Iran War: Western Media Ignores Mecca-Alliance-Sought Regional Security Meeting

[The final version of today’s Iran war post should be up by 7:45 AM EDT, so please return or refresh his page then]

Today’s Iran war update is comparatively short due to the current low level of kinetic action as the Israel elections start and the US midterms are now a week away But the press is also following the fallout (from the big money vantage) of the Lula win in Brazil, European protests, and the Anthropic IPO and other “AI funding versus the clock” stories, and skipping over not only Iran/Saudi-Ansar Allah conflict developments, but also the sharp escalation of Israel ethnic cleansing on the West Back, particularly in Hebron.

We’ll briefly turn to the West Bank horrors before turning to a potentially fundamental shift in Middle East politics, that of key states closely or at least somewhat allied with the US exploring a regional security alliance with Iran. We said from the very outset of the Iran war that one way for the conflict to end would be for Gulf States to pull away from the US and come to a modus vivendi with Iran. The abject failure of the US to defend the petrostates and the punishment they suffered as a result of hosting US forces and allowing use of their airspace appears finally to have sunk in, at least to a degree with Saudi Arabia.

The flip side is these kingdoms are still very much US dependencies. The UAE dollar and the Saudi riyal are both pegged to the US dollar. If you think the Europeans, who were dominant global players not that long ago, are having trouble divorcing themselves from the US from a military and economic perspective, imaging how much harder it is for these fragile Middle East states. So as much as the opening meeting between Mecca Alliance members and Tehran is promising, perhaps even seminal, it seems unlikely to get very far unless the US is willing to use it as cover for an exit. As we will see below, Robert Barnes’ take on potential US election outcomes makes that possibility less remote than it might seem.

As for the other Mecca Alliance members Pakistan and Turkiye…..the very well-connected Trita Parsi recounted on a fresh Mario Nawfal talk that Iran does not trust Pakistan as a mediator, that it has come to see Islamabad as a message-carrier for/advocate of the US. And as for Turkiye, Erdogan’s middle name is double-dealing. One of many many examples that no less that DW recounted: Turkey lets Azov fighters go back to Ukraine, breaking deal with Russia.

But Israel has agency and will continue on its murderous, self-destructive aggression until it runs out of steam. We’ll skip over pre-election speculation since the results will come in in relatively short order, and we can then look at what comes next. For those who care to follow it closely, Aljzaeera has turned its live feed entirely over to the Israel election.

To the West Bank. From Aljazeera in UN panel accuses Israel of ‘extermination’ in West Bank, genocide in Gaza:

A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, including extermination, torture and rape, while also continuing “to commit genocide in Gaza” despite a ceasefire brokered by the United States.

The report, published on Monday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, examined killings and physical and mental harm inflicted by state actors from October 7, 2023, through September of this year.

Note this report does not include the pre-election surge in violence in the West Bank, widely seen as intended to burnish Netanyahu’s Amalek bona-fides. The pretext was two IDF soldier deaths in the West Bank, see Associated Press on October 24 in Israeli military says 2 soldiers were killed in West Bank attack that also left 2 gunmen dead for more on the backstory.

Back to the Aljazeera summary:

The commission found that the situation in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, had “deteriorated gravely” since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

It said Israeli military operations, reinforced by sustained violence by settlers, amounted to a “widespread and systematic attack” on civilians, and that Israeli authorities “intended to collectively punish” residents of the occupied West Bank for the Hamas-led attack on Israel.

“The Israeli authorities and forces have committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence in the West Bank, as well as persecution based on intersecting discriminatory grounds, with nationality, race and ethnicity at its core,” the report said.

From Babak Vahdad on Twitter

Interestingly, remarks by Ali Bagheri Kani, Deputy for Foreign Policy and International Security at Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretariat, suggest that yesterday’s quadrilateral meeting in Tehran was not intended as a one-off event.

– According to Bagheri, there was no discussion about expanding the format to include other countries. Instead, the emphasis was on continuing consultations among Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey within the same framework.

