The US-Israel war on Iran started on 28 February with strikes that eliminated the country’s powerful and long-serving Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with dozens of top military, intelligence, and political figures.
The list of those killed in the first few hours of the war also included Iran’s Minister of Defence Aziz Nassirzadeh, the country’s shrewd and ambitious officer-politician Ali Shamkhani, and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Beyond the elimination of Iran’s ruling elite, the American-Israeli war on Iran, whose legal justification has not been made, has killed Iranian civilians, including 50 schoolgirls in their classes on the first day of the war.
It has targeted key military and nuclear installations in the country and prompted a military reaction from Tehran that started with missile strikes on Israel, then on US military installations in the Arab Gulf countries, and later on civilian and industrial facilities, including oil refineries, airports, and hotels.
As the war entered its fourth day, Iran had conducted drone strikes against the US Embassy in Riyadh, forcing it to close. The US also had to shut down its embassies and reduce the diplomatic staff in several embassies in the region and to call on its citizens to leave 14 Middle East countries, including Egypt.
Meanwhile, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a significant part of the international oil trade and for liquefied natural gas (LNG), prompting a spike in oil and gas prices across the world, with the average price per barrel bypassing the $80 mark, an increase of $15.
The fear of a prolonged war, which US President Donald Trump has said could take about four to five weeks, has led to predictions that the price per barrel could rise to $100.
However, according to an Egyptian official, the worst part of the war is its repercussions on the region.
He argued that the present war is unlike the 12-day war in June last year that Israel started against Iran before the US joined in the final days to strike key Iranian nuclear facilities.
The present war, he explained, is one with far greater regional ramifications.
“The war was coming, and the Iranians knew it and prepared for it even as they were heavily involved in negotiations with the Americans over the future of the nuclear programme and their long-range ballistic missiles capacity,” he said.
The most alarming part, he added, is that the war has no geographical boundaries and that it is a regional war given Iran’s associate groups, including the Houthis in Yemen, Iraq’s Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces), and Hizbullah in Lebanon that on day four of the war launched missile strikes against Israeli targets.
Israel then conducted military strikes on Lebanon and acted to expand its occupation of Lebanese territory in South Lebanon, with implicit threats that things could get much worse. In anticipation of the worst, the Lebanese government acted promptly to ban Hizbullah’s military acts.
Arab diplomats informed about the internal dynamics of Lebanese politics say that this is a crucial moment for Lebanon. They say that Hizbullah will not succumb easily to this decision despite the fact that it had been weakened by its long war with Israel that started on 8 October 2023 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza and led to the elimination of Hizbullah’s top echelon of leaders.
“Israel had never honoured the ceasefire [with Hizbullah signed in November 2024]; the question today is how the Lebanese government and Hizbullah will handle this sensitive moment without starting an internal confrontation that could lead to troubling consequences for Lebanese internal stability,” said Hesham Youssef, an Egyptian former Arab League diplomat with insight into Lebanese affairs.
Youssef said that there are also key concerns about what this war could mean to the security of the Arab Gulf countries.
The Iranian strikes against civilian and industrial installations in the Arab Gulf countries “were a big mistake on the side of the Iranians,” he said. “The strikes amplified the concerns of the Arab Gulf countries about Iranian intentions towards its neighbours and undermined the breakthrough that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghachi was trying to make in Iran’s relations with the Arab countries.”
“Iran has caused itself significant diplomatic harm in the midst of this tough war,” Youssef said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty issued a statement of solidarity with the Arab Gulf countries in the wake of the Iranian attacks. He called on Iran to immediately suspend any strikes on its Arab neighbours and warned that these strikes threaten regional stability.
Already 10 Arab countries have been caught up in the line of fire. These include Jordan, which is already facing growing concerns over the possible ramifications of the expanded Israeli attacks on the West Bank next door.
They also include Iraq, where Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi is unlikely to bow to any attempt to steer clear from the current war, especially at a time when the US is threatening sanctions on Iraq if pro-Iranian politician Nouri Al-Maliki is reappointed prime minister of Iraq.
Other Arab countries are dealing with current and future side effects of the war. Egypt is facing a potential drop in Suez Canal revenues and gas supplies.
Israel has decided to suspend its gas exports to Egypt. This has led Egypt to suspend its gas and LNG exports amidst concerns over the stability of supplies in the local market ahead of the high consumption of electricity in the summer.
Fears over regional stability have also prompted a sharp rise in the exchange rate of the dollar, which seems to be inching closer to the LE50 benchmark after months of stabilisation at around LE46.5.
In statements made on the second day of the war, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said that Egypt is bound to be affected by the war.
With the Israeli decision to close the Rafah Crossing at the start of the war, Egypt is becoming increasingly concerned at the fragile humanitarian situation in Gaza and the chances for the durability of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The Egyptian official said that there are no signs that Hamas or Islamic Jihad will get involved in the ongoing confrontation.
On Tuesday, an Iranian missile strike hit a UK military base in Cyprus. The attack came hours after the UK said that it would allow the US to use British military bases for strikes against Iran.
Youssef argued that Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to get the maximum possible support from Trump to weaken every possible Israeli adversary and to consolidate his own vaunted political status as one of Israel’s most consequential prime ministers.
However, there are many variables that will decide how the next days of the war will unfold, he added.
A key point relates to American casualties. Trump is only too happy to have cut down the cheap oil supplies that China used to obtain from Iran, he said, as he did in the case of Venezuela earlier in the year following the kidnapping of President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro, prompting policy change in Caracas.
“But Trump’s eyes will inevitably be on the body bags and the approval ratings ahead of the mid-term congressional elections in the US later this year,” Youssef said. He explained that if Trump were to lose his majority in Congress, he would be a lame duck for the remainder of his presidency.
By Tuesday this week, six Americans had died in the war.
Youssef added that there is no guarantee that if the US pulls out of the war, “claiming victory as it did last summer in the 12-day war,” Netanyahu will stop. “It would depend on the kind of armaments capacity he has and the kind of US pressure he would come under,” he said.
The key question remains what will now happen in Iran, a vast nation with 90 million people, multiple ethnicities, and beyond-border influences.
“The stability of Iran is crucial to regional stability and the opposite is also true,” he said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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