This paper examines the evolution of security as discourse in framing the issues which become securitized in the Arab oil monarchies of the Gulf. Taking the theme of ‘regime security’ as its central starting point, it questions how ruling elites construct and respond to local and regional security agendas. The paper adopts a constructivist approach to security and illustrates the importance of agency in creating and sustaining security policies in the six member-states of the Gulf Co-operation Council [GCC]. One of the primary aims of the paper is to examine how these regimes distinguish between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions of the security agenda and also how these relate to each other. By shedding light on the myriad factors which inform regimes’ perceptions of their internal security matrix, it aims to enhance our understanding of their policies towards external threats and challenges to regional security. This is crucial to proper analysis of regional policy formulation towards the unfolding post-occupation dynamics in Iraq, continuing tensions between Iran and the international community, and the threat posed by radicalism and trans-national terrorism. These external issues cannot be separated from the threats they are seen to pose to internal security by policy elites cognisant of the multiple supra- and sub-state linkages and ideational cross-currents at play in the region. This is most evident in the social construction of the ‘Shiite crescent’ theory which provides a powerful filter through which much regional security policy is filtered. The second core theme of the paper argues that, just as local discourses on security are dominated by the issues listed above, policy-makers give insufficient attention or weight to a range of evolving and longer-term challenges to local and regional security. These include demographic changes and the challenge of integrating large numbers of young people into stratified labour markets, resource depletion in several of the states which will require a reformulation of the social contract and redistributive mechanisms which regulate state-society relations in renter systems, progressive state failure in Yemen which is allowing extremist organisations a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula and links Gulf security to the volatile Horn of Africa sub-regional complex, and the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation with the attendant risk of sharpening existing fault-lines and access to scarce resources within the region.