MANAMA, June 26 -- For four months, the Gulf Cooperation Council's member states lived inside the blast radius of a war they did not choose. The United Arab Emirates absorbed nearly 3,000 Iranian drone strikes across its territory. Kuwait saw refinery infrastructure damaged. Qatar's liquefied natural gas export terminals operated under disruption warnings for weeks. Saudi Arabia dispatched emergency teams to fuel-storage facilities along its eastern coast on multiple occasions. None of these countries voted for the war that started on February 28. All of them absorbed its consequences.

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Gulf on Tuesday to reassure those countries that the ceasefire deal would protect them, Saudi Arabia, Q...