The Decibel - Iran’s power grows ahead of peace talks as Gulf remains on edge

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

On Friday, negotiators from the U.S., Israel and Iran are set to talk in Pakistan about the future of the war. The Gulf Arab states, who have been attacked during the conflict, will not be party to the talks. But they have a lot depending on the outcome. Today, the Globe’s international affairs columnist Doug Saunders joins the show from Dubai, where he is witnessing the impact of the ceasefire in the region. He breaks down what this agreement – and any future long-term deal – means for Iran, the Gulf region and the Strait of Hormuz. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Thursday, the fragile ceasefire between the U.S., Israel, and Iran solidified a little bit when Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu authorized direct negotiations with Lebanon. This came less than 24 hours after the Israeli military pounded Lebanon's capital, Beirut, with airstrikes that resulted in the deadliest day in that country since the war began. Meanwhile, the strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. It's the key shipping lane that U.S. President Donald Trump wants open as part of the ceasefire. The ceasefire is set to expire in 12 days, but negotiations for a longer-lasting deal are expected to begin this weekend in Islamabad. And there is much on the line, especially for the countries that won't be at the negotiating table, including the goals.

Gulf Arab states like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others. That's where Doug Saunders is. He's the Globe's International Affairs columnist. Doug joins us to talk about the disruption to an area of the world that has staked his reputation on being a beacon of stability and safety in a tumultuous region and just how much Iran has gained in the last six weeks of war. I'm Cheryl Sutherland and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Doug, thanks so much for joining me today. Great to be with you, Cheryl. So we're talking around 12 noon Eastern on Thursday,

which is Thursday night where you are in Dubai in the UAE. And this is a country that has seen over 2,500 missile and drone attacks from Iran since the war began. So now we have this ceasefire deal. What is the mood like there? At first, you would think that things are very normal here and have been throughout the conflict. on the streets things look normal the malls are full the cafes are full there's even some people on the beach and that sort of thing everybody looks a little bit tired because most nights people have been getting several incoming missile alerts where their smartphones scream at them it's a little

like when you get one of those amber alerts on your phone in Canada and it says to go find a building or a floor of your building to hide from drones or missiles that have been detected coming in from Iran. On Wednesday, we had the ceasefire announcement at 4 a.m. here. And then less than an hour after that news, my phone screamed at me with an incoming missile alert. And then they got worse, actually. A lot of the worst attacks here in UAE occurred in the afternoon, Saudi Arabia was being hit, Kuwait was being hit, Bahrain was hit in one of the worst barrages of attacks since the early days of the war around March 1st and so on. So why would Iran continue its attacks on the UAE and other Gulf states now that there's a ceasefire

deal in place? There are a couple theories about why this huge assault was unleashed in the day after the ceasefire. One theory is that Iran wants to escalate things to a very high level so that the peace negotiations can, if they call for a de-escalation, it's from a very high point. A second theory is that Iran is angered by Israel continuing to attack Lebanon and is continuing to attack what it sees as the U.S. Israeli proxy countries, which is the Gulf of Arab states. most of which, including the Emirates here, have U.S. military bases on them and facilities. And a third interesting theory is that Iran wanted to use this last-ditch measure to cut off the ability of the Gulf Arab countries to export their oil and gas through means other than the Strait of Hormuz. So Saudi Arabia has an east-west running pipeline that allows it to export to the Red Sea instead of the Persian Gulf. And somebody, presumably Iran, hit that pipeline very hard on Wednesday, disabling it for a while.

And some similar sort of facilities were hit in Kuwait. So are they trying to make it so that everyone has to squeeze through the Strait of Hormuz? and then they can charge ships $2 million each to pass through it. Who knows? Yeah. So I'm glad you brought up the Strait of Hormuz because it seems to all come back to the Strait of Hormuz when it comes to this war. How long can Iran effectively control the Strait of Hormuz? Does this feel like a long-term possibility?

Well, let's remember that in this context, all that control means is blow up any ships that go across if they don't have your permission. This is not something that's recognized under the law of the sea or under international law or anything like that. Oman, the Arab country that is on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, has said very explicitly that it will not participate in a scheme to charge ships' fees to cross the strait. Interesting. Why are they saying that? Because only Iran wants to do this. And maybe Donald Trump, the notion that Iran and

Oman together would charge these fees of $2 million per ship appeared in one of Iran's 10-point peace plan proposals. The United States, which means President Trump, seemed to like that particular item. The Sultanate of Oman immediately responded and said, no, this trade of Hormuz is a naturally occurring feature. It's, you know, it's not a political instrument. We will never charge money for this. There are no countries other than Iran and maybe the Trump administration now that would take seriously the idea of charging fees to do that, particularly when those fees would certainly be collected by the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran and used to rearm a military force.

