Voices from the Arab Press: The Mecca agreement changes the equation

Mecca agreement changes the equationAsharq al-Awsat, UK, August 15For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.orgThe trilateral Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani defense agreement, more than a year in the making, sends a clear message: threatening the security of the Gulf ultimately means threatening the security of the entire region.The signatories have chosen to act because they believe the region must move toward progress and away from chaos.The agreement is significant in its form, timing, and location. It was signed in Mecca, conveying, as the Gulf saying goes, that the matter has fully matured and that there is no longer room to accept the current reality of destructive wars. Iran must understand that its expansionist project is surrounded by increasingly irrational assumptions.Collectively, the three signatories possess formidable resources and capabilities, with combined GDP estimated at $3.3 trillion. Pakistan overlooks the Arabian Sea, while Turkey’s presence in Somalia gives it access to the Red Sea. All three wield significant economic and international influence.TURKISH PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, next to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after signing a joint defense agreement in Mecca, on August 7, 2026. (credit: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS)Turkey hosted a NATO meeting only weeks ago, while Pakistan played an active mediating role between Iran and the United States because it is accepted by both sides: it is not an enemy of the regime in Tehran, and Turkey’s relationship with Iran is not hostile either. Yet the persistent threat to Gulf states has convinced all three that the risks have become too great. The message to Tehran is that relations and interests with Iran cannot take precedence over Gulf security, and that continued threats to the region are no longer acceptable.Together with the earlier multinational Red Sea defense coalition, signed by 14 states and open to others, the new agreement effectively completes a circle of deterrence. Saudi Arabia has achieved something many international strategists have long advocated: surrounding adversaries with friends. This leaves hostile actors with less room to maneuver, whether in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab or in the Gulf basin.The clearest message is that Iran must seriously reconsider its dream of reshaping the Middle East according to its own preferences, regardless of how Tehran chooses to portray these strategic agreements. Iran’s expansionist ambition is deeply destabilizing. Regional powers have grown weary of the Iranian regime’s chronic confrontations with its surroundings, and enough is enough.Iranian society itself has been exhausted by the effort to market a political product that few accept. Iranians have taken to the streets repeatedly, at enormous personal cost, to say that what is happening is not only irrational but unacceptable. The Iranian opposition, in all its forms inside and outside the country, is growing, while the economy is close to collapse.Long and difficult efforts have been made to reach settlements with Tehran, but agreements are repeatedly signed – even through major powers friendly to Iran – and then violated for one reason or another. Some blame the multiplicity of decision-making centers inside the system; others point to ideological rigidity rooted in a closed sectarian political doctrine that has produced a political mentality out of step with the age.Whatever the cause, the outcome is the same: widespread destruction and chaos across the region, and most recently severe damage to the global economy.Many countries and societies have passed through a revolutionary phase, only to discover that revolutionary conditions cannot last forever and that practical realities eventually force accommodation with the surrounding world. The Soviet Union and China are modern examples, alongside many others in history.Yet after nearly half a century, Iran still refuses to acknowledge that its ideology is fundamentally unacceptable and resembles a mirage: the closer it believes it is getting, the farther away it recedes.Tehran now faces a simple choice: change its behavior, respect its neighbors, and learn to coexist.My final thought is this: we are still waiting for Iran to shake off the dust of the past and live among its neighbors in peace and goodwill.– Mohammed al-Rumaihi Translated by Asaf Zilberfarb. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in these articles are the sole responsibility of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of The Media Line, which assumes no responsibility for their content.Trump: Economically strangling Iran vs falling back into deal trapAn-Nahar, Lebanon, August 16By mid-August, the Trump administration’s strategy toward the war with the Islamic Republic of Iran had entered a new phase of volatility, shaped this time by competing factions seeking to persuade the president of what he should do next.This week, the balance shifted away from the dealmaking camp and toward the national security team, bringing with it a strategy built around maximum economic and military pressure, with diplomacy kept as a secondary tool rather than an escape route from decisive action.The influence of those who last week pushed US President Donald Trump to declare victory and seek a way out of the war through vague understandings with Iran – possibly secret, possibly born of necessity – has declined. