A photograph shows makeshift shelters inside a war-damaged building, parts of which collapsed on a windy winter day in Gaza City on January 13, 2026. AFP
Three months later, however, the situation seems far more complicated and dangerous, with worrying developments taking place in recent weeks in Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Syria and Lebanon as well as the occupied Gaza Strip. Trump’s daring military operation against Venezuela on 3 January, abducting its president and his wife and transporting them to New York to be tried on charges of drug trafficking, gave way to a ripple effect all over the world.
The success of the highly advanced US operation seems to have whetted the appetite of the once “America First” president to undertake more military adventures and issue threats not only against countries in America’s so-called backyard but also against Iran and even Europe. This is taking place at a time when close regional allies of the US, topped by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were hoping the US administration would exert serious efforts in helping to settle the new explosive situations in Sudan and Yemen, as well as proceeding with the implementation of the second phase of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, which would lead to easing the tremendous human suffering of over 2.4 million Palestinians and the full withdrawal of Israeli Occupation Forces from Gaza.
Unfortunately, the role of the current Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be missed in continuing to push for expanded military adventures in hope of achieving his ultimate goal of redrawing the map of the Middle East and establishing Israel as the region’s dominant superpower. Netanyahu, whose country is too small to carry out a large-scale military attack against Iran despite its advanced military capabilities, continues to push the Trump administration to follow up on his threat to intervene militarily in case the Iranian government continued to crackdown on protesters who have been demonstrating against miserable economic conditions. While independent and Iranian human rights groups’ conservatively estimate the number of Iranian protesters killed since the demonstrations broke out in late December at 200 to 500, it cannot be a coincidence that it was only in the Israeli media and supposedly leaked Israeli intelligence assessments that the number of Iranian victims has been put at 2,000 – part of the attempt to drag Trump into a war.
However, reports in the US media imply that the Trump administration continued to weigh its options, knowing that opting for military power can only make things worse, undermining the protests taking place in Iran, and providing the regime there with an easy justification to use greater force against protesters after accusing them of serving a foreign, US and Israeli agenda. Equally dangerous were the threats made by top Iranian officials that should Trump decide on any military action in the region, Israel and all nearby US military bases in Gulf countries would be legitimate targets.
That is simply a doomsday scenario the region simply cannot afford. Trump has already warned that if Iran dared to target his strongest ally, Israel, or the US military in the Gulf, he would respond with an attack harsher than any Iran has ever seen. This would mean setting the entire region on fire, and the blaze will be one that would require many years to extinguish, far beyond Trump’s remaining three in office.
Hopefully, wisdom will prevail and the US president will continue to pursue his target of winning the Nobel peace prize and bringing in trillions of dollars in investments to the US economy rather than undertaking an extremely risky military adventure with potentially disastrous consequences.
Considering the joint military adventure the US and Israel carried out in June against Iranian nuclear facilities and top military leadership, it is obviously not a difficult mission to conduct a second round of expanded air strikes. Yet, unlike the situation in June, this time it is not clear which targets in Iran could help achieve the declared US goal of supporting the protesters, or the Israeli goal of unseating the regime. Making matters more complicated is the fact that neither the US, Israel, nor any other party aiming for regime change in Iran can point to an obvious alternative to the current regime. With close to 100 million people, including a variety of ethnic groups, Iran cannot be left to chaos especially within such a vital, oil-rich region.
It’s not a stretch to hope that the same close US allies working hard to bring an end to the various complicated conflicts in the region such as Gaza, Sudan and Yemen will also exert serious efforts to achieve a compromise between the US and Iran. One key reason the Iranian regime is left with so few options to help confront the current round of protests against tough living conditions is the continuation of tight economic sanctions on Iran.
As much as there are a flood of reports on imminent US military action in Iran, there remains room for mediation to restart the stalled nuclear talks between the two countries. If those talks resumed and there were positive signs of willingness to compromise by both sides that could provide some breathing space for Iran’s regime and hope for improved economic conditions for Iranians. Meanwhile, working along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, Egypt needs to continue engaging the Trump administration in sincere efforts to extinguish the other wars and military threats in the region rather than starting new ones with unpredictable consequences.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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