The Gaza War has ended after two years that rocked the region from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of the Gulf. It saw Israel go on a rampage, attacking both Hamas and Hezbollah. In its offensive against the latter, the organisation’s flamboyant and long-serving leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated. A month later, his likely successor, Hashim Safialdeen, was eliminated, but the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were not done — more than a month after the ceasefire to end the war took effect, a strike killed Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, who was accused of leading the drive to re-arm the group.
The IDF’s long reach extended to Iran: On June 13, Israel fired the opening barrages against its most powerful foe. Over 12 days, Iran’s nuclear facilities and instruments of state control were struck. Emboldened by the green light given by Washington — the United States also carried out strikes against Iran’s deeply-buried nuclear facilities, using bunker-busting bombs — Israel expanded its aims to include regime change.
In the two years since 7 October, others, from Yemen to Syria, were also struck, leading an Israeli journalist, Barak Ravid, to write that the war has “changed the Middle East forever”. Buoyed by a stream of victories, and seemingly impervious to growing international condemnation of its actions in Gaza, Israel then went too far, launching a strike on Qatar in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to eliminate Hamas’ negotiators who had gathered in Doha.
Arab allies of the US were furious, to put it mildly. Qatar was mediating the conflict in Gaza and hosted the Hamas delegation on behalf, and at the behest, of Washington. The attack came as a shock to the Arab Gulf states. Anwar Gargash, the Diplomatic Adviser to the United Arab Emirates’ President, described the Israeli attack on Qatar as “treacherous”, and added that “the security of the Arab Gulf states is indivisible”.
Suspicions of outright US collusion, or at least tacit approval, sapped whatever trust was left of America in Gulf capitals: While the idea that President Donald Trump would approve such an attack boggled the mind, the notion that he did not know about it beforehand strained credulity.
As the American and Emirati observers, April Longley Alley and Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, put it: “Trump’s inability or unwillingness to stop Israel’s attack added to many Gulf leaders’ longstanding concerns over the reliability of the US security umbrella. Gulf states are now re-evaluating their defence and security alliance — not to replace the US, but to fill gaps and update cooperative mechanisms.” Indeed, Saudi Arabia acted quickly to formalise a defence alliance with Pakistan in the wake of the Qatar attack. The Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement was signed on 17 September 2025, a mere eight days from Israel’s brazen strike.
A Saudi-Pakistan alliance reduces the Kingdom’s overreliance on the US. The Saudis’ vision for the region requires strategic autonomy and the development of domestic military industrialisation that Pakistan and other partners could provide. More importantly, the newly-forged alliance “could provide something the United States has thus far been unwilling to offer — a nuclear deterrent”, an analysis in Washington’s Middle East Institute concluded. When Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, was asked about this element, he replied unequivocally “that under the bilateral defence pact, Islamabad would make its nuclear capabilities available to Saudi Arabia if required, effectively placing the Kingdom under a de facto nuclear umbrella”.
The attack on Qatar also belied the notion that the Gulf was an oasis of tranquility and peace in a turbulent region. Beyond the optics, the perception of a peaceful Gulf as an area of stability encouraged investment, trade, and, of late, a haven for capital fleeing troubles in their home countries. Millionaires of all stripes are pitching their tents, so to speak, in Dubai in search of business opportunities and peace of mind.
In the wake of the attack, the Trump Administration scurried to control the damage, approving security guarantees for Qatar, and, in a particularly noteworthy move, forcing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologise to Qatar’s Prime Minister as Mr Trump listened in.
Despite this setback, Israel has nevertheless felt over-empowered. As Mr. Netanyahu boastfully assertedon 20 October: “We have reached the peak of Mount Hermon in Syria and taken control of the skies over Tehran amidst our war on seven fronts”. Other Israelis (academics included) are imagining themselves as the new regional hegemon, and even demanding jizya, a levy paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule in exchange for protection and exemption from military service. Mr Netanyahu has averred that his military campaign has “changed the face of the Middle East”. The question is how regional powers will act in response to the region’s new realities after two years of war. States in the region will have three options: Balance against Israel, bandwagon with an emboldened Tel Aviv, or hedge.