that is a menace to most of the countries in the region. How would Trump, you mentioned Trump there, how would Trump benefit from fees? Well, it's, that particular proposal bore a certain resemblance to the sort of deal that the Venezuelan dictatorship reached with President Trump, which instead of doing a regime change, they kept the authoritarian regime in place,

but with friendly agreement to pay portions of its revenue to the United States, and those sorts of things. There's a lot of fear in this region that the outcome of the Islamabad talks is going to be something like what Venezuela got, which is a regime that's very nasty to its people being kept in place,

the difference being that it's doing things that are friendly to the U.S. administration, which might include giving a share of tolls collected on the Strait of Hormuz or something like that. Anyway, those are the sort of terms that the United States. States and Iran are coming in with to Islamabad. So you're talking about transactional diplomacy, essentially. Well, yeah, exactly. And the fear among a lot of governments here and a lot of people

here is that the entire outcome and purpose in the end of this war was effectively to strengthen Iran's theocratic regime just in a way that also benefits the United States in some very short-term monetary way to the considerable detriment of everyone here. I mean, those fees, if it was done, they would raise the cost of oil somewhat. But the larger worry is not the idea of having to pay fees. I mean, ships are already having to pay, you know, much larger amounts in insurance and all this other stuff. It's the idea that Iran would continue to be using military force to hold shipping hostage. I mean, already just in the 24 hours after the ceasefire agreement was reached, Iran has already shut off the Strait of Hormuz once, and it's currently shut down,

which it said was in protest against Israel's actions in Lebanon. So the implication there is whenever the Iranian regime didn't like something that's going on in the region or in the world, it could hold the entire world economy hostage. And we've seen that blocking that straight, it causes entire crop failures in the entire Indian subcontinent. It causes medicines not to be made. It causes semiconductors not to be made. Causes the price of everything in the world to go up and so on. So are we really left with an outcome where the Iranian regime can choke off the entire world economy when it doesn't get what it wants? Is that the outcome that we want to negotiate? Yeah. And on that, I mean, does this put Iran in line with other superpowers, given what we've seen? Like, could we put it in line with China and the U.S.? Well, no, it does not make Iran a superpower. The straight of Hormuz notwithstanding, Iran has very limited resources, but it's not a simple little country that you can change or control just by assassinating its executive leader. It's a complex regime.

that has many different arms and factions, which don't always agree with each other. I mean, another explanation for why the missile barrages continued after the ceasefire is that some branches of the Revolutionary Guards or of the military in Iran might not have been agreeing with whatever branch of the government was negotiating the ceasefire. So you have that complexity as well. But, no, Iran is not a major power. It's a fairly wily group of autocrats who've learned to hold on to power by being strategically smart, by doing things like never actually starting a nuclear weapons program,

but having all the elements that they could start one at any point so that then they can gain negotiating concessions in exchange for simply having that. So it's limited power. It's entirely possible that some of the countries of the region might try. to mount a military mission not to attack Iran the way the United States and Israel did, but just to secure the Strait of Hormuz, which would mean launching attacks on the Iranian positions on the islands and coasts along there. That's interesting. The leadership of this country, the United Arab Emirates, said last weekend that they would

participate in such a coalition military exercise. They want to see what's going to happen in his last. and see if a Faustian bargain of that sort really is going to get negotiated, where President Trump, in order to get out of a war that he's realized is politically and economically very bad for him, is willing to hand the Iranian regime a set of concessions that'll make it more powerful than it was before the war. We'll be right back. So I want to broaden this conversation out and talk about alliances and geopolitics in the Gulf

region. So before the war started, a lot of these Gulf states were more aligned with the U.S. I'm thinking about the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and even Kuwait and Bahrain. Then there's Oman, which considers itself a neutral state. Doug, let's talk about how these alliances have shifted. Let's start with the U.S. allies. Have their attitudes towards the U.S. and Trump changed since the war? Yes, although they had changed before the war.

there's a tricky balancing act that a lot of these countries are having to walk, which is that their people are very angry about the United States and Israel, over Gaza, over lots of things that Trump has done and so on. And even though they rely on the U.S. security umbrella for a lot of the sort of economic stability and post-petroleum transition that is happening in their country. countries, they can't go too far with that because their own publics are a little bit outraged by it. And what has changed since this war is that the presence of U.S. military facilities, that security umbrella has turned into kind of a target rather than umbrella, you know.

And that's what governments and citizens across this region are sort of wrestling with is the notion that their security blanket is now a target. All the things that had made this sort of a safe haven and allowed them to develop economies other than oil suddenly has become a threatening thing that's made them vulnerable, right? I think they're only beginning to wrestle with what the repercussions of that are because there's not some replacement security umbrella. So the future is a little bit uncertain in those terms. Everybody's kind of hoping things will just snap back to the way they were a couple years ago. And yet at the same time realizing, no, the fact that this happened once, like even if this war actually is over and the ceasefire holds and it's all in the past, the fact that this has happened once is going to make any company that wants to locate an office here, think twice about it. It's going to make anyone

who wants to move their family here from a place like Canada think twice about it. So I think we're only beginning to see what's changed. What about Oman? We talked about it being a neutral state. Is this still the case?

