the 29-year-old Bahrain killed in a drone attack while she was sitting with friends
By Habib Toumi
MANAMA: A lively debate has erupted across Arab social media over the implications of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, exposing a deep divide within the region about how the Middle East’s security threats should be understood.
The discussion began with a post by former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who warned that the current confrontation with Iran is not merely another episode in the Israeli-Iranian rivalry.
Instead, he suggested it may represent a broader strategic effort led by Washington, with Israel as a regional partner, aimed at reshaping the Middle East into a new geopolitical order.
His remarks quickly ignited responses from journalists, analysts and political figures across the Arab world. What started as a strategic observation turned into a wider debate about competing perceptions of danger, the language used by Arab elites, and the realities faced by different states across the region.
Moussa’s argument rested on a geopolitical reading of the war. The campaign against Iran, he wrote, cannot be reduced to an Israeli initiative or a tactical escalation. It should be seen as part of a larger American strategic project that could transform the regional balance of power.
Such a transformation, however, would not occur easily. The Middle East sits at the intersection of global interests: China’s Belt and Road Initiative (CRI) crosses the Arab world, while Russia maintains significant strategic presence in the region. Any attempt to reshape the geopolitical order would inevitably intersect with those competing interests.
Moussa, an Egyptian, also warned that Iran is unlikely to surrender easily. The logic of escalation, he suggested, could lead to a catastrophic scenario in which the region finds itself trapped in a destructive confrontation that spares no one.
For that reason, he urged Arab governments and the Arab League to treat the moment with existential seriousness. If the Arab world does not engage strategically with the implications of a changing regional order, he argued, it risks becoming merely an object of transformation rather than an actor shaping its future.
But this interpretation drew sharp criticism from prominent Saudi journalist Abdulrahman Al Rashed, who argued that focusing on grand geopolitical narratives risks overlooking a central reality: Iran itself has been a direct source of instability and violence across much of the Arab world for decades.
In a pointed response, Al Rashed wrote that the Iranian threat cannot be viewed solely through the lens of Israel. According to him, at least eight Arab countries have been targeted by Iranian missiles, drones or proxy militias.
From Yemen to Iraq, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Iran’s network of allied militias has profoundly reshaped regional conflicts. Groups such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon have played major roles in wars that have devastated societies and weakened state sovereignty.
Reducing Iran’s military power, Al Rashed argued, would therefore diminish one of the main sources of instability that has plagued the Arab world for the past four decades.
He also criticized what he described as the reluctance of some Arab governments and intellectuals to condemn Iranian attacks on Arab states. In his view, hiding behind opposition to Israel cannot justify ignoring aggression directed at fellow Arab countries.
The exchange highlighted a deeper issue: Arab states do not experience regional threats in the same way.
Yemeni media figure Hamdan Al Alimi joined the discussion by emphasizing how geography shapes perceptions of danger.
For countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several Gulf states, the Iranian threat is not a theoretical concern but a daily reality.
Missile attacks, drones, armed militias and landmines have been part of the lived experience of these societies for years. The humanitarian consequences have been severe: hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions displaced and entire cities destroyed.
At the same time, Al Alimi acknowledged that Egyptian elites often see the Israeli threat as the most immediate national danger, given Egypt’s history of direct conflict with Israel and its geographic proximity to the Palestinian issue.
Both perceptions, he argued, are legitimate.
The problem arises when one threat is emphasized while the other is minimized or ignored. For many in the Gulf and Yemen, discussions that focus exclusively on Israel while downplaying Iran’s role appear disconnected from their daily realities.
Conversely, for many Egyptians and Palestinians, Israel remains the central strategic challenge shaping regional politics.
This divergence illustrates a broader dilemma facing Arab policymakers: the region today confronts multiple overlapping security threats rather than a single defining conflict.
Israel’s power and its role in the Palestinian issue continue to shape regional dynamics. At the same time, Iran’s regional network of militias and influence has expanded into numerous Arab states, from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen, he said.
Treating one challenge while ignoring the other risks weakening any attempt at collective security.
Tahani, an Emirati woman, told Moussa that “Your analysis assumes that Washington can reshape the Middle East as it sees fit, whenever it wants.”
“Recent experience proves otherwise. The consequences of the 2003 invasion of Iraq remain chaotic to this day, and Washington emerged exhausted from the war in Afghanistan after 20 years without having created a new regional order.”
She stressed that talk of a meticulously planned American-Israeli strategy to transform the region ignores the fact that the Middle East is rife with conflicting forces and intertwined international interests, making any project to reshape it so easily more of a theory than a reality.
The debate sparked by Moussa’s remarks ultimately reflects an important truth about today’s Middle East: there is no single narrative that fully captures the region’s complex security landscape.
The diversity of threats experienced across the region should be acknowledged and taken into account in developing a coherent strategy as Arab states recognize that the fears of Cairo, Riyadh, Sana’a and Beirut do not always originate from the same source.