– He also revealed that the participants discussed the timing and location of future meetings, although no final decision was reached. Mohsen Rezaei reportedly tasked Bagheri himself with following up on preparations for further consultations in the near future.

– As I wrote yesterday, this suggests that the quadrilateral format may be emerging as a more regular diplomatic channel, rather than simply a one-time initiative aimed at addressing the current Iran-US crisis.

On the assault on Hebron:

🇮🇱🇵🇸 Terrible scenes of what can only be called COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT in the West Bank!

Two IDF soldiers were shot dead in Hebron on Friday, and the Israeli government thinks it’s okay to level entire neighborhoods in the area in response.

Peace has no chance as long as injustice like this is allowed to continue!

Source: BBC, Reuters / Writer: Mhedi

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 26, 2026

This is not Gaza. This is Hebron today.

The Israeli occupation has begun destroying Palestine’s economic capital, a city that accounts for 75% of the country’s production in the stone and marble, leather and footwear, plastics, glass, oils, dairy, and gold industries.

Ethnic cleansing is being inflicted on the Palestinian people everywhere across the land of Palestine.

— Ahmed Nashwan (@ahmed_nashwan1) October 24, 2026

Everyone I’ve spoken with over the past two years has told me the same thing:

Armed resistance in the West Bank has been reduced to almost zero.

The recent Nazi decision by the Israeli government to impose mass collective punishment, ethnically cleanse an entire neighborhood of Hebron, suggests the same.

The point is to create an Israeli lebensraum, to create a Palestine without any Palestinians in it. That’s the essence of the Israeli project

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) October 26, 2026

Predictable harassment of foreign media. They act like they have something to hide, no?

This is the moment Channel 4 News Foreign Affairs Correspondent Secunder Kermani was charged at by a group of Israeli settlers in the Occupied West Bank.

The settlers have laid siege to a Palestinian home, while nearby Israeli soldiers keep watch but do not intervene.

Violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank have risen dramatically over the past two years, while Israel’s government has approved a record number of new settlements.

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) October 26, 2026

And ongoing indignities:

Palestinian children in Jenin have to crawl under Israeli military gates to get to and from school.

Such restrictions have disrupted education for 24,500 Palestinian students in the occupied West Bank this year. https://t.co/506Eec98nF

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 27, 2026

Now to the outreach to Iran via Mecca Alliance members. Again, I would curb my optimism, with one big caveat. If these feelers continue, it could allow for Trump to depict progress as faster than it is, both to try to calm nervous markets and to even take credit in some manner. That matters because even halting talks could give Trump cover for not engaging in his much-promised devastating attack. Think of this as the Trump analogue to Peneolope in the Odyssey unravelling at night the shroud she was weaving during the day, to hold her suitors at bay, or Scheherazade telling stories every that she didn’t wrap up to the serially sexually betrayed King Shahriyâr who had resolved to kill every women he had sex iwht, enticing him to stay her execution day by day for the famed one thousand and one nights, when he finally pardoned her.

Even though (due also to this being a slow Middle East news day ex the Israel elections), many in the independent commentary sphere have been excited about the talks in Tehran, PressTV did not make it the biggest story on its landing page:

By contrast, I found no front-page mention of these talks at BBC, the Middle East version of Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Guardian. The Washington Post did deign to take note of the talks, but its story is literally at the very end of its long landing page, which IMHO is burying it:

With fear rising across the Middle East that the U.S. and Israel will restart military strikes on Iran, diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey met with Iranian leaders in Tehran in a new push to negotiate an end to the war. https://t.co/0aEnNkkZfk

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 26, 2026

Anadolu Agency did not showcase the meetings either. From its landing page:

From the PressTV account, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia hold security meeting in Tehran:

Delegations from Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have begun a meeting in Tehran, with regional security, the consequences of US-Israeli military aggression and support for the Palestinians and Lebanese among the main topics of discussion.

The meeting, which kicked off on Monday, was proposed by Pakistan and held with Iran’s support and cooperation.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Major General Mohsen Rezaei is hosting the gathering.

Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman and Turkish National Intelligence Organization Director Ibrahim Kalin are representing their respective countries.

Iran’s SNSC Secretary Major General Rezaei welcomes senior officials from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as a four-way meeting gets underway in Tehran.

The talks will focus on regional security, the fallout from military aggression, and support for Palestine and Lebanon. https://t.co/Muc4XunUp6

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) October 26, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also attended the four-way meeting.

Before the meeting, the three representatives met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

After the meeting, Rezaei told reporters that regional cooperation should have begun long ago and that the visits by senior Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi officials showed that US threats do not have much of an impact on countries around the world.

The top security official pointed out that a new and positive atmosphere has taken shape in the region and that the results of the Iranian nation’s resistance in the face of US-Israeli aggression are becoming more tangible every day.

On the outcome of the summit, Rezaei said the Pakistani, Saudi and Turkish delegations believed that the solution to the region’s problems lies in the four countries working together.

As we’ll see soon from Twitter comments, a big belief was that the motivation for these talks was for the Saudis, with help from their friends, to press Iran to get Ansar Allah to back off from attacks. This seems probable if misguided. Ansar Allan has agency. Even though it has gotten financial support from Iran, its drone and missile technology and manufacture are largely indigenous. Iran is widely believe to have pushed Ansar Allah earlier to enter the war and mess with Red Sea shipping, and it demurred then. Ansar Allah also has clear demands for ending its attacks on the Saudis, and has no reason to back down given that it clearly has the upper hand.

To return briefly to media coverage, Anadolu Agency, readers had to scroll way way down the page to see Iran says 4-nation talks back regional security free of outside interference.

Note the failure in the headline to name all the participants, particularly Turkiye. The subhead also presents the results as underwhelming:

Talks with senior officials from Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan created a new, positive atmosphere, says secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

From the body of the stary:

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said participants in four-nation talks in Tehran on Monday agreed that security in West Asia should be based on regional states, with external interference prevented.

Mohsen Rezaei made the remarks following a meeting of delegations from Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran to discuss regional security, Israeli activities in the region, and developments in Palestine and Lebanon.

“We concluded that West Asia’s security must be based on the countries of the region, and any external interference must be prevented,” he said.

Rezaei said regional countries should have begun cooperating earlier, arguing that the Turkish, Pakistani, and Saudi delegations’ visits to Tehran demonstrated that US threats had no effect at the global level.

He said talks with senior officials from the three countries had created a new, positive atmosphere.

“The four countries believe that cooperation among them offers a way out of the crises facing the region,” he added.

From the ample speculation on Twitter. A take similar to ours (which I saw after completing the overview above) from AJ. Note he adds that any proposals have ot go though the approval process in Iran:

All photos, no bite…

Based on my assessment and analysis here is the reading of the current situation and the developments over the last 48 hours:

1. The Tehran meeting is HIGHLY UNLIKELY (about 15%) to change the course of the war, because the decisions that set it sit in Washington, and Jerusalem, none of which was at the table.

2. Perhaps it can change Saudi Arabia’s place in the next round of target selection: if US strikes resume after 3 Nov (likely, 55-65%), Iran sparing Saudi territory is now a realistic possibility (40-50%), with risk displaced to the other Gulf nations.

3. A written Saudi-Iran undertaking is unlikely (about 25%) and a 14-day Houthi pause is unlikely (about 20%).

4. Decisions are still needed from the Supreme Leader, Iranian Parliament and for Turkey to ratify the Mecca Agreement and for Saudi Arabia to endorse any proposed deal.

More to follow.

Signal, not noise!

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.

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) October 26, 2026

In recent hours, many have been wondering why Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was absent from yesterday’s talks in Tehran with representatives of the Mecca Pact.

In my reading:

– Ghalibaf, who has been identified as a key figure in Iran’s negotiations with the United States, is directly associated with a separate diplomatic track that may eventually also involve nuclear issues.
Interestingly, he was in Tehran yesterday. He attended parliamentary meetings, while a previously scheduled foreign trip had reportedly been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

– My sense is that his absence may have been deliberate. By keeping Ghalibaf out of the meetings, the Iranian leadership could have wanted to signal, including symbolically, that consultations with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey are distinct from negotiations with Washington.

