Histories of the 1971 independence of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar generally focus on the agency of the United Kingdom and a group of local sheikhs in these states' construction. This paper draws new attention to the roles of Saudi Arabia and Pahlavi Iran in the consolidation of a monarchical order in the Persian Gulf, arguing that projects of state formation from 1968-1971 succeeded only by gaining the support of these two regional powers. By the late 1960s, Iran and Saudi Arabia lost confidence in Britain’s political and military role in the Gulf. Although both states had benefited from British military protection, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi of Iran concluded that the British were managing their withdrawal from the region in a way that would both favor the interests of the Gulf sheikhs over their own and undermine their shared pursuit of a counterrevolutionary order in the Gulf. As the Shah complained to King Faisal in a 1968 meeting, British policy stemmed “either from their weakness or from their conniving nature. After leaving an area, they are accustomed to creating a baffling mess and disarray.” As such, from 1968 to 1971, Iran and Saudi Arabia put aside their initial opposition to Britain’s federation schemes to collaboratively influence British policy, forcing London to reshape its political strategy. As is evidenced in the records of their private consultations, King Faisal and the Shah overcame mutual Saudi-Iranian suspicions and collaborated to constrain London’s influence while taking into their own hands the British project to fortify the Gulf states against progressive or leftist revolution. To shed new light on Iranian and Saudi diplomacy, this paper employs the Persian-language archive of the Shah’s Foreign Minister Ardeshir Zahedi, which opened in 2018. The Zahedi archive includes records of myriad high-level Saudi-Iranian consultations and of Iranian meetings with the Gulf sheiks. These documents provide an opportunity for historians to overcome their previous dependence on British sources. Drawing on these records, this paper shows that the independence of the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain should be seen as part of a wider regional project to construct a counterrevolutionary and monarchial order in the Persian Gulf on the eve of Britain’s withdrawal.