RIYADH: Luigi Di Maio, the EU’s special representative for the Gulf, has condemned Iran’s ongoing attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and has pledged that Europe stands “at their disposal” with intelligence and other tools to help defend the region.
In an interview with Arab News in Riyadh following the extraordinary EU-GCC ministerial meeting of March 5, Di Maio stressed that the bloc “strongly condemned the unjustifiable Iranian attacks against the GCC countries” and fully backed the Kingdom’s right to self-defense.
Di Maio framed his visit as an explicit act of solidarity with Saudi Arabia following waves of missile and drone strikes launched by Iran as part of the wider confrontation unleashed by US-Israeli strikes on Iran since late February.
“I am paying a visit to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the EU after the attacks that Saudi has suffered during the last weeks, in particular to show my solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … and to say we really admire the strategic resilience of the Kingdom during this period,” he said.
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Di Maio pointed to the joint EU-GCC statement issued after the March 5 ministerial, which branded Iran’s strikes on Gulf states “inexcusable” and a threat to regional and global security.
“Yes, I confirm what is written there, and I confirm even more because that statement is almost five days after the attacks,” he said, noting that the pattern of attacks has since widened.
“Now we are beyond two weeks and Iran is not only attacking military bases, it is attacking civilian infrastructures, it is attacking civilians. And this is why our call on Iran is to stop these attacks against the GCC,” he said.
He underlined that the condemnation goes hand in hand with support for the Gulf states’ legal right to respond.
“In any case, the GCC countries like Saudi Arabia, they can count on us, on our support, in particular in supporting them, according to Article 51 of the UN Charter of self-defense.”
Asked whether the EU was prepared to move beyond political declarations and into more concrete forms of security support, Di Maio was explicit that the bloc is ready to respond to Gulf requests, including on intelligence and defense technology.
“We are at their disposal,” he said. “We are at their disposal in terms of their requests, and this is why this mission is, even for me, an opportunity to pay a visit to each country of the GCC to listen to them, to listen to their requests.”
Smoke rises following a strike on the Bapco Oil Refinery, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, on Sitra island, Bahrain, on March 9, 2026. (REUTERS)
This openness extends to sensitive areas of cooperation, including sharing European experience of countering Iranian-made drones and building up integrated air and missile defenses with Gulf partners.
Indeed, the Shahed drones that have terrorized Ukrainian cities are now part of Iran’s toolbox in the Gulf theatre as well.
“This exchange and this cooperation between the Ukrainian government and GCC governments is very important because, as Europeans and as GCC countries, we are facing similar challenges, the same challenge.
“The same kind of drone, the Shahed, hitting the soil of Ukraine, is now hitting the soil of the GCC, violating the airspace of the GCC countries.
“This is why we have to share knowhow, technologies and even to connect more and more our defense industry, because I think that in Europe, there is a lot of knowhow for allowing the GCC to face this challenge.”
For Di Maio, this emerging defense partnership is about adding capabilities at a time when Iran’s missile and drone campaign has disrupted energy flows, threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and targeted civilian infrastructure across the region.
He described the Gulf as strategically “interdependent” with Europe, arguing that security in the region can no longer be treated as a distant concern.
“It is not only about energy. It is about food security, it is about investments, it is about air connections. Everything is interrelated between the EU and GCC,” he said.
Over the past three years, as tensions with Iran, the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Red Sea have converged, Brussels and the Gulf capitals have quietly built a dense network of what Di Maio calls an “infrastructure of diplomatic, political and economic channels of cooperation.”
That infrastructure is now being stress-tested by a conflict that has widened from US-Israeli strikes inside Iran to Iranian retaliation across the region — including against oil facilities and vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of global oil supplies pass.
“First of all, our member states have immediately answered the calls of the GCC countries according to their bilateral agreements, in terms of military and defense support, in terms of assets,” Di Maio said.
“Second, the Red Sea. The Red Sea is even more important now. Even if I look at the alternative routes for exporting energy, the Red Sea is crucial.
“This is why we are very proud of our defensive mission in the Red Sea, the Aspides mission of the EU, escorting commercial vessels and defending them from the missiles and drones of the Houthis.”
Operation Aspides, launched in 2024, has since had its mandate extended until 2027, operating in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab and into the wider Northwest Indian Ocean to protect commercial shipping from missile and drone threats.
“And then there is the Hormuz Strait,” Di Maio said.
The Liberia-flagged tanker Shenlong Suezmax, carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia, that arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, on March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/File)
“Kaja Kallas, the high representative vice president of the European Commission, called a few days ago the secretary-general of the UN, Antonio Guterres, proposing a plan for the Hormuz Strait using the model of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
“(This was) a very important initiative where we managed, as the international community, with the facilitation of the UN, in having humanitarian corridors, humanitarian corridors, naval corridors.
“For Hormuz, in this case, it is about fertilizers, it is about food security, but it is even about oil and gas. Because if we look at the impact of this crisis on some countries around the world, we see the humanitarian crisis it is producing.”
His comments point to a broader concern in Brussels: that the war with Iran, and Tehran’s attacks on Gulf oil and gas infrastructure and tankers, will deepen humanitarian crises in energy-importing developing countries already hit by high prices and supply disruptions.
Amid this volatile backdrop, Di Maio singled out Saudi Arabia’s behavior for praise, both for its handling of daily threats and for its attempts to prevent the current war from erupting in the first place.
“First of all, the resilience of the Kingdom is very important at a global level for facing this crisis. But let me underline, the Kingdom is under daily attacks from Iran and is successfully rejecting these attacks,” he said.
“But the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like many other GCC countries, tried until the end to have a deal between the US and Iran to avoid this war. They tried the diplomatic way to avoid the impact of such a crisis on the global markets and in general the global scenario.”
“So the capacity of Saudi Arabia, of being resilient in terms of the energy infrastructures, of being proactive in terms of diplomatic channels and of being a very important fuel for the integration of the GCC, it’s crucial for the future of this crisis.
“And my message to Iran in any case is that the more they continue the attacks, the more the risk of further escalation is there.”
EU Representative Luigi Di Maio with Arab News' Lama Al-Hamawi. (AN Photo)
As Iran has targeted oil infrastructure and shipping routes, Riyadh and other Gulf producers have scrambled to reroute exports via east-west pipelines and Red Sea ports to limit the impact on global markets.
Di Maio said this capacity for rapid adaptation is central to preventing a shock that would ripple far beyond the region.
Alongside security assurances, Di Maio pointed to the EU’s record of sanctions on Iran — including a recent move designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
“There are no doubts about our knowhow in the sanctioning of specific entities, specific people, linked even to the dual use materials for building the Shahed drones. We are totally at (the GCC’s) disposal for sharing knowhow and information on that.”
Beyond hard security, Di Maio cast the GCC — and Saudi Arabia in particular — as indispensable diplomatic actors in preventing the US-Israel-Iran confrontation from spilling into a wider regional war.
“I think that the role of the GCC countries over the past years was fundamental. For instance, if I look at Russia-Ukraine, they negotiated the most important number of prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine,” he said.
“But if I look at other scenarios, the Great Lakes region in Africa, if I look at the past in Gaza and the ceasefire in Gaza, the diplomacy of the GCC before this war, but even after the current conflict, was becoming and is becoming more and more crucial for us as Europeans.
“We want to partner with them more and more because this capacity of negotiating and this capacity even of leaders-to-leaders diplomacy, it’s something that is precious to us.”
