While the United States and Iran are weighing what options are available to end their war through potential bargaining, the Arabs, who are expected to bear a massive burden as a result of the war, are unable to reach a consensus on how to approach the conflict.
Arab governments remain clearly, though covertly, divided in their response despite paying lip service to diplomacy. The Arab public seems particularly worried that the war will drive a further wedge between the Arabs and the Iranians and allow Israel to extend its “free hand” in the Middle East.
There are increasing fears that all the Arab nations regardless of where they stand on the war will pay the price for it, whether in human costs or by draining their economies, but most importantly as a result of its geopolitical consequences.
Two major risks stand out in the war scenarios even if the parties reach a ceasefire deal: deepening the Shia-Sunni divide in the Arab world and Israel’s intention to create a new Middle East that will allow it to eliminate the Palestinian cause at the Arabs’ expense.
In this regard, the Arab nations are expected to be caught in a strategic dilemma in balancing their security and stability against regional and internal strains, particularly from US new-imperialism, Israel’s expansionism and growing Sunni-Shia sectarianism.
As the conflict intensifies, confusion over proposed negotiations to end the war continues. In a war that appears to be defined by who will blink first, the two sides are pushing for maximalist demands in the yet-to-be launched ceasefire talks.
The United States has reportedly made a 15-point proposal echoing those made by US President Donald Trump before the war began: Iran committing to no nuclear weapons; the US taking possession of Iran’s highly enriched uranium; limits on Tehran’s defence capabilities; and an end of Iran’s support for proxies in the region.
The list also includes a new demand, which is “guarantees” for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has declared this to be closed and had prevented ships from passing through it following the US-Israeli strikes on its energy installations.
Iran has, meanwhile, dismissed the US plan and laid out its own conditions, which include an end to the war, guarantees against future conflict, compensation for war damages, and halting attacks from all fronts involving allies of the US.
Iran also insists that any deal should recognise its authority over the strategic waterway that provides an exit for the Gulf oil to the world as well as guarantees that any commitments by the United States will be implemented.
Despite continuing rumblings about a negotiated ceasefire deal, however, Washington and Iran remain farther away from a diplomatic breakthrough than ever with each side continuing to dictate its terms.
As the search for an exit has stalled, the war has raged on, heading into its sixth week with the United States and Israel continuing to strike targets inside Iran and Tehran retaliating by bombing Israel and US Gulf allies with drones and rockets.
Meantime, the Houthis in Yemen have entered the war by sending a barrage of missiles against Israel, saying that the attacks were in retaliation against it for its continued targeting of infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories.
The attacks call into question whether the Houthis will again target commercial shipping travelling through the Red Sea corridor. During the Israeli war on Gaza that started in 2023, Houthi attacks virtually closed the Strait of Bab Al-Mandeb, incurring huge damages for shipping.
In Lebanon, Israel continues its incursion into the south of the country and its airstrikes against the north with its declared intension of seizing a chunk of Southern Lebanon to create a “buffer zone” that will deepen instability in the beleaguered nation.
With the prospects of peace talks remaining dim, several challenges highlight the predicament facing the Arab world as its fragile sociopolitical and economic structures are put to the test.
The crisis has already dealt a devastating blow to the region’s economies, from the low-income to the wealthy energy-exporting countries, with spikes in import bills and a surge in prices impacting the cost of living across the region.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests the war may cost economies in the region from 3.7 to 6.0 percent of their collective Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which represents a staggering loss of US$120-194 billion.
Just to underscore one aspect of the economic cost of the war, a small fraction of the billions of dollars spent daily on it could fund basic humanitarian needs and life-saving support for millions in the low-income Arab countries affected by the military operations.
Stability is another key issue. One of the challenges that tests the Arab world’s ability to secure its future is its capacity to keep up with the regional destabilisation that is expected to arise after the war.
As the bombs continue to fall, it is becoming increasingly clear that the hidden objectives of the joint US-Israeli operation go beyond the murky justifications and security concerns propagated by Washington and Tel Aviv.
Looking deeper into the war’s strategies, operational tactics, and lethal weaponry deployed by the United States and Israel against Iran underscores a more aggressive objective than merely downgrading Iran’s military.
Contrary to speculation that has suggested that Trump’s objectives have been confusing, conflicting, and contradictory, his goal has been constantly in tandem with that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aims at substantially destroying Iran.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to “entirely blow up” Iran’s gas fields and oil facilities and has claimed that the US military operating under his orders has “annihilated” Iran’s leadership and its nuclear and missile facilities and navy.