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Vice President JD Vance invested heavily in convincing Trump that diplomacy could extract him from the Iranian corner.Tehran helped weaken their case by refusing to offer concessions and effectively insisting that Trump change his behavior rather than the Islamic Republic changing its own. Pete Hegseth has returned to the forefront, representing the military establishment and a national security camp that also includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the national security adviser.The major new development is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s growing weight within this camp. Military readiness is now being paired with an economic strategy designed to move beyond traditional sanctions toward financial isolation and strangulation that may prove more painful to Iran than anything imposed since the war began.The movement of the USS George Washington toward the Middle East to replace the Abraham Lincoln confirms that the Pentagon is not preparing to disengage. Hegseth’s assertion that the US Navy can maintain the blockade of Iran indefinitely puts military power directly in service of economic suffocation.Bessent, meanwhile, is promising unprecedented financial measures. These are not signals of a government managing the end of a war, but of one attempting to change its terms.Bessent has a legislative foundation to build on. The Senate has passed, by a large majority, the sanctions bill associated with Lindsey Graham targeting Russia and Iran, though a battle remains in the House. Its significance extends beyond Iran itself to the countries and entities that provide Tehran with financial and commercial lifelines.China sits at the center of this equation, not only because of its economic relationship with Iran but because pressuring Beijing turns sanctions from a direct siege into a siege of Iran’s escape routes.The broader economic strategy also seeks to target unconventional methods Tehran uses to circumvent the financial system, including cryptocurrencies, networks of intermediaries, companies, and front organizations.The objective is not merely to add names to sanctions lists, but to reduce Iran’s ability to move, access, and use money to finance the state, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its external networks.China will be the hardest test. Excessive American pressure on Beijing carries strategic costs for US-China relations, but excluding China from the equation would hollow out a major part of the strangulation strategy.The message Washington wants to deliver is that continuing to rescue Iran economically is no longer separate from the wider American confrontation with China, particularly after Tehran refused to give Trump what he needed to justify a return to negotiations.More important than the sanctions is the continued naval blockade of Iranian ports. Any breach in it would serve the Revolutionary Guard’s strategy in the Strait of Hormuz. Any American willingness to lift it would be read in Tehran as proof that holding the global economy hostage through the strait succeeded in forcing the American president to submit. Lifting the blockade in exchange for Iranian promises would simply restore to the Islamic Republic the very leverage Washington is trying to take away.Iran is not in a position to dictate terms as a victor, but it has demonstrated a capacity to obstruct and to prevent the United States from turning military superiority into political victory.The irony is that a war that did not begin over the Strait of Hormuz has become suspended over its fate, while the issues that originally drove the confrontation have been postponed.Iran will signal that it is ready to resume negotiations and may try to revive the memorandum of understanding promoted by the Witkoff-Kushner-Vance camp. The problem is that this memorandum increasingly resembles a trap for Trump because it allows Tehran to manage the clock without relinquishing its nuclear program, missiles, drones, or proxies, while presenting a partial reopening of Hormuz as though it were a strategic concession.Iran’s battle is not diplomatic alone. The Revolutionary Guard is fighting in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen to preserve the geography it has built over decades.In Iraq, the Quds Force clings to armed factions as instruments of influence and decision-making, against efforts by the state to restore its authority and rebuild Arab relationships, including with Saudi Arabia.Iranian-aligned Iraqi weapons are not incidental to Tehran’s strategy; they are one of the regime’s own lines of defense.In Lebanon, the struggle is even more direct. The Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are working to prevent the state from monopolizing arms and to derail a process that could consolidate Lebanese sovereignty and lead to negotiations with Israel under American sponsorship and Arab and European support.Keeping Hezbollah underground does not necessarily save it; it may instead push it toward the fate now confronting the Houthis, when a proxy becomes first an instrument of attrition and then fuel for confrontation.Yemen is the most dangerous test. The Houthis possess an Iranian arsenal capable of threatening navigation through Bab al-Mandab, and they demonstrated again this week that they can strike ships. If they succeed in closing or seriously disrupting the strait, the Trump administration will face a decision sanctions cannot answer: will the United States use military force to keep the passage open, or allow Iran to replicate the Hormuz experience in Bab al-Mandab?This is where the illusion that diplomacy alone can manage the confrontation collapses. The record of the Witkoff-Kushner camp in Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine offers little evidence that partial deals produce strategic solutions.Kushner’s expected visit to Israel and Egypt will officially focus on Gaza, but Israel will inevitably want to know which direction Trump intends to take in the next phase of the Iran war.Time is also pressing on the president domestically. Congress’s return after the summer recess will put the war, its cost, and Iran policy back at the center of political debate, while the midterms approach and Republicans need a strategy they can explain to voters. The image of a divided administration and a president oscillating between decisive action and a deal has become a political liability, not merely a foreign-policy problem.For now, the camp that expects no genuine agreement with Iran in the coming months has