Under the pressure of the military confrontation between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other, longstanding questions have resurfaced about the ability of the Arab system to build a collective defense framework capable of confronting regional threats.
These questions intensified following Iranian attacks targeting several Arab countries, and the defensive responses that followed, in which Gulf states participated alongside Iraq and Jordan. Once again, calls have emerged to revive the project of a “Joint Arab Force” as one of the proposed options to strengthen regional security.
In this context, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, during a meeting of the Council of the Arab League held via videoconference on March 8, called for activating the concept of Arab national security and strengthening frameworks for joint Arab cooperation to effectively address existing threats—including revisiting the proposal to form a Joint Arab Force.
This was not the first such call. Egypt had previously raised the idea during the Arab summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015, where the summit welcomed the initiative and tasked the Arab League with drafting a protocol to establish such a force.
At the time, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi stressed the need to create a joint Arab force to confront what he described as an “unprecedented threat,” referring to the growing activity of terrorist groups and armed conflicts in the region.
Political Disagreements
The idea of a joint Arab force emerged primarily within a complex security context that the region experienced over the past decade, marked by the rise of radical armed groups such as ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and others that carried out violence against civilians in several Arab countries.
The concept centered on building an Arab mechanism capable of protecting the internal security of Arab states through a formal protocol defining the force’s structure and tasks.
However, translating this idea into reality stalled because of disagreements among Arab countries—most notably over the issue of leadership, according to Major General Osama Mahmoud Kabir, an advisor at Egypt’s Command and Staff College.
Debate focused on which country would lead the force, who would serve as chief of staff, and who would control the operations sector—a major organizational structure that includes armament and force organization.
While Kabir notes that Egypt is among the countries most qualified to lead the military component of such a project, he points to another challenge that later emerged: the question of how closely such a force would be tied to international law and the potential external implications of that relationship.
He also noted that concerns arose at the time about how to preserve the independence of the force so that it would not be subject to outside interference, and so that major powers would not be able to prevent it from carrying out its missions if those missions conflicted with the interests of some countries.
Joint Arab Defense
Following the Israeli strike that targeted leaders of Hamas in Qatar in September 2025, the issue of joint Arab defense once again returned to the forefront with the convening of an urgent Arab–Islamic summit in Doha to discuss the repercussions of the attack.
Although the idea of a Joint Arab Force was raised during the discussions, the summit’s final statement did not include a concrete project to establish such a force. Instead, it reaffirmed the firm commitment to the sovereignty, independence, and security of all member states and to the collective responsibility to confront any aggression that threatens the security of member countries.
Nevertheless, the summit did not issue clear executive decisions specifying practical mechanisms for joint defense or concrete steps to activate this commitment.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Hababi, a Saudi researcher in international relations, believes that the idea of creating an Arab defensive force is not new. Historically, it has been linked to the concept of joint Arab defense within the framework of the Arab League.
He points out that many of the crises the region has witnessed in recent years—such as the divisions in Libya, the conflict in Sudan, and the Yemen crisis—reflect the need for a more effective collective defense mechanism to deal with complex security crises.
Al-Hababi cites the example of the Peninsula Shield Force, affiliated with the Gulf Cooperation Council, which was established in 1981 as a joint defense force among Gulf states. He emphasizes that joint military exercises and defense coordination among Arab armies could serve as the nucleus for establishing a defensive Arab army in the future.
The Political Decision Obstacle
Observers and military experts remain skeptical about the success of attempts to create joint Arab forces due to political obstacles.
Lebanese strategic expert Brigadier General Georges Nader points to the experience of the Arab Deterrent Force, which was created in the 1970s but did not last long after most participating forces withdrew.
Nader argues that the fundamental problem is not military capability but rather the absence of a unified Arab political decision.
“Many decisions of the Arab League have remained ink on paper due to disagreements among member states,” he says, adding that these divisions represent the main obstacle to any project aimed at establishing a joint Arab force—even if the necessary military capabilities exist.
As armed conflicts continue to spread across the region, Kabir believes that reviving the idea of a joint Arab force reflects a growing recognition among some Arab states that the consequences of regional conflicts could spill over into other countries.
“This reality reinforces the need for an Arab force that possesses both political legitimacy and military capability to intervene in emergencies in a way that helps prevent chaos and protect regional security,” Kabir adds.
Between renewed calls to revive the Joint Arab Force project and efforts to overcome the complexities that have so far hindered its implementation, the question remains:
Will the rapid security transformations in the region push Arab states to overcome their differences and build a joint military defense system? Or will the project remain an idea that resurfaces with every crisis but never finds its way into implementation?
The article is a translation of the original Arabic.
