The war with Iran has revived a familiar idea: that stability in the Middle East might be achieved through a Persian Gulf version of the Helsinki process. In May 2026, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb suggested that the Middle East may need a Helsinki-style security framework bringing together rivals, including Iran and Israel. On July 20, Stubb and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier carried the argument further in the Financial Times, calling for a Middle Eastern Helsinki Act on the premise that trust is not required to begin a process because the process itself creates trust. Riyadh reportedly considered a similar proposal in May and recently joined Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates in calling for de-escalation and a return to negotiations with Iran to restore Gulf stability. The appeal is understandable. For nearly five decades, the region has endured missile and drone attacks, maritime crises, proxy warfare, and strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure, and, in recent years, an expanding cycle of retaliation involving Iran, Israel, the United States, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states. The ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict has undone the region’s reputation for stability and progress. An end to the conflict would be no guarantee of peace: the region lacks a standing mechanism to prevent an incident involving Iran from becoming a war. The Gulf needs both deterrence and an ordered process for diplomacy. Neither is sufficient alone.
Years of Gulf engagement with Iran show that trust is not a prerequisite for sustained dialogue. But the current system is ad hoc, and it leaves the smaller Gulf states to deal individually with Tehran where a collective approach would add weight. As a method of risk reduction, the Helsinki analogy holds. As a theory of regional order, it erodes quickly. Helsinki did not replace deterrence; it gave deterrence rules, but only because each side saw value in doing so. The Gulf suffers less from the absence of forums in which to discuss regional issues than from the absence of enforceable reciprocity. The principal obstacle is not mistrust alone. It is the lack of a shared definition of aggression, of a settled balance of power, and of any credible means of verifying Iran’s decisions. Above all, Iran’s use of proxies to project power will inevitably erode any confidence-building process.
An attempt at a Gulf Helsinki process would first need to survive the test of its basic purpose. Iran’s attacks on Gulf states in the current conflict make it impossible for such a process to serve as a vehicle for collective security, for reconciliation, or as a substitute for American power. At most, it can provide rules for managing an adversarial relationship: assigning responsibility, slowing escalation, and imposing a material cost for repeated violations. Gulf governments require deterrence to prevent Iran from converting military pressure into political concessions, and diplomacy to reduce the risk that an incident at sea, a proxy strike, or a misread missile launch will trigger a war none of them intended. The strength of the Gulf’s deterrent architecture will determine whether the result is a durable peace or merely another instrument by which Iran projects power and escapes consequence. The exercise would therefore be less a grand bargain than an effort to build guardrails.
Exploring such a process also means confronting the Gulf states’ strategic predicament. The current conflict has reinforced a long-standing principle: the United States is the region’s indispensable security partner, but Washington alone cannot guarantee absolute security, and its presence exposes the Gulf states to Iranian attack in any confrontation involving Washington, Israel, and Tehran. The tyranny of geography leaves the Gulf states no choice but to maintain channels with Tehran and to look for opportunities to reduce tensions. However, the attacks on Qatar and Oman demonstrate that mediation provides no immunity from Iranian aggression. If the Gulf is to enter a Helsinki-style structure, it must first overcome its political divisions and strengthen its defenses so that dialogue can be conducted from a position of strength. Deterrence need not be completed before diplomacy begins. Gulf defenses, consultation mechanisms, and negotiations should instead advance in parallel. Hotlines and agreed procedures for incidents at sea would establish a measure of predictability, if not trust.
A Difficult Fit
In 2006, Henry Kissinger famously observed that Iran must decide whether it wants to be a nation or a cause. The Islamic Republic claims to be both. The West has never compelled Iran to choose. It has accepted the bifurcation instead, running parallel tracks of dialogue and confrontation that work against each other. A regional system can accommodate different political orders; it cannot function if one participant demands the privileges of sovereignty while denying those same rights to others and preserving a capacity for deniable violence against its neighbors.
The 1975 Helsinki Final Act did not emerge from harmony. Europe remained divided by ideology, nuclear weapons, forward-deployed armies, covert action, and competing political systems. The West feared subversion and political infiltration. Both blocs employed intelligence services and front organizations. Helsinki did not end this competition. It regulated part of it.
Helsinki’s success, however, rested on circumstances that contemporary comparisons tend to overlook. Europe had defined military frontiers, disciplined alliances, mature command structures, and a nuclear balance that made uncontrolled escalation catastrophic for both sides. NATO and the Warsaw Pact disagreed about the legitimacy of the European order, but each knew where the other’s forces stood and which governments were responsible for them. Military coercion remained overwhelmingly attributable to states.
The process also succeeded because its participants could trade interests. Moscow wanted recognition of postwar borders and political stability in Eastern Europe. Western governments sought military transparency, human rights commitments, and a continuing diplomatic forum that offered a meaningful prospect of containing Soviet aggression. The Final Act was broad enough to encompass security, economic, and humanitarian baskets, yet modest enough to begin without legally binding enforcement. The follow-up meetings at Belgrade in 1977, Madrid in 1980, and Vienna in 1986 created records, exposed violations, and gave weaker actors somewhere to raise them. Throughout this period, the American military presence remained Europe’s firm pillar of security.
Cold War Europe was not free of covert action. The Soviet Union and the West alike supported political movements, intelligence operations, and influence campaigns. But the central instruments capable of producing a major war were national armed forces whose deployments could be observed and whose governments could be addressed. Iran’s operations against the Gulf states generally occur below that threshold. Yet the region remains unable to discuss that record openly, as the current conflict illustrates. Iranian-supported Iraqi militias have struck Gulf states from Iraqi territory; the militias deny responsibility, and Baghdad demands proof of attribution even as it warns that its own territory must not be used as a launching ground against its neighbors. Accountability remains politically disputed even where the enabling network is widely understood. No new security structure can survive unless its members confront such aggression directly.
Helsinki worked because the strategic balance already existed and because the principal instruments of war were attributable to governments. Institutions reinforced that equilibrium; they did not manufacture it. The Gulf instead has Iran, a fragile Iraq, six loosely connected Arab monarchies, and a thicket of Iranian-enabled militias. Before it can contemplate Helsinki, the region must answer a question Europe largely did not face: who is accountable when the shooting starts?
The Absence of Collective Identities
The six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council remain divided by threat perceptions, geographies that carry different economic exposure, views on mediation, relationships with Washington, and positions toward Israel. New regional constructs, such as the Saudi defense agreement with Turkey and Pakistan, brings together potent partners, but are unlikely to produce a genuine deterrent to Iran, in the near term. Efforts to create an integrated Gulf missile defense system have repeatedly failed. Iran’s proxies, for their part, are far from a monolith, though they act in general harmony with Tehran’s strategic interests.
A cooperative security process succeeds only when it is clear who has acted, who has violated agreed standards, and who can stop the action. Since the founding of the Islamic Republic, the Revolutionary Guard has projected power in ways designed to make each of those questions difficult to answer. During the current conflict, Tehran has at times claimed that missile forces targeting the Gulf acted without its specific authorization.
This ambiguity has become more valuable to Tehran since the American and Israeli destruction of significant portions of its conventional military. Iran intends its proxies’ actions to be attributable to its power yet independent enough of its control to shield it from direct international response. Attacks in the Red Sea may be engineered by Iran and serve Iranian interests, but the world’s attention falls on the Houthis, and little if any action follows against Tehran. Tehran supplies the funds, specialized weapons, training, intelligence, and political support that make such attacks possible, while preserving uncertainty over individual operational decisions. The strategy allows Iran to pressure its regional and international adversaries, claim credit for specific operations, and preserve room for escalation control and diplomatic denial.
A state-to-state nonaggression pact that leaves Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi militias, Palestinian armed groups, cyber operators, and maritime proxies outside its terms would be compromised from the outset. Yet it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to agree to transparency on command relationships, finance, weapons transfers, training, missile and drone deployments, and operational communications. Tehran is highly likely to reject any verification that penetrates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force.
Responsibility and Sovereignty
The central contradiction in adopting the Helsinki template is that confidence-building measures cannot succeed where responsibility for violations remains entirely negotiable. If a system is to be more than a bureaucratic exercise replicating existing channels, the first test of cooperative security cannot be whether adversaries will gather to deliver speeches. In the absence of transparency, any workable relationship will require Iran to accept responsibility for the principal instruments of its strategic competition. Acceptance of that responsibility would allow a nascent agreement to develop. Even Helsinki evolved: the 1975 accords matured into the 1986 Stockholm Document, which for the first time obliged participants to accept on-site inspection of military activity.
The next difference involves the acceptance of adversary sovereignty. A regional security arrangement cannot endure if one participant defines sovereignty as immunity for itself while denying the same rights to others. The GCC states approach Iran seeking to protect their territories, their choice of international relationships (including the Abraham Accords), freedom of navigation, and unimpeded commerce. Iran routinely insists on international respect for its “rights,” its sovereignty, and noninterference in its internal affairs. Its approach to regional power projection, however, rests on ignoring those same rights in its target states. Neighbors become arenas in which Iranian-enabled militias veto host-country decisions.
