As US and Israel Plot Iran Escalation, Regional Powers Scramble to Avert It

The first of two elections that many believe are the final bell before all out war is resumed against Iran is now complete. Although it seems likely that the efforts to cobble together a governing coalition in Israel, if that is even possible, will take weeks, the American midterms are expected to be the last milestone before the United States and Israel launch a massive attack on Iran.

There is no doubt that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is almost bursting with anticipation of the bloodshed to come. Donald Trump, as always, seems unsure of how to proceed, but seems very uncomfortable with the situation as it stands, while also being unwilling to make the concessions necessary to end this futile, destructive war he started for no good reason.

Iran can do little to deter an American attack, if that is what Trump decides to do. But it can retaliate with devastating consequences, which will be felt by its Gulf Arab neighbors, Israel, and the global economy.

That is why the countries of the newly created Mecca Pact — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Türkiye — took the dramatic step of meeting Iranian officials in Tehran.

Iran trumpeted the meeting as demonstrating the seriousness with which the Sunni Muslim states take the Islamic Republic, meeting in the Iranian capital rather than in a third country.

Saudi Arabia said the meeting was aimed at mediating between the United States and Iran, but there is no evidence the United States had any part in the planning of this meeting. Indeed, the indications are the opposite; one purpose of the confab was to establish regional dialogue specifically on security matters.

Participants included Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Field Marshall Asim Munir, Saudi Minister of Defense Prince Khalid bin Salman, and Turkish Director of National Intelligence Ibrahim Kalin. They met with Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei.

The fact that the meeting included leaders of the countries’ respective militaries indicates that the description of the meeting — that it was to deal with regional security — is likely accurate.

And, while little has been made public about the substance of the meeting, it also seems fair to say that there was little progress that could have been made on the major issues—the war with U.S. and the ongoing battles between Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni Ansar Allah.

Little Room for Negotiations

Regarding Ansar Allah, Saudi Arabia was feeling Iran out to see if they would intervene with the Yemeni fighters whom the Saudis have been unable to defeat.

But Iran doesn’t have much reason to do so. While they could benefit from pulling the Saudis away from the American war effort, the compromises Tehran would have to make are far too great.

Reports out of Israel state that the Saudis offered Ansar Allah $1 billion for a ceasefire. But the Yemeni group will not budge on its understandable demand that Saudi Arabia drop its air blockade of Yemen.

This is not an issue Iran can try to mediate. If they try to get Ansar Allah to compromise on the air blockade, it undermines their argument that the United States must end its sea blockade of Iran.

Iran supports Ansar Allah’s cause, but if they thought they could get concessions from the Saudis on the kingdom’s support for American military efforts, Ansar Allah might find it reasonable to agree to a temporary ceasefire to help their ally.

But they cannot compromise on the air blockade, nor would Iran want them to. As long as Saudi Arabia maintains its efforts to block air traffic in Yemen, they can’t buy their way out of Ansar Allah attacks.

On the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the Saudis are very worried, as are all the countries of the Gulf and their neighbors. They should be, given that Trump has warned the Gulf states to get ready for a “short, intense military campaign.” Considering that the war started on February 27 was supposed to end in just a few days, or weeks at most, no one is counting on the “short” part. But it is likely to be intense, and that intensity will be felt in Iran and the Gulf Arab states.

The problem for Iran is that its interlocutors can do little to turn Trump’s mind. Even Saudi Arabia, which is in a terrible position right now if the war restarts, has few options outside of registering its reservations with Trump, which it surely has already done.

Türkiye and Pakistan have even less leverage over Trump’s decisions. If he is reckless enough to risk the consequences of restarting the war with Iran, what can they do to stop him?

And those consequences are potentially very dire.

The Costs of War

Iran has made it clear that it intends to target data centers, AI hubs, and underwater fiber networks that are the backbone of the internet in addition to oil infrastructure. No one doubts they have the capability of doing so.

The amount of damage that can be inflicted on the world dwarfs anything we’ve seen until now.

