Juan Cole Informed Comment
Al Jazeera reports that on Monday, the three members of the Mecca security pact visited Tehran. Apparently attempts had been made to have Iranian officials visit Pakistan or another member state but the attempt fell through. So on Monday Field Marshal Asim Munir of Pakistan, Saudi Minister of Defense Khalid Bin Salman, and Turkish Director of the National Intelligence Organization Ibrahim Kalin visited Tehran, meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei.
The meeting, which was certainly unwelcome to President Donald Trump, was a further sign that medium regional powers are beginning to mobilize for their own security, convinced that the United States is no longer willing or able to provide it. Indeed, they likely see the United States, with its tight alliance with Israel, as the primary driver of instability in their region, and as an active threat to their welfare. They are attempting to offer Tehran some carrots to come in from the cold, and attempting to signal to Israel that it will not have free sway to launch attacks throughout the region. That Pakistan is a nuclear power gives this message some credibility.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, suggested that the meeting could be the beginning of a regional security organization that arises from the region itself.
The Saudi spokesman characterized the meeting as an attempt to forestall any escalation in tensions and to deploy diplomacy to resolve the current crisis. Saudi cabinet minister visits to Iran are rare. The Defense Minister had last visited in April 2025, in the wake of the 2023 Chinese-brokered restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He was the highest-ranking Saudi official to visit Tehran in decades.
The Saudis expressed gratitude to Qatar and Pakistan for their mediation efforts.
The four countries issued a memorandum in which they pledged to continue the dialogue and to seek to strengthen cooperation among the four countries, according to Saber Gol Anbari at al-Arabi al-Jadid.
The meeting took place in the context of threats by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump to resume bombing Iran. Emma Graham-Harrison and Julian Borger at The Guardian reported that Netanyahu in particular wanted his military to attack Iran again in the run-up to today’s elections in Israel, but that his own generals defied him and refused. Israel has run low on interceptors and Iran still has tens of thousands of drones and a large stock of ballistic missiles that could penetrate Israel’s defenses. Netanyahu allegedly also tried to convince Trump to go to war with Iran again jointly, but the president declined to take any action until next week’s midterms. Trump’s base, to whom he promised a cessation of America’s forever wars, is upset with him for reneging on that pledge and for putting up their cost of living with his Iran misadventure. Further shooting and a big spike in gasoline and diesel prices just before people go to the polls would therefore hurt him very badly, and he likely will in any case suffer a humiliating loss next Tuesday.
Iran has made it clear that if it is attacked again it will target what is left of the US military bases in the region as well as local refineries and oil facilities, which would spark a global economic downturn. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye are already suffering economically from the crisis as it is.
Saudi Arabia and its allies also almost certainly were seeking Iran’s help in reining in the Houthis in Yemen, who have been successfully striking Saudi infrastructure to protest the Saudi air blockade on northern Yemen.
File photo of Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir. White House photo by Daniel Torok. Public Domain. Via Picryl .
The Saudi economy could contract anywhere between roughly 3% and 6% this year, depending on whether the conflict with Yemen’s Houthis continues. Other Gulf countries more dependent on the Strait of Hormuz for exports such as Kuwait and Qatar could see a whopping 16% economic contraction. Some analysts estimate that the Hormuz petroleum and gas blockage will add 7 percentage points to the Turkish inflation rate and shave four tenths of a point off annual GDP growth. Pakistan’s economy is expected to grow 3.5% in fiscal ’27, which means growth is flat, and high fuel costs are one reason for the stagnation.
Another round of fighting in the Gulf would have the potential to blight the regional economies, and even the entire global economy.
Major Gen. Rezaei, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said after the meeting that the quadrilateral meeting in Tehran served to demonstrate to the United States that the efficacy of its threats had faded.
The Trump administration had attempted to make it impossible for planes to land at Iranian airports and threatened countries with sanctions for maintaining ties with Tehran.
Rezaei affirmed that officials of the Mecca Pact countries hold that the resolution of the region’s difficulties lies in the cooperation of those three countries and Iran. He said all four agreed that security in West Asia must be localized and that foreign interventions must be forestalled.
He maintained that all four agreed — though this point was not in the official memorandum — that Israel must withdraw from the territories it has occupied in southern Lebanon, southern Syria, and the Palestinian West Bank, and halt its aggression.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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