Abdul Basit Alvi
The meeting in Tehran on the twenty-sixth of October did not happen because of a sudden change of heart among the parties involved. It happened because one man had spent weeks, and arguably months, preparing the ground for it. That man was Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff. He had traveled to Tehran before the delegation arrived. He had sat with Iranian leaders and listened to their grievances. He had asked questions and taken notes and made mental maps of where the openings might be. And at some point during those conversations, he put a proposal on the table. The proposal was simple. Why not bring the members of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement together with Iran for a direct meeting? Why not create a space where the countries of the region could talk to each other without the shadow of external powers hanging over every word? The Iranians listened. They did not reject the idea outright. And eventually they said yes.
This is not speculation. It is a matter of public record. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters that the proposal for the four-party meeting came from Field Marshal Asim Munir during his earlier visit to Tehran, and that Iranian authorities accepted the initiative . That detail carries enormous weight. It means the meeting was not a Saudi idea. It was not a Turkish idea. It was not something cooked up in Washington or imposed by circumstance. It was a Pakistani idea, born in the mind of a military leader who had decided that the region’s problems could not be solved by military means alone. And it was accepted by a country that has been viewing the Makkah alliance with deep suspicion.
To understand why this matters, you have to understand what the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement actually is. The pact was signed on the seventh of August 2026 by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey . Its core clause is blunt and unambiguous. An armed attack on any one member is treated as an attack on all three . It is a collective security arrangement in the tradition of NATO’s Article 5. It created a secretariat. It appointed a retired Pakistani lieutenant general as its first secretary-general. And it was activated in early October, when the alliance’s political and defense committee met in Riyadh and decided to deploy forces to Saudi Arabia in response to escalating Houthi attacks . The alliance was not a paper tiger. It had teeth. And that gave the delegation that arrived in Tehran a certain weight. They were not supplicants. They were representatives of a functioning security bloc with real military muscle behind it.
The delegation itself was composed of figures who do not travel together often and who do not sit in the same room with Iranian officials as a matter of routine. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman represented the kingdom. He is a brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a senior royal with direct access to the highest levels of Saudi decision-making, and a figure whose presence in Tehran was itself a statement . Saudi officials had avoided the Iranian capital for years. The rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran had shaped the region’s politics for decades. For Khalid bin Salman to sit down with Iranian security officials was a signal that something had shifted, that the kingdom was willing to explore whether dialogue could produce something that confrontation had not.
Turkey sent Ibrahim Kalin, the director of its National Intelligence Organization . Kalin is not a conventional spy chief. He is an intellectual, a man who has written books on philosophy and politics, a close advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has spent years shaping Ankara’s foreign policy. His presence signaled that Turkey was taking the meeting seriously at the highest levels. Turkey sees itself as a bridge between the Arab world, Iran, and South Asia. Kalin’s participation reinforced that role. It told the Iranians that Ankara was not there to deliver ultimatums. It told the Saudis that Turkey was committed to the alliance but also committed to finding a way out of the spiral of escalation.
Pakistan sent Field Marshal Asim Munir himself, accompanied by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi . Asim Munir was the architect of the meeting. He was the one who had proposed it. He was the one who had persuaded the parties to come. His presence in the room was a reminder that Pakistan had staked its credibility on this initiative. If the meeting failed, if it collapsed into recriminations or produced nothing of substance, it would be Munir’s reputation that suffered. He had put himself on the line. He had made himself vulnerable in a way that military leaders rarely do. And that vulnerability was itself a kind of currency. It told the Iranians that Pakistan was serious. It told the Saudis and the Turks that Pakistan was not playing games.
The host on the Iranian side was Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council . Rezaei is a figure who carries the weight of Iran’s revolutionary history. He commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran-Iraq war, a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of people and shaped the Islamic Republic’s view of the world. He has run for president multiple times and lost every time. He holds a doctorate in economics. He is known for speaking bluntly, for not softening his words for diplomatic convenience. When Rezaei said after the meeting that the discussions had been “very good” and that a “new atmosphere” was forming in the region, those words mattered precisely because they came from a man who does not usually speak in those terms . Rezaei is not a diplomat by training or temperament. He is a security man. And security men do not waste words on pleasantries unless they mean them.
The formal statement released after the meeting was deliberately modest. It said the participants had agreed to continue dialogue to strengthen cooperation among the four countries, including for peace and security in the region . That was the official language. It was careful and calibrated and designed not to frighten anyone. But Rezaei went further in his remarks to Iranian state television. He said the four countries had agreed that security in West Asia must be guaranteed by the countries of the region themselves, and that all forms of foreign intervention must be prevented . That language did not appear in the joint statement. The participants were not ready to put it in writing. But the fact that Rezaei said it publicly, and that no delegation contradicted him, tells us something about the direction of the conversation. It tells us that the parties were exploring a framework in which the region takes ownership of its own security rather than relying on external powers to manage its conflicts.
