The extremely dangerous ongoing military escalation following the joint US-Israeli attack against Iran early this week is being met with the fundamental belief that wars in our troubled region, already rife with conflicts and disputes, will never be the right way to permanently settle differences or look after the interests of the populations. Any major conflict in this region seriously impacts not just the nations directly involved but the entire region if not the whole world.
This was the position Egypt maintained while working tirelessly with other key Arab and Muslim allies to end Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which lasted for two bloody years. After a shaky truce was reached thanks to Egypt’s positive engagement with US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, along with key Arab and Muslim allies, Cairo was readying for the difficult mission to carry out Trump’s plan in its entirety, hoping that success will restore relative calm in the region and allow its countries to recover from the many losses of this war, human, economic, and political.
However, Israel’s current extremist government has continued to push for further military escalation, showing no respect for any of the agreements it reached, whether in Gaza or Lebanon. Maintaining a permanent state of war in the region is a strategy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes will not only guarantee his own political survival, but also enable him to indulge his illusions about drawing up a new Middle East order led by Israel.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has caved in to Netanyahu’s pressure, dragging the US into a second major military attack against Iran in eight months. The Iranian regime certainly does not have many friends in the region, but there is a near consensus among the countries involved, if not the world at large, that a sustained military campaign by the US and Israel against Iran cannot achieve either country’s declared goals and may open the door to a long period of instability and other unintended consequences that will harm countries of the region first and foremost.
Egypt is not directly involved in this war, even though it has always pointed out that raising the red flag over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions alone rings hollow if no similar demands are made to make Israel admit to its own nuclear arsenal and make Tel Aviv join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, aware of the possible dangerous consequences of a military confrontation between the US and Iran and the chaos it would lead to in the Middle East, Egypt has made sincere mediation efforts. Egypt not only hosted a meeting in September between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency to reach an understanding on cooperation between the two sides, but it also maintained an open hotline with top Iranian and US officials to try to find a middle ground that would avoid the military scenario.
Egypt also backed the tireless efforts carried out by Oman up until the last hours to try to reach an agreement between the United States and Iran. After hosting the last mediation round at his own home in Geneva, Oman’s foreign minister was right to note that there was a good chance of reaching an agreement, asking Washington to avoid further involvement in the conflict, simply stating, “this is not your war.” Yet it seems all seven meetings held between Trump and Netanyahu since the US president took office in January 2025 were focused on the plans for this joint war that will never be an easy ride.
In his remarks on Sunday, President Al-Sisi not only expressed regret over the fact that the war started against Iran, but also left no room for doubt as to where Egypt stands in terms of its firm rejection of Tehran’s decision to retaliate against the joint Israeli-US military operation by targeting Arab Gulf countries, as well as Jordan and Iraq. Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait had all publicly stated their opposition to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, rightly worried about its effects on their own peoples, economies, and the region’s future.
Considering Egypt’s strategic relations with the Gulf, and the fact that they all stood by Egypt through difficult times over the past decades, it is only to be expected that Cairo should declare the Iranian attacks on those countries a serious mistake, and that they are fully entitled to take all measures necessary to protect themselves.
Such irresponsible Iranian attacks, targeting airports, hotels, and residential buildings and killing only foreign nationals who live and work in Gulf countries, will only further isolate Tehran and reverse whatever sympathy it might have gathered among Arab and Muslim populations, who are certainly not happy that it is now facing an attack by Israel and the United States.
Meanwhile, it is one thing for Trump and Netanyahu to repeatedly call on the Iranian people to revolt against their government, going as far as assassinating Iran’s top political and spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But it is a totally different thing to set out to achieve this goal through a vicious military campaign in which hundreds of innocent Iranians will be killed. Making matters worse is the acknowledgement, even by top US officials, that they don’t have any clear idea of who the alternative to the current Iranian regime would be. The fear, based on the experience of many countries in the region, is that wars waged by external forces can only lead to disintegration and chaos. That means trouble and bloodshed for many years to come in an already explosive region responsible for providing no less than 20 per cent of the world’s supply of oil and gas.
As President Al-Sisi noted in his remarks on Sunday, Egypt has been among many countries in the region that paid a heavy price for all the recent wars, epidemics, and upheavals. COVID, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Gaza war, and now the military escalation between Israel-US and Iran have all prevented Egypt from achieving its ambitions to improve its economy and raise the living standards of its people.
Considering Iran’s location, the size of its population, and the pride it rightly maintains in its history and civilisation, the current military escalation threatens far worse consequences than all the previous wars the region has witnessed. That is why all concerned parties must not give up on the effort to put an immediate stop to this war, bringing all parties involved to an understanding that respects the interests of the region’s inhabitants.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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