Five weeks into a war that has killed thousands, shuttered one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, and drawn in nearly every major power in the Middle East, a former Iranian diplomat is arguing that the outlines of a peace deal already exist. Mohammad Javad Zarif, who served as Iran’s foreign minister during the 2015 nuclear deal negotiations, has published a roadmap calling for a comprehensive end to the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The proposal envisions Iran capping uranium enrichment below 3.67 percent, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and accepting a mutual nonaggression pact with the United States. In return, all sanctions would be lifted.
It is, on paper, a serious offer from a figure with genuine diplomatic credentials. But the Gulf states’ swift and sharp rejection of the plan exposes a fundamental problem: no framework for peace can gain traction when the party proposing it is actively waging war against the very neighbors it needs at the table. Zarif’s roadmap fails not because its terms are illogical, but because Iran’s ongoing military aggression against Gulf states has destroyed the minimum threshold of trust that any negotiation requires. The proposal asks the region to discuss architecture while Iranian missiles are still punching holes in the walls.
What Zarif Is Proposing
Zarif’s roadmap is more than a gesture toward negotiation. It reads as a structured diplomatic offer with specific commitments, designed to appeal to both Washington’s nonproliferation concerns and Iran’s demand for economic relief and security guarantees.
The nuclear component is central. Iran is believed to hold significant quantities of highly enriched uranium, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Zarif proposes that Iran cap enrichment well below weapons-grade levels, at the same 3.67 percent threshold that governed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Beyond the bilateral framework, the plan envisions a regional fuel-enrichment consortium involving China, Russia, the United States, Iran, and Gulf neighbors. The idea is to multilateralize nuclear fuel production so that Iran’s enrichment capacity is embedded in an international structure rather than maintained as a sovereign, unchecked program.
Zarif also calls for a broader regional security framework involving major powers and Gulf states. The logic is transparent: the war has shown that bilateral deals between Washington and Tehran do not hold if the wider region is unstable and excluded from the terms.
The elements he proposes — enrichment limits, sanctions relief, nonaggression commitments, and a multilateral security architecture — echo the structure of past negotiations he helped lead. But they are being offered in a context that bears no resemblance to the slow diplomatic maneuvering of the Obama era. And the difference between then and now is not merely one of scale. It is one of shattered trust.
The Damage Iran Has Inflicted on Its Own Neighbors
The proposal landed poorly in the Persian Gulf because Zarif’s roadmap treats Iran’s military aggression against its neighbors as a secondary detail rather than a defining reality of the current crisis.
Saudi Arabia reportedly detected missiles over Riyadh. The UAE said it had responded to Iranian missile and drone attacks. In Bahrain, an explosion in early March injured dozens of people including children, some seriously. An analysis suggested the blast may have been caused by an interceptor missile fired from a US-operated Patriot air defense battery, though Manama and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack. Iran has threatened to destroy desalination plants that provide drinking water to millions. It closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s crude oil and natural gas supplies normally flow, restricting passage to vessels from nations Tehran considers friendly.
These are not historical grievances being dredged up to block diplomacy. They are events of the past five weeks. Iran struck Gulf states it was not formally at war with. Human rights organizations have warned there is a substantial risk that attacks on essential civilian infrastructure, such as electricity, heating, and water systems, would violate international law and could amount to war crimes. The World Health Organization reportedly warned about escalating risks to public health, with Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calling for restraint over the environmental risks from attacks on nuclear sites.
Zarif’s proposal asks the region to look past all of this and focus on the structural logic of a deal. That logic may be sound. But diplomacy requires more than logic. It requires a minimum threshold of good faith, and Iran has spent down that account to zero.
The Gulf Response Tells the Real Story
The specific voices rejecting Zarif’s roadmap reveal just how deep the trust deficit runs.
Gargash criticized what he characterized as Iranian aggression, describing it as a strategic miscalculation rather than a display of strength. The UAE’s position is unsurprising — it has been directly targeted. But the more telling signal came from Qatar.
Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani reportedly addressed Iran directly, suggesting that any tactical gains had come at the cost of damaging important regional relationships. That statement from a Qatari figure carries particular weight. Qatar has historically served as one of Iran’s closest interlocutors among the Gulf Arab states. If Doha is signaling this degree of frustration, the diplomatic isolation is deeper than Zarif’s proposal acknowledges.
The Gulf states are not rejecting diplomacy in principle. They are rejecting a framework that asks them to negotiate with a country that is simultaneously bombing their cities. Zarif’s roadmap envisions a regional security architecture, but the Gulf capitals have concluded — reasonably — that Iran’s behavior, not its proposals, should define the terms of any future settlement. A deal that does not account for the damage Iran has inflicted on its own neighbors will not survive the first read.
Why the Timing Makes Trust Impossible
The trust problem is compounded by the fact that the war is not winding down. It is widening. Every day the conflict expands, the credibility gap between Zarif’s peace architecture and the reality on the ground grows wider.
Iran reportedly fired long-range ballistic missiles at the US-British military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, marking a significant escalation. British cabinet minister Steve Reed said one missile fell short and the other was intercepted. Israel announced it was expanding its ground campaign in Lebanon and warned of a lengthy operation after Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked border areas in northern Israel. Baghdad saw multiple overnight attacks on a US diplomatic and logistics center at the airport. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers rampaged through Palestinian villages, setting homes and cars ablaze after a settler funeral.
Meanwhile, President Trump reportedly gave Iran an ultimatum to reopen the strait or face the destruction of its power plants, starting with the largest one. Ghalibaf reportedly responded with strong rhetoric, threatening that regional energy and desalination facilities would face severe consequences if Iranian infrastructure was attacked. The Strait of Hormuz, he said, would remain fully closed until any destroyed power plants were rebuilt.
The violence is pulling in more actors, not fewer. A helicopter crash in Qatari territorial waters killed multiple Turkish and Qatari service members. Whether this was connected to the wider conflict or a separate accident, it is a reminder that the fog of a regional war touches everything.
This is the environment into which Zarif has dropped a proposal predicated on rational self-interest and mutual de-escalation. It is asking countries to trust a process while the sirens are still sounding.
What This Reveals About Regional Diplomacy
Zarif is betting that rational self-interest will eventually override the momentum of escalation. He may be right — wars end when the cost of continuing exceeds the cost of compromise. The elements of his roadmap could well form the skeleton of an eventual settlement. But a proposal’s logical coherence is irrelevant if no one at the table believes the other side will honor its terms.
The Gulf response has clarified something important about how regional diplomacy functions during active conflict: frameworks cannot precede trust, and trust cannot be rebuilt while the aggression continues. Zarif’s roadmap treats the war as context for negotiation. The Gulf states treat it as the reason negotiation is currently impossible. Both positions have historical precedent, but only one of them accounts for the missiles that landed in Bahrain.
Zarif’s roadmap may be ahead of its moment, or it may be the kind of document that acquires relevance only after the fighting has exhausted the alternatives. But for now, it stands as an illustration of a deeper truth about this conflict: the party that has done the most to destroy regional trust cannot also be the one to design the framework for restoring it — at least not while the destruction is still underway.
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