President Masoud Pezeshkian also met with the delegations, and his words added another layer of significance. He said Iran was ready, with firm conviction and serious determination, to take steps toward deepening regional cooperation, resolving differences, and drawing on the shared capabilities of Islamic countries . He said Tehran supported any understanding that contributed to strengthening regional unity, cohesion, security, and development . He said Muslim countries could use their collective capabilities to offer the world a model of justice and development . These are not the words of a leader preparing for war. They are the words of a leader who sees an opening and wants to explore it. Pezeshkian is a different kind of Iranian leader than his predecessors. He speaks in the language of unity and development rather than confrontation and resistance. His statement was carefully crafted to signal openness without committing Iran to anything specific. But the signal was clear enough.
The context in which this meeting took place was not calm. It was, in fact, dangerously volatile. Western officials were signaling that the United States was prepared to launch another large-scale strike on Iran after the American midterm elections . The Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia had intensified. The war in Yemen had become a grinding conflict that threatened to draw in outside powers. And the broader Middle East was still recovering from the US-Israeli war against Iran earlier in the year, a conflict that had killed Iran’s supreme leader and reshaped the balance of power across the region. In this environment, the Tehran meeting functioned as a small but important brake on the slide toward a larger confrontation. It created a channel. It allowed the parties to look each other in the eye and hear each other’s concerns. That is not a small thing when the alternative is miscalculation and escalation.
The meeting did not produce a ceasefire. It did not produce a treaty. It did not produce a dramatic breakthrough that could be packaged for television cameras. What it produced was a commitment to keep talking. What it produced was a public acknowledgment from all four countries that dialogue was preferable to escalation. And what it produced was something less tangible but perhaps more important. It produced a sense that the countries of the region could take ownership of their own security, that they did not have to wait for Washington or Moscow or Beijing to tell them what to do. That sense is fragile. It can be destroyed by a single missile or a single miscalculation. But it exists now in a way that it did not exist before.
For Field Marshal Asim Munir, this was the culmination of months of patient work. He is not a politician. He does not give speeches about his vision for the region. He works through quiet conversations, through visits that are announced only after they have happened, through proposals that are designed to be acceptable to all sides. The Iranian Foreign Ministry’s confirmation that the meeting was his idea is a rare piece of public credit for a military leader who generally avoids the spotlight . But it is credit that is earned. Asim Munir has spent months shuttling between capitals, talking to the Americans, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Turks. He has used Pakistan’s unique position as a country that has relationships with all of these actors to create space for dialogue. Pakistan is not a neutral party in the strict sense. It has a defense pact with Saudi Arabia. It has deep ties to Turkey. It shares a long border with Iran. But it is precisely this web of relationships that makes it useful as a convener. Asim Munir has turned Pakistan’s connections into a diplomatic asset.
The Pakistani nation has noticed. The public reaction to the Tehran meeting has been overwhelmingly positive. Pakistanis have grown weary of being told that their country is isolated, that it is a source of instability rather than a solver of problems. The sight of their army chief sitting down with the Saudi defense minister, the Turkish intelligence chief, and the Iranian security leadership in a single room, discussing peace rather than war, is a source of genuine pride. It suggests that Pakistan can play a constructive role in the world, that its military is not just a fighting force but a diplomatic instrument. That perception matters. It shapes how Pakistan is seen abroad and how Pakistanis see themselves.
The road ahead is not easy. The agreement to continue talks is a beginning, not an end. Saudi Arabia still has deep concerns about Iranian support for groups that threaten its security. Iran still has deep concerns about Saudi Arabia’s ties to the United States and its willingness to host American military assets. Turkey has its own complex agenda. Pakistan must balance its defense commitments to Saudi Arabia with its desire to maintain good relations with Iran. The Makkah alliance’s activation in October, which involved deploying forces to Saudi Arabia, was a signal of resolve. The Tehran meeting was a signal of openness. Holding both of those signals together is the challenge. It requires a kind of diplomacy that is patient, quiet, and persistent. It requires leaders who are willing to take risks for peace and absorb criticism from those who prefer confrontation.
The Muslim world has no shortage of challenges. It has no shortage of divisions. It has no shortage of external actors eager to exploit those divisions for their own purposes. But it also has no shortage of people who want peace, who want development, who want a future where their children can grow up without the shadow of war. The Tehran meeting was a reflection of that desire. It was a statement that the countries of the region are not condemned to perpetual conflict. They have agency. They have choices. And with the right leadership, they can choose a different path. Field Marshal Asim Munir has shown what that leadership looks like. He has shown that a soldier can be a peacemaker. He has shown that Pakistan can be a bridge rather than a barrier. The question now is whether others will follow his example. The question now is whether the opening created in Tehran will be widened or allowed to close. The answer to that question depends on the courage and persistence of the people who made the meeting happen. And it depends on whether the words spoken in Tehran are followed by actions that match them.
