A Middle East Alliance needs U.S. leadership
Middle Eastern powers cooperate when it suits them, while an enduring alliance for regional peace and prosperity requires sustained American stewardship.
In a nutshell
- Four Middle Eastern powers share threat perceptions toward the fifth – Iran
- They are competitors, not natural allies, and jostling for influence
- All but Iran could join a regional alliance if built and sustained by the U.S.
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The notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is often invoked to explain alliances and conflicts among nation-states in the Middle East. It is comforting, but wrong.
The saying is comforting because it assumes Middle Eastern countries share a logic of alliance-building, for instance, against a common enemy like the Islamic Republic of Iran. But it is wrong because in the Middle East a darker logic can prevail: “The enemy of my enemy can be a temporary friend but is ultimately another enemy who is further down the list and will be dealt with in due time.”
Thus, in the 21st century, the Middle East still requires an outside power like the United States to build, sustain and lead alliances among regional powers with mutual suspicions and limited mutual interests. U.S. leadership could bind the four regional powers − Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt − into a regional alliance. Or they can revert to their natural state of four-sided competition.
Turkiye
Turkiye is Janus-faced, looking both northwest toward Europe and southeast toward the Middle East. It has the largest economy in the Middle East, supported by the region’s largest urban middle class, with strategic regional assets like the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, the straits connecting the Black and Mediterranean Seas, Mediterranean ports and an eastern border with Iran. It is a valuable member of NATO, hosting a large U.S. air force base at Incirlik that is a logistical hub for America’s actions in the wider region.
Despite proclaiming in 2004 a policy of “zero problems with neighbors,” Turkiye has in fact created a variety of problems along its borders. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to restore Turkiye’s traditional position of power in the Middle East, which alienates the Arab countries and concerns Israel. Turkiye and Saudi Arabia compete for influence in post-Assad Syria. President Erdogan’s support of Islamist causes throughout the region further puts Turkiye at odds with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His repeated threats “to liberate Jerusalem” have served to ratchet up tensions with Israel.
Ankara’s friends in the West tend to overestimate its reach. Following the Cold War, Turkiye and Russia competed for influence in Central Asia and Turkiye came up short. Structural weaknesses in its economy and internal dissension over Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian rule weaken its current ability to project influence. And though it has the second-largest land force in NATO, its last intervention abroad – in Cyprus in 1974 – did not go well. In Syria, Turkiye has wisely intervened indirectly using proxy forces rather than its own military.
Turkiye is no paper tiger, however. It brings significant hard power and diplomatic clout to a regional alliance. President Erdogan, for all his bluster against Israel, is pragmatic when necessary and can work together with others.
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has an economy nearly as large as Turkiye’s and, with a population less than half the size, it has more financial assets available for alliance projects. It is a large landmass, the size of the U.S. east of the Mississippi River, and hosts the two holiest sites in Islam (Mecca and Medina) as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, giving its kings prestige throughout the Muslim world. Its national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is one of the five largest corporations in the world by asset size and maintains sufficient production capacity to act as a swing producer of the world’s oil. Furthermore, the country leads the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of itself and five other hydrocarbon-rich Arab countries, giving it added clout.
Saudi Arabia only emerged as the most powerful Arab country in the last 25 years. It remains dependent on outside powers, especially the U.S., for its security and arms. For most of the last century, periodic internal Islamist dissent has slowed modernization efforts, which have occasionally, for instance from 2002 to 2006, led to terror attacks and open revolt. Iran and its proxies in recent years have attacked Riyadh with missiles and launched drone strikes on oil facilities along the Saudi eastern coast.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has an economy nearly as large as Turkiye’s and, with a population less than half the size, it has more financial assets available for alliance projects.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt were engaged in a cold war from 1958 to 1970 during the presidency of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. More recently, they have found common ground, especially after the Saudis (and Emiratis) helped Egypt’s current president, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo in 2013. In return, Egypt ceded islands in the Red Sea back to Saudi Arabia.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel remain frozen. Efforts to bring the two together have been largely unsuccessful to date, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman constrained by popular sentiment. Decades of demonizing Israel in the Saudi media, plus solidarity with the Palestinians, have left the country unready to normalize relations – though nascent business ties and secret intelligence cooperation with Israel take place.
