Backstabbers: France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia’s Push to Empower Iran
France and Germany are attempting to negotiate a separate deal to tie Iran more deeply to China and Russia via Saudi Arabia. What good are enemies when you have “friends”?
France and Germany are not just tolerating a dangerous outcome on Iran; they are actively seeking to normalize it. And in doing so, they are attempting to advance a framework that could entrench Iranian leverage over the Strait of Hormuz while opening the door for Russia and China to gain a role in Gulf security. That is not diplomacy in any serious strategic sense. It is functional French and German betrayal of the United States.
Most of the world is now familiar with the United States’ incremental military pressure and a bilateral MOU track with Iran. But while that has been happening, a parallel diplomatic effort has been advancing that directly challenges core American red lines and seeks to institutionalize Iranian coercive leverage over the Strait while drawing the Middle East closer to Russia and China.
Specifically, Saudi Arabia, with active backing from France, Germany, and elements of the EU, is exploring a multilateral non-aggression pact with Iran. First reported in mid-May 2026, the framework is explicitly modeled on the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the Cold War détente agreement between the West and the Soviet bloc.
Content and structure
The proposal features multiple “baskets” covering security guarantees, confidence-building measures, economic cooperation, and normalization. Critically, it includes a supervisory and implementation committee that Iran has pushed to include “friendly and aligned countries,” widely understood to mean Russia and China as formal observers or guarantors.
This is not a simple bilateral Saudi-Iran deal. France and Germany are not passive supporters; they are actively shaping and endorsing the process. The goal is framed as regional stabilization and preventing further escalation as global oil inventories approach operational minimums.
The contradictions
The same European powers that:
Maintain strong anti-Russia sanctions and rhetoric over Ukraine.
Doubled down on aggressive green energy transitions.
Expect unconditional U.S. security guarantees via NATO Article 5.
are now helping legitimize an arrangement that risks embedding Iranian leverage over a critical global chokepoint while inviting Russia and China into Gulf security oversight.
Germany’s multi-year economic slump, deindustrialization pressures, and France’s slower but still sluggish performance underscore the self-inflicted pain driving this urgency. Years of policy distortion in the name of “transition” have left both countries more exposed to energy strain and more desperate for some kind of regional stabilization. That desperation does not make the policy wise. It makes it dangerous.
There is also a political incentive to tolerate higher baseline energy costs if they can be paired with “stable” flows. That fits the broader European narrative: keep the lights on, keep prices tolerable, and use the situation to justify further decarbonization. Lower prices and freer competition undercut that political project. A deal that preserves Iranian leverage may therefore be attractive not despite the risk, but because of the leverage it creates for the EU’s energy agenda.
Major implications
That France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia are engaging in this manner brings a number of implications that go beyond the Gulf:
1. Erosion of U.S. primacy in the Gulf
The pact creates a parallel security architecture that reduces American centrality. Saudi Arabia’s participation is particularly damaging, because it signals a hedging strategy after observing the limits of U.S. follow-through on decisive enforcement. That is not prudence. It is a move away from the security order that has underwritten Gulf stability for decades.
2. Strained U.S.-Saudi relations
Riyadh is diversifying away from over-reliance on Washington. While the Kingdom still needs U.S. weapons and intelligence in the near term, this signals a longer-term shift toward strategic autonomy. That is understandable from the Saudi point of view, but it also makes the Kingdom less reliable as a forward-looking U.S. partner. That carries real economic and security ramifications for Riyadh.
3. NATO and transatlantic fracture
France and Germany negotiating against core U.S. interests in the Gulf while still relying on American security guarantees and U.S. energy flows exposes a growing contradiction inside the alliance. The issue is not that NATO collapses tomorrow. The issue is that repeated divergence in key theaters makes the alliance look increasingly hollow in practice.
4. Empowerment of Iran and the axis
Iran gains de facto recognition of its regional dominance without surrendering its missile and drone arsenal or proxy network. Russia and China secure formal roles in a critical energy region, which is a strategic win for both. Tehran gets time, room, and legitimacy. Moscow and Beijing get a larger seat at the table. Washington gets another reminder that diplomacy without enforcement often becomes a mechanism for delay.
5. Institutionalized energy risk
By accepting Iranian control of the Strait through political normalization and supervisory mechanisms, the pact entrenches higher baseline risk premia, depressed shipping confidence, and chronic uncertainty in global oil flows. That kind of arrangement does not reduce danger; it prices danger in and calls it stability. It is exactly the sort of structure that rewards coercion while punishing free navigation.
6. Regional realignment and instability
Other Gulf states may feel forced to follow Saudi hedging. Israel becomes further isolated. The Abraham Accords expansion looks less plausible. The result is a more fragmented, more multipolar, and more unstable Gulf with competing security frameworks rather than one dominant order.
7. Domestic and global blowback
In Europe, short-term energy relief may buy political time for deeply unpopular political leaders, but it exposes the contradictions of their foreign and energy policies. In the U.S., it strengthens the case for reducing commitments to partners who undermine American interests while still expecting American protection. If Washington concludes that Europe is acting like a strategic liability, the political case for a harder line becomes much easier to sell.
The endurance trap
This is the predictable outcome of the endurance trap in action. Iran absorbs tactical blows, retains coercive capability, runs the diplomatic clock, and watches U.S. allies crack first in search of accommodation. That is how Iranian leverage compounds over time and is a byproduct of the U.S. administration’s failure to see the campaign through at the time of this writing.
The United States still has tools to block or reshape this outcome: stronger security guarantees, secondary sanctions, and, if necessary, focused kinetic enforcement to restore freedom of navigation. Whether it uses them before the situation hardens into a new normal will play a role in deciding whether this becomes a temporary diplomatic episode or a structural shift in the Gulf.
France and Germany are not neutral actors here. They are helping create the conditions under which Iranian coercion becomes easier to live with, Russia and China gain regional influence, and U.S. leverage is diluted.
With friends like France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, who needs enemies?
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