On Thursday, he visited both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, meeting UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Two days later, he visited Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where he held extended talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Bahraini King Hamad bin Issa Al Khalifa.
All four countries were dragged into the US-Israeli war against Iran, paying a heavy price in terms of their security and oil infrastructure, vital for the entire world. Despite publicly expressing their opposition to the military escalation before it started on 28 February, and in the case of Oman and Qatar exerting serious mediation efforts to avoid it, Iranian missiles and drones continued to rain on them, hitting not just the US military bases spread throughout the Gulf, as Iran claims, but civilian targets that have nothing to do with the US-Israeli attacks.
Leaders of the Gulf nations practised maximum self-restraint, rejecting public and illicit Israeli and US demands to directly join the war. They realise that, while it is easy for the US and Israel to launch heavy aerial attacks against Iran and then go home, it is they who would pay the price in the short and long term, considering that they would always be Iran’s neighbours as geography will never change.
Months before the war started, Egypt warned of the extreme danger of allowing tensions to rise, and sincerely sought to act as a mediator, together with other countries, between Iran and the United States, in the hope of improving the chances of reaching a deal satisfying to both sides. The agreement Egypt mediated between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September on resuming cooperation between the two sides reflected Egypt’s belief that diplomacy could work, and it was very much hoping to build up on that step.
However, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to push the US administration for war, going so far as to present illusory scenarios on how easy it would be to topple the Iranian regime – a ploy crafted by his intelligence agency, the Mossad, according to The New York Times – the situation got out of hand, and the world started preparing itself for the worst nightmare scenarios. Netanyahu has made no secret of the fact that toppling the Iranian regime had been his dream for decades, believing that only this step would ensure Israel’s hegemony over the region and help to redraw the map of the Middle East, as he prefers to put it.
To achieve this goal, it does not matter to him if he must set the entire region on fire, or force the world to shoulder any human or economic costs. When US President Donald Trump was opposed to targeting Iranian oil facilities at the beginning of the war, Netanyahu ordered attacks on storage tanks in Tehran in order to cloud the skies of the capital and create a media image of the country on fire.
Last week, he ordered a second major attack on the South Pars oil field that’s jointly owned by Iran and Qatar amid conflicting reports regarding whether Trump was informed beforehand. The Israeli media reported that Trump gave the green light before the attack in the hope of redoubling pressure on Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil goes, the closure of which demonstrates how this war started without proper preparation.
Unfortunately, Iran responded with attacking a major gas field at Ras Laffan in Qatar, causing damage that will take up to five years to fix, according to Qatari oil officials, and reduced Qatar’s production of liquified gas by 17 per cent. That is bad news for the entire world, since the insane increase in the prices of oil and gas is not limited to power consumption, but will cause massive harm to the production of fertiliser and food crops and cause shipment prices to soar.
Egypt, like all countries of the region, has already started suffering the negative economic consequences of this needless war against Iran, and the worst is yet to come if no serious effort is exerted by all concerned parties to bring it to an immediate end. That is why Al-Sisi’s visits to the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia were immediately followed by a meeting of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan to discuss proposals for renewed mediation efforts between Iran and the United States. Egypt, like many of the world’s countries, does not see this war as necessary or unavoidable, yet its commitment to the security and safety of the Gulf countries is unshakable.
Due to the commitment to safeguard the interests of the Gulf countries and the safety of their peoples along with millions of foreign expatriates from all over the world, Egypt felt it had to move quickly as the world was on the tip of its toes following Trump’s warning on Saturday that Iran had only 48 hours before he started targeting its power stations to force it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It was certainly no coincidence that a mere few hours before Trump’s deadline on Monday, news came in that the US president decided to postpone his threat by five days, and he announced that Washington was involved in negotiations with Iran to reach a satisfying deal.
Having withstood fierce US and Israeli attacks over the past four weeks, causing human losses and massive destruction as well as the assassination of top political and spiritual figures including the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran denied that it was involved in any talks with Trump. However, senior Iranian officials conceded that they were looking into proposals presented by Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan to end the war. Shortly before Trump withdrew his threat on Monday, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was holding another round of talks over the phone with US Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, as well as the foreign ministers of Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan.
In Iran, there is zero trust in US intentions, especially with contradictory and showy statements made daily by the US president and his close ties to Netanyahu. As a matter of fact, the entire world is finding it difficult to interpret Trump’s daily statements, both in news conferences and on his private social media platform, Truth Social. That would be an understandable negotiating tactic, except that the price paid by the countries of the region for this ambiguous US policy is too high to risk any further manoeuvres.
It is too early to say with confidence how soon the US-Israeli war against Iran will come to an end, especially with Netanyahu’s determination to fail any mediation effort. But, as a key regional power, Egypt has no choice but to continue working hard to bring this madness to an end, knowing that the consequences of this dangerous war will outlast the outcome of direct military confrontations.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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