Any serious regional security arrangement would require Iran to curtail the Quds Force’s regional role, almost certainly more deeply than its leadership would be prepared to accept. The Quds Force compensates for Iran’s conventional weaknesses by dispersing coercive capability across states and organizations that can threaten Israel, Gulf infrastructure, American forces, and international commerce without requiring Iran’s direct involvement in every war, minimizing Iranian losses at the same time. Quds Force activity therefore becomes the principal metric of the seriousness and survivability of any Gulf version of Helsinki. Iran’s conduct, not its statements, will be the best measure of its intentions. If weapons transfers decline, if proxy attack tempo falls, if maritime harassment stops, if militia financing contracts, and if Tehran permits host governments to restore control over armed groups, then Iran’s approach to the region can be said to have measurably changed. In my experience, such indicators need to hold for several consecutive quarters before they can be read as a change in policy rather than a pause for reconstitution. But diplomacy with Iran is an illusion when it ignores the expeditionary institutions whose conduct determines whether Iranian assurances are worth anything.
Attribution issues compound the problem. Predefined evidentiary thresholds would require sensitive intelligence to be shared among the GCC members and accepted by Iran. A Tehran that officially denies its involvement in the operations in question will resist any provision that erodes the strategic ambiguity it believes has protected it from the consequences of its aggression. To avoid the escalation trap of automatic consequences, those parameters must distinguish administrative penalties, such as economic measures, from military action. The United States has deep experience building multilateral intelligence-sharing relationships and can help the Gulf states set the parameters for consequences should Iran refuse to address their concerns. One solution may be a U.S.-supported Gulf attribution and incident-review cell building on the architecture that already exists between CENTCOM and regional partners.
Dealing With Washington and the Global Economy
The Strait of Hormuz is where the debate over regional order confronts reality. Iran’s efforts to control the strait are driven by the influence such control would confer over the global economy as well as over the economies of its neighbors. Freedom of navigation is therefore the clearest test of whether Iran can accept sovereign equality and international transit as a rule rather than a favor. If Tehran claims the right to decide which neutral vessels may pass, under what conditions, and at what price, it is not participating in cooperative security. It is seeking recognition of a coercive veto over the economies of its neighbors, and of its ability to hold those economies hostage as a lever against the global community. The restoration of commercial confidence in the strait and its connected waters should be understood as the foundation of any regional political process, and the rules by which confidence is maintained should conform to international law. Progress will be measurable in Joint War Committee listings, in war-risk rates, and in the willingness of charter shipping to take Gulf cargoes.
Any security arrangement will impose a demanding test of reciprocity. Iran will insist on recognition and protection of its coastline, constraints on the use of Gulf territory for U.S. offensive action, and deference to its broader regime-security interests before Arab states and outside trading powers receive verifiable commitments to unimpeded navigation. It is almost certain to argue that broad sanctions relief is the price of moderating its claims on the strait.
America’s role in this construct presents its own challenge beyond sanctions. Like the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Iran describes the American military presence as a principal source of insecurity and works actively to undermine it. Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proposed what he called the Hormuz Peace Endeavour at the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2019. Coming eleven days after the attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities, the proposal was quickly dismissed as another effort to exclude American security capabilities from the region. China and Russia have each proposed regional security architectures that likewise appeared designed to minimize U.S. influence without adding to regional security.
Like their Cold War European counterparts, the GCC states regard the American presence as the principal external barrier to Iranian coercion, even as they seek greater consultation over U.S. operations that could expose them to Tehran’s retaliation. Any process premised on American withdrawal would be unacceptable to most Gulf governments; Tehran, for its part, will characterize any tolerance of the American presence as an act of aggression. Reciprocity would also require Gulf states to refrain from supporting violent nonstate action against Iran and Washington to consult host governments before operations likely to expose them to Iranian retaliation.
From Collective Security to Armed Détente
Absent regime change, Iran will remain a major challenge across the water regardless of the outcome of any war or negotiation. All Gulf states have maintained channels with Tehran to reduce risk, exchange messages, and preserve room for mediation. These efforts have not eliminated tensions, but the détente they produced has allowed the region to work through disputes rather than be consumed by them. The limits of bilateral dialogue, however, cannot be ignored: Gulf engagement counted for little when it came to stopping Tehran’s missile and drone strikes or its many acts of direct and indirect aggression over the past decade. The Gulf should retain these channels while accepting what they cannot do.
The appropriate objective at this point, therefore, is not collective security. Instead, it is, first, armed détente: a condition in which rivals can defend themselves but accept rules that reduce the danger of uncontrolled escalation. Armed détente is neither a euphemism for war without end nor a slogan for permanent hostility. Bilateral communication can continue, and collective approaches can be used where necessary. In short, the region must reduce danger before it can build trust.
