The Middle East can afford neither another endless war nor another peace built on the expectation of the next one. Yet that is the danger gathering around Yemen, Gaza and the region’s vital waterways. Military alignments are being reinforced, civilian suffering continues, and commercial shipping has become an instrument of strategic coercion. Regional leaders must decide whether to negotiate the restraints necessary for coexistence or allow another round of escalation to narrow the possibilities of peace.
An order survives while it can convert power into security and security into legitimacy. The Middle East’s existing security architecture is struggling to meet that test. Its defenders possess formidable military resources but cannot guarantee immunity from attack. Its challengers can disrupt established arrangements but have not demonstrated that they can construct a more peaceful or representative alternative. Between these competing claims, populations endure wars whose stated objectives become increasingly detached from their human consequences.
The immediate need is an international conference on Middle East peace and security under United Nations auspices. Its agenda should encompass Yemen’s war, Gaza’s humanitarian and political tragedy, and safe navigation through Bab al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz. These crises have distinct origins, but their interaction demands coordinated diplomacy. The conference should establish a common framework for peace while allowing each negotiating track to advance at its own pace.
Recent developments around Yemen underline the urgency. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has offered assistance in defending Saudi Arabia if requested, subject to parliamentary authorisation. Cairo’s position reflects solidarity with Riyadh alongside its economic interest in secure Red Sea commerce. Disruption of shipping towards the Suez Canal makes instability around Yemen a direct Egyptian concern.
Meanwhile, reported Saudi-Emirati arrangements to renew support for forces confronting the Houthis suggest an effort to strengthen their military position. Cooperation against a common adversary, however, does not resolve disagreements over southern separatism, national authority or Yemen’s eventual political structure. The internationally recognised government, southern armed formations and the Southern Transitional Council retain different interests. Their military cooperation cannot substitute for agreement on the country’s future.
Such measures may reinforce deterrence, and Saudi Arabia has a legitimate right to defend its territory and population. But territorial defence cannot settle the question of how Yemen should be governed. Unless military cooperation supports an achievable political settlement, it risks prolonging a contest in which battlefield gains repeatedly fail to produce an accepted peace.
Yemen’s strategic weight explains why this failure matters beyond its borders. International discussion too often reduces the country to Bab al-Mandab, as though its significance began and ended at a maritime chokepoint. Yemen is also a substantial territorial state, with a population exceeding 40 million, a long political history and shores extending along the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. Its importance derives from the combination of territorial depth, demographic weight and maritime reach.
Its mountains complicate military domination, while its coastal approaches allow locally rooted forces to project disruption beyond their strongholds. Geography makes conquest difficult and neglect costly. A strategy that treats Yemen principally as a buffer, proxy arena or shipping problem will underestimate the political realities sustaining its conflicts. Secure sea lanes ultimately require a political settlement on the land beside them.
The Houthis have exploited these advantages through organisational cohesion, missiles, drones and familiarity with demanding terrain. Their endurance demonstrates how a conventionally weaker actor can impose substantial costs on wealthier and better-equipped opponents. Yet endurance does not confer an unlimited political mandate. The capacity to threaten neighbouring states and commercial vessels cannot provide a legitimate foundation for regional leadership.
The wider confrontation requires the same distinction between military capability and political legitimacy. Iran and the Houthis invoke resistance to foreign domination, while their adversaries invoke sovereignty and stability. Both claims must be judged against conduct: protection of civilians, respect for neighbouring societies and willingness to accommodate competing political interests. Neither resistance nor stability excuses repression or the indefinite denial of rights.
The resulting balance permits obstruction more readily than resolution. Saudi Arabia and its partners cannot readily impose an accepted political order throughout Yemen; the Houthis cannot compel Yemen’s other communities or neighbouring states to accept their predominance. Each side retains sufficient strength to frustrate the other. What remains militarily sustainable for the belligerents becomes socially and economically ruinous for civilians.
This logic has spread into the region’s waterways. The United States maintains a naval blockade directed at vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, while Iran has intensified attacks and restrictions affecting shipping in and beyond the Strait of Hormuz. Around Bab al-Mandab, Houthi attacks and declared restrictions have placed further pressure on commercial navigation. These measures differ in scope and legal character, but collectively expose civilian shipping to an expanding confrontation.
Diplomacy must seek safe navigation, protected civilian crews and dependable commercial access consistent with international law. Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab connect regional security to the economic life of distant societies: disruption affects energy supplies, freight charges, food prices and insurance costs. Developing countries with limited financial reserves are especially exposed. Their populations have no influence over the decisions producing these confrontations, yet share their economic consequences.
An international conference should turn this shared vulnerability into a sustained negotiating process. The UN secretary-general should begin consultations with regional governments and the principal external powers to establish an agreed agenda. GCC states, Iran, Egypt and other concerned governments must be involved. Yemen’s negotiations should include its principal political and armed actors alongside meaningful civilian representation, while Palestinians must have effective representation in decisions concerning their rights and future.