Netanyahu’s military goals in Iran are no less bellicose: to see Iran fully capitulate and pave the way for a “transformed” Middle East under Israeli hegemony.
On the other hand, Iran is resorting to a counter-strategy that aims at frustrating the US-Israeli military tactics through a defensive-offensive approach and executing a prolonged war of resilience, patience, and survival.
Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone strikes on Israel and US targets in the Gulf are entering their second month, and they seem to be effective, inflicting a punishing cost on its foes and destabilising the entire region.
Iran’s closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz is pushing a global surge in energy prices, inflicting substantial economic pain on the world economy, and driving a wedge between the United States and its allies and trade partners.
These are all wakeup calls to the Arab world, which is facing profound bewilderment and strategic challenges regarding the future of the region, driven by dwindling unity and fears of further instability.
While most of the 22 member states of the Arab League have remained on the sidelines, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria have been vocal in their support for the Gulf states, which are reportedly pushing for a continuation of the war to punish Iran.
Oman, though a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which groups the Gulf monarchies, has voiced unease about the attacks on Iran. Its foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, has criticised the US campaign against Iran and said America’s “friends must help extricate it from an unlawful war.”
“Resistance movements” in Iraq, the Lebanese Hizbullah group, and the Houthis in Yemen all form the region’s Shia axis, and they have showed support and solidarity with Iran, raising concerns that they might join it, widening the shadow battlefield.
Yet, a stern warning came from non-Arab Turkey. Both its foreign minister Hakan Fidan, and the director of its powerful intelligence service, İbrahim Kalın, have urged the Gulf states to see the war’s wider context and realise the risks they were running if they encouraged an outcome in which Israel emerged stronger.
But while the stakes are high from the immediate impacts of the war, the scenarios for the long-term consequences remain horrifying. The messaging coming from the war planners indicates a tremendous multidimensional shift in the region’s geopolitical landscape.
While the world focuses on the military operations and their political and economic ramifications, the deeper ideological and geopolitical forces driving Trump and Netanyahu are being largely forgotten.
One of the foreseeable consequences forced into the spotlight by the region’s Shia-Sunni Muslim divide is sectarianism. Once the war broke out, it was crystal clear that it would drag the religiously divided region into a sectarian conflict.
What is most feared is that behind Trump’s and Netanyahu’s messaging, there is a serious attempt to recalibrate the US strategy in the Middle East in line with the Sunni-led countries’ efforts to reverse the so-called “Shia rise” following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
There are already signs that the war has not only exacerbated the long-standing Sunni-Shia sectarian divides but has also broadened the fissure between peoples across the Arab region who are branded as either Shia or Wahabi (a sect of Sunni Muslims) only because of their siding with one party or another in the conflict.
In fact, the sectarianism that has emerged during the on-going war had not only impacted the battlefield but has also evolved into a larger conflict that threatens to upend the cohesion of Arab societies, a strategy long pursued by Israel and the United States.
The other US-Israeli motive behind the ongoing conflict is to draft a final chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict, one that will liquidate the Palestinian cause not only by making Palestinian self-determination impossible but also by expelling the Palestinians from their land.
The war of destruction on Iran and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which started after Hamas’ incursion into Israel in October 2023, are closely related. Iran and Gaza are facing the immediate and visible consequences of the United States’ “neo-imperialist” and Israel’s expansionist plans to reshape the Middle East.
Israel and the United States viewed the operation by the Iran-backed Hamas as an attempt to torpedo Trump’s process of the normalisation of the ties between Israel and the Arab world, known as the “Abraham Accords” in 2022.
Israel’s primary objectives in the ongoing war with Iran, its only remaining formidable regional foe, involve destroying its military capabilities and eliminating its immediate threat end its regional influence in order to create its own new Middle East.
As the five-week war has proceeded, Israeli President Isaac Herzog has admitted that the core objective of Israel and the United States is to “change the Middle East”.
His remarks to the US network CBS News echoed Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, who are pushing for a reshaped Middle East under Israel’s hegemony that will pave the way for the Zionist project of a “Greater Israel”.
In order to fulfill that project, the Trump-Netanyahu tandem should first close the chapter of the Palestinian state and expel the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, for there will be no new Middle East and no “Greater Israel” without their transfer, or expulsion.
For the Arab world, the Iran war is indicative of the pain its governments and peoples will have to endure. But what matters after the guns fall silent is whether they will have the resolve and resources to face up to the dilemma of a new Middle East in which they will have no choice but to assert themselves.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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