Deterrence will be difficult to achieve without improved military cooperation among the Gulf Arab states. These countries share a core set of interests: freedom of navigation, protection of civilian infrastructure, noninterference, sovereign equality, and the need for crisis communications. The region also continues to see the United States as an indispensable partner. However, whereas the GCC states have long treated security as American protection combined with independent national diplomacy, events of 2026 show that this formula is no longer sufficient. They must overcome or work around traditional rivalries to build machinery capable of common responses, while accepting that differences in foreign policy and intense commercial competition will continue. Iraq will need to be considered in this design, but domestic political challenges and the influence of Iranian-sponsored militias will limit its role. The Gulf Cooperation Council need not become a supranational alliance, but its members should agree on common definitions of attack, common thresholds for consultation, and minimum obligations to assist a member under coercion. They have committed to the principle before: in the Joint Defense Agreement signed at Manama in December 2000, which treats aggression against one member as aggression against all, and again in the unified military command approved at Kuwait City in December 2013. Neither commitment has been operationalized. Without that collective foundation, Iran will continue to negotiate bilaterally, reward accommodation, and test whether pressure on one state produces silence from the others.
This is not a new prescription. Gulf states should deepen integrated air and missile defense, maritime-domain awareness, intelligence sharing, cyber resilience, infrastructure protection, and mine-countermeasure capacity. Repeated efforts have foundered on differing threat perceptions, national command sensitivities, distrust over intelligence sharing, divergent relations with Israel and Iran, and intra-Gulf competition. The Gulf is unlikely to achieve NATO-like unity, but progress against any of these obstacles may be the most important test of Gulf leaders’ ability to secure their own region. The absence of full unity should not prevent efforts to improve GCC-wide warning and consultation through smaller coalitions for maritime security, mine clearance, infrastructure resilience, and intelligence sharing.
The United States should remain the backbone of this system, even as Gulf governments develop task-specific partnerships with European and Asian states. This would allow the Gulf to benefit from U.S. technology as it builds its own military industries, including domestic production of counterdrone and missile munitions. Even minilateral integration would improve defenses, harmonize threat assessments, and allow the region to negotiate with Tehran from a position of greater collective strength.
The second layer is risk reduction. The Gulf states should seek to establish with Tehran a set of de-escalation arrangements drawing on military hotlines, maritime incident procedures, emergency foreign-ministry consultations, exercise notifications, search-and-rescue cooperation, and technical working groups on desalination and environmental disasters. Participation should require no political preconditions. It would augment, not replace, existing bilateral channels.
The third layer is conditional and sequenced cooperation. Agreements on Hormuz, proxy restraint, and economic access should be developed—consistent with existing sanctions regimes but targeted at shaping Iran’s behavior, to create conditions under which sanctions could be gradually removed. None of this will be easy. Debate is inevitable over how to distinguish Iranian aggression from Iranian-enabled proxy aggression, and over whether particular proxy attacks were coordinated with Tehran in advance.
The governing principle for each side is likely to be no preconditions for communication and no benefits without performance. Violations should trigger predetermined consequences: suspension of relief, financial snapback, interdiction, or proportional defensive action. Economic penalties can be set in advance; military action should remain a political decision by the states directly affected, taken after consultation with their partners.
The scope should remain subregional. A process that attempts from the outset to deal with the region’s nuclear, Arab-Israeli, sanctions, and maritime disputes would give every participant a reason to block progress. The Gulf has already shown an ability to develop such constructs. The Saudi-Turkish defense relationship has improved despite their different positions on Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood.
The difficulty will remain that from the first day of talks Iran will press for recognition of its claimed right to evade Western sanctions, to shape regional questions involving Israel and the United States, and to preserve its proxies. Iran must understand that engagement will not change Gulf positions: neither Israel nor Iran may use Gulf airspace for attacks on the other, and Gulf normalization with Israel, like Gulf relations with Washington, is not Tehran’s decision to make.
This approach also gives Iran a path to better relations. Tehran would not be required to abandon its political identity or to accept American regional primacy as a condition for talks. It would be required to demonstrate, issue by issue, that it can accept reciprocal rules. Tehran would also need economic and financial benefits to see value in the arrangement.
A Long Road Forward
Operational outcomes rather than ceremonies are the measure of any Gulf process. It will become apparent early whether Iran can restrain its own military institutions and affiliated networks; trends in GCC unity will be equally visible. Do commanders receive clearer rules? Do GCC states consult before responding separately? Does Iran restrain weapons transfers to its proxies?
The original Helsinki process took nearly three years to reach the Final Act. It opened at Dipoli, outside Helsinki, on November 22, 1972, where ambassadors spent more than six months settling agenda and procedure before a single substantive session convened, and it survived reversals because its participants treated the forum as a continuing instrument rather than a ceremony. A Gulf process would need to persist through sanctions disputes, proxy incidents, leadership changes, and periods of military tension, remaining durable enough to sustain dialogue and consequences at the same time. The Gulf cannot leap from war to collective security overnight. It can, however, carefully build a new order combining deterrence, communication, attribution, and conditional bargains. That is less dramatic than a new Helsinki Act. But it is also more likely to survive.
