A Saudi-backed non-aggression proposal suggests that GCC capitals are drawing a hard lesson from the war: Iran may be battered, but it cannot be wished out of the regional order.
The Cradle
The war has made that old confidence harder to sustain.
Iran has been hit hard. Its economy is strained, its military vulnerabilities are clearer, and its regional position has been tested under extreme pressure. Yet it has not vanished from the map. The Islamic Republic has held. Its deterrent has not been erased. Its ability to disrupt the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the wider region remains a fact that no capital can afford to ignore.
That is what gives recent Financial Times (FT) reports on a Saudi-backed regional non-aggression framework their weight. Even without formal negotiations or an official draft agreement, the proposal points to a change in the way parts of the Arab world are now thinking about Iran after the war.
The question quietly taking shape among GCC capitals is no longer how to remove Iran from the regional equation, but how to deal with an Iran that survived the war, absorbed immense pressure, and remains one of West Asia’s central powers.
The limits of containment
According to FT, Riyadh has floated the idea of a regional non-aggression pact inspired by the Helsinki process of the Cold War era. One Arab diplomat quoted by the newspaper said “Arab and Muslim states would welcome a non-aggression pact modeled along the lines of the Helsinki process.” European governments have reportedly shown support for the idea as a mechanism to reduce tensions and prevent another catastrophic regional war.
Yet despite the significance of the proposal, there is still no evidence of a formal negotiating process, no publicly known meetings dedicated to the framework, and no official draft agreement. This distinction is critical.
At this stage, what exists is not a structured diplomatic initiative but rather an exploratory political signal – one emerging from the shockwaves of the recent war and the growing realization across the region that the old security architecture may no longer be sustainable.
For Saudi Arabia and several Gulf states, the war changed the calculation. It exposed Iran’s vulnerabilities, but also its capacity to impose enormous costs on the entire region. Missile strikes, drone attacks, disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, and the threat of prolonged escalation showed how fragile Gulf stability becomes when Iran, Israel, and the US are pulled into direct confrontation.
More importantly, the war appears to have convinced many regional actors that even a weakened Iran cannot simply be removed from the geopolitical map.
This may be the most important strategic takeaway of the post-war environment.
For years, many states in the region – publicly or privately – operated under the assumption that mounting pressure on Iran would eventually diminish its regional role or even destabilize the country internally.
Yet the war produced a more complicated outcome. Iran emerged damaged, economically strained, and strategically challenged, but not collapsed. The political system endured. The military infrastructure survived. Regional influence was reduced in some arenas but remained intact in others. And perhaps most crucially, Iran continued to demonstrate its ability to disrupt regional stability if cornered.
That is why the Saudi proposal carries meaning even before it becomes an official initiative. It reflects a recognition that Iran remains too large, too interconnected, and too embedded in the region to be managed through containment alone.
Tehran has heard this before
The idea itself is not entirely new from Tehran’s perspective.
In 2019, Iran proposed the Hormuz Peace Endeavor, known as the HOPE initiative, which called for Gulf security arrangements led by regional states rather than outside powers. At the time, many Arab governments viewed the proposal with suspicion, seeing it less as a genuine security project than as an Iranian attempt to weaken the American role in the Gulf.
As then-Iranian foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif argued during that period, “The Persian Gulf region can and should secure itself.”
Today, however, the regional atmosphere has changed dramatically.
The war accelerated a process already underway since the Chinese-brokered Saudi–Iran rapprochement in 2023. Gulf states have been inching toward strategic balancing rather than rigid alignment. Riyadh, in particular, appears interested in widening its options, reducing dependence on a single security patron, and avoiding entanglement in open-ended regional wars.
China and Russia have strong incentives to support such a trajectory. Both powers have long favored security arrangements led by regional states rather than western military dominance. For Beijing, long-term stability in the Gulf is tied directly to energy security and the protection of strategic trade corridors. Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly advocated collective security mechanisms in the Gulf that would reduce direct US influence over regional security arrangements.
Yet despite these shifts, there are major reasons why Iran is unlikely to view the current proposal as an immediate priority.
The first and most obvious issue is timing.
From Tehran’s perspective, the war has not truly ended. The shadow of escalation still hangs over the region. Iranian officials continue to calculate the possibility of renewed confrontation with Israel or the US. The future of the Strait of Hormuz remains uncertain. Sanctions pressure continues. Military tensions remain high.
Under such conditions, Iranian strategic thinking is still dominated by immediate deterrence rather than long-term regional institution building. Had this proposal emerged after a clearer stabilization of the post-war environment, it might have received greater attention inside Tehran. For now, Iranian policymakers are still focused on defining the outcome of the war itself before redesigning the order that may come after it.
Israel in the background
The structure of any future arrangement is another problem.
At this stage, nobody knows what such a framework would look like, who would participate in it, or what obligations it would impose. For Tehran, that ambiguity matters.
One of Iran’s central concerns will be Israel’s role. Even if Israel is not formally included in such a structure, which currently appears unlikely, Tehran will still ask basic questions about the position of states closely aligned with Tel Aviv.
Would countries supporting Israeli military operations remain inside the framework? Would Gulf states participating in regional security arrangements continue intelligence or military coordination with Israel during future conflicts? Could such a mechanism become a tool for regulating Iran rather than genuinely stabilizing the region?
For Tehran, these are not secondary concerns. They are likely among the core questions shaping Iranian caution.
This may explain why no senior Iranian official has publicly commented on the proposal so far. The silence is revealing. If formal talks or concrete agreements were already underway, stronger public signaling would likely have emerged from one side or another. Instead, the current phase appears to be one of quiet testing, backchannel exploration, and strategic observation.
For now, Tehran appears to be observing the proposal cautiously rather than viewing it as the foundation of an imminent diplomatic realignment. An informed Iranian source tells The Cradle that while discussions surrounding the Saudi proposal have reached Iranian political circles, significant skepticism remains inside Tehran over whether Riyadh has truly shifted toward pursuing a genuine long-term regional non-aggression framework.
According to the source, much will depend on how Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states respond in the event of renewed military escalation against Iran.
Riyadh’s own caution is also deliberate.
Saudi Arabia has reasons to move carefully. Openly advancing a regional security framework involving Iran while the war’s consequences are still unfolding could create tension with Washington or expose Riyadh to accusations that it is drifting away from the US security umbrella. The kingdom is therefore likely exploring possibilities without turning them too quickly into public commitments.
At the same time, Europe’s support for the idea reflects growing anxiety over the region’s trajectory. As FT noted, “The months of war have created a new sense of urgency among Arab and Muslim states to rethink their alliances and the region’s security apparatus.”
From Brussels to Paris, the priority is no longer reshaping Iran internally but preventing a broader West Asian collapse that could devastate energy markets, destabilize shipping routes, deepen economic crises, and trigger wider regional fragmentation.
A wary coexistence
The regional environment has shifted in another important way. Israel is increasingly viewed by parts of the Arab and Muslim world not only as a strategic partner against Iran, but as a destabilizing force capable of dragging the region into continuous confrontation.
This does not mean Gulf states suddenly trust Iran. They do not. Deep mistrust, security competition, and rivalry all remain. But the binary logic that once defined regional politics, with Iran on one side and an Arab–American–Israeli alignment on the other, appears less stable than before.
A more pragmatic order may instead be taking shape, based less on ideological blocs than on uneasy, transactional coexistence.
Whether such an order can actually succeed remains uncertain.
West Asia is not 1970s Europe. There is no equivalent of the Cold War balance that shaped the Helsinki process. Regional rivalries are intense. Proxy conflicts continue. The question of Israel remains unresolved. The possibility of another direct confrontation involving Iran has not disappeared.
Still, the Saudi proposal is significant – less for what it is today than for what it reveals.
For the first time in years, serious conversations are emerging not around isolating Iran, but around managing coexistence with it.
That alone may be the first sign of a new regional era.
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