The Gulf goes to Tehran

On 26 October, senior officials from three of Washington’s regional security partners flew to Tehran and sat down with its fiercest adversary. Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman led the delegation, joined by Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, and Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir. They met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The United States was not in the room.

The visit came amid warnings of renewed American strikes after the US midterm elections on 3 November. President Donald Trump had told supporters that Washington might launch “another little Epic Fury”, a reference to Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign against Iran launched alongside Israel on 28 February. Subsequent reporting said regional allies had been briefed on possible short, intense attacks and the retaliation they might provoke. No final decision had been announced. For Riyadh, however, the danger was immediate enough to warrant a direct approach to Tehran.

The visitors represented the three signatories of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed on 7 August. Its text treats an external armed attack on one party as an attack on all, while leaving the nature and extent of assistance to the parties’ assessment. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says it should not be viewed as “an alliance established against Iran, Israel or any third country”. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has presented a wider regional security framework as a path towards lasting stability. Less than three months after signing the pact, its members were pursuing deterrence and dialogue together.

Riyadh framed the trip as crisis management. Its foreign ministry said the aim was to “de-escalate between the parties to the current crisis”. Rezaei described “a very positive atmosphere” and said the participants agreed that regional countries should provide regional security without outside interference. They would keep talking. The public accounts of the meeting, however, offered no timetable or enforceable arrangement for de-escalation.

Rezaei later claimed that Prince Khalid had warned Israel might eventually target Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That remains the Iranian official’s account, not a publicly confirmed Saudi statement.

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For Riyadh, Yemen was an urgent test. Alhurra, the US government-funded Arabic-language broadcaster, reported that attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement (Ansarallah) since September had left at least 17 people dead in Saudi Arabia, injured hundreds and disrupted thousands of flights. During the Tehran meetings, the Houthis claimed further attacks on Riyadh’s airport and pumping stations along the East-West pipeline. Those claims could not be independently verified. The Saudi-led coalition separately reported intercepting five ballistic missiles directed towards Riyadh and the kingdom’s east, as well as drones aimed at its south.

The pipeline gives the threat strategic weight. It carries Saudi crude to the Red Sea, providing an export route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.

Araghchi had said on 20 October that neither Riyadh nor the Houthis had responded to Iran’s mediation initiative. The Tehran meeting produced no publicly announced agreement to stop the attacks. Regional sources briefed on the discussions told the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National that Saudi Arabia and its partners had asked Iran to restrain the Houthis. At the same time, Iranian interlocutors maintained that Tehran lacked the leverage to compel them.

That distinction matters. Iran’s relationship with the Houthis gives it influence; it does not establish that Tehran can order every attack to begin or end.

Gregory Gause of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, speaking to Alhurra, identified a further constraint: neither Turkey nor Pakistan was willing to apply military or economic pressure on Iran. Their ability to change Tehran’s calculations was therefore limited. Riyadh wanted Iranian help in extending any Gulf understanding to Yemen. Whether Tehran could deliver that, and on what terms, remained unresolved.

Diplomacy nevertheless continued. Qatari mediators visited Tehran on 30 October. By 1 November, Araghchi said his deputy had travelled to Qatar for further consultations, while ruling out a planned direct meeting with American representatives. Discussions over regional hostilities and the reopening of Hormuz had not yet produced an announced agreement. The channel remained active, but its results remained uncertain.

The defence pact carries its own constraints. Turkish parliamentary scrutiny was still under way in late October, and the agreement’s text makes entry into force dependent on ratification by all parties. Its collective defence language is not an automatic order to dispatch troops. Turkish officials have stressed that military action remains subject to national decisions and parliamentary requirements.

That caution is consistent with the diplomatic mission. Ankara and Islamabad want to support Riyadh without committing themselves to an open-ended confrontation with Iran or the Houthis. Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute told Alhurra that the three partners possessed limited leverage over either Washington or Tehran. Ultimately, she argued, preventing further escalation depended on an agreement between those two capitals.

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Pezeshkian’s visit to Moscow on 27 October invited another interpretation: that Tehran was assembling a counterweight to Washington. The setting supports a narrower conclusion. He was attending the Gas Exporting Countries Forum summit, where Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, also met Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit showed diplomatic coordination, but did not, by itself, establish a new security alignment.

The language was nonetheless pointed. Pezeshkian said regional problems could be resolved “without the United States.” Putin expressed hope that conditions would improve. Following Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s earlier visit to Tehran, Araghchi had said Iran and Russia had never worked so closely. These were meaningful signals of partnership, not evidence that Moscow could deliver a regional settlement.

Washington, meanwhile, kept diplomacy and military pressure in play. On 30 October, Trump called the conflict “a war, but it’s not a typical war” and said the United States still had time to negotiate. The following day, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump had made no decision on further strikes and preferred a diplomatic solution. He also reaffirmed American defence commitments to Saudi Arabia. Fidan’s meeting with Rubio at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta underscored the point: the Tehran channel had not replaced communication with Washington.

So what is this? Not an anti-American bloc. It is a hedge against the possibility that American and Iranian decisions will leave neighbouring states absorbing the damage.

Saudi oil facilities, airports and desalination plants sit within reach of Iranian weapons. Another round of war could expose them regardless of how closely Riyadh coordinates with Washington. As Anna Jacobs of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington told Alhurra: “These countries know they need to find a modus operandi with Iran.”

The test is not whether every Houthi attack stops immediately, nor whether one round of talks produces a comprehensive peace. It is whether continued diplomacy yields a sustained reduction in attacks, reciprocal restraint and arrangements that survive the next crisis.

Washington’s absence from one meeting does not mean its influence has disappeared. Regional diplomacy does not mean the region can yet secure itself. The Mecca partners have opened a channel to Tehran. Its value will depend on whether they can turn conversation into restraint.

Regional ownership is a slogan until someone can help stop a war.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.