Abbas Kardan: Middle East Affairs Researcher
Since the end of World War II, no region has tried harder—and failed more consistently—than the Middle East to build a workable system of collective security. From the Arab League in 1945 to the Negev Forum in 2022, dozens of treaties, councils, coalitions, and initiatives have been launched. Yet the outcomes have been strikingly similar: persistent dysfunction or subordination to extra-regional powers.
The first reason is chronic reliance on foreign security providers. Take the 1991 Damascus Declaration, which brought together the (P)GCC states, Egypt, and Syria to form a joint military framework and peacekeeping force. It evaporated once the Persian Gulf states opted for the direct presence of U.S. troops instead.
The second reason is deep, enduring divisions within the Arab world. Arab governments have never agreed on who should lead, what ideology should prevail, or how to prioritize regional threats. The long rivalry between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the divide between republics and monarchies, the 2017 Qatar crisis, and the older rift between Iraq and Syria all contributed to the collapse of every attempt at a broad Arab security arrangement.
A third problem has been the absence of strong, binding institutions. Most initiatives lacked a real joint command or independent budget. The 1950 Joint Defense Treaty included a Defense Council, but it never deployed a single soldier. The (P)GCC’s Peninsula Shield Force was used only once—during the 2011 unrest in Bahrain—and even then for internal security rather than external defense.
A fourth, and decisive, factor was the intentional exclusion of the region’s major non-Arab powers. Turkey, because of its political orientation, NATO membership, and close ties with Washington, has shown limited interest in joining Middle Eastern security structures. But Iran and Israel were systematically left out of all arrangements before 2020. For decades, the Arab world sought Arab-only frameworks that could maintain a balance of power without involving powerful non-Arab states.
Iran—with its geopolitical weight and strong ideological identity—was often viewed as a threat to Arab cohesion. Consequently, many regional structures were explicitly or implicitly designed to contain Tehran. The (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council was established just six months after Iran’s 1979 revolution, amid open fears of revolutionary spillover. The “Arab NATO” proposal of 2017 was conceived to form an anti-Iranian security belt. The U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces, with 44 member states, have repeatedly intercepted vessels carrying Iranian weapons.
Israel’s position, until 2020, was almost identical to Iran’s: a declared adversary, and entirely absent from all Arab initiatives. The Arab League’s founding charter committed members to “defending against Zionism,” and no Arab pact lacked an anti-Israel clause. But within five years, the landscape changed dramatically. The Abraham Accords of 2020 opened the door to open cooperation. Israel formally joined the Combined Maritime Forces in 2021. The inaugural Negev Forum meeting in 2022 brought the foreign ministers of Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and the United States together—on Israeli soil. Even the Gaza war from 2023 to 2025 did not halt this trend. Security and intelligence cooperation continued: shared radar networks, real-time intelligence exchanges, and Israeli arms sales to Arab states are now part of the region’s everyday security architecture. This trend was further reinforced by intelligence and military cooperation between Israel and Arab states during Israel’s twelve-day war with Iran.
As a result, the region’s two major non-Arab powers have moved in opposite directions. Israel has moved from the periphery to the center of a new Arab-Western security network, while Iran remains firmly outside it. This is the defining—and harshest—feature of the emerging regional order: security is increasingly built on an “all-against-one” order. What once resembled a three-way security triangle among Iran, Israel, and the Arab states has now hardened into a two-pole structure, with the Arab bloc plus Israel on one side and Iran on the other.
Given Iran’s refusal to recognize Israel, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states (the Abraham Accords, which emphasize a shared lineage tracing back to the Prophet Abraham), and the likelihood that more Arab countries may join them, It would be better for Tehran to avoid pressing for a leading role in this region.
Instead, Iran may find greater strategic advantage in focusing on its own historical and cultural sphere to the east—while maintaining good-neighborly relations with nearby Arab states. The eastern civilizational frontier of Iran is now undergoing profound shifts, where missed opportunities could easily turn into new threats. This shift would also reduce Iran’s exposure to the emerging Arab–Israeli security architecture.
Without such a strategic recalibration, Iran risks remaining trapped in the historical fissures, identity rivalries, and great-power maneuvering that continue to shape the Arab Middle East.
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