The Israeli-U.S. war has exposed a humiliating reality: The weakness of the Arab world.
Arab resilience has already been strained to the breaking point Israel’s wars on Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria as well as Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and moves toward annexation.
What is unfolding is not just a conflict between states, but the erosion of a regional order long dependent on U.S. security guarantees, fragmented policymaking, and reactive politics.
For decades, America’s traditional allies in the region — the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman), as well as Jordan, and Egypt — have managed crises individually, at times coordinating and at others working at cross purposes driven by personal rivalries.
Today’s challenge is no longer singular. “There is a huge vacuum in the Arab world — it is being filled by everyone except the Arabs,” says Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister and ambassador to Israel and the U.S.
“You have an Iranian project, an Israeli expansionist project, and others shaping the region. But there is no Arab project,” added Muasher, currently vice president or studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research on the Middle East.
That vacuum is being actively shaped by three competing visions. Strikingly, none of these visions derive from the thinking of Arabs themselves.
The Iranian project is rooted in the export of revolutionary influence through non-state actors, proxy networks, and asymmetric warfare designed to project power while avoiding direct confrontation.
The Turkish project relies on soft power, ideological outreach, and long-term political influence to seek leadership across parts of the Sunni world, Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond through culture, religion, and political networks.
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The Israeli project seeks uncontested regional military dominance, reshaping borders and political realities, and resolving the Palestinian question on its own terms — at the expense of Jordan and Egypt.
Each of them has a strategy. The Arabs do not.
The war on Iran, and Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon as well as the silent annexation of the occupied West Bank, have made the cost of that failing unmistakable.
For the Gulf states, the lesson has been hard and existential. Years of defense partnerships with Washington did not prevent missiles and drones from striking critical infrastructure and civilian targets. The assumption that security could be outsourced has been fundamentally shaken.
At the same time, American priorities have become clearer. When military resources were stretched, they were directed first toward Israel. The result needs a recalibration. Trust has been replaced by doubt and a sense of abandonment.
As one senior regional security official put it: “We had agreements, bases, and understandings — but when the missiles fell, we were left to absorb the shock on our own.”
Yet the strategic dilemma remains. The United States can engage — and disengage. Israel will escalate — and consolidate. But Arab states will be left behind to manage the consequences of Iranian and Israeli threats.
This group of states — often described as the region’s “moderate alliance,” and by critics as a “surrender alliance” — now faces a defining test: Whether it can coordinate a clear position on both challenges without prompting a confrontation with President Trump.
And then there’s the rift over his expanding war with Iran. There is broad agreement among them, but only on one thing: That Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities must be curtailed.
But still there is no clarity on how the U.S. and Israel can end the war or why it was even started. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has told Congress that her staff saw no indication of any resurgence of nuclear activity by the Iranians.
In the absence of any credible explanations, Arab states think back to what happened in Iraq after the U.S.-led war in 2003 toppled President Saddam Hussein regime, but left behind a dismantled state that faced insurgency and sectarian conflict for a decade.
A collapsed Iranian state risks prolonged region-wide instability. A weakened but intact Iranian regime may turn towards revenge, through proxy warfare and regional disruption.
At the same time, a second shock, by Israel, is already under preparation. “A unified position is essential,” Muasher argues.
Israel’s two-and-a-half year war on Gaza has rendered much of the enclave uninhabitable. Over 50% of it is now occupied by the Israeli army. The West Bank, Jordan’s strategic backyard, is dealing with an aggressive and consequential process: territorial consolidation through forceful annexation, fragmentation of land, increasing settler violence and the erosion of the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
For Jordan, where citizens of Palestinian origin make up a large percentage, this is an existential threat. For Egypt, the potential outflow of Palestinians from Gaza presents a different, but equally serious, challenge.
These are not parallel crises. They are converging dynamics. And yet there is still no unified Arab response.
What is required is not a military alliance, but a coordinated political-security framework among the eight states — one capable of defining shared interests and risks and acting upon them.
First, they need to find a unified position on Iran that supports the declared goals of the war: the removal of the regime and the full destruction of Tehran’s nuclear and military capabilities to ensure it cannot re-export instability.
“If the war does not achieve its declared goals, its impact on the Gulf states will be more than before the war because the regime will become more aggressive,” said the senior regional security official. “We need to prepare for post-war retaliation.” He added: “The Americans and the Israelis will leave and tell us, ‘Manage the fallout yourselves because you refused to join our war.’”
Second, they need to articulate a clear and collectively enforced red line against annexation in the West Bank and any form of forced displacement of Palestinians — framed not only as a political issue, but as a direct threat to regional stability.
Third, they must recalibrate their relationship with the United States, maintaining strategic ties but reducing dependency and asserting clearer regional priorities.
Beyond clear positions, there must also be action. This means coordinating economic and diplomatic signaling, making clear that further annexation or destabilization carries tangible regional costs. It means leveraging existing relationships, including normalization agreements, as instruments of influence rather than passive frameworks. And it means pooling security, intelligence, and strategic assets, so that deterrence is not outsourced, but partially built from within the region.
This is not about confronting Washington. Nor is it about entering open conflict with Israel. It is about defining an Arab position that is credible because it is collective.
For Jordan, the stakes are immediate. It sits at the center of the region’s most volatile problems: the future of the West Bank, the risk of displacement, and the broader reconfiguration of regional power. Its stability is not just a national concern but a strategic necessity. Jordan now hosts the main American base in the Near East.
Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq have become unsafe. Israel has limited land for air force jets to take off and return freely.
As one Jordanian official put it, “We need to stop reacting and start acting. We have assets: stability and tested security services to Israel, and to every country in the region and beyond… We need to flip these cards. This is our oil card.”
If the current trajectory continues, the sequence is predictable: a war that weakens Iran but does not resolve the threat; an American drawdown that leaves behind uncertainty; and an Israeli pivot toward reshaping the regional and Palestinian reality in ways that directly impact its neighbors. At that point, the cost of inaction will no longer be theoretical.
The Arab world does not lack resources. It does not lack influence. It lacks will — the will to get off its feet and reclaim its agency.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Rana Sabbagh
Rana Sabbagh is an award-winning Jordanian investigative reporter and editor who has worked across the region for over 40 years. As editor of The Jordan Times, she was the first woman in the Levant to run a national daily.