the upper hand. That is why Bessent’s role now goes beyond the Treasury Department. His task is to give Trump a way out of negotiations that failed to deliver victory, and to transform withdrawal from them into a pressure strategy the president can present as an act of strength rather than an admission of failure.The Gulf states prefer economic strangulation to another destructive military war, understandably so, but they do not control American decisions. Trump alone decides whether to maintain or lift the blockade, expand or reduce pressure, use force or refrain from doing so. He cannot hide indefinitely behind allies’ advice, their objections, or mediators’ promises.Iran is betting on his inconsistency. The dealmaking camp is betting on his attraction to announcing quick victories. The national security camp is betting that this time he can resist both temptations.The test is not how many new sanctions are imposed or how many aircraft carriers are deployed. It is whether Trump can convert economic and military pressure into a coherent strategy, or whether he will once again give the Revolutionary Guard the time it needs to turn negotiations into a tool for exhausting the United States rather than exhausting the Islamic Republic of Iran.– Raghida DerghamA very predictable Israeli positionAl-Bayan, UAE, August 14It was never realistic to expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to approve President Donald Trump’s plan to move into the second phase of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement on the Gaza Strip, especially with crucial Israeli parliamentary elections scheduled for October 27.Last week, Netanyahu formally announced his government’s rejection of the 15-point document submitted by Trump’s Peace Council and declared that Israeli forces would remain in Gaza until the Palestinian factions had been completely disarmed.On July 1, Trump announced what he called a historic agreement providing for the complete disarmament of Palestinian factions in Gaza. He said the plan included the formation of a Palestinian administration to govern the Strip in close coordination with the Peace Council so that Gaza would not again become a base for attacks against Israel, as well as the creation of a Palestinian police force and an agreed implementation mechanism.The most important provision, however, was that Israel would begin a gradual withdrawal from the roughly 60% of Gaza it currently occupies in parallel with the disarmament process. When Trump was asked at the time about Netanyahu’s position, he said he was confident Israel would agree and that he would be disappointed if Netanyahu refused.What stunned Netanyahu’s government was Hamas’s acceptance of the most dangerous provision: complete disarmament. Israel had been betting that this would never happen, especially since Hamas and the other factions had effectively resisted implementing it since accepting Trump’s 20-point plan signed at the international Sharm el-Sheikh conference last October.Anyone who has watched the Israeli government’s behavior since its assault on the Palestinian people began after Oct. 7 had little reason to believe Israel would honor any agreement in Gaza, no matter how many documents it signed. It accepted the Sharm el-Sheikh deal in theory in order to recover the hostages, but failed to implement the other conditions, particularly the ceasefire and the agreed level of humanitarian aid.In practice, Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza since the agreement was signed last October, among some 73,000 killed and 173,000 wounded since Oct. 7, while occupying additional territory.It established the so-called Yellow Line, leaving around 60% of the Strip under Israeli control and subject to systematic demolition and bulldozing. The principal objective has been to create conditions that make Gaza unlivable and thereby facilitate the displacement of Palestinians outside the Strip.From the beginning, Israel calculated that receiving its hostages would mark the end of its obligations under any agreement, while Arab states and Jordan continued pressing Trump to implement the second phase.When the American president announced a deal on that phase, and Hamas accepted it, the central question became obvious: what about Netanyahu’s government?It was hardly logical to announce Trump’s latest plan without first securing Israeli approval. Unfortunately for Trump, the Palestinians, and the region, the announcement came only weeks before Israel’s parliamentary election campaign began.Netanyahu’s calculation is straightforward: if he implements Trump’s agreement and begins withdrawing gradually from Gaza, the Israeli opposition will use it against him, while his far-right partners may leave the governing coalition. That would reduce the chances of the Likud and its allies winning, particularly as most current polls suggest that the governing bloc will lose its majority. Netanyahu therefore declared that Israel’s interest requires rejecting the agreement despite the fact that its sponsor is Trump, perhaps Israel’s closest friend ever to occupy the White House.The core dispute is over the timing of withdrawal: should it take place gradually and simultaneously with Hamas’s disarmament, as Trump’s plan states, or only after the complete dismantling of Hamas’s military infrastructure and destruction of every weapon, including handguns, as Israel demands?In practical terms, Netanyahu’s new condition means postponing implementation until after the election. If he loses, he will tell Israelis that he rejected Trump’s plan and leave it hanging over whoever succeeds him. If he wins, he can implement only minor parts, while maneuvering to preserve the existing reality in Gaza.Israel’s rejection, therefore, was not surprising. Most likely, the strongest response from the American president will be to express his disappointment.