given that it has the largest standing army in the region. The Gulf nations will face manpower shortages if they want to build up the role of the alliance.

“It’s not their capability, it’s the manpower issue,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told Al-Monitor. “Where are you going to get troops?”