Three-way regional chess: Tehran, Ankara, Riyadh seek stability amid crisis

Simultaneous visits by senior Turkish and Saudi officials to Tehran last weekend were widely seen as a move by the two US allies to explore new channels to manage rising regional tensions through dialogue with Iran.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s visit was particularly notable. He met not only with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi but also with Iran’s president, the parliamentary speaker, and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

Saudi deputy foreign minister Saud bin Mohammed Al Sati also held separate talks with Iran’s foreign minister and senior officials.

Expanded diplomatic engagement signals strategic intent

The scope of these engagements suggested that the trips were not ceremonial visits but part of a deeper, multilayered conversation on regional security and economic dynamics, reinforcing the perception that both Ankara and Riyadh sought structured dialogue with Tehran at a moment of heightened regional uncertainty.

Iranian media argue that overlapping crises—ranging from concerns of a new military confrontation between Iran and Israel to instability in Syria—has compelled major Middle Eastern actors to search behind closed doors for common ground and shared strategies.

Yet, not all experts believe these visits will produce breakthroughs. “The trips by Turkish and Saudi officials resemble goodwill gestures and attempts to assert regional roles more than representing practical solutions,” international affairs analyst Ali Bigdeli wrote in the reformist Sazandegi newspaper.

Syria’s central role

Ankara, Riyadh, and Tehran view Syria as a critical arena where their security interests and regional influence intersect, pushing them toward cautious coordination despite deep differences. Accordingly, Syria appears to have featured prominently in the Tehran talks on Sunday.

“Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia each have their own priorities regarding Syria and Syria’s strategic weight makes it impossible for any of them to overlook or bypass it,” a commentary in Donya-ye Eghtesad argued.

“Even so, all three have come to recognize the need for a workable common ground—one that allows cooperation to persist, preserves regional stability, and keeps diplomatic channels open,” the commentary added.

Jaafar Haghpanah, a university professor and Turkey specialist, told Khabar Online: “In Syria, a shared concern for both countries is preventing it from becoming an arena for Israeli influence. Both also fear Syria turning into a failed state and a haven for extremist movements.”

Rising anxiety over a renewed Israel–Iran clash

Concerns about a potential new round of hostilities between Iran and Israel have intensified and prospects of nuclear talks with Washington currently seem slim.

Meanwhile, Israel’s state radio reported last week that Tehran was accelerating preparations for a potential confrontation and Israeli fighter jets reportedly conducted threatening flights over Iraq close to Iran’s borders.

Such developments have contributed to anxiety in the region and further market instability in Iran. The rial has weakened more against the US dollar in recent days, a shift widely interpreted as reflecting fears of possible military escalation.

Ankara and Riyadh acting as intermediaries?

The combination of military activity and sensitive diplomatic exchanges has fueled debate that Turkey and Saudi Arabia may be exploring a mediatory role or delivered messages from the US government.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei categorically denied the claim on Monday, saying reports of message-passing from the American president were “not accurate.”

However, Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said it was “not impossible” that the visitors carried messages from Washington. He argued that Iran would not accept the reported US conditions for renewed talks.

According to lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnouri these conditions were “zero enrichment, ending cooperation with resistance groups in the region, and reducing Iran’s missile range.”

Sources in Washington told Iran International last week that Washington reaffirmed these three conditions in response to a letter allegedly sent by President Massoud Pezeshkian through Saudi channels requesting mediation for renewed dialogue.

Saudi and Turkish officials have not commented on the issue.

How Iran's theocratic rule takes hits but persists

Dec 3, 2025, 18:04 GMT

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Ata Mohamed Tabriz

A lopsided war with Israel and the United States in June rattled Iran’s political order, but it survives through smarter coercion and the disarray of forces that might otherwise bring it down.

Internal contestation is harsher than at any time in recent memory, with competing factions trying to preserve or redefine their place in a system that has lost the capacity for reform or institutional expansion.