Well, and any Omani will tell you that neutrality in their sense, it often gets called the Switzerland of the Persian Gulf, and they don't like that phrase. because Switzerland is a country whose neutrality meant that they didn't involve themselves in anything. And the Amanis like to think our role is to be the country in the middle that actually does engage with everybody. Like we're part of everybody's thing.

They were participating with Iran and with the United States and to some extent with Israel in the negotiations. And they like to think we are the brokers who will solve everyone's problems. So it was a huge blow to Oman when the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began, because Oman had been right up to that day, practically, hosting the peace talks with Iran, which have been going pretty well. And the Omanis were not told. None of the Arab countries were told in advance that this was going to happen. Now, Oman has pledged throughout this war, and even in recent days, to maintain its position of neutrality and to continue to maintain good relations with Iran and the United States.

But at the same time, in practice, that resolve has kind of broken. Three weeks into the war, Oman's foreign minister, Bader al-Saidi, he wrote a pretty angry article for the economist and gave a series of TV interviews. in which she pretty angrily denounced the United States for launching the war. He said, you know, this war is a disaster. It's only the responsibility of the United States. And, you know, one man has led us into this and nothing good can come of this. It was a real break from the normal neutral position. And it obviously was coming from the very top.

And now it's there's the double slap in the face that Pakistan's military puppet regime has stepped in as the brokers or the peacemakers in place of Oman. Yeah. What do you make of that? Because Oman, you know, you mentioned like Oman is usually the mediator here. What do you make of the fact that Pakistan is now the broker of these talks right now? Well, yeah. I mean, for Oman, it's really bad news because, of course,

not only did they get that sort of double slap in the face of being shunned and rejected, but then they also got attacked by Iran. And they thought they were Iran's, like, they were the one country that could be friends with Iran and with the United States. And to get attacked was really insulting to them. They're like, why, why us? And so on, particularly because their religious leaders are very pro-Iranian regime. And it's quite possible that their public is as well.

I mean, another one of the outcomes of these talks probably is going to be that it's going to strengthen the legitimacy of a Pakistani administration that doesn't have any real legitimacy. I mean, I was in Pakistan for their election in 2024 when most people voted for the party of a guy who's still in prison. That's basically the situation in Pakistan now. It's a fairly illegitimate leader who's backed by the military, and it's the military who are overseeing these peace talks. And Pakistan has been, you know, brutally bombing Afghanistan throughout this period of the Iran war, not getting big headlines because everyone's attention is focused on Iran. And now the United States, by making Pakistan the venue for these peace talks, is essentially

giving the Pakistani regime carte blanche to do the various nasty things it's doing in the region. So if you look at it this way, compared to the situation on February 27th, we now seem to be having an outcome where the Iranian regime is stronger, has more resources, and more ability to repress its people. Pakistan's military-backed administration is stronger and has licensed from the United States to do its worst. Benjamin Netanyahu can attack Lebanon in ways that would not have been tolerated before. And so on and who knows where Donald Trump stands out of all this, it's not an outcome that's enhanced peace in the region. The fact that countries of the Middle East that had seemed to be peaceful non-players are suddenly in play, it's not a very comforting

sign for the future. So just to end here, Doug, the U.S. and Iran are due to meet in Pakistan for talks this weekend. It's always possible, of course, these talks could be called off. But if they aren't. What will you be watching for that would show progress towards a longer lasting end to this war? The tricky thing is that something that brings an immediate end to this war is not consistent with something that's going to bring a lasting peace to the region. One thing you have to think about is the people of Iran who in January of this year, you know, we're facing mass slaughter by their government for having risen up and asking for reasons. regime change, many of whom welcomed the U.S. Israeli strikes at first. Now they're facing a

situation where the regime will stay in place, and that's almost certainly going to be the outcome, and we'll have a lot of license to take revenge on the people of the country. I don't see any prospects for something that's going to be good for the people of Iran. There is a possibility that an agreement will be reached between the United States and Iran. that will allow movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, and it will normalize economic relations for Iran, which could be good for some forms of stability in the region. The interesting thing being that that would be essential to be the outcome

that President Barack Obama negotiated more than a decade ago in the JCPOA talks, the so-called Iran nuclear deal, But there will probably be aspects of this that will be worse than that, especially if there are fees being charged for ships transiting the Persian Gulf. So you're left sort of at the end saying, okay, what have we learned? What was the point of this? What was it all worth? And it essentially was a terrible set of atrocious things happening to at very best. The very best outcome we could hope for is returning to almost exactly.

the way things were on February 27, 2006, in the Middle East. I mean, which was not very good. And that's the very best we can hope for is a return to the February 27th world. And anything else that we can hope to fight off or prevent in Islamabad this weekend is just stuff that would be worse than February 27. I mean, that's a depressing note to end on. But I guess that's the reality. Doug, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Cheryl. That was Doug Saunders, the Globe's International Affairs columnist. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our associate producers and interns are Finn Durmo and Emily Conahan. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McGoughlin and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive.

editor. Thanks so much for listening.