Why the GCC is learning to live with Iran

Peiman Salehi, The Cradle, May 20, 2026 —

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.

For years, much of the Persian Gulf’s security debate rested on the belief that Iran could be boxed in. Sanctions would weaken it, regional pressure would limit it, and US deterrence would hold it in place. Over time, that logic shaped the Gulf’s security arrangements, its reliance on Washington, and its growing alignment with Tel Aviv.

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.