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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Gulf Arab countries have long relied for their security on the U.S. military bases that they host.

But after six months of war, the repeated pummeling of those countries by Iranian missiles and drones has made the limitations of U.S. security guarantees abundantly clear.

Iran and its allies have nearly destroyed some of the U.S. bases, set luxury hotels ablaze, and, most recently, knocked offline one of the most critical pieces of energy infrastructure in the world, an oil pipeline that stretches across Saudi Arabia.

Their backs against a wall, Gulf Arab officials are now trying to cobble together different ways to avoid attacks by Iran and its allies, including direct diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

Even that option faces challenges. On Sunday night, a meeting that was scheduled for Monday between Iran and the Gulf Arab states was abruptly postponed. The delay came after Saudi Arabia and Iran reached an impasse in discussions about the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial route for Gulf energy exporters — according to a senior Gulf official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Analysts say the region’s leaders have no choice but to seek different security options after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran exposed the vulnerabilities of the Gulf Arab countries and emboldened the Islamic Republic.

“We’re stuck in this position of trying to build something new while maintaining some of the old,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “We need to snap out of this external protector syndrome.”

The island nation of Bahrain, for example, has been host to a major U.S. naval base for decades in the hopes of protecting itself from Iran. But as in other Gulf countries, the base became a target instead.

The base was nearly destroyed in February, on the first day of Iran’s retaliatory attacks against the assault launched by the United States and Israel. Most of the sailors stationed there were evacuated to Florida, leaving a skeleton crew, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

Some sailors in Bahrain were evacuated so rapidly that the U.S. Navy is still trying to reunite them with their belongings, Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, said at a recent town hall meeting. It is unclear when they will return, he said.

For the United States and its allies in the Middle East, the war has incurred steep costs. Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz represents a major strategic failure and an economic setback for Gulf energy exporters. The inability of U.S. forces to fend off attacks by Iran is another strategic failure, which could have significant consequences for those countries and for the United States’ projection of power.

Yet Bahrain and the other Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, have no clear, single alternative to the United States as the guarantor of their security.

Their militaries are smaller and weaker than Iran’s, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on advanced weaponry in recent decades, including American F-15 fighter jets and Patriot missile defense systems.

China and Russia have not stepped in to defend the Gulf countries, despite close ties with many of them.

Many Gulf officials are calling for greater regional self-sufficiency in defense. But efforts to bolster regional security — like a new defense pact among Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey — are unproven. It remains unclear whether any of these countries will be willing and able to come to each other’s aid.

The most realistic option for Gulf countries is to build defense partnerships that will “supplement, rather than replace, the U.S. security umbrella,” said Yasmine Farouk, Gulf and Arabian Peninsula project director at the International Crisis Group.

Gulf analysts and officials say that without U.S. assistance and American weaponry, such as air defenses, the damage to the Gulf states would have been far worse. Dozens of people were killed in the Iranian attacks, instead of hundreds or thousands. Flights carrying tourists and businesspeople were canceled and delayed but have started to resume.

Still, Iran’s campaign wreaked havoc on the energy-rich economies of the Gulf countries, cracking their images as safe havens in a volatile region.

The war proved that the Gulf’s advanced defense systems are not “leak proof,” and that Iran can “impose major costs” on the countries by using large numbers of relatively cheap drones, said Kristian Alexander, a senior fellow at the Rabdan Security & Defence Institute, a government-linked research institution in the UAE.

Facing fierce counterattacks from Iran, the United States “prioritized protecting its personnel and defending Israel,” Alexander added. “These priorities did not always coincide with the Gulf’s needs to protect airports, ports, desalination plants.”

The short supply of U.S. missile interceptors globally also posed a challenge for the Gulf Arab states in the early weeks of the war, and they have tried to fill the gap by turning to Ukraine and other European countries. But even enhanced air defenses against relatively inexpensive Iranian drones cannot provide complete protection.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said President Donald Trump is “in constant communication” with regional partners and that the United States “maintains stronger bonds with these countries than ever before.”

She dismissed the idea that U.S. military protection for the Gulf countries has been insufficient, saying that analysts who assert that “are not privy to sensitive diplomatic conversations and have no idea what they are talking about.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel suggested Tuesday that he was open to sending federal agents to polling places, raising alarms from Democrats that the Trump administration would act aggressively to assert greater control over the coming elections.

The remarks, made during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, stood at odds with earlier comments indicating that he did not intend to send federal agents to polling places around the country. However, when Sen. Peter Welch (D., Vt.) pressed the issue, Patel seemed to reverse course.

“I thought you weren’t going to be sending people to the polls,” Welch said.

“When did you hear that? Just another lie,” Patel declared, raising his voice.

Welch revisited the issue. “So you are sending FBI agents to the polls?”

“We have election crisis coordinators manned at all 56 field offices,” Patel replied, appearing to refer to what are known as election crime coordinators. “Election integrity is of paramount importance. This FBI will not shy away from that effort.”