– In other words, Tehran may be trying to preserve a visible separation between two diplomatic tracks: regional consultations with key regional powers on the one hand, and direct negotiations with the US on the other.

– This does not necessarily mean that the two processes are unrelated. They clearly have points of contact. But keeping them formally separate may be politically important for Tehran, particularly given the sensitivity of any future negotiations involving the nuclear file.

– Of course, this remains my interpretation.

#Iran

— Babak Vahdad (@BabakVahdad) October 27, 2026

This rumor has made the rounds in the YouTube commentary community:

Saudi Arabia reportedly offers Houthis $1 billion in Iran-brokered deal to halt attacks
https://t.co/KHLwOJqmNM

— Israel Hayom English (@IsraelHayomEng) October 26, 2026

While I do not want to seem to have gotten fuzzy-headed, as in unduly hopeful, Robert Barnes on Judge Napolitano described in detail why a Republican bloodbath at the midterms is entirely possible and could force a Trump exit from both Iran and Ukraine.

Even though Robert Pape continues to argue that Trump’s plan for a three-day attack will lead to an extended intense war, as with past planned short conflicts, the difference here is the US is entirely bereft of means to go on for very long.

From a lightly-edited machine transcript:

Barnes: So, the White House’s own internal polls show them in a very bad situation… Right now they are behind in a bunch of seats. They’re behind in more than 240 House seats currently by their own internal polling.

They could lose over 260 House seats due to the way early voting is trending. And in the Senate, they’re currently behind in 55 Senate races or within the margin of error within those races. Uh and there’s three more races that they’re carefully watching. I mean, you even have Senator Cotton in Arkansas spending money on campaign advertising because he’s concerned about singledigit margin of victory possibility in Arkansas….

So basically the Senate looks like a disaster, the House looks like a disaster. Uh they are Governor Abbott is within the margin of error in Texas. The Texas state house uh could flip to the Democratic party. There’s a range of state legislatores they’re looking at losing. Democratic trifecta is taking over in places ranging from Pennsylvania to Arizona.

So, it is looking like a worse than a tsunami. I mean, it’s something the last time we’ve had an election that is looking like it could go this bad is 1920. And what that, you know, in common where Democrats lost outside of the Deep South, Democrats lost 25 out of 25 Senate races, including couple seats. They lost more than 90% of the House seats outside of the South. And what of was common of course that was the last major betrayal election about war where a candidate promised to keep the country out of war then dragged them into war. Had scandals and economic issues compounding the problem and they paid him back with the biggest political revolution. That’s really actually been seen if you look under the hood uh in terms of the statistical data….

And so the president is sporadically nervous about it. But then he convinces himself that uh it can’t happen. It won’t happen. That as long as he hits the campaign trail will magically reverse.

Right now, every time Trump goes someplace, the numbers get worse in the local area for the Republican. This happened in Alaska. This happened in North Carolina. This happened I mean I’ve heard from Republican congressional candidates.

There’s people that are asking Trump not to come to their local jurisdiction because the number their numbers go down because people are so angry at him in particular. That’s and some of the people that are the angriest at him are his longest standing core voter support.

And this doesn’t even get into the early voting which looks like a bloodbath.

Massive surges of black voting participation throughout the South up 20 higher than it was for Barack Obama in ’08 and 2012. That’s how massive it is. …

But if he loses this election badly and especially if Bibi loses tomorrow in Israel, then uh Trump will recognize internally but not admit externally to very many people uh that the Iran war was a mistake and that continued involvement in the Ukraine war was a mistake….

But Hegseth will be the first head on the chopping block because Hexith will be impeached very quickly. He may be even impeached by the lame duck Congress with Thomas Massiey’s impeachment proposal. Hegseth has no friends and allies on the Hill. ….