Balancing against Israel will require states with credible power to check against Israel’s ambition for primacy in the Middle East. Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel four decades ago, will be the most concerned about Israeli regional hegemony. Having witnessed the devastation in Gaza, the real fear in Cairo will be that Israel intends to push Gazans into the Sinai.
Egypt has begun to balance internally against Israel. The outgoing IDF chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, “indicated that military developments in the region, including Egyptian armament, are causing concern for Israel”. Others have also expressed worry about Egypt’s military build-up and modernisation through co-operation with China. Mr Netanyahu himself has reportedly asked “Washington and Cairo to dismantle what it describes as ‘military infrastructure’ established by the Egyptian army in Sinai”.
But while a candidate to lead a rebalancing act, Egypt will need Saudi backing as it is strapped for cash. The Kingdom has resisted normalising with Israel, notwithstanding US pressure. It is not far-fetched to argue that the Saudis saw the attack on Qatar as a shot across the bow, or, to paraphrase Clausewitz, diplomacy by other means: A way of heralding the arrival of “imperial Israel”, as two journalists writing for The New York Times recently reported.
The Saudis see themselves not only as the leaders of the Middle East, but of the entire Muslim world. Allowing Israel to rise unchallenged as the master of the region will not sit well in Riyadh. This makes the Saudis likely to play a role in seeking to contain Israel, but perhaps not an overt one, given its newly-reinforced ties with the US, and the imperatives of its Vision 2030 transformation drive.
Jordan is another regional actor that would be impacted by the new reality. Despite its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, it feels genuinely threatened by the developments in the Occupied Palestinian territories following 7 Oct. Jordan fears that settler violence and other activities may kick a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians further into the future, if not off the field entirely. Worse, as in Egypt, the spectre of eventual expulsion of West Bank Palestinians to Jordan is an existential worry. Taken together with the events in Gaza, the Jordanian street is growing increasingly hostile towards Israel, adding to pressure on the government, which is already grappling with sizeable economic and political woes.
Then there is Iran. The regime is highly institutionalised, implacable in its enmity towards Israel, and enjoys some popular support. During the 12-Day War with Israel, Iranians largely rallied behind the flag, putting paid to Mr Netanyahu’s hopes of fomenting regime change. With the war over, however, and given Iranians’ many day-to-day concerns — from economic hardship to water rationing and power cuts — it remains to be seen how the clerical regime will fare in the near future, particularly since its dismissal of efforts to restart nuclear control talks could impose an ever higher price on the people. Abbas Milani of Stanford, a native of Iran, believes that the regime, with all its constellations and anti-Western and anti-Israeli rhetoric, “will soon be a matter of history”. Indeed, with succession looming, the fate of the Islamic Republic remains cloudy.
So far, however, the Iranian regime has weathered the storm and likely will double down on its nuclear programme with a vengeance. As its proxies were decimated, its own “military capabilities degraded, and its adversaries closing in, Iran may see producing even a rudimentary bomb as the only option that it has left”, Eric Brewer, a deputy vice-president for the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Material Security Programme, contended. Doing so would, however, plunge the region into further turmoil and spark even more conflict.
Turkey is another major regional player that would stand up to Israel. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regional ambitions collide with the idea of an Israeli hegemon. Ankara has also taken a tough stand against Israel’s actions in Gaza, suspending all trade between the two countries, among other measures. On top of that, Mr Erdogan has consistently expressed support for Hamas over the last decade. Meanwhile, his ambitions of leadership of the Muslim world have seen him back the Palestinian cause vociferously in a bid for domestic popularity, and support among Arab populations.
An additional consideration for Turkey is Syria, its neighbour. Ankara views the country as being within its sphere of influence, and has moved to implement a defence agreement which would entrench its presence there. Israeli airstrikes on military bases across Syria are a reflection of Tel Aviv’s wariness over this development: Defence Minister Israel Katz described them as a “clear message and warning for the future”.