Under the law, armed federal officers or military personnel are barred from being deployed “at any place where a general or special election is held.” The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a letter to a Democratic senator last month that there were “no plans” for the armed forces to deploy troops to polling stations for the midterm elections.

As President Donald Trump has ramped up his efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote in an election his party might lose, Democrats have sought assurances from Trump administration officials that they will follow the law, which carries a potential five-year prison sentence for any violations.

The president regularly declares the 2020 election he lost was “rigged,” and has said the only way Democrats can win control of Congress this year is by cheating. The claims have fueled broader concerns that loyalists within the administration may wage a pressure campaign against state officials to produce election results favorable to Trump’s party.

When he was first asked about the issue at the hearing, Patel vowed to “follow the law.”

“If there’s a reason to go there because there’s been a violation, we will, otherwise we won’t,” he added, noting that “we’re going to house our agents and intel analysts in our field offices.”

Historically, the Justice Department used workers at its public integrity unit to consult with prosecutors and agents around the country on sensitive investigative issues around elections. But the Trump administration dismantled that unit last year, leaving it unclear who in the department and the FBI would handle such critical decisions in the final days of the election cycle.

Welch expressed alarm at Patel’s responses, saying they suggested he could harness the power of the federal government to try to affect election outcomes.

“This is about whether the United States citizens — Republicans, Democrats, independents — are the deciders of this election or there is election interference led by the FBI and the Trump administration,” Welch said.

The senator prodded further. “Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?”

Patel sidestepped the issue, saying instead: “I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies.”

An angry argument ensued, with the pair exchanging attacks. The senator denounced the FBI director as a “panderer” to Trump, and Patel suggested Welch’s personal finances were suspicious.

“Let’s knock it off,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) as he tried to lower the temperature in the hearing room.

It did not work.

“Everybody sees you for the complete and total fraud you are,” Patel said angrily to Welch.

The Vermont senator then challenged Patel over his travel, in which he often combines work with recreational activities. During a trip to Italy, Patel spent time at the Olympics in Milan, during which he was filmed chugging a beer with the men’s hockey team after they won gold.

“I go where I want to go, after delivering the most prolific crime reduction in U.S. history,” Patel said. “What you’ll never understand is the players who are my friends invited me to the locker room.”

Patel was also pressed on whether counterintelligence agents had opened an investigation into how a wealthy Russian oligarch paid for part of the wedding celebrations for Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

“It may involve some intelligence degradation, and I would like to know what steps you are taking to investigate,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.).

He added, “I think there’s a potential for compromise in intelligence and also the possibility of improper influence.”

Patel was noncommittal.

“We will look at whatever information comes our way,” he said.

In one of the stranger exchanges, Patel repeatedly fielded questions about bestiality, part of a recent change in FBI policy that loosened hiring standards, including by no longer automatically disqualifying job candidates who have participated in sexual activity with animals. The change, he said, was made out of consideration for people who may have been forced, either as children or sex-trafficking victims, to participate in such conduct.

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked,” Patel said. While he did not elaborate, there have been cases in which children or others were forced to engage in sex with animals.

Previously, the director said, the FBI had automatically disqualified anyone who had engaged in such conduct, no matter the circumstances. Lawmakers seemed flummoxed by the explanation.

“Either side of what, the bestiality?” Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) asked. “So you disqualified the animal?”

Patel replied, laughing: “We have great K-9s, but we’re not going to disqualify them.”

At other points, the hearing veered into sniping.

Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) said Patel had acted “like a thug” in using law enforcement agents to subpoena reporters.

“We are not targeting reporters at any point in time,” Patel replied.

“We don’t have an FBI director, we have a lackey here, and frankly not even a good lackey, he’s an incompetent lackey,” Booker said. “This is a mockery and a sham.”

As the two men argued, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) sought to end the exchange.

“Are you done now? Are you ready to shut up?” Grassley growled at Booker.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

The popular image of Yemen’s Houthi rebels is of men on the backs of pickup trucks, firing AK-47s into the desert air.

Yet the group has launched long-range missile strikes at Israel, more than 1,000 miles away. The Houthis prey on ship traffic in the Red Sea with naval drones. And evidence points to their growing ambition to use artificial intelligence and other means to produce more advanced weaponry themselves, making them less reliant on their sponsors in Iran.

Although they are backed by Iran, for months the Houthis remained on the sidelines of this year’s fighting in the region. That ended in July, when they declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia. Since then, they have marched south, seizing the historic port city of Mokha last week while capturing islands near the narrow strait known as the Bab el-Mandeb, tightening the group’s grip on the choke point at the southern end of the Red Sea.

“They use every opportunity to build their capability, to test their capability, such that they are now the most lethal nonstate actor in the entire Middle East,” said Timothy A. Lenderking, the former U.S. special envoy for Yemen, speaking at a Middle East Institute forum Friday.

