The Quiet Sunni Alignment Going Unnoticed
Prior to the Abraham Accords, Israel was celebrating the stabilization of her largest and most volatile borders. The Camp David Accords with Egypt saw Israel’s southern border pacified with the first of Arab nations to recognize Israeli borders and forego the pretext of continuing a forever war against the state. The following Wadi Araba Treaty was the next diplomatic treatise to pacify Israel’s longest border along the east. However, both treaties are explicitly transactional.
The territorial secession of Israel and the loss of her strategic depth, the internal strife of recognizing Israel within Egypt and the loss of her prestige in the Arab world were both bought and conditioned upon with the American dollar; roughly for every $3 of military aid Israel received, Egypt would receive $2 annually. Likewise, the Wadi Araba treaty was pinned to the Hashemite Kingdom receiving immediate debt relief of $698.4 million as well as a continued annual support, today worth billions.
Since the peace, Egypt has received billions annually in weaponry, training, and support at a ratio of 2:3 to Israel. However, unlike Israel, Egypt has invested a large portion of its aid in its co-production capabilities, creating domestic military factories run jointly with the US, France, Germany, Russia, and others. Aid is the mechanism by which the regime in Cairo maintains control while also restraining Egypt from confrontation.
The Jordanian economy is collapsing and structurally dependent on foreign assistance. Aid is the price of maintaining a border with Israel.
During this most recent conflict, it has become apparent that Israel must remove the American aid which, in the eyes of Jerusalem, has proven to constrain her more than enable her. Netanyahu recently stated explicitly the goal of removing all American aid within a decade. On the other side of the Atlantic, the growing hostility towards Israel within the American youth is now a bipartisan issue, and it is apparent that both future Democrat and Republican parties will likely seek to end the aid.
Yet the current map of the Middle East is bound together by the American dollar. The peace treaties are anchored in U.S. financial aid more so than mutual trust or love between nations. And once U.S. aid is removed from the region, whether through political shifts or strategic retrenchment, the entire regional balance will shift again.
Once
removed, so too is the financial, political, or deterrent incentive to
continue to enforce them. Borders once considered politically ‘quiet’
will once again become active.
Egypt Today
Domestically, Egypt has been in a severe economic crisis for the past decade. Economic life in Egypt is marked by large degrees of inflation of the currency and high rates of poverty. The country is run by a military junta, which is largely unpopular amongst its own citizens who consistently show strong support and sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite her economic woes, she remains a strong military power, possessing a well-kept and modern army. And with an economy constantly in free fall, and a strong military, the regime in Cairo is much more an army with a country rather than a country with an army.
With the consistent threat of popular revolt, as happened in the Arab Spring, and the loss of the country to the Muslim Brotherhood, the regime is desperate for internal legitimacy.
All her previous attempts to solve Egypt’s economic crises have failed, and so, the only tool left for Cairo to gain local support is her military.
And Cairo has already signaled that it views the peace as one of conditional compliance and not true commitment. Since Oct 7th, Cairo has overseen a massive buildup of troops in the Sinai, far beyond permitted levels according to the clauses of the Camp David Accords. Area C of the Sinai, along Israel’s border, according to the treaty can only host a police force but today hosts complete divisions of armored tanks, artillery, and aircraft.
During the height of the war with Gaza, Egypt proceeded with a military exercise only meters from the Israeli border, in which Egyptian soldiers practiced air raids in a direct homage to the Hamas infiltration of Oct 7th. Additionally, Sisi himself has used the threat of war and the breaking of the peace to dissuade Israel’s pursuit of moving the Gazan population.
Following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, Egypt sought closer ties with Somalia — widely interpreted as an attempt to counter Israeli influence at the mouth of the Red Sea and assert control over the Bab el‑Mandeb corridor.
The State of Jordan
The Jordanian economy is likely collapsing. The Jordanian water supply is effectively controlled by Israel, and her agricultural output is not enough to supply her own population. The country boasts no natural resources to exploit or develop to boost local industry, and in the past years she has become regional hub for refugees. Coupled with high unemployment, Jordan has essentially become entirely dependent on a combination of remittances and foreign aid.
Domestically, the population is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to its ban, the largest party in the Jordanian Parliament, was the party of the Muslim Brotherhood. Parliament members regularly curse Israel, and former Parliament members have even been caught smuggling weapons into Judea and Samaria. The overwhelming majority of the population is nominally Palestinian, and since the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood party, the Islamist mobilization and broadcasting within the country has only grown.