He’ll be under massive pressure to deescalate those two conflicts uh if he loses badly in the election because he’ll need to rescue some political capital. He he’s been told he’ll need to get his public opinion approval back into the 40s. Otherwise, there’s a substantial chance a bunch of Republicans, you know, play Julius Caesar. And not only does he get impeached, but he actually gets removed from the White House.

They’ve already been strategizing that within the White House. They already believe that if the Democrats get up to 55 Senate seats, they already have six or seven Republicans that will vote to remove the president. And they think that number would get to double digits if his approval rating is in the low 30s where it currently stands. So that he’s been advised he’s got to get out of these wars if he loses these elections.

Napolitano: Can he avoid impeachment by the House if the Democrats take the House by these significant numbers?

Barnes: Oh, no chance. And there’s two major issues. One is that if they win the House by big margins by over 235 House seats, the then not only would he be impeached and impeached quickly, but there’ll be massive investigations with the subpoena power….

Similarly, Chuck Schumer may lose his control of the Democratic party in the Senate if the Democrats get over 55 Senate seats because of dissatisfaction with Schumer’s leadership. And so you may have really strong opposition causing a just a complete nightmare not only for Trump but for everybody around Trump, everybody with political ambitions. They’re already angling now figuring out what they’re going to do if the Titanic hits the iceberg in the midterms….

Why did Trump betray his promises?

Corruption, corruption, corruption. And they use the Epstein files as the filter for it..

He was told by people that his name was all over the Epstein files. But the the uh the people who control the FOIA programs at the Justice Department are people that are allied with the CIA and others. That’s why they controlled the foyer divisions at the Justice Department and the FBI. That’s how they got their jobs. So they when they went through the files, they went back to Pam Bondi and said, “Oh my goodness, Donald Trump’s name is here over 30,000 times.” The and that panicked Pam Bondi. She ran to Trump. That panicked Trump.

The underlying story is the Epstein files reveal the modus operandi of the CIA, the MI6 and MSAD for more than 40 years involving financial corruption, secual manipulation uh and and in disturbing geopolitical agendas at scale. They tied into eugenics and a bunch of other aspects. And so it would be shocking to realize that you know the power structure in these countries saw you know poor women around the world as simply cattle to use for the purposes of the personal pleasure and power enhancement and black mail/ extortion capacity or sometimes just providing the kind of services no one else could provide because of how sick and disturbed they were.

So it would be an unmasking of the deep state globally, of the military and national security establishment, intelligence infrastructure globally, and in particular a whole bunch of key donors that he would be implicated.

But they convinced Trump that his name was all over the files. That convinced Trump that he had to cover it up when who he’s covering it up for is really for other people and for institutional corruption at scale. Uh that would, you know, unsettle anybody who watched. It would be a complete unmasking of the western power structure in ways that they may never be able to recover from if the full details were revealed.

Napolitano: Does AIPAC and does the Israeli lobby escape un unharmed from this massive Democratic victory you’re talking about?

Barnes: Uh they are hopeful but they need the margins to be small. They have influence with Jeff. They have influence uh with Schumer and as long as the Democratic margin is 52 or less in the Senate and 200 less than 230 in the House, they have enough loyalists that are willing to uh risk their political future to within the party to protect Israel. If that number gets over 235 in the House, if that number gets over 53 in the Senate, they no longer have confidence that they’ll be able to have the people in the leadership positions that they want.

I would really really like to be hopeful but recall what happened after the Vietnam protests and the Nixon resignation. The elites got together, decided the destablization had gotten too far and manage to bring enough dissenters back into the fold to restore a lot of status quo ante (although the military did remain chastened for quite a while). Recall how Church Committee reforms were quickly neutered.

Similar, after the near financial-system death event in 2008, we gat an incumbent-preserving, ordinary citizen raping patch-up that greatly increased inequality by keeping interest rates very low for a long period, favoring in particular rentiers in the form of financial speculators like private equity and hedgies.

So for durable change to take place, the public needs to keep the pressure high. The toll inflicted on ordinary American by the direct and indirect costs of the Iran war could do that. But an election rout alone will not suffice.