Reassessing Arab security: Strategic imbalances and political threats
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The Middle East is currently experiencing one of the most complex periods in its political history. Regional transformations are intersecting with changes in the structure of the international system, creating a highly sensitive strategic environment marked by rising tensions and an expanding scope of security and military interactions.
Within this turbulent environment, a growing strategic view has emerged that emphasizes that achieving sustainable peace in the region cannot be based on an imbalance of power or on domination by a single side. Rather, it must rely on building stable deterrence balances that allow conflicts to be managed rationally and reduce the likelihood of sliding into large scale confrontations. The most recent war clearly exposed one of the deepest imbalances affecting the Arab system for many years, namely the absence of a clear and decisive definition of the concept of “the enemy” in Arab political awareness.
It has become evident that the region still suffers from a state of strategic confusion when it comes to identifying the real sources of threat to Arab security. For decades, the United States and Israel have committed serious violations against the Palestinian people and have participated in policies that caused significant harm to several Arab states. At the same time, Iran has continued in recent years to expand its influence across a number of Arab arenas through various tools that have directly contributed to weakening some states and fueling divisions within their societies. Moreover, its tensions with the United States and Israel have demonstrated its readiness to attack Arab Gulf states and threaten their security.
Between these two parallel trajectories, the Arab system finds itself facing a complex equation that it has not yet been able to resolve or formulate a clear approach toward. The reality indicates that the conflicts taking place in the region are often managed from the perspective of power balances among different actors, while the simplest and most straightforward criterion remains absent. That criterion is that any party that harms Arabs or attacks their states and societies should be regarded as an enemy, regardless of its position in the other conflicts unfolding in the region. Accordingly, one of the main lessons revealed by the current war is the need to redefine the concept of Arab security on a clearer basis built on a simple principle: whoever harms Arabs is their enemy, even if the parties involved are fighting each other in other conflicts.
Recent developments have also revealed the continuing problem of cross border ideological organizations within the Arab political environment. Some of these organizations, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, adopted media rhetoric that attempted to justify attacks targeting some Gulf states. This reflects a recurring pattern in the behavior of such organizations, which often place organizational and ideological considerations above national interests and the requirements of regional stability. This discourse cannot be understood in isolation from the political background of the conflict between this organization and several Arab states, especially Egypt and the Gulf countries, which in recent years have taken decisive measures to confront its activities after it was proven to be involved in practices that threaten the stability of the national state and seek to undermine its institutions.
In this context, the attempt to exploit the current war appears to be part of a recurring political and media pattern within the Muslim Brotherhood. This pattern involves using major crises to reintroduce its political discourse and settle scores with the states that confronted its activities in recent years. It does so by reproducing political narratives that seek to portray the ongoing conflict as an opportunity to weaken the Arab states that opposed its political and organizational project. This behavior reflects the nature of the ideological discourse adopted by the group, which often stems from a logic of conflict with the nation state rather than from considerations of regional security and stability.
Among the tools the organization has used in this context is the citation of old recordings and statements that opposed the twelve-day U.S.-Israeli war against Iran’s nuclear facilities, in an attempt to suggest that those positions reflected support for the Iranian attacks targeting Gulf states. This method relies on taking political positions out of their temporal and contextual framework and selectively reusing them to serve the organization’s media discourse and reinforce its political narrative. This is the same approach it has previously used to sow discord and incite against Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The organization’s criminal role has not been limited to manipulating political positions; at times, it has also attempted to whitewash Iran’s role in the region or downplay the seriousness of Tehran’s expansionist policies, carried out through a network of proxies and armed organizations across several regional arenas. This reflects a situation of circumstantial political convergence between certain ideological narratives associated with the organization and the narratives Iran seeks to promote in the region. This convergence does not necessarily indicate a direct alliance, but rather a meeting of interests against the Arab states that have taken a clear stance against the organization’s activities in recent years.
These media and political moves cannot be separated from the broader context of the conflict between the nation state and cross-border ideological organizations. The experience of the region over the past decade has shown that these organizations often seek to exploit periods of instability affecting states or regions to reorganize their ranks and expand the reach of their political discourse, taking advantage of the fluidity that accompanies major crises. From this perspective, the attempt to exploit the current war appears to be part of a broader strategy aimed at repositioning the group as a political actor in the region, despite the significant decline it has experienced in recent years due to measures taken by several Arab states to confront its activities.