IPC Speaker al-Ahsan Endorses Davutoğlu ‘Middle Powers Plan’ for Hormuz

May 22—Professor Abdullah al-Ahsan, respected political scientist at the International Islamic University Malaysia and Istanbul Şehir University, endorsed former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s proposed Hormuz mediation framework in a May 21 commentary in Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. Al-Ahsan will be a featured speaker at the May 22 meeting of the International Peace Coalition.

Al-Ahsan considers Davutoğlu’s proposal—a joint maritime security force composed of Türkiye, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia to secure and temporarily administer the Strait of Hormuz—the most viable path out of the current standoff. The argument rests on what he calls “dual-acceptability”: these four nations have functional relationships with Tehran, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Washington simultaneously, in a way no Western-led force can. Tehran, he writes, does not view these “prominent Muslim-majority democracies through the adversarial lens of imperial encirclement,” and Saudi Arabia and the GCC have substantial economic and diplomatic ties with each.

The geopolitical asset of dual acceptability—coupled with Davutoğlu’s personal standing as a “scholar-statesman” with “deep conceptual understanding of regional equilibrium and institutional diplomacy”—gives the proposal, in al-Ahsan’s reading, “immediate intellectual credibility” when presented at the UN Security Council and to the international community.

The piece arrives at a striking moment. Davutoğlu’s framework, set out in Project Syndicate in April and restated at the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable, is now taking the form of concrete diplomatic motion. During his meeting with Trump in Washington in early May, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva handed Trump a copy of the 2010 Brazil-Türkiye-Iran Nuclear Agreement—the same framework Davutoğlu helped mediate as Türkiye’s foreign minister, under which Iran would deposit enriched uranium in Türkiye in exchange for civilian-use nuclear fuel. Pakistan’s General Asim Munir is in mediation discussions with Iran. And the May 26 Chinese-presided UN Security Council debate on the UN Charter is approaching as the immediate venue for advancing the framework.

Al-Ahsan’s intervention adds a respected Muslim-world scholarly voice to the convergence—and his appearance at tomorrow’s IPC meeting brings it directly into the network that has been advancing the proposal.