Gulf countries have stepped up diplomacy with Iran in a bid to de-escalate tensions across the Middle East, amid fears of renewed US strikes on Tehran and intensifying hostilities between Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The three nations that signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye – and diplomats from Qatar met with high-ranking Iranian officials on Monday in an effort to prevent the resumption of all-out war.
Underscoring the high stakes, the meeting in Tehran was attended by Saudi Minister of Defence Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, just days after Iran-aligned Houthi fighters struck Saudi airports , ports and oil facilities.
Meanwhile, during a diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge on Monday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi called for a regional security framework, including a “non-aggression pact”, between the Gulf countries and Iran under which the United States would no longer be the primary provider of security.
While Gulf countries appear determined to avoid another round of conflict – which has already restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupted global oil and gas supplies and wreaked havoc on energy facilities and infrastructure in Gulf states – questions remain over whether a regional agreement is possible and where it would leave relations between the US and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
On Friday, US President Donald Trump repeated warnings that Washington may carry out another military operation against Iran as rising fuel prices weigh on the US midterm elections scheduled for November 3. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iran would respond more forcefully to any renewed US military action, stoking fears of an even wider escalation.
While this week’s talks in Tehran mark the first high-level contact between Iran and the Mecca mutual defence pact nations since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28, reports suggest they have stopped short of landing an agreement.
Reuters reported that Qatari mediators presented Iran with a draft deal on Sunday, which Tehran was expected to respond to by the end of the week. On Wednesday, the news agency quoted Iranian officials as saying Qatar had put forward ideas that were unacceptable and that Tehran would show no flexibility regarding the nuclear issue.
Khaled Batarfi, a Saudi political analyst and academic, said the visit to Tehran indicated that Saudi Arabia was willing to give Iran a “last warning” and “submit to the region’s concerns”, but that Iran has so far refused.
“The gap is [wide] and what makes it worse is that there is no trust,” Batarfi told Al Jazeera.
Observers say diverging views are unlikely to turn the current diplomatic efforts into a lasting infrastructure. “It’s really hard to see a regional security framework coming out in the coming months or even years,” Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, told Al Jazeera.
“What we are seeing is more small groups, flexible groups of countries that are taking the lead in trying to reach either bilateral or multilateral solutions,” the analyst said. “A regional security framework would need the same vision for the region, which is not necessarily shared… among the GCC countries themselves.”
Hamidreza Azizi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye share concerns that a prolonged confrontation between Iran and the US could further destabilise the region.
“The main obstacle remains the fundamental disagreement between Tehran and Washington over the sequence of commitments,” Azizi told Al Jazeera. “The US wants Iranian concessions, particularly on the nuclear issue, while Tehran insists that its conditions for ending the war must be met first.”
“Regional mediation could help bridge this gap, possibly through an interim arrangement, but the willingness of regional actors to facilitate an agreement does not necessarily mean that the two principal parties are prepared to make the necessary compromises,” he added.
As for a new security order, Azizi said regional countries do not share a common understanding of what it should look like and what role the US – which has so far been the GCC’s main security partner – would have left to play.
Iran has long advocated for a regional security architecture that would reduce or eliminate the US military presence. “Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, however, remain deeply integrated into the US security system, and there is little indication that they intend to abandon it,” Azizi said.
“The recent war has certainly raised questions about the reliability of American security guarantees, but this has encouraged these countries to diversify their security partnerships rather than fundamentally redefine their strategic alignments.”
