Mohammad Javad Zarif’s new Foreign Affairs essay is being read as a peace overture. It is better understood as an attempt to convert Iran’s battlefield losses into a narrow U.S.-Iran bargain: nuclear limits and maritime access in exchange for sanctions relief and regional reintegration. Beneath the triumphalist framing lies an offer to cap enrichment below 3.67 percent, ratify the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol, transfer all enriched material to a multilateral consortium, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and accept a nonaggression pact with the United States. These are not the terms of a government pressing its advantage. They are the terms of a government seeking to lock in what leverage it has left before conditions deteriorate further.

That bargain may appeal to a White House that is eager to calm energy markets and declare success. It should not. Because Iran retaliated directly against Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, any durable settlement must go beyond enrichment caps and sanctions relief to include Gulf security as part of the deal itself. It must be worthy of the leverage that produced it.

Five weeks of U.S.-Israeli strikes have degraded Iran’s military infrastructure on a scale that no previous combination of sanctions, covert action, or diplomacy achieved. Iran’s supreme leader has been killed, along with dozens of senior military and intelligence officials. Iran’s missile production capacity, air force, navy, and air defense network have been severely diminished. Zarif himself conceded that Iran’s nuclear program did not deter the attack, an extraordinary admission from the man who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal—one that tells us more about Tehran’s position than his claims of victory.

Yet the campaign’s most consequential product is not what it destroyed inside Iran. It is what it revealed about the region. The war exposed the structural vulnerability of Gulf states that host U.S. military power but had no say in its use. Iran struck these countries not as adversaries but as U.S. addresses. The political consequences of that distinction will define the postwar order.

Critics will note, correctly, that Tehran had already moved toward significant concessions before the first strike. The Guardianrevealed that the United Kingdom’s national security advisor, Jonathan Powell, judged Iran’s prewar offer at the February talks in Geneva as “surprising” and sufficient to continue negotiations. The U.K. team reportedly expected further progress at technical talks scheduled to take place in Vienna on March 2, two days after the strikes began. But the comparison between that offer and what Zarif now suggests is instructive. Before the campaign, Iran proposed a temporary enrichment pause of three to five years with remaining ambiguity on inspections. After five weeks of strikes, Zarif has proposed permanent constraints, full ratification of the Additional Protocol, and complete material transfer. The campaign lowered the floor of what Tehran will accept.

The internal dynamics point in the same direction. As Afshon Ostovar has documented in Foreign Affairs, the campaign decimated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) senior ranks while leaving Iran’s pragmatist leaders, Pezeshkian, and former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami, largely intact. The New York Times has described Iran’s leadership as paralyzed, with severely disrupted decision-making and communications infrastructure fueling paranoia and internal power struggles. Zarif’s essay reads as the external expression of this fracture: the pragmatist wing articulating terms to Washington before the IRGC can reconsolidate.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s pattern of public denial and private engagement speaks for itself. Iranian officials insist that no negotiations are underway, even as they receive the United States’ 15-point proposal through Pakistani intermediaries, communicate through Omani and Egyptian channels, and allow selective tanker passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed to state media that Iran had received messages from “friendly countries” regarding Washington’s request, but he noted that does not mean it is in negotiations with the United States. The distinction is political, not operational. A government that believes it is winning does not ask its adversary to pause the escalation ladder. It climbs it.

The most revealing feature of Zarif’s essay is what it omits. His entire framework is bilateral: Iran and the United States negotiate enrichment caps, sanctions relief, a nonaggression pact, and the strait’s reopening. The Gulf states appear only as objects of Zarif’s condescension, mocked for their security model, characterized as U.S. shields, and lectured for having rejected Tehran’s past offers of regional security arrangements.

Zarif wants to channel the endgame into a U.S.-Iran track that restores Iran’s prewar economic position while leaving Gulf states as bystanders to a settlement that they will be expected to absorb. His proposed regional security network, which lists Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Yemen, is an attempt to insert Tehran into the postwar architecture before it is built without Iran at the table.

A leaked message from Zarif said that the UAE and Israel are “one and the same” and urged prioritizing strikes against the UAE. One does not propose a regional security partnership with countries that one has simultaneously advocated bombing. The contradiction reveals the purpose: Zarif’s regionalism is instrumentalized, a vehicle for Iranian influence, not a genuine offer of collective security.

The Gulf states that absorbed Iranian retaliation are not waiting for Washington or Tehran to determine their postwar position. They are already articulating their demands, with increasing specificity.

