Signs of escalation re-surfaced in the US-Israeli war against Iran on Monday, against the backdrop of speculation over the possible resumption of direct or indirect US-Iranian negotiations with a view to ending the war.
The UAE announced that its air defences had intercepted missiles and incoming drone attacks from Iran. While the Emirati Ministry of Defence announced the interception of three missiles, the emirate of Fujairah said that an Iranian drone had sparked a fire at an oil facility, causing moderate injuries to three workers with Indian citizenship.
Iranian news outlets, including the official news agency, quoted Iranian officials as saying that Iran was not planning to hit any targets in the UAE but had warned that it would not ignore any involvement in facilitating US or Israeli threats against it.
The attacks were the first such clashes since the US and Iran reached a ceasefire on 8 April. Two days earlier, US President Donald Trump notified the US Congress that hostilities against Iran had come to an end, indicating that he did not need the required Congressional authorisation for a war lasting more than 60 days.
The strikes against the UAE took place as the US was forcing the reversal of Iranian measures applied to block traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has announced that the US will help “guide” ships that have been stranded by Iran’s closure of the Strait, saying that the US has been asked by countries “from all over the world” to help free their ships “locked up in the Strait of Hormuz” as “merely neutral and innocent bystanders”.
The US would “guide their ships safely out of these restricted waterways,” Trump said.
Hours after Iran’s attack on the UAE, Trump told the US network Fox News that Iran would be “blown off the face of earth” if it targets US ships protecting commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The statement came after the US said it had intercepted six small Iranian boats that were trying to prevent the passage of commercial ships through the strait. Iran denied the American account.
However, according to two informed Pakistani sources who spoke from Islamabad on Monday, the new clashes do not necessarily exclude the chances for the resumption of talks on ending the war.
According to one of the sources, communications between the US and Iran, both directly and via Pakistan as the lead mediator in a possible deal between Washington and Tehran, have not been fully paused despite the failure to convene the second round of the talks scheduled in Islamabad two weeks ago.
Islamabad was always aware that it would be a difficult task to manage the mediation, the source said, even as it had received the consent of both sides and the endorsement of the three other members of the newly established regional Quartet.
While Pakistan is the sole official mediator between the US and Iran, its mediation, which secured a first round including direct talks between Iranian and American delegates, came after a diplomatic push from the regional Quartet that brings together Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
The Quartet has met at the foreign minister level in Jeddah and Islamabad. It has also met at the level of assistant foreign ministers in the Pakistani capital.
Meanwhile, according to sources in Cairo and Ankara, both Egypt and Turkey, with the strong endorsement of Saudi Arabia, have been working in parallel to increase the chances of the success of the Islamabad negotiations.
According to Ozge Genç, a resident fellow at the Doha-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs, Turkey has been actively involved in supporting the mediation and in calling for the continuation of the negotiations to avoid a slip back into hostilities.
Genç said that the Turkish intervention was based on the shared views of the Quartet to try to stop the war and arrive at a deal or even a framework agreement on a potential deal.
She noted that Ankara’s contributions were part of Turkish diplomacy and in line with the Turkish political agenda, including the wish to avert a major conflict that could prompt further displacement in the region.
Genç said that the Quartet is intended as a forum for consultation among countries that wish to avert a prolonged conflict in the Gulf that could come with huge political, military, and economic costs to the entire region.
The future of the Quartet is not something that is being discussed by the four states, according to an informed Egyptian official. He explained that they have shared interests at the collective level, with some countries having closer relations within the group than others.
“Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have a defence agreement that was signed in the autumn of 2025, and Egypt and Turkey signed a military cooperation framework agreement earlier this year,” the official said.
According to Pakistani diplomat Maleeha Lodhi, it is too early to predict the future of the new regional Quartet. “For now, it is a forum for diplomatic consultations on matters related to the war on Iran,” she said, adding that it is not yet known whether this ad hoc alliance of four like-minded states will persist or develop into a more permanent structure with possible security and military components.
Alaa Al-Hadidi, a professor of international relations at the American University in Cairo and an Egyptian former ambassador to Turkey, was cautious in his forecasts about the Quartet.
“Let us see first whether these four countries, and I deliberately say four countries because they are acting as such, will be able to deliver on securing a sustainable end to the war on Iran,” Al-Hadidi said.
He added that each of the four countries in the group has shared interests and cooperation incentives with others, but that “they also have their disagreements.”
It has “so happened” that these four countries are able to work together on the issue of the war on Iran, but this does not mean that they will be able to work together in the same way on another conflict, he said.
He said that while Egypt and Turkey have been mostly on the same page with regard to the war on Iran and the conflict in Sudan, they do not necessarily share the same close rapport on the management of the situation in Libya, with Cairo and Ankara having had moments of conflict between 2015 and 2020 with regard to the political future of the country.
Al-Hadidi argued that, for now, it is clear that more established regional and sub-regional groupings are not playing a leading role, and they might fall out of fashion altogether, leaving the space open for influential states in the region to engage independently or in cooperation with like-minded states on specific conflicts.
“I think we have gone beyond the times of regional and sub-regional powers. And this is why I think one should not spend time trying to understand whether the UAE is planning to walk out of the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] or even the Arab League following its exit from OPEC [on 28 April],” he said.
According to Al-Hadidi, most of these organisations have lost influence. “Now is the time for regional capitals to take over from organisations that were established in the second half of the 20th century and have demonstrated little to be really proud of,” he stated.
According to Lodhi, this is not just about the regional context but also about the international context. She argued that it is hard to miss the fact that while Iran has been under attack from the US and Israel over its nuclear programme, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, of which Iran, but not Israel, is a member, was convening at the UN in New York.
Iran is a founding member of the NPT and was involved in the drafting of its Article Four, which focuses on the right of member states to have peaceful nuclear programmes. The NPT entered into force in March 1970.
Many diplomats agree that the war on Iran and before that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear agreement that was signed between Iran and the US and five other countries in 2015, have brought into question the universality of the NPT.
They argued that it has become hard to assume that there are collective rules that apply at the international or regional levels. In the words of one, with very few exceptions, international, regional, and sub-regional organisations and conventions will likely continue to grow less and less relevant in the future as a sign of the demise of multilateralism.
“We are now living at a time of alliances of choice, and these are very issue- and time-specific alliances,” he said.
On Tuesday, hours after the US had tabled a UN Security Council resolution to condemn Iran for closing the Strait of Hormuz and to demand an immediate end to the closure and to all Iranian attacks, Saudi Arabia demanded the resumption of Pakistani mediation to reach an end to the conflict in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia was part of the consultations on the draft resolution along with Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif called for the respect of the ceasefire to allow for the Pakistani mediation to make a breakthrough. “It is absolutely essential that the ceasefire be upheld and respected, to allow necessary diplomatic space for dialogue leading to enduring peace and stability in the region.”
Both President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman called UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed to show solidarity against the Iranian attacks. In parallel, Egyptian and Saudi concerned bodies were in touch with their Pakistani counterparts to give a push to de-escalation.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 May, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: