Since the end of World War II in 1945, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the outbreak of Arab-Israeli wars coinciding with conflicts between colonial powers and national-liberation movements, the Middle East has witnessed repeated attempts by regional and international actors to propose collective security arrangements, whether to protect their interests or achieve a degree of stability.
For example, in 1950 the member states of the Arab League signed a Treaty of Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation that stipulated a mutual commitment to defend territorial integrity and national sovereignty. In 1955, in coordination between the former colonial power, Britain, and the superpower, the United States, and with the aim of repelling the communist threat from the Middle East and besieging national-liberation movements and the Arab nationalist tide, the Baghdad Pact (Middle East Treaty Organisation) was formed, comprising Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.
In the face of resistance from Nasserist Egypt and nationalist forces across the Arab world, the Baghdad Pact quickly collapsed and disappeared from the Middle Eastern scene, but the goals of the old and new colonisers remained intact.
In some cases, regional and international efforts have resulted in halting ongoing wars and conflicts and in achieving long-term successes in establishing and maintaining peaceful settlements. Thus, the Yemen War, in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia were embroiled between 1962 and 1967, ended thanks to Arab diplomatic mediation culminating in the 1967 Khartoum Agreement.
Egypt and Israel ended their state of war and signed a Peace Treaty in 1979 brokered by the United States. The Iraqi and Iranian governments accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598, which ended their bloody war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. Meanwhile, a combination of regional mediation and international guarantees brought about the adoption by the parties to the Lebanese Civil War of the 1989 Taif Agreement.
Although the Middle East has been among the regions most exposed to interstate wars, military conflicts, and civil strife since the mid-20th century, and among the least fortunate in terms of reaching peaceful settlements that guarantee security and stability, the few regional and international efforts that have succeeded in ending some wars and conflicts have maintained their cohesion over long periods of time and in the face of numerous internal and external challenges.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have never returned to direct military confrontation, or confrontation through proxies, since the Yemen War ended in 1967. The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty remains intact despite the pressures imposed on it by the policies and practices of the Israeli extreme right and the reality of the stalled resolution of the Palestinian issue. Not a single military clash has occurred between the two countries since the initial ceasefire and disengagement following the October 1973 War.
UN Security Council Resolution 598, issued in 1988 which halted the Iran-Iraq War, was not violated by either country, despite Iraq’s repeated use of military tools in its external actions prior to the fall of the regime led by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Iran’s systematic and ongoing use of proxy wars in its Middle East policy.
Despite its many shortcomings, the Taif Agreement has protected Lebanon from slipping back into civil war, especially under extremely difficult internal and external circumstances that have included regional and international competition for influence in this small Arab country.
What are the conditions for the success of peaceful settlements of wars and conflicts in the Middle East?
CONDITIONS: It seems that the first condition is for the warring and conflicting parties to acknowledge their inability to achieve a decisive military outcome, and, subsequently, their willingness to open up to compromise and non-zero-sum solutions, accepting mediation diplomacy, negotiation, and guarantees of security and interests.
This was precisely what prompted Egypt and Saudi Arabia to accept a negotiated settlement to the Yemen War in the 1960s and what also prompted Iraq and Iran to end their bloody war, a war which neither side won, in the 1980s.
Sometimes, warring and conflicting parties reach this conviction in the context of a severe internal or external crisis, such as Egypt’s military defeat in June 1967, which preceded the Khartoum Agreement signed in September 1967, or the collapse of economic and social conditions in Iraq and Iran after the long years of war between 1980 and 1988, which prompted them to accept UN Resolution 598 and a ceasefire.
The second condition for a successful peace is the presence of an inspiring political leadership that believes in peacemaking and is capable of transcending a history of bloodshed and destruction. This describes the leadership of former Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat (1970-1981), whose sincere desire to end the war between Egypt and Israel led him to negotiate, first indirectly and then directly, with an enemy against whom our country had fought successive wars.