Despite Saudi Arabia having significant influence over the Arab emirates of the Gulf, there are tensions there too. Qatar has its own Islamist agenda abroad, often at odds with Riyadh’s goals. Even the United Arab Emirates, the closest Gulf state to Saudi Arabia in countering the Muslim Brotherhood, diverges from the Saudis by supporting rival players in Yemen and Sudan.
Israel
By far the smallest of the regional powers in land size and population, Israel has the region’s most powerful military, as recently demonstrated in its destruction of Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Gaza and its defeat of Iran, with American support, in the 12-day war of June 2025. Israel’s string of military victories is based on a high-morale conscription force, which can mobilize hundreds of thousands of reservists when needed, and is backed by U.S. provision of the most advanced weaponry. Israel’s high-tech economy is the region’s most innovative and it is the region’s sole liberal democracy, another source of strength.
Israel’s relations with the other regional powers range from tense (Egypt), distrustful (Saudi Arabia), verbally hostile (Turkiye) to open warfare (Iran). These relations have only worsened since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, setting off a two-year war in which Israel devastated the Gaza Strip. For all of Israel’s investment in ensuring military advantage, it has not invested commensurately in public diplomacy. Its Islamist enemies usually prevail on the worldwide information front – and especially among the Muslim public – to the detriment of the creation of an alliance of pro-U.S. regional powers.
In 2026, Israel will enter an election year in which the country will be focused on its own internal, highly schismatic politics. Following the trauma of October 7, the Israeli public is less interested than ever in the kind of significant political concessions to the Palestinians that would improve relations among the region’s other pro-U.S. powers.
Nevertheless, Israelis are very much interested in normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia and improving ties with both Egypt and Turkiye, provided the cost does not include greater vulnerability to attacks. Thus, if the right formula could be found that meets Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish needs for movement on the Palestinian issue, and Israel’s needs for security, then we might expect progress in 2026. But Israel’s current internal focus on elections and public sentiment, still embittered by the Hamas attacks, does not provide much hope for dramatic peace moves in the coming year.
Egypt
Egypt has the region’s largest population, 118 million, and enjoys a central location linking North Africa with the Arab East, further enhanced by the strategic waterway of the Suez Canal. Its traditional leadership of the Arabs has, in recent decades, given way to Saudi Arabia, due to the relative strengths of the two economies. Egypt still commands respect as the seat of the Arab League and the cultural capital of the Arab world. Its talented diplomatic corps ensures Egypt’s voice – which is often critical to American-led regional initiatives, for instance, the postwar Gaza plan – remains relevant.
Read more by Middle East expert Robert Silverman
- Stabilizing Gaza under the Trump plan
- Who will win the competition for influence in Syria?
- Countries recognize Palestine: Will it be different this time?
Economic stagnation is Egypt’s main weakness, an inheritance of the failed socialist policies of President Nasser in the 1960s, and it remains evident in the military’s control of large industries. The perennial challenge for Egypt’s rulers is to find jobs for the millions of young people entering the workforce each year. Another persistent problem is Islamist extremism, which provides the justification for continued military government. But this creates a vicious cycle of economic problems and political unrest leading to the tightening of security controls which further entrenches stagnation.
For Egypt, a way out of this cycle is to work with the U.S., and through it the international financial community, to gradually reform its economy while sticking close to the West on foreign policy. This could instead create a virtuous cycle of reform steps and political alignment with Washington, creating more investment and trade. But Egypt also has preoccupations beyond its borders – Ethiopia’s dam on the Nile, internal divisions in Libya and the Houthis’ disruption of trade in the Red Sea. And like India, Egypt has a political class that does not necessarily support economic reforms or alignment with the U.S.
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