Saudi Arabia has proposed a regional non-aggression pact between Middle Eastern states and Iran, modelled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords, according to diplomats cited by the Financial Times — an initiative that would establish Gulf security guarantees independent of Washington and potentially without Israel.
The proposal comes as US-Iran ceasefire talks remain narrowly focused on the Strait of Hormuz, leaving unresolved Iran’s missile program, drone capabilities, and support for armed proxy groups — the threats that matter most to Gulf states.
“Iran is not going anywhere and this is why the Saudis are pushing it,” an Arab diplomat told the FT.
The 1975 Accords — signed by the US, the Soviet Union, Canada, and most European states — secured the common acceptance of post-World War II borders and established commitments to human rights and economic cooperation. Their significance lay less in binding legal force than in the legitimacy they conferred on a new security architecture.
Saudi Arabia is seeking an analogous framework for the Middle East, providing Iran with a formal guarantee it will not be attacked again in exchange for mutual commitments on non-aggression and proxy restraint.
European capitals and EU institutions support the proposal, the FT reported, with two Western diplomats calling it “the best way to avoid future conflict” — reflecting a calculation that containing Iran without a formal security architecture is unstable and that Tehran needs a political incentive to accept constraints on its military capabilities.
The UAE has moved substantially closer to Israel since the US-Israeli campaign began, and two diplomats told the FT there are doubts about whether Abu Dhabi would join. Without the UAE, the pact’s geographic coherence is compromised. Israel is unlikely to be included in any framework granting Tehran formal security guarantees.
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An Arab diplomat acknowledged that “in the current climate you are not going to be able to get Iran and Israel” in the same pact, adding that without Israel, “it could be counter-productive because after Iran, they are seen as the biggest source of conflict.”
The FT does not indicate whether the Trump administration was consulted or has expressed a view — and the initiative’s implied premise, that Gulf post-war security can be designed separately from the US-Iran bilateral track, is a departure from the framework Washington has pursued.
The proposal is a strategic pivot for Riyadh. For years, Saudi Arabia and Washington were pursuing a landmark normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel — a deal that would have anchored Gulf security firmly within a US-brokered framework.
The Iran war ended that track. By autumn 2025, Saudi state media had moved from demanding a “credible pathway” toward Palestinian statehood to insisting on full sovereignty before any talks — a position the Middle East Institute described as normalization “steadily receding.”
MBS now appears to be pursuing a regional architecture that does not depend on Israeli participation or US leadership, and treats Iran as a permanent regional actor to be managed rather than defeated.
In March 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations under Chinese mediation — widely described as a landmark in China’s advancing engagement in the Middle East and the clearest signal that Beijing was emerging as a rival diplomatic force to Washington in the region.
The non-aggression pact proposal is arguably its continuation, extended from bilateral rapprochement to a multilateral security framework — evidence that Riyadh sees diplomacy with Tehran as a long-term necessity regardless of what the current conflict produces.
The timing is pointed, with Trump currently in Beijing for his summit with Xi Jinping, engaged in bilateral tracks on Iran, trade, and rare earth supply. Saudi Arabia floating a regional security initiative while Washington’s attention is elsewhere — and while the US is simultaneously negotiating with Iran, China, and the Gulf states on separate tracks — signals that Riyadh is not waiting for those negotiations to conclude before designing the post-war order it wants.
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