Proposing a non-aggression pact amid regional hostilities may seem premature. Yet agreements to stop war matter most when distrust is the deepest. The key question is whether regional governments can agree on rules that make their disagreements less destructive.
In a recent lecture at Cambridge University in the UK, Oman’s Foreign Minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, called for a non-aggression pact among all eight Gulf littoral states: the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council along with Iraq and Iran. He described it as the essential prerequisite for an inclusive regional security architecture. As Albusaidi conceded, it would be hard to achieve.
But as another major escalation looms between Iran and the United States, the region urgently needs a diplomatic path forward. Indeed, the ongoing conflict has proved so hard to resolve because the region’s security arrangements have remained underdeveloped, relying for too long on external powers. The way forward then can be an inclusive agreement.
The Omani proposal is anchored in a historic precedent. In November 1976, the foreign ministers of all eight Gulf littoral states met in Muscat to pursue collective security after Britain’s withdrawal from the region. It remains the only time all eight have sat at one table.
The Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran–Iraq war then pushed the region towards defensive arrangements that later hardened into exclusion. For decades, Iran, in particular, was seen as a threat to the rest of the region. Yet, given that the country holds roughly half the Gulf coastline, any security architecture without it is structurally unsound.
It was not until 2019 that the idea of a regional security arrangement was revived. In May of that year, then Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif proposed a regional non-aggression pact with Gulf neighbours during a visit to Baghdad, which Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov endorsed. That September, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani launched the Hormuz Peace Endeavour (HOPE) at the UN General Assembly, envisaging a non-aggression pact among Hormuz states.
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