A report by Anthropic last week on the misuse of AI said that “a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen,” where the Houthis have their stronghold, used Claude for “a sustained effort to develop guided weapons.” Despite Anthropic’s safeguards, the company said, the cell proceeded as far as the test firing of a guided rocket.

The Houthis still rely on their Iranian sponsors for the most sophisticated components in their drones and ballistic missiles, but as the Anthropic report suggested, in recent years they have become much more advanced at building their own weapons systems.

This has given the Houthis greater flexibility to maintain their fight against their Yemeni and Saudi adversaries, attack shipping traffic in the Red Sea, and threaten Israeli and U.S. targets even with the U.S. Navy enforcing a monthslong blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Laboratory of war

The Houthis and their Iranian advisers were already experimenting with uncrewed surface vessels a decade ago. The militant group used a remote-controlled boat loaded with explosives to attack a Saudi frigate all the way back in 2017, killing two people in the process.

After the Houthis captured Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014, Saudi Arabia led a military coalition propping up the country’s government and fighting back against the militants. A ceasefire was declared in 2022, but experts say the group has used the intervening years to dramatically advance its capabilities.

The truce gave the Houthis time “to regroup, retrain, refit, restock,” Lenderking said.

“The volume of goods being brought into Yemen to make weapons increased exponentially and the number of routes being used increased exponentially after the truce was announced in Yemen in 2022,” said Peter Salisbury, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, who has studied Houthi weapons manufacturing closely.

At first, Yemen was a laboratory for Iran’s pursuit of warfare. Increasingly, it is the factory, too. Salisbury said that larger parts like missile chassis are fabricated in Houthi-controlled territory rather than sent from Iran.

“Iran and Hezbollah have invested heavily in continuing to up-skill the Houthis in the manufacture and use of weapons,” Salisbury said. “Increasingly they’ve been able to indigenize the production of a lot of things like one-way attack drones.”

According to Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Iranian defense industry has dedicated design bureaus and factories for weapons systems specifically for proxy forces like the Houthis that are “simple to assemble, simple to move, simple to prepare for launch, and simple to use.”

Resilient supply chains

The Iranians encouraged the Houthis to develop additional supply chains for components from places like China, whose factories supply many of the drone parts used around the world.

“There’s a lot the Houthis don’t need anymore, and the reason they don’t need it anymore is because they’ve been able to use the global black market supply chain to get most of the things they need,” said Kevin Donegan, a former commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, whose area of responsibility included the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and who built the first intelligence fusion cell to study Iranian support for the Houthis.

“They do need key components still, especially for the missiles to make them effective,” Donegan said. “They have the ratlines that still can bring those components because they’re not the big pieces.”

Those might include guidance systems, rocket engines, and wing tips and fins that require a higher degree of precision engineering, Salisbury said.

While the U.S. Navy’s blockade focuses on large container ships and tankers, smaller components can be smuggled on medium-size vessels like the traditional dhows plowing the region’s waters. Shipments can be sent directly to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, transshipped via the Horn of Africa or even transferred ship to ship in the waters off the coast of Somalia. Salisbury calls it a “giant game of three card monte.”

Increased self-sufficiency is not necessarily the same thing as complete independence from their sponsors in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “I think they pretty much still need a lot of help from the IRGC,” Nadimi said. He said that he believed there were “significant numbers” of Revolutionary Guard officers involved in the planning and execution of the current phase of the fighting in Yemen.

The need for Iranian advisers and the more advanced components may explain how the renewed fighting in Yemen started this summer in the first place.

A Houthi delegation traveled to Tehran, Iran, in July for the funeral of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After, they boarded a flight home operated by Iran’s Mahan Air, which is under sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, back to Sanaa.

The Saudis and the Yemeni government believe that the aircraft carried Iranian military personnel and weaponry. When airstrikes prevented the plane from landing at Sanaa International Airport, the flight diverted and managed to land elsewhere in Houthi-controlled territory.

The Houthis then launched retaliatory attacks on Abha International Airport, in the southern part of Saudi Arabia. It was the first Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia since 2022, and began a new and unpredictable phase of fighting, with an adversary that spent years planning and advancing its tactics and technology.

If the Anthropic report is accurate, the group that was using Claude in northern Yemen tried to develop a multistage ballistic missile with a range of more than 1,200 miles and a hypersonic glide vehicle. The would-be weapons designers were careful to avoid the company’s safeguards, hiding the true purpose of the guidance systems they were designing from the very system helping them design it.

Anthropic said there was no evidence that they were successful in “fielding an operational device.” The users queried Claude Code about why their field test had failed. “Nevertheless, we have evidence that the actors had already built an offline simulation tool kit that does not rely on Claude,” the report said.

Recent history suggests they will keep working to improve their capabilities.

“Keep in mind that the Houthis are always on the move,” said Lenderking, the former U.S. envoy. “They’re extremely entrepreneurial.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.