Indeed, Al-Sadat’s genuine belief in peace and his linkage between ending wars and Egypt’s opportunities for development and progress encouraged him to make a historic visit to the enemy’s capital to initiate “land for peace” negotiations between the two sides and deliver an unprecedented speech in its parliament the Knesset to gain Israeli popular support for peace.
Thus, through US mediation efforts and international support, and in the face of Arab opposition that offered no alternative, the Egyptian-Israeli peace was achieved, for which Al-Sadat paid with his life, being assassinated in 1981.
The third condition for the success of peaceful settlements in the Middle East, one positively demonstrated by the experience of ending the Iraq-Iran War and of the Taif Agreement in Lebanon, is the presence of genuine international guarantees that protect the implementation and continuation of the settlement in question.
UN Security Council Resolution 598 ending the Iraq-Iran War was only possible because of US, Soviet, and European guarantees given to the two warring parties. The Taif Agreement on Lebanon was also only possible because of Saudi and Arab guarantees, on the one hand, and US and European guarantees on the other. These guarantees were given to the warring sectarian forces in Lebanon and also to the regional actors involved, among them Syria, Israel, and Iran.
What do these conditions mean for the wars and conflicts taking place in the Middle East today?
On the one hand, they mean that unless Israel, along with Hamas and Iran-aligned militias like the Houthis, resist the temptation to resort to military means repeatedly and open up to negotiated settlements and peaceful solutions, the ongoing wars will not end. Influential Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar can play a constructive role in convincing Hamas and its allied Palestinian factions to refrain from military escalation in response to the current Israeli strikes, accept their future exclusion from governing Gaza, and return to the negotiating table through mediators.
However, only the United States can push the right-wing Israeli government to halt the current round of escalation and resume negotiations to extend the ceasefire arrangements with Hamas. Unfortunately, many legitimate doubts surround whether the US Trump administration is willing to move in this direction.
As for the Houthi militias, while acknowledging that a prolonged US military campaign against them could neutralise their leadership and military arsenal, thus containing the threat they pose to Red Sea and Middle East security, Iran, as their regional patron, is the party capable of pushing them to change their practices. Here, too, there is reason to be sceptical of Iranian intentions. As long as the Islamic Republic sees no room for serious negotiations with Washington regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme and its overall interests and policies in the Middle East, it remains unlikely to pressure the Houthis to adopt different paths.
In the Middle East today, the influential Arab states stand alone and without partners as a force willing to make peace and end wars and conflicts. Israel is not a potential partner for regional peacemaking; rather, it, like Iran and its militias, is the most dangerous threat to security and stability. The Trump administration, preoccupied with the Ukraine war and global competition with China, and in which the voices of Israel’s friends are louder, is not willing to invest in supporting Arab efforts to achieve peaceful settlements and long-term security arrangements.
On the other hand, the conditions for the success of peace settlements in the Middle East over the past few decades demonstrate the priority of the presence of inspiring political leadership, such as that of former president Al-Sadat, or of politicians capable of either recognising the impossibility of comprehensive military victories, as former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin did in Israel before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, or of promoting negotiated compromises as acceptable historical solutions, as the great Yasser Arafat, former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), did in the 1990s to save the Palestinian national-liberation movement.
Finally, past experiences in the Middle East demonstrate that peace settlements and collective security guarantees, even if they can be launched by influential regional actors, require the support of major international powers.
American guarantees played a crucial role in forging peace between Egypt and Israel. Without the international guarantees provided to Iraq and Iran, as well as to the belligerents in Lebanon, UN Security Council Resolution 598 would not have succeeded, and the Taif Agreement would not have held together.
Here lies the additional challenge that will confront security, stability, and peace in the Middle East in the coming years, due to the Trump administration’s apparently limited willingness to help influential Arab powers reach lasting peace settlements and its reluctance (at least to date) to play an active role in formulating collective security arrangements in the Middle East that do not marginalise the national rights of the Palestinians or legitimate Arab interests.
* The writer is a political scientist and former MP. He is currently director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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