The 81st United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week had no shortage of political theatre. Delegates walked out during Benjamin Netanyahu's speech, Mahmoud Abbas addressed the Assembly by pre-recorded video after being denied a US visa for the second year running, and leaders traded accusations over the wars in Gaza and Iran. Less visible, but perhaps more consequential, was the diplomacy taking place around them. While speeches exposed the region's divisions, mediators were working intensively behind the scenes to keep US-Iran communication alive and move the Gaza ceasefire from agreement towards implementation.
These efforts show how mediation operates over a spectrum: before agreements, by containing escalation; around them, through networks of diplomatic actors; and after them, by supporting implementation. The same states often perform all three functions while holding security commitments in neighbouring conflicts. Protecting the channels that sustain this work is therefore increasingly important.
Before the deal: keeping diplomacy alive
The US-Iran exchanges during UNGA illustrate the first shift, although they took place in the shadow of an agreement that had already failed. Pakistan, working with Qatar and other regional partners, secured a ceasefire in April and a memorandum of understanding signed on 17 June. The memorandum unraveled within weeks amid disputes over control of the Strait of Hormuz and renewed strikes. In New York, Iran presented proposals to reopen the strait within seven days in return for US steps that included lifting the blockade of Iranian ports, while Qatari mediators shuttled between Tehran and Washington. Even after President Donald Trump publicly rejected the Iranian proposal, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was awaiting Washington's definitive position through the mediators and continued to argue that a negotiated settlement remained the only viable way out of the confrontation.
Subsequent exchanges demonstrated both the value and the limits of keeping that channel open. On 20–21 October, Pakistan's army chief visited Tehran, while Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said indirect exchanges with Washington were continuing through Pakistan and Qatar. Iran nevertheless maintained its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Communication persisted, even as prospects for a breakthrough remained uncertain.
Keeping adversaries connected is itself a conflict-management function. Mediators transmit proposals, clarify disagreements and explore reciprocal steps, preserving the political space for a settlement. In such circumstances, mediation may initially be less about resolving the conflict than about preventing the political space for resolution from disappearing altogether.
Around the deal: from individual mediators to mediation networks
Mediation is traditionally imagined as a triangular relationship: two conflicting parties and a third party positioned between them. Contemporary conflicts increasingly look messier.
The diplomacy surrounding Iran during UNGA demonstrated this clearly. Pakistan has led the US-Iran file since the spring, and Qatar publicly described its work in partnership with Pakistan to de-escalate US-Iran tensions and safeguard freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, while Oman maintained its own diplomatic engagement with Iran, emphasising dialogue, confidence-building and safe navigation. Qatar itself drew a broader lesson from the experience at the UN Group of Friends of Mediation: that partnerships are indispensable. It also argued that the growing diversity of mediation actors requires a more coordinated and integrated approach.
Yemen reveals a more complicated pattern. UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg pursued talks in Muscat and Saudi Arabia, while Iran proposed political engagement with the Houthis. Yet escalation continued. Following Houthi attacks on Riyadh's airport, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan agreed to implement collective defence commitments, although Türkiye's assistance remained largely bilateral pending parliamentary ratification of their pact. Britain subsequently announced defensive air patrols over Saudi Arabia, while Egypt announced additional military assistance. These developments illustrate how diplomatic engagement coexists with expanding security commitments, complicating states' roles across interconnected conflicts.
Such networks are not necessarily coordinated or complementary. They can also compete or work at cross-purposes. But the diplomacy surrounding Iran and Yemen during UNGA suggests that contemporary mediation is increasingly difficult to understand by looking at individual mediators, or individual conflicts, in isolation.
After the deal: when mediation becomes implementation
Much of the diplomatic language surrounding Gaza during UNGA was no longer focused exclusively on reaching a ceasefire. Attention centred on making an existing agreement work. That agreement is itself contested. The October 2025 ceasefire and the peace plan endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2803 remain only partly implemented, and in August the mediators Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye publicly condemned continuing Israeli violations.
At a high-level roundtable on early recovery, Qatar said its mediation with Egypt, Türkiye and the United States was continuing to fully implement the peace plan and its roadmap. The discussion extended from maintaining the ceasefire to humanitarian access, infrastructure, withdrawal, stabilisation, governance, early recovery and reconstruction. The ceasefire's first anniversary in October exposed the gap between agreement and implementation: hostage releases and increased humanitarian access had not translated into the promised governance arrangements, international deployment or meaningful reconstruction.
Funding shortages have compounded these difficulties: in October, the World Food Programme reported reducing its assistance in Gaza from 1.6 million to 1.1 million people, underscoring how sustaining a ceasefire's humanitarian gains also depends on continued international support.
This complicates a common assumption about mediation: that the mediator's principal task ends when the parties reach an agreement. Peace processes rarely work that neatly. Agreements create new disputes over sequencing, interpretation, compliance and implementation.
Mediators can therefore help parties navigate the fragile transition from commitments on paper to changes on the ground. In Gaza the role is closer to that of a guarantor, monitoring compliance and pressing the parties to meet obligations they have already accepted. Developments since UNGA have reinforced this shift. Recent mediation over Gaza has focused on some of the most difficult elements of implementation, including weapons, Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction, demonstrating how implementation itself can become a new phase of negotiation.
Protecting the space for mediation
These developments raise another question: if mediation depends on networks, continuous communication and prolonged engagement, what exactly needs to be protected?
Recent events make the question urgent. In September 2025 Israel struck a meeting of Hamas's negotiating team in Doha, on the territory of the state mediating between them. On 11 June this year, as the United States and Iran exchanged strikes, a plane carrying Qatari mediators was stranded on the tarmac in Tehran. Qatar had earlier declined to mediate on the Iran file while it was itself under Iranian fire.
At the UN Group of Friends of Mediation, Qatar stressed that mediators must operate safely, independently and impartially. It identified threats beyond physical attacks, including interference with communications, breaches of confidentiality, cyber threats and disinformation.
Protection must therefore cover the wider mediation process: safe travel for mediators and delegations, secure venues, confidential communications, and confidence that diplomatic engagement will not expose participants to attack.
Who provides that protection is the harder question. International law protects diplomats and, in armed conflict, those who carry messages between belligerents. It has no dedicated regime for mediating states or for their envoys, venues and communications.
The Group of Friends of Mediation, which has already advanced several General Assembly resolutions on mediation, is the natural place to begin. A resolution affirming the inviolability of mediators, venues and channels would set a baseline and guarantees written into ceasefire texts would give it practical force. These overlapping roles make clear mandates and explicit commitments to protecting mediation processes especially important.
Looking beyond the breakthrough
UNGA 2026 produced no spectacular diplomatic finale. But that may be precisely its lesson for contemporary mediation.
While the most visible moments in New York unfolded at the podium, much of the consequential diplomatic work took place away from it. Behind the speeches, mediators kept channels open, coordinated access and leverage, sustained humanitarian arrangements and supported implementation. These quieter functions deserve greater attention alongside diplomatic breakthroughs.
The measure of mediation, therefore, should not simply be whether it produces a deal. Its value may lie in creating the conditions for an agreement, keeping an existing one alive, or ensuring that, even amid war, there remains a channel through which tomorrow's agreement can still be negotiated.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies