In January 1991, Saddam Hussein fired thirty nine Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel. His logic was transparent: drag neighbors into the fire so the coalition fractures under civilian casualties. It was the worst strategic decision of the Gulf War. It did not fracture the coalition. It welded it together. Every Scud that landed converted fence-sitters into combatants. By the time the last missile fell, the Arab world’s tolerance for Saddam had evaporated and the road to his destruction was paved by the neighbors he attacked. Iran is now running the identical playbook with superior weapons and inferior judgment. In the last thirty six hours Tehran has fired missiles and drones at Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Oman. It struck a luxury hotel on Dubai’s Palm. It hit the Burj Al Arab. It damaged Dubai International Airport. It killed a Pakistani worker at Abu Dhabi’s airport. It struck the port of Duqm in Oman, the country that spent years mediating between Tehran and Washington. It attacked a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. It fired at a residential neighborhood in Bahrain. Every target is civilian. Every country told Iran, in writing, that it would not allow its territory to be used for the attack on Tehran. Dr Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, President of the Emirates Policy Center, said it plainly to Reuters: what has now been proven is that we, not the United States, are in the line of fire. When Iran struck, it struck the Gulf first under the pretext of targeting US bases. This is the mechanism Saddam never understood and Tehran is now discovering. When you attack your neighbors to punish a distant power, you do not weaken the distant power’s alliance structure. You become the reason the alliance exists. Gulf states spent January telling Iran they would stay neutral. Iran responded by bombing their airports, hotels, and ports. Saudi Arabia, which privately lobbied Washington for the strike while publicly promising Tehran protection, now has the political cover to drop the pretense entirely. The Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry has already vowed to take all necessary measures to defend its security, including the option of responding to the aggression. Gulf analyst Abdelkhaleq Abdulla told Reuters that Iran was making a strategic mistake by targeting its closest neighbors. He is understating it. Iran is not making a mistake. Iran is manufacturing the very coalition that will define the next decade of Middle Eastern security architecture. Every missile that lands on a Gulf capital converts a hedging state into a hostile one. Saddam fired Scuds and created the coalition that removed him from Kuwait. Iran is firing ballistic missiles and creating the coalition that may remove it from the regional order entirely. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaa...…