The UAE’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, put it directly in the Wall Street Journal: “A simple cease-fire is not enough.” Any conclusive outcome must address Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, proxy networks, and blockades of international sea lanes. Emirati presidential advisor Anwar Gargash described the geopolitical repercussions of Iran’s strikes on the Gulf states as “profound,” cementing Tehran as the central threat shaping Gulf strategic thinking. The chairman of the Gulf Research Center, Abdulaziz Sager, said that the Gulf’s message to Washington is no longer implicit but explicit: Any agreement with Iran must directly address and guarantee Gulf security.

These are not marginal voices. They represent a policy consensus that cuts across the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) internal divisions on tactics. Current reporting suggests that Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait have pushed for a quicker end to the war, while the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain want a settlement that locks in deeper constraints on Iran. But across that spectrum, the underlying insistence is the same: Gulf states must be in the room, not waiting outside it.

The scale of what these states absorbed justifies the demand. The UAE alone has engaged more than 438 ballistic missiles, 2,012 drones, and 19 cruise missiles. Dubai International Airport was hit. The Burj Al Arab was damaged by interception debris. Qatar shot down two Iranian bombers and saw Ras Laffan, the backbone of its liquefied natural gas exports, struck by drones. Doha has sent 11 formal letters to the United Nations Security Council documenting Iranian attacks on its territory. The most recent, dated April 2, detailed cruise missile strikes on a QatarEnergy-chartered tanker in Qatari economic waters; the attack came after the Security Council had already adopted Resolution 2817, which condemned Iranian strikes on Gulf states. Qatar has explicitly invoked its Article 51 right to self-defense and reserved the right to seek compensation for all damages. The Strait of Hormuz’s closure has produced what the International Energy Agency’s director called the “greatest global energy security challenge in history.” Saudi Arabia has vowed to employ military force against further Iranian incursions. Ukraine has signed 10-year defense cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, leveraging its hard-won counter-drone expertise—a sign of how fast the postwar security architecture is already moving.

A deal that addresses enrichment while leaving Iran’s missile and drone arsenal unconstrained will be seen by Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha as trading their security for Washington’s priorities. U.S. intelligence has confirmed the destruction of only around a third of Iran’s missile arsenal. The conventional threat, not the nuclear program, is what struck Gulf populations and infrastructure. Any settlement must reflect that reality.

First, missile, drone, and maritime constraints must be a part of any deal, not deferred to a future negotiation. Iran’s capacity for asymmetric coercion, fast boats, mines, drones, and cruise missiles is what closed Hormuz and struck civilian infrastructure across six countries. Shelving these issues, as Zarif’s proposal effectively does, would simply defer the next crisis.

Second, a formalized consultation mechanism must be established that prevents a repeat of Feb. 28, when the Gulf states discovered that they were in a war by hearing explosions overhead. Hosting U.S. forces cannot mean absorbing strikes for wars that the host did not authorize. This is a precondition for the continuation of basing arrangements. The leverage here is mutual: Washington has few basing alternatives with comparable infrastructure, location, and political stability, and the Gulf states know it.

Third, Iran must formally renounce the use of force against Gulf states, not merely against the United States. Zarif’s bilateral nonaggression pact is inadequate precisely because it leaves Iran’s relationship with its neighbors undefined. A regional nonaggression framework, encompassing all GCC members and Iran, would be more durable than any bilateral instrument, and it would test whether Tehran’s professed interest in regional cooperation is genuine or instrumental.

Fourth, any deal that lifts sanctions on Iran without addressing the economic damage that the Gulf states absorbed will breed the kind of resentment that guarantees another crisis. Gulf economies, built on energy exports and connectivity, have been hit by disrupted shipping, surging insurance premiums, damaged infrastructure, and investor flight. A settlement that restores Iran’s economic access while leaving its neighbors to bear the reconstruction costs alone is not a peace deal. It is a subsidy for the next round of coercion.

Zarif’s proposed fuel consortium, inviting China and Russia to co-manage Iranian nuclear material, illustrates the deeper problem with his framework. It is an invitation for great-power competition over Iran’s nuclear estate. Beijing, which released a carefully noncommittal five-point proposal this week, has no incentive to serve as a neutral custodian. Moscow, which provided Iran with intelligence and training before the war began according to British intelligence, has even less.

The U.S. military campaign created leverage that no previous administration achieved. The question is whether the settlement will be worthy of it, or whether Washington will let Zarif’s narrative, rather than the strategic reality, set the terms.