On Monday, while Donald Trump was publicly pondering whether to “make a deal” with Iran or “finish them off,” something happened in Tehran that should have set off alarms in every office of the State Department, assuming anyone is still left there to hear them.

Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of the Crown Prince, flew to Tehran. With him came Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin. They sat down with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and senior security official Rezaei, who hosted the talks, for about two hours. The agenda: the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the Strait of Hormuz, the American blockade of Iran’s ports and a regional non-aggression framework.

Read that list again. Those are the four biggest security problems in the Persian Gulf. The countries that actually live there just met to discuss them. The United States, which has two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group and a blockade in the neighborhood, was not in the room. Nobody seems to have missed it.

The pact that was supposed to protect Riyadh from Iran

Here is the delicious part. The three visitors are the signatories of the Makkah Agreement, the mutual-defense treaty that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed on August 7. Article 2 says an attack on one is an attack on all. It was sold, at least in Washington’s imagination, as a Sunni shield for the Kingdom against Iran and its friends in Yemen.

Eleven weeks later, the entire shield showed up in Tehran to talk about cooperation. Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan says Tehran will “study” the agreement, “and if it is good, we will support it.” The treaty conveniently includes an accession clause allowing new members to join by consensus. My sources tell me the three formally invited Iran to join once the U.S.-Israeli war ends, and that Tehran accepted on that basis. No official readout confirms that yet. But the official readouts did agree to keep talking “among the four,” and Iran has a phrase for what it wants: “endogenous security.” Translation: security for the Gulf, by the Gulf, without the 5th Fleet.

Imagine NATO’s founding members inviting the Soviet Union to join in 1952, and you have some idea how badly this has gone for American strategy.

Nobody wants to fight the Houthis

The pact’s first test was supposed to be Ansar Allah, which has spent October pounding Saudi airports, the Riyadh area and the East-West Pipeline. Riyadh’s new allies have answered the call with remarkable clarity. Pakistan’s Foreign Office said on October 9 that its forces in the Kingdom will not cross into Yemen. Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said a day earlier that Turkey sends no troops to attack another country. They will defend Saudi soil. They will not go hunting in Saada. The American Embassy in Riyadh, meanwhile, is on ordered departure.

So what is a crown prince to do when his allies won’t fight and his airports keep getting hit? According to my sources, Field Marshal Munir told Prince Khalid that Riyadh needed to reach an accommodation with Ansar Allah, and reportedlyPrince Khalid arrived in Tehran with a $1 billion down payment to help buy one. An anonymous report in the Israeli paper Israel Hayom says the same, including that the money flew in on the prince’s plane. Riyadh hasn’t confirmed it, and officially insists on the return of seized territory first. I personally doubt this story because it is a piddling amount that the Houthis will view as a meaningless gesture. But consider the picture if it is true: the Saudis would be paying Iran to get the Houthis to stop shooting at them. Washington spent a decade and billions of dollars in arms sales so that Saudi Arabia would not need Tehran’s help. That worked out well.

Araghchi had offered on October 11 to broker Saudi-Houthi talks. Two weeks later the Saudi defense minister was in his capital. Iran has gained more leverage in a month of diplomacy than in a year of American “maximum pressure.”

Pakistan, the indispensable middleman

The architect of Monday’s meeting was Pakistan, which requested it during Munir’s October 20 visit to Tehran. Islamabad has pulled off something remarkable. It has a ratified defense treaty with Riyadh, a channel to Tehran that both capitals now publicly endorse, and a seat in the mediation that Washington depends on, all while politely declining to fight anyone. It even carried Iran’s terms to Trump: i.e., release a portion of Iran’s frozen assets and lift the blockade. Trump reportedly said no. Tehran publicly denies ever offering Hormuz in exchange for an end to the blockade, while its ambassador says it did. That is how you know serious bargaining has started.

Pakistan used to be described in Washington as a country forced to choose between Riyadh and Tehran. Instead it has built a structure in which it doesn’t have to choose at all. That is called statecraft. Trump and Rubio should look into it.

Meanwhile, back at the war room

While the region is busy building a a new security architecture, Washington is building a target list. CNN reports that American forces can strike Iran “within 96 hours” of an order, hitting energy, military and nuclear targets, most likely after the November 3 midterms. A third carrier group is on the way. Embassies in Amman, Beirut, Doha and Abu Dhabi have been thinned out, which tells you what the planners expect Iran’s answer to look like.

In Israel, Netanyahu has ordered his security services to topple the regime in Tehran, and he is reportedly pressing for a major air campaign against Iran’s missile forces. Even his own generals aren’t sure. Israeli Channel 12 reports that IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir resisted an instruction from the political leadership and demanded signed legal authorization before acting. Israelis went to the polls today with neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor his rivals’ projected to reach a majority. Trump endorsed him again with the words “finish the job that we started.” Nobody has explained which job that is, or how it ends.

And then there’s the blockade, now past its 100th day. CENTCOM boasts that it has kept $25 billion of Iranian exports off the market. It has also kept them off the market at a time when the world is short of oil and diesel and Brent sits above $100. Congratulations all around.

The architecture without the architect

For seventy years, the security of the Persian Gulf has been an American product. The United States set the rules, sold the weapons, parked the carriers and decided who the enemy was. The bargain was simple: the Gulf monarchies paid, and Washington protected them.

This year the protection failed. Saudi airports, pipelines and refineries were hit. Qatar’s LNG trains burned. The UAE drained its fuel reserves at Fujairah. The Gulf states discovered that American protection meant a front-row seat to someone else’s war. So they are doing what any sensible customer does when the security company stops showing up: they are talking to the burglars, the neighbors and each other.

None of this is finished. The Tehran meeting produced no treaty text, and Turkey’s parliament still has to ratify the pact. Riyadh and Tehran have centuries of mistrust between them, and one bad Houthi missile could blow the whole thing up. But the direction is unmistakable. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran have started drawing up a regional security order in which the United States is not the architect, not the landlord and not even on the guest list.

Washington, of course, has a response ready. It will wait until after the midterms, and then it will bomb Iran. That should bring everyone back to the American way of doing things. I’m sure of it.

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Chatted today with Moby and Jelena about Iran’s meeting with the Mecca Pact countries:

Discussed my latest article with Jim Webb:

Had an early conversation with Mario… the polls were still open in Israel:

Sulaiman and I spent most of our time speculating about the election outcome in Israel:

Nima also was focused on the Israeli election:

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