At dinner on the 44th floor of the Waldorf Astoria in Doha this week, no missiles crossed the skyline. No warning alerts interrupted the conversation. Traffic moved smoothly below, and the city lights glittered.
This is what normal now looks like in Doha, Qatar. The city functions despite reduced energy exports, Iranian attacks and a war changing how Gulf governments defend themselves.
More than five months into the conflict, the military tempo has slowed. The central dispute now is over who sets the rules in the Gulf.
On Friday, a US official said Iran and Oman could soon reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Washington said it would lift its blockade of Iranian ports once commercial shipping resumed without impediments. Less than a day later, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rejected Washington’s account. Reopening Hormuz, its spokesman said, depends on the United States accepting Iran’s conditions, not on an agreement with Oman.
Oman has narrowed the dispute to a route through Hormuz. It has not settled who controls the territorial waters.
Washington wants commercial vessels to move through an international waterway without Iranian permission or tolls. Tehran wants a settlement that preserves the leverage it gained by restricting passage. Negotiators have agreed on coordinates for a route through Hormuz, but Iran still seeks to control incoming traffic and impose transit fees, both of which Washington rejects.
The deal also has to work for the companies that move the ships. Owners need a guarantee that their vessels will not be attacked, detained or stranded in territorial waters. Insurers have to provide coverage. Iran’s demand for transit payments creates another problem: US persons and US-owned or controlled companies cannot pay Iran for safe passage without running afoul of US sanctions.
Some war-risk policies can also terminate coverage when vessels pay certain Hormuz transit charges. If a vessel refuses to pay Tehran, it may be at risk. If it pays, its owner may face problems with its insurer or Washington.
Diplomats can reopen Hormuz on paper. Captains have to reopen it at sea.
Iran cannot match the United States militarily, but it has learned to shift the costs of conflict onto others. A restriction in Hormuz affects an insurance contract in London, a purchase of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Qatar, an energy bill in Asia and eventually a political calculation in Washington.
The same war that let Iran turn a shipping lane into a weapon is pushing Saudi Arabia to seek security alliances in addition to its defence agreements with Washington.
By late March, Saudi data showed that Iran had launched more than 700 missiles and drones toward the kingdom. Saudi defences intercepted most, but Riyadh has spent months protecting cities, military facilities and energy infrastructure.
Iran can also attack Saudi Arabia through armed proxies. From Yemen, the Houthis have renewed missile, drone and ground attacks and this week injured 11 civilians in the Najran region. To the north, Iran-aligned Iraqi militias threatened retaliation as Baghdad worked to keep its territory from becoming another launch point against its neighbours.
On Friday, Riyadh signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Turkiye and Pakistan. An armed attack against one of the three will be considered an attack against all. The pact links Saudi Arabia to NATO’s second-largest military and a nuclear-armed Pakistan with long-standing military ties to the kingdom.
A regional official familiar with the security discussions told me that Iran would likely test the pact through a proxy. The Houthis give Tehran deniability from Yemen. Several Iran-aligned Iraqi militias could offer another route. Either could let Iran discover how far it can go while forcing Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad to decide when an attack on one becomes a fight for all three.
The agreement does not spell out what each country must do after an attack, and Pakistan and Turkiye maintain their own relationships with Iran. Tehran has spent five months choosing where and how to expand the conflict. Riyadh has now made that choice more complicated.
The pact also raises questions about how much protection Washington can provide in a long war. Gulf governments have watched the United States use large quantities of air and missile defence weapons while Iran attacked military bases, energy facilities and cities. Riyadh is not distancing itself from Washington. It is making sure Washington is no longer its only option.
Egypt is already close to the new group.
Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Pakistan and Egypt have spent months meeting as a four-country group. In June, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi received the other three countries’ foreign ministers in Cairo and urged them to make those meetings a permanent part of regional security cooperation.
If Cairo joins the Mecca agreement, three countries become four and the pact gains far more weight across the region.
Doha has strong relationships with Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Iran has attacked Qatar and disrupted its energy exports through Hormuz. But Qatar has built much of its influence by talking to governments that will not talk to each other. Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has remained involved with US President Donald Trump in efforts to de-escalate the Iran conflict even as Qatar has paid a high price for it.
Joining the pact could give Qatar greater security guarantees, but it would also make that diplomatic role harder.
In Doha, restaurants are crowded again. Traffic flows smoothly through the city. Dinners high above the Gulf are no longer interrupted by missile alerts.
The next peace in the Gulf will not look like the one that preceded this war. It will depend on who sets the rules in Hormuz, who answers the next proxy attack, and who can still get Tehran and Washington talking before another missile crosses the skyline.
The Arabic version of this article was first published by Al Jazeera Arabic.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