That has produced fear among the Gulf states, but it has also produced tension between them and Iran. Gulf states are angry at Iran for targeting them in response to American attacks, but Iran is aggravated because the Gulf states have cooperated with Washington.

This double-edged sword was visible this week when Qatar submitted a proposal for a ceasefire and a path back to negotiations, including reciprocal but revocable steps each side could take, presumably offering each side the assurances they needed to proceed.

But at the same time, Qatar publicly supported the call for Iran to allow international traffic through the Strait of Hormuz unconditionally. That did nothing to help the case for Qatar’s proposal, which Iran eventually dismissed as a collection of random ideas rather than a serious proposal and which Trump ignored.

Vice President JD Vance, who has quietly been opposing the resumption of large-scale fighting, tried reaching out via a letter to Rezaei, but the letter reportedly offered no immediate relief from any of the pressures the U.S. is putting on Iran while demanding that any talks include the nuclear issue, which Iran insists be left to be discussed after its minimal terms are met. In other words, it was just Vance delivering Trump’s unacceptable terms in nicer language.

If that wasn’t enough to make the Vance letter a non-starter, the fact that Vance’s earlier efforts were routinely contradicted by Trump soon after empties the vice president of any credibility, even if Tehran believes he is personally sincere in his desire to avoid another round of full-scale fighting.

This leaves only one hope: that Trump, in his eternally mercurial and indecisive way, will back away from what will be a devastating conflict.

One unknown is how much Trump understands about the danger that an Iranian response presents and how certain it is that a devastating response will be coming.

Trump’s threat of a “short intense” attack would seem to imply that he is being led to believe that the United States can overwhelm Iran with devastating force. Of course, that is exactly what he tried in February, and it failed dismally. Outside of insanity, does he have any reason to think that the same action would produce a different result this time?

It could be that what the U.S. and Israel are planning is a multi-phase attack.

American planners may think the weakness of their initial strike was that they targeted Iranian leadership while devastating large areas of civilian and military infrastructure, believing that this would lead to the collapse of the Iranian government. When that failed, there was no plan B.

It may be that the idea this time is to simply start with doing as much damage to Iranian infrastructure as they can, then pinpoint where the response is coming from and take out those missile and drone launchers.

That is consistent with what Senator Chris Murphy is warning about when he says that what the Trump administration is planning is “insane.”

“It will lead to devastating escalation, and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting,” Murphy said. “They’ve been asked by the president to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.”

The result, then, would be one of two things. If the U.S.-Israeli attack is successful, the Gulf states will suffer significant damage, but they can recover and, theoretically, come out with a weakened Iran. But that would mean that what failed in February magically works in November, and there is no evidence to support that expectation.

The other, far more likely scenario is that Iran continues to weather American and Israeli attacks and responds by devastating the Gulf states, further demolishing American positions, and inflicting a far greater degree of damage on Israel than they have in the past.

In that scenario, Gulf oil and civilian infrastructure could be damaged beyond repair. Moreover, given the region’s inherent instability — governed as it is mostly by iron-fisted dictators ruling over states of mixed and often clashing ethnicities drawn up by colonial map-makers — such a scenario could well mean the end of one or more of the Gulf states.

It is that scenario that the Mecca Pact countries are trying to avert.

They are not fools; they knew there was little that Iran could do to change the strategic playing field. Instead, they hoped that sending their top security leaders to Tehran would signal to Washington how concerned they were. They understood that the meeting, by its very existence, would give Iran a diplomatic win and, more importantly, would show that the Mecca Pact is intended to forge a new regional security system that will want to work with Iran, potentially even including it in the group someday.

The Mecca Pact countries, as well as Iran, hope that this message of the region’s strong desire to avert the oncoming catastrophe will convince Trump to back off.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is even more incentivized to see the war roar back to life. With the election process in deadlock, he needs to move swiftly, before the opposition can make the case to the public that they are better suited to defeat Iran than Netanyahu.

He needs the war to make it more difficult to replace him, and he will push hard for it. He has already tried to provoke Iran into an act that would have restarted the major fighting before Trump was ready. He will surely try again before too long.