Gulf Chiefs Meet Iran’s President and Agree to Keep Talking
Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Pakistan’s army chief and Turkey’s intelligence chief met President Pezeshkian and the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council in Tehran today. Iranian state television says the four agreed to continue talks after what it called a first meeting. No communique has been issued and the talks were still under way this evening.
This is the meeting we reported this morning as a journey; it has now happened, and what it was for is clearer than what it achieved. The three visitors represent a mutual defence pact signed in August, and the agenda was twofold: how Iran might persuade the Houthis to stop striking Saudi infrastructure, and whether a deal between Tehran and Washington can be reached before fighting resumes. Riyadh’s statement put the aim as finding “ways to de-escalate tensions, enhance regional security and promote its stability”. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said the past two years had shown that “sustainable and reliable security in our region will only be possible by building trust and cooperation among the countries of the region”. A former foreign minister put it more sharply: “Regional security is not imported, it must be created by the people of this very region together.” One analyst called it an eleventh-hour attempt to tip the balance towards compromise, warning that without a formula to bridge the American-Iranian divide the visitors may leave with “little more than goodwill in a race against the clock”. Iran’s president was due in Moscow next for a gas exporters’ summit.