Politics

The meeting on Sunday of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in Islamabad not only represented the best hope for a ceasefire in Iran but was also the embryo for a new order designed to curb Israeli and Iranian dominance after the war.

Although the four nations have met as a quartet before, the one-day meeting of foreign ministers in Islamabad on Sunday was, in a way, the official opening ceremony of an initiative that is intriguing diplomats.

The group’s first goal, in an increasingly complex web of disputes, is to persuade all sides to stop the escalation and agree a ceasefire. As such, the group will be meeting much more frequently, according to Yasmine Farouk, a Gulf specialist at the International Crisis Group.

“This group of four started becoming very active because this is really a dangerous stage of the war,” Farouk said. “We’ve already seen Israel damage nuclear plants inside Iran and the potential deployment of troops. This is the nightmare … that could make some of the Gulf countries who so far say they don’t want the war to stop to realise that this is getting out of hand.

“Because if you target desalination waters and the power plants, if you have a nuclear leak in the waters of the Gulf, this is when it becomes a nationwide crisis inside those countries.”