A huddle in Tehran

A huddle in Tehran

LAST month, I argued in this space that Iran is emerging as a big regional power to our west. The question I left hanging was whether it would use its newfound centrality to avenge the past or to build a future. Last week offered the first real glimpse of an answer. On Oct 26, Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Pakistan’s defence chief, and Turkiye’s intellige­nce chief sat down in Tehran with Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The joint statement that followed was thin, pledging only continued dialogue on regional peace and security. But the significance of the Tehran huddle lies less in what was said than in the fact that it happened at all, and where. Consider who came. The three visitors are the signatories of the Makkah Joint Defence Agree­m­ent, signed in August, a pact many read as a hedge against precisely the kind of Iran I described last month. Saudi Arabia was struck repeatedly by Iran during the war, hosted American forces that attacked Iran, and is under fire from the Houthis even now. Yet, the Saudi defence minister led the delegation, and they travelled to Tehran. Not Riyadh, Ankara or Islamabad, nor a neutral venue like Doha or Muscat. When three of the region’s largest military powers, one of them nuclear-armed, come to your capital to talk about regional security, they are acknowledging that no regional security arrangement is possible without you, and that the road to one runs through your door. For a country that spent four decades behind a wall of sanctions and was treated as a problem to be contained rather than a party to be consulted, this is a milestone. The significance of the Tehran huddle lies less in what was said than in the fact that it happened at all, and where. It also happened in the teeth of American pressure. Washington was openly weighing a fresh round of strikes, US forces were reportedly ready to move within 96 hours of an order, and a naval blockade was choking Iran’s southern ports. The region’s middle powers came anyway, having concluded that Iran would still be standing after this war and that they need a working relationship with it whatever Washington decided. The second thing worth noticing is what Iran chose to emphasise. Rezaei told state television that Tehran and its three guests had agreed that the region’s security is to be achieved through the countries of the region. A senior Pakistani security official told Reuters the meeting’s primary aim was a regional mechanism to prevent military attacks between them. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said for months that Tehran will welcome any regional security arrangement that excludes foreign forces. Put these together and the outline of the order Iran wants comes into view. It rests on three pillars: non-aggression among the states of the region, an alignment of their interests, and the exit of outside powers, above all America, from the business of guaranteeing Gulf security. This is a window into the kind of power Iran wants to project. Last month, I worried that once the Americans were gone, the Iranian military machine would turn its gaze to the riches of the Gulf monarchs and present bill after bill. That risk has not gone away. But the posture on display in Tehran was not that of a power seeking to dominate its neighbours by force. It was that of a power seeking to become the indispensable centre of a regional system it helps design. The China analogy is instructive here too. In 1954, with Beijing still shunned by much of the world, Zhou Enlai put forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in negotiations with India. Mutual non-aggression sat at their heart, alongside non-interference in internal affairs. Non-aggression is the language of a power confident of its own weight, which wants its neighbours to accommodate it rather than fear it. There is hard strategic logic beneath the soft language. A non-aggression architecture without foreign forces is the one in which Iran’s advantages count most. Take American bases and carriers out of the Gulf, and Iran’s hold over Hormuz, its missile arsenal, and its network of allies make it the pre-eminent power on the Gulf littoral by default. In that setting, a non-aggression pact is not a concession but a way of having one’s pre-eminence ratified by one’s neighbours. Nor did the idea originate in Tehran. In May, Saudi Arabia itself floated a non-aggression pact between Iran and the states of the region, reportedly modelled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Iran is now taking an idea its rivals put on the table and making it the organising principle of an order with itself at the centre. That, too, is what emerging powers do. None of this is settled. The factional contest I described last month is playing out in plain sight. The hard-line daily Kayhan treated oil above $115 a barrel as proof that pressure on shipping works better than diplomacy, while moderate papers warn of a wave of bankruptcies in Isfahan, Tabriz, and Arak as the blockade bites. Which camp prevails will decide whether the language of non-aggression is here to stay. Pakistan has a particular stake in all this. An Iran that seeks pre-eminence through a regional architecture is a neighbour Pakistan can work with, and help shape from the inside. An Iran that seeks it through reparations, tolls, and coercion would place us in an impossible position between our western neighbour and the Gulf states on which so much of our economy depends. The huddle does not answer last month’s question. But it shows that the option of building a future is on the table, in Iran’s own words, and that its neighbours are prepared to engage on those terms. That is a milestone. Whether it becomes a trajectory depends on whether the voices in Teh­ran speaking the language of non-aggression win the argument at home, and whether Washington, after its elections on Nov 3, lets them. The writer is a business and economy journalist. khurram.husain@gmail.com X: @khurramhusain Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2026