Bringing adversaries to the table will require difficult reciprocal concessions. Iran will seek relief from coercive pressure; Gulf governments will require credible protection against attacks; Yemeni factions will demand political guarantees; and Palestinians will need evidence that another diplomatic process will advance their rights. Preparatory diplomacy must identify steps that can be exchanged and verified. A conference without such groundwork risks becoming another occasion for restating incompatible positions.
Its first priority should be immediate de-escalation: an end to attacks on civilian shipping, protection against arbitrary seizure, and reliable arrangements for communication, rescue and investigation of incidents. Negotiations should address the US blockade of Iranian ports alongside Iranian attacks and restrictions, seeking reciprocal measures that restore lawful commerce and reduce military confrontation. Technical support from the International Maritime Organization could help translate commitments into workable navigation arrangements.
A parallel Yemeni track should pursue a monitored cessation of hostilities, an end to cross-border attacks and dependable humanitarian and commercial access. Arrangements to sustain essential services and livelihoods would make a ceasefire meaningful beyond the front lines. Political negotiations must address authority, southern aspirations, local autonomy and the distribution of resources. Yemen’s constitutional future must emerge from agreement among Yemenis, supported by neighbours prepared to accept an outcome they cannot dictate.
Reconstruction should reinforce that settlement. Gulf assistance could restore infrastructure, employment and economic connections, giving communities a tangible stake in peace. Yemen’s neighbours would gain security from functioning institutions and livelihoods that weaken the incentives for renewed mobilisation. An impoverished, fragmented Yemen will remain a source of instability regardless of the sophistication of the defences deployed around it.
The Gaza track must prioritise a durable cessation of hostilities, unrestricted humanitarian relief, protection against forced displacement and reconstruction. These obligations must be connected to accountability under international law and a credible political horizon for Palestinian self-determination and statehood. Rebuilding homes while leaving their inhabitants exposed to renewed destruction cannot constitute a sustainable settlement.
Palestine belongs within this framework because its unresolved tragedy shapes public opinion and strategic mobilisation across the region. Armed actors invoke Palestinian suffering to justify confrontation elsewhere, while governments struggle to defend security arrangements that appear indifferent to Palestinian rights. Continued dispossession and violence widen the distance between official diplomacy and popular expectations, weakening the legitimacy on which a durable order depends.
Recognising this connection does not make humanitarian relief conditional on a comprehensive bargain or justify attacks on civilian shipping. Palestinian civilians and merchant seafarers are entitled to protection in their own right. A credible conference must reject the practice of making one civilian population bear the cost of injustice inflicted on another. Consistency in civilian protection would give its diplomacy an essential moral foundation.
Beyond these immediate priorities, the conference should establish a continuing regional security dialogue. GCC states, Iran and other concerned governments could begin with crisis hotlines, notification of major military exercises, restraints on cross-border attacks and procedures for investigating incidents before retaliation escalates. Trust is unlikely to precede cooperation; it must grow through verified conduct.
External powers would retain important interests and responsibilities, but regional states must help shape the arrangements under which they live. A settlement designed principally around rival spheres of influence would reproduce the dependencies and grievances that have undermined earlier approaches. International guarantees should support regional accommodation and give states confidence to honour reciprocal commitments.
Pakistan could contribute through its relationships with Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, the United States and other important actors. Its diplomatic task would be to connect defensive reassurance with opportunities for compromise. A stable Arabian Peninsula and secure waterways serve Pakistan’s interests; an open-ended regional war would endanger them. Its partnerships should therefore strengthen its capacity to prevent escalation and support negotiations.
Scepticism about another conference is understandable. The Middle East has witnessed many declarations unsupported by implementation. This initiative would require deadlines, monitoring and a standing mechanism for follow-up. Its value should be measured through fewer attacks, safer voyages, sustained humanitarian access and progress towards political agreements. Convening the participants would begin the work; it would not complete it.
The alternative is already visible: Yemenis facing deprivation, Palestinians denied a secure political future, Gulf states spending heavily against recurring threats, and commercial vessels navigating an expanding confrontation. Each actor may believe that another deployment or retaliatory strike will improve its position. Together, these decisions can deepen the insecurity they are intended to overcome.
The Middle East’s waterways connect its economies to the world; its unresolved conflicts increasingly connect its wars to one another. Yemen cannot be subdued into political consent, Gaza cannot be reconstructed into lasting peace without Palestinian rights, and maritime commerce cannot depend indefinitely on armed confrontation. An international conference would offer no guarantee of success, but it would provide a means to negotiate these interlocking dangers before they deepen.
Bab al-Mandab and Hormuz should be passages for commerce, not pressure points of permanent war. Yemen and Palestine should be societies with a future, not recurring subjects of humanitarian appeals. The passage from conflict to consensus begins when regional leaders accept that no state can build an enduring peace on the permanent insecurity of another.