Yet Iran's nearly 50-year-old theocracy persists, compensating for poor governance with stiff security control and the careful redistribution of shrinking resources.

Just as authorities have slackened enforcement of Islamic social rules, allowing unveiled women and open-air concerts in public, it has stepped up a crackdown on political dissent and alleged spies.

Opposing this order are three forces whose interaction with the securitized state produces neither fundamental change nor imminent collapse, but something closer to endurance through erosion.

Those are: people inside Iran fighting localized economic and professional battles without organized networks, an exiled opposition adept at narrative and symbolism but detached from lived realities inside Iran and foreign actors committed to curbing Tehran’s nuclear and regional strength but not to toppling it.

One system, many channels

The Islamic Republic is structured around the Supreme Leader, whose authority ultimately resolves all major decisions. Around this axis sits an intricate constellation of parallel institutions, security councils, loyalty networks and overlapping hierarchies.

Policymaking is multi-layered. But decision-making is ultimately his sole prerogative.

President Masoud Pezeshkian recently issued a telling statement that unmanageable infighting would ensure should Ali Khamenei somehow exit the scene. It underscores a basic fear: without the Leader’s centrality, the power networks would drift apart.

Nothing illustrates this better than the way “system” is used interchangeably for both the political order and the leader himself.

Khamenei functions less as the manager of a unified apparatus than as the referee of internal conflicts. The state bureaucracy is not the engine of governance but one node among political, security and economic bodies each pursuing their own interests.

The 12-day war intensified these fissures. The removal of influential IRGC figures disrupted long-standing balances and sharpened factional sensitivities.

The Babak Zanjani affair illuminates the power politics at play.

Sprung with little explanation from a death sentence for corruption, the disgraced tycoon now not only walks free but weighs in regularly on politics, even appearing to threaten former President Hassan Rouhani with death in a tweet this week.

Such a rapid rehabilitation could not occur without powerful establishment backing.

Unorganized discontent

The war’s economic toll—passed on to society through inflationary policies—has deepened hardship and widened discontent. Iran’s society today is in ferment but unorganized: protests erupt across workplaces and cities, but without intermediary institutions they remain local and short-lived.

A recent nurses’ strike in Mashhad, much like the truck drivers’ strike before it this spring, showed the pattern clearly: strong anger, weak connective tissue.

The labor market’s collapse into unstable, platform-based work illustrates a society living in permanent emergency. Eight million rideshare drivers do not prove total collapse, but they reveal a mass shift toward insecure livelihoods.

Economic stress drains the psychological capacity for sustained organization; survival overrides solidarity.

Provincial centers skew toward economic protests, while peripheral regions experience conflict mainly through security confrontation.

The recurring demolition of homes in Baluchistan in southeastern Iran is one example of a strategy that provokes local resistance but rarely ratchets up because no networks link periphery grievances to central demands.

Inside Iran, opposition forces function like isolated islands. Outside, the opposition produces abundant media output but struggles to translate daily grievances into a shared political language.

The gap between “voice” abroad and “life” inside has produced an opposition that amplifies frustrations but does not alter the balance of power.

Survival on the edge

The Islamic Republic continues not as an effective state but as a mechanism that defers crises day by day. Security has replaced policy; the cost of maintaining power rises constantly as the quality of governance decays.

The system persists because no countervailing power with organizational depth has yet emerged.

European-triggered international sanctions and intermittent threats from the United States and Israel show that containment—not internal transformation—may be the ultimate priority from outside powers.

External pressure accelerates economic and infrastructural decay but cannot substitute for domestic political change.

For the West, Iran remains a security file, not a political project.

Foreign actors may accelerate or intensify pressure, but the indispensable condition for change is alignment between internal and external forces around a shared language and objective.

Until such convergence forms, the Islamic Republic will remain in a state of endurance through erosion—able to enforce the status quo even as it becomes less capable of maintaining stability or basic services.