Given these factors, Turkey has adopted a two-pronged approach. It has used maximalist rhetoric — Mr Erdogan called the attacks on Iran “state terrorism” — while avoiding steps that would bring it into direct conflict with Israel, although the Turkish leader has ordered the country’s stockpile of medium and long-range missiles be increased. Meanwhile, it has leveraged its status as a member of Nato to signal to Israel that there are costs to its actions.
Likewise, Israel and its supporters have been looking askance at Turkey. Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, called for Israel to attack “Turkey’s Akkuyu nuclear plant”, which will be operational this year. His rationale was that the plant poses safety and proliferation risks. In an article in 2024, he concluded eerily that “Turkey may believe Akkuyu will come online in 2025, but, in reality, that may be the year the nuclear site’s lights go out, once and for all”.
Arguing the same point, a report by the Israeli think-tank Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs a few months before the attack on Iran warned of threats posed by Turkey to Israel. The report argued that Mr Erdogan’s regional ambitions are fuelled by the “aim to revive the Ottoman Caliphate through strategic control over Syria.” This state of affairs raises several questions, including whether Turkey’s stance would encourage others to join it, or if a new alignment to keep both sides in check emerges.
The second scenario — jumping on the Israeli bandwagon — grows dimmer by the day. There is little prospect that more countries will join the Abraham Accords anytime soon. As two scholars put it: “A welter of projects that sought to bind Israel closer to Arab countries…will likely fall by the wayside.” Significantly, however, the Accords have survived the test of the Gaza War, the confrontation with Iran, and the attack on Qatar, which is a testimony to its resilience. None of the signatories has abandoned the Accords, or even suspended them, even as the political cost of normalisation has increased since the Gaza war began. Nevertheless, the future of the agreements is dubious, as public opinion in the Arab world is “strongly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, seeing it as an Arab, not just a Palestinian, concern”, as the economist Alexandre Kateb opined in an article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
A third strategy that could be pursued by Middle Eastern states is hedging. Many of them have already cultivated ties with different powers. Arab countries have been seeking membership in multilateral groups like Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, while pursuing mini-lateralism at the same time.
The US and Western countries are not the sole security suppliers to the region anymore. China is already making inroads into regional affairs. Last year saw the biggest Arab-China summit in Beijing. The meeting was well-attended, and high-level delegations represented their respective countries. The summit has adopted “the Beijing Declaration and the Action Implementation Plan”, which “laid out a framework for boosting Chinese-Arab ties and cooperation in various fields, including in economy, politics, infrastructure and aviation, over the next two years”.
Given widespread public opinion in the region, many Arab countries will likely opt for hedging. Given public opinion — about 89 per cent of Arabs surveyed by the Arab Center of Washington DC oppose recognition of Israel — closer ties with Israel are near impossible.
Strengthening ties with China and Russia while maintaining solid relations with Western powers would engender coveted stability and normalcy in the region. The modus vivendi reached by the Arab Gulf states with Iran, book-ended by the Beijing-brokered rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, will enhance the Gulf states’ chances of forging a new path.
The international context, where great power competition is becoming fiercer by the day, is particularly relevant in this regard, allowing countries, not just the Gulf states, more wiggle room than they had in the brief unipolar moment. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MbS’) recent US visit is evidence of how much clout the Gulf states have garnered in Washington. Mr Trump is by turns welcoming and querulous towards his guests, but the reception MbS received at the White House was all but unprecedented.
The net effect is that the region will be divided into two blocs: One that seeks to balance against a developing hegemon, and another that opts for hedging as the path forward. It is a recipe that will entrench rivalry at its core, despite occasional transactional actions, and leave the Middle East in a state of constant haggling.
Image Caption: A Palestinian youth carries rocks to throw against Israeli tanks during a raid in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank on 1 December 2025. Photo: AFP
About the Author
