The limits of a possible settlement with Iran

When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on Friday that Washington and Tehran had arrived at a “final, agreed upon text” for a war-ending deal, the news landed on a region frozen in place. The Middle East remains caught in political and security gridlock: Iran is still choking off the Strait of Hormuz, the US is blockading Iranian ports and a steady drumbeat of military operations has only thickened the fog — each side trying to set new rules of engagement it can later cash in for advantage at the table.
Twenty-four hours later, US forces were shooting down Iranian drones over Hormuz. Tehran, unbowed, reaffirmed its intention to manage transit through the strait. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put it bluntly: “Our sword will always hang over the Strait of Hormuz.” A posture that unsettles not only Washington but the major Gulf capitals, Riyadh first among them.
Such language is less bravado than strategy. Tehran is trying to salvage a political result from a war that has cost the regime dearly in terms of men and materiel, and it wants to walk away holding three cards: tacit acknowledgment of its role in securing Hormuz; the survival of part of its nuclear capability under the cover of a drawn-out “technical negotiation;” and a seat for Lebanon in any regional bargain, preserving a future for Hezbollah and keeping Israel pinned down.
The aim, in short, is to convert the coming agreement into what Iran’s leaders like to call “diplomatic resistance” — war by other means, dressed as the rights of the Islamic Republic.
The Trump administration is working from a different playbook. It wants a fast deal, one that swings Hormuz back open to oil and global trade, drains the war of its domestic cost and delivers a written document the White House can hold up before its electoral base as proof that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been bridled — something the Obama-era agreement, in Trump’s telling, failed to do. And it has drawn a line: no release of Iranian assets except against implementation and no settling for verbal pledges Tehran can later evade. What it wants is a road to dismantlement under long-term inspection.
Israel’s anxiety runs the other way. It has no appetite for a US-Iranian memorandum that quiets the Lebanese front, fences in its own freedom to maneuver and ties its hands before it can dismantle Hezbollah’s military apparatus — a force that, battered as it is, still sends drones across the border daily and with unsettling accuracy, hitting Israeli targets and leaving soldiers dead and wounded.

Iran’s posture is one that unsettles not only Washington but the major Gulf capitals.

Hassan Al-Mustafa

In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia occupies the most telling position. Riyadh is pressing hard on the diplomatic track that Pakistan and Qatar are driving, even as it states plainly that it will not let Gulf territory, or the region around it, become a billboard for Iranian military messaging.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned, in the bluntest terms, what it calls brutal Iranian aggression and flagrant violations of the sovereignty of Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, warning that continued attacks threaten regional and international security and corrode the very efforts meant to calm things down.
This is a principled stance that fuses security with politics and it explains the shape of Saudi diplomacy. Riyadh has never ruled out talking to Iran. In recent years, it has run a measured de-escalation track with Tehran. But it has made the terms plain: sovereignty and noninterference, free navigation, an end to strikes on Gulf states, and a halt to proxy warfare. By that logic, Saudi support for the Pakistani and Qatari mediation is support for anything that stops the war from spreading and denies Iran the tool of security-political blackmail through attacks on its neighbors.
That is what gives Islamabad and Doha, with Saudi Arabia and other regional players behind them, their unusual weight at this fragile moment. Both can speak to each principal at once, holding military, political and economic ties to Washington and live channels to Tehran. But mediation will be judged on deliverables, not declarations: reopening Hormuz without tolls or political strings, ending the missile and drone strikes on neighboring states, fixing a formula to contain highly enriched nuclear material, and pulling Lebanon out of the ledger of mutual pressure — all synchronized with American moves on Iranian ports and frozen accounts.
The real question, to my mind, is not how fast a “framework of understanding” gets signed, but what guarantees it carries. An agreement that dodges the hard issues will be a house of cards, ready to fall at the first quarrel or skirmish. But one anchored in published, scheduled steps, UN technical oversight and firm security guarantees for the Gulf Cooperation Council could open the way to a lasting de-escalation. A de-escalation architecture solid enough to bear the weight of what might eventually become a lasting peace.

• Hassan Al-Mustafa is a Saudi writer and researcher specializing in Islamist movements, the evolution of religious discourse, and relations between the Gulf states and Iran. X: @Halmustafa