Iran's Security Chief Proposes Gulf Framework Without US Role

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei used a Sunday address to lay out a formal institutional blueprint for the Persian Gulf, calling on Iran and six Arab Gulf states to construct a unified regional order explicitly excluding American involvement. The proposal, delivered as Iran simultaneously transmitted seven conditions through Qatar to the United States, frames Tehran’s regional ambitions as a governance alternative rather than a security threat.

Rezaei’s core proposal centers on what he termed a “Persian Gulf family” of eight nations: Iran, Iraq, and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. The architecture he described would function as a single economic and security bloc, encompassing a unified currency, a common market, joint investment participation, and coordinated regional security arrangements. The proposal deliberately mirrors the existing six-member GCC structure while expanding it to include Iran and Iraq, presenting the enlarged framework as a natural regional order that American military presence has disrupted rather than created.

Additional reference context is available at https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/940639/irans-rezaei-gulf-states-and-iran-must-build-their-own-order.

The institutional argument rests on a forecast about American power. “America and Trump will leave. Everyone knows that the American economy is, in reality, on a path toward collapse. Within the next 10 years, America will not be as it is today,” Rezaei stated, characterizing Washington’s regional dominance as a temporary condition. He then pivoted to what he framed as the durable alternative: “But we and the Arab countries will remain. We are the ones who must fix the region. We must establish security in the Persian Gulf. We must create a pact for economic cooperation and be friends together in the region.”

The economic integration dimension is equally explicit. “We are one family, the Persian Gulf family. We are eight countries, and we must focus on reconstruction and economic development, cooperate with one another, participate in each other’s investments, and even have a single currency and a single common market,” he said.

The timing of the statement matters. Rezaei spoke on the same day Iran transmitted its conditions to Washington through Qatari diplomatic channels, as American embassies issued simultaneous security warnings across the Middle East, and as President Trump returned to the White House amid signs the regional conflict was approaching a critical inflection point. The statement functions as both a diplomatic overture to Gulf Arab governments and a structural argument about where long-term regional alignments will settle.

Meanwhile, the Gulf states Rezaei is addressing are already navigating precisely the balancing act his proposal is designed to resolve. The UAE Crown Prince met Iranian President Pezeshkian at the BRICS summit on September 13, the first senior Gulf-Iran meeting since the war began. Qatar has been serving as the diplomatic conduit for Iran’s conditions to Washington. Oman has been negotiating the Hormuz corridor framework with Tehran directly. Each of these governments is simultaneously maintaining American security commitments while deepening engagement with Iran, and Rezaei’s Sunday statement is calibrated to tilt that balance toward Tehran.

By framing the American security guarantee as finite and relationships with Tehran as permanent, Rezaei is making a structural accountability argument to Gulf Arab decision-makers: the institutional partnerships they formalize now will outlast any American administration. Whether Gulf governments, whose security architectures remain deeply tied to Washington, treat the proposal as a credible governance offer or as strategic positioning is the question that will define the next phase of regional diplomacy.