– Emad El-Din HusseinIran’s continuing war on LebanonAl Rai, Kuwait, August 16Lebanon remains trapped in the same vicious cycle, suffering from a cancer called Hezbollah’s weapons – an Iranian arsenal whose sole purpose is to turn the country into a satellite orbiting the Islamic Republic.The sixth anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion made this clear once again, recalling how Hezbollah, in coordination with others, protected the storage of ammonium nitrate.The anniversary also revealed that Lebanon is still struggling against an internal enemy embodied by Hezbollah’s weapons, which have been used inside and outside the country, particularly in Syria, long before the so-called “support war for Gaza” that produced a Shi’ite catastrophe that was in reality a national Lebanese catastrophe.The latest remarks by Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem confirm this. He accused the Lebanese authorities of having “supported Israel rather than Lebanon” and said President Joseph Aoun had “become a partisan and divisive figure,” supposedly incompatible with his role.These remarks are simply another front in Iran’s continuing war against the Lebanese state and all its institutions. Fortunately, brazenness cannot conceal defeat, and this defeat is Lebanon’s because Hezbollah caused it.As a result of the disaster created by Hezbollah – in other words, by Iran – Lebanon is now forced to fight on two fronts under conditions no country should envy: one against Iran’s war on the Lebanese state, and another to end the Israeli occupation so that displaced Lebanese can return to their towns and villages.Difficult negotiations with Israel have taken place with the aim of ending that occupation. Everything Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic behind it are doing only strengthens Israel’s position. How can a Lebanese negotiator answer when Israel points out that Hezbollah’s weapons were used to threaten residents of Galilee communities? How can Lebanon respond when Israel presents documented information showing that Iran built military infrastructure across the country?This is why Prime Minister Nawaf Salam was right to respond to Qassem with unusual clarity, honesty, and courage, without naming him: those who accuse the political authorities of helping Israel rather than defending Lebanese sovereignty, and then call for dialogue and unity as if the Lebanese had no memory, should remember that the greatest assistance Israel received came from those who unilaterally dragged Lebanon into futile “support wars,” gave Israel the pretexts to violate the country, destroy its cities and villages, kill its people, and displace hundreds of thousands.Those who monopolized the decision of war, continue trying to confiscate the state’s authority and tie Lebanon to external calculations and axes, while ignoring the interests of their own community and the Lebanese people as a whole, are in no position to distribute certificates of patriotism, let alone sovereignty.There can be no Lebanese sovereignty without one independent decision in a state, with one army exercising authority over its entire territory through its own institutions.Dialogue and unity require the courage to acknowledge bitter truths and accept responsibility for reckless choices whose enormous price the Lebanese continue to pay.Everything Qassem has said can be answered in this way. He tells the Lebanese authorities to concern themselves with national sovereignty, strengthening the army, ending the Israeli occupation, reconstruction, and investigating the port explosion.He claims direct negotiations have brought Lebanon only humiliation, disappointment, and repeated concessions, and argues that every attack on Lebanon occurred under American supervision and approval.He calls on the state to stop making free concessions, open dialogue with “the resistance,” repair the domestic situation, and focus on sovereignty.Nor does he forget to praise Iran, claiming it ensured Lebanon was the first item in its memorandum with the United States and demanded an end to Israeli attacks and withdrawal. Qassem ultimately claims that the memorandum process will achieve Israel’s withdrawal, and that nothing would have been accomplished without the resistance’s steadfastness.He also invokes internal unity, praising the alliance between Hezbollah and Amal as an impenetrable barrier against Israeli-American aggression and “small players,” and portrays the two as united in people, resistance, future, and life.The least that can be said of this argument is that it assumes the Lebanese have no memory, including no memory of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and his companions, or of figures from Samir Kassir to Lokman Slim. It also assumes they have forgotten who opened the southern front without even minimal respect for Lebanese sovereignty.It is increasingly clear that Hezbollah’s secretary-general regards the Lebanese as a flock incapable of critically reassessing his positions.From Iran’s perspective, the Lebanese state is expected to bear the consequences of everything Hezbollah has inflicted on the country, including the return of Israeli occupation.There is no explanation for Qassem’s remarks except contempt for the intelligence of the Lebanese people on the one hand and total Iranian control of Hezbollah on the other.The question remains: how can Lebanon escape this crisis? Must it wait for major change in Iran? The answer is simple. Lebanon can begin to free itself if it understands that true humiliation lies in using occupation as a justification for maintaining illegal weapons, and in refusing to acknowledge that occupation cannot be ended without direct negotiations with the occupying power.There is a price that must be paid. Those who refuse to pay it seek instead to trade endlessly in the south and its people while waiting for judgment day in the Islamic Republic – the day Iran finally becomes a normal state that no longer uses brazenness to justify defeat.– Kheirallah KheirallahTranslated by Asaf Zilberfarb. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in these articles are the sole responsibility of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of The Media Line, which assumes no responsibility for their content.