20APR

Four states write Hormuz rules without Washington

3 min read

10:10UTC

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan met at Antalya on 18 April to expand the quadrilateral's scope to sanctions relief, maritime security and ceasefire guarantees. The United States had no seat at the table.

← Back to Two unsigned rulebooks collide at Hormuz Jump to analysis ↓

ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

The Antalya four are drafting a Hormuz settlement in a room The White House chose not to sit in.

The Antalya Diplomacy Forum on 18 April hosted the third meeting of Hakan Fidan (Turkish Foreign Minister), Prince Faisal bin Farhan (Saudi Arabia), Badr Abdelatty (Egypt) and Ishaq Dar (Pakistan)⁠¹. Stated scope expanded beyond any prior round to sanctions relief, maritime security and multi-state ceasefire guarantees, without a US seat at the table.

Regional officials told Bloomberg and the Associated Press a two-week ceasefire extension had been agreed in principle. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the United States had not formally requested one, and Iran's Ismail Baqaei then denied the extension entirely on 20 April. The extension now rests on wire-service reporting citing regional officials; the market priced that reporting as authoritative on Friday, and the market was wrong when Brent round-tripped on Monday.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan are the four states whose ports, pipelines or airspace integration bear the direct weight of a Hormuz closure. Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir is now the person carrying diplomatic paper Iran will read, and Pakistan Air Force F-16s are reinforcing Saudi Arabia's airspace integration in parallel. For European governments watching from Brussels, the Antalya format is where a practicable ceasefire text will plausibly be drafted, which is a shift in where the centre of gravity of the process sits.

A counter-view from Washington is that quiet mediation works best when the United States does not claim public ownership, and that an absent US seat is tactical rather than structural. That reading sits against a 22 April ceasefire expiry with no published text behind it and no signed Iran instrument on the US side.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan held their third meeting at a diplomatic conference in Antalya, Turkey on 18 April. This group has been trying to negotiate a ceasefire and keep the strait of Hormuz open, without the United States in the room. For the first time, the four countries said they were also discussing sanctions relief for Iran. That is significant because US sanctions on Iran are the main economic weapon in the conflict, and the US Treasury controls them rather than any of these four countries. Meanwhile, regional officials told wire services a two-week ceasefire extension had been agreed in principle. But Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman denied it the same day, and The White House said the US had not formally requested an extension. Only a wire service citing unnamed regional officials is confirming a deal that no government has publicly signed.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The Antalya quadrilateral emerged because four states have economic exposure to Hormuz throughput that Washington does not share. Turkey processes Russian crude for European re-export; Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the two largest alternative suppliers but need Hormuz stable to maintain their own export routes.

Egypt's Suez revenues depend on tanker flows that Hormuz disruption redirects; Pakistan's oil import bill is dominated by Gulf crude. All four have more direct economic incentive to stop the war than the US does.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
The Antalya format's expanded scope over sanctions relief creates a regional buy-in mechanism that could anchor a post-ceasefire deal if Washington eventually co-signs the framework.
Risk
A ceasefire extension confirmed only by wire services citing unnamed regional officials is fragile: Iran's denial and Washington's non-request leave the 22 April deadline without any signed text behind it.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from Türkiye

Türkiye

Primary parallel: The 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) required a P5+1 format (the US, UK, France, Russia and China plus Germany) because sanctions relief required US and EU legislative or executive action that no regional format could substitute. The Antalya quadrilateral's claim of sanctions-relief scope attempts to compress that architecture into four states, none of which control the sanctions architecture that matters most to Tehran.

Counter-parallel: The 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea was negotiated bilaterally by the US and North Korea without a regional format, then collapsed partly because South Korea and Japan were not invested in its delivery. The Antalya model inverts that failure: it builds regional buy-in first, without US participation, which may produce regional durability at the cost of US-deliverable sanctions relief.

Consensus view: Chatham House's Sanam Vakil notes the Antalya quadrilateral's third meeting is the first time a regional format has claimed scope over sanctions relief, a domain previously treated as bilateral US-Iran territory.

By placing sanctions relief on the table, Fidan, bin Farhan, Abdelatty and Dar are collectively signalling that a regional solution may require partial sanctions unwinding that Washington has not authorised, creating a gap between what the four states are promising and what they can deliver.

Counter-view: The Ankara Policy Center's Selim Koru argues the scope expansion is deliberate diplomatic positioning: by claiming sanctions relief as a regional concern, the quartet acquires veto-adjacent status in any eventual US-Iran deal, because a ceasefire built on guarantees the four states negotiated cannot be sustained if Washington undercuts those guarantees with OFAC actions.

Fidan, bin Farhan, Abdelatty and Dar gain veto-adjacent status in any eventual US-Iran deal precisely by claiming that scope.

Key tension: Whether the quadrilateral's absence of a US seat is a diplomatic asset (Iran talks to it precisely because Washington is not in the room) or a structural limit (it cannot deliver on sanctions relief without US Treasury cooperation).

First Reported In

Update #74 · Two unsigned rulebooks collide at Hormuz

Hurriyet Daily News· 20 Apr 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

International Energy Agency

G7 members agreed on 2 October to release up to 100 million barrels through the IEA over four months, front-loading diesel.

China

China signed the 15 October text reaffirming the Resolution 2216 arms embargo on the Houthis. The Wall Street Journal reported that Conflict Armament Research found Chinese parts in a Houthi copy of Iran's Kheibarshekan missile.

Russia

Russia joined the 15 October consensus condemning the Houthis, a month after vetoing a mandate for a UN panel of experts on Iran sanctions on 17 September. One Western official told Bloomberg that Moscow is providing Iran with missiles, and the White House rejected the assessment.

India

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval raised seafarer safety with Mohsen Rezaei on 12 October, after a drone hit the Petro Dolphin with 11 Indians aboard at Sohar. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar urged that attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers be avoided.

Lebanon

President Joseph Aoun met UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix in Beirut on 14 October as UNIFIL winds down before its mandate ends on 31 December. Two days later Qatar's prime minister pledged in Beirut to fund a solar plant for Lebanon.

Kataib Hezbollah

The militia announced a halt to operations except against "hostile aircraft" and denied any disarmament deal with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. A day later Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani urged eliminating "remaining traces of the US presence in other arenas".

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.