James R. Webb

Very important meeting today between representatives of the Mecca Pact (KSA, Pakistan, and Turkey) and Iran in Tehran. But an invitation for Tehran to join the pact was not on the agenda. Rather, an emergency session in which the three are requesting Iran's help to end the conflict with Ansarollah, which is threatening to destabilize Saudi Arabia. From the Iranian perspective, KSA has committed the same mistake as Trump: Starting a war that it cannot control or end. Tehran is willing to help, a source in Iran tells me, but Ansarullah's condition for KSA to lift the air blockade on Yemen before any fighting ends is unchanging. (Ansarullah is focused on the air blockade, not the sea blockade) Still, this meeting reflects something even more important, and something we and other restrainers have pointed out for years: As the US pulls back militarily, contrary to Washington's conventional wisdom, regional states are showing greater agency and taking responsibility for the region's security themselves. This does not mean all problems will be resolved or that conflict and chaos will be avoided, but it will be their conflicts, their chaos, and their responsibility, not the US's.