At the outset of the Oct 7th war, there were mass border demonstrations in Jordan where its citizens were calling for confrontation with Israel. The nature of these protests required the Jordanian army being deployed to the border, albeit facing its own citizens. Yet still, the King reiterated that if the Palestinians were to be expelled from Gaza, then Jordan would be forced to go to war, regardless of the standing peace.
The Emerging Sunni Bloc – And Why Egypt and Jordan Are Excluded
Since the attacks on Iran, the perceived threat from Tehran have significantly diminished throughout the Sunni world. No longer viewing Iran as the immediate threat to their interests in the region, the Sunni powers now look towards Israel. Most notably a new military alliance was signed between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Possessing a nuclear umbrella from Pakistan, Saudi financials, and the Turkish military forces and industrial capabilities, such an alliance is a formidable foe.
As noted, each party has something with which it can offer to the alliance. Beyond the pragmatic realism with which it offers each nation, there are other non-quantitative but ultimately more influential goals of this alliance.
Such an alliance launches Pakistan’s political presence and prestige and grants her much more economic and political leverage against her historic foe of India. For Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the alliance bolsters both as the apparent leaders of the Muslim world. The uncontested position of such has been long sought after from Saudi Arabia, as ward of the holy sites, and from Turkey in her position of establishing a neo-Ottoman realm.
Previously, such a position has also been sought by Egypt. And Cairo actively competes with Turkish influence in Libya as well as the Horn of Africa. And while she possesses the military to be a relevant asset to such a bloc, her economy would demand her entrance into the establishment as only a junior partner, an inherent forfeit to her claim of leader in the Arab and Muslim world. Likewise, Jordan too offers no economic leverage to the bloc and as such is excluded.
Another reason for Jordan’s exclusion lies in the proposed IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Corridor). Currently, the proposal consists of a freight line emerging from the UAE through Saudi Arabia, then Jordan, and finally Israel, yet Ankara has recently proposed an alternative route, which runs from Iraq into Turkey, excluding Israel and Jordan from the procedure and monopolizing the east-west trade routes through Turkey.
In the face of all these issues, confrontation with Israel begins to appear as an increasingly inviting proposition.
Alignment of Interests
The economies of both countries have been largely reliant on the aid with which they receive, and it has been the unspoken rule that such aid would be pulled from them if they ever attacked Israel. However, with the changing political order, in both Israel and the United States, Jordan and Egypt are both receiving signals now that aid will be pulled from Israel. Such a scenario begs the question, if there is no American economic interest in Israel, would an attack against it merit the withdrawal of American aid from their own economies? And if not, then attacking Israel does not pose the inherent economic collapse that it meant previously. Both Egypt and Jordan possess militaries with Western technologies and capabilities. And Egypt, who has spent much of its time investing in the capability of local production of military equipment and munitions, has developed a stockpile and production capability that even if such aid were immediately withdrawn, its effect would not be felt during wartime.
Both countries face increasing Islamist pressure internally, and gaining legitimacy through confrontation with Israel first, would garner support from the vast majorities in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and their goals. Considering the economic instability of these countries and the potential coup or revolt that might happen in either, an inexperienced leadership would likely join the larger Sunni bloc as junior partners. Attempting to save themselves from either fate, the regimes might attempt to confront Israel before the Turkey-Saudi-Pakistani bloc becomes openly hostile. As such, confrontation would re-establish both as central actors within the Arab and Muslim world and have a stabilizing effect upon their regimes.
Geographically, their shared position against Israel, relative to the larger Sunni bloc, is advantageous. Both countries exist along Israel’s immediate borders. Egypt has preemptively militarized the Sinai. And Jordan controls Israel’s longest border. Together they form a natural pincer around Israel – with the potential to strike at Israel’s high ground in Judea and Samaria, and her underbelly, through the Negev, simultaneously.
Both regimes face internal crises, economically and politically, and both have already signaled a willingness to break current treaties. When US aid disappears from the Israeli budgets, the stick and carrot nature of aid to the Arab states fundamentally changes simply to a carrot.
Israel Moving Forward
The
peace Israel enjoys today with Egypt and Jordan is not ideological, but
financial. Once US aid collapses, so goes with it the incentives for
peace. The internal crises that both Egypt and Jordan face make both
volatile and unpredictable and increase the attractiveness of a
confrontation with Israel. Both have already signaled a willingness to
challenge Israel. And a new regional alignment, driven by exclusion,
desperation, and ambition, could emerge.
Within
these next 10 years, Israel must seek, as Egypt has done, to increase
its own domestic production capabilities of munitions and other military
equipment. Simultaneously, Israel must strengthen her position in
Somaliland to thwart any future closing of the Red Sea from either the
orders of Cairo or Ankara.
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