Isolating Israel and the “counter-engineering” of the Middle East

Among Middle Eastern capitals, Tel Aviv appeared the most unsettled by the Egyptian–Turkish rapprochement, crowned last week by the signing of several agreements and memoranda of understanding. Chief among them was a framework military agreement covering cooperation in arms manufacturing, intelligence sharing, and enhanced levels of defense coordination.

For Israel, this was not merely the normalization of relations between two major regional states. It was a strategic shift that redraws the balance of power in a region Tel Aviv has long sought to fragment—undermining its states, destabilizing them, and entangling them in conflicts that make it easier to implement its long-standing and repeatedly renewed plans for regional domination.

Just one day after Presidents Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed the joint declaration, following the second meeting of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council between Cairo and Ankara, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged with a warning that “the Egyptian army is getting stronger” calling for this development to be “monitored.”

During closed-door discussions at the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Netanyahu signalled that the power of the Egyptian army is increasing in a troubling manner. “Israel and Egypt have a relationship and common interests,” he said, according to media reports, but Tel Aviv “needs to prevent it [the Egyptian army] from becoming too strong.”

Israel on edge

Despite the limited information emerging from Netanyahu’s closed session, the intensifying warnings from unofficial Israeli security circles were striking. Retired Brigadier General Amir Avivi, founder and head of the“Habithonistim” movement, which brings together former security officials from different agencies, cautioned against the risks posed by the Egyptian–Turkish rapprochement. He interpreted this development as a sign of a new regional axis taking shape.

Avivi, who currently chairs the Israeli Defense and Security Forum, said in a video posted on X that Israel should prepare in the coming years for the possibility of a simultaneous military confrontation with Egypt and Turkey. He added that the signing of a broad strategic military agreement between the two countries means that the so-called radical Sunni axis has begun to raise its head.

He went further still, calling for Egypt and Turkey to become “the compass for building” the Israeli army and demanding “an army that knows how to fight in two theaters simultaneously and against regular armies.”

This growing concern reflects Israel’s awareness that the project of “re-engineering the Middle East,” which Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to accomplish, no longer faces the kind of regional void that existed in the aftermath of the waves of instability that swept the region since 2011. Major capitals have grasped the scale of the threat, nearly closed the pages of their disputes, and begun rearranging their priorities—fearful of meeting the same fate as states whose crises Israel managed to infiltrate through sectarian and ethnic fractures.

The Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth picked up on signs of anxiety within official circles in Tel Aviv. In a report, it noted that Erdogan’s regional tour of Riyadh and Cairo, and the strengthening of his ties with Arab states, could weaken Israel’s political position in the region, adding that the growing partnership between Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia could lead to Israel’s “political isolation.”

Israeli moves over the past two years have revealed that its objectives are no longer limited to expanding normalization through the Abraham Accords or deepening economic and security cooperation with certain Arab capitals. They have gone further—toward imposing comprehensive dominance over the region after fragmenting it into fragile entities. This vision has been repeatedly articulated by Benjamin Netanyahu in speeches and statements, in which he has spoken openly of a “new Middle East” led by Israel, of his army’s ability to reach every inch of the region, and even of his ambitions to establish what is known as “Greater Israel.”

A belated warning

Without intending to, Netanyahu has sounded the alarm—prompting centers of regional gravity to draw closer and agree on a strategic vision aimed at reducing tensions and extinguishing the fires ignited by Israel or managed through its proxies. It has become clear that no single state can confront the Zionist project, now an “open book” to anyone who reads the region’s power maps.

If the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran has receded, it has left a highly dangerous strategic vacuum. This decline follows the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the exhaustion of Iran-backed forces in Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen, and escalating American pressure on Iraqi Shiite factions. In response, the remaining regional powers—coincidentally Sunni-majority states—are now considering new alliances based on confronting shared risks and exchanging interests.

This is how decision-making circles in Cairo, Ankara, and Riyadh have been thinking: launching a pragmatic axis not founded on ideological slogans, but on a shared understanding that what comes after Iran—should it be subjected to an American–Israeli strike—will not be the end of the road, but merely another station in a trajectory of unchecked Israeli expansion. As a former Egyptian diplomat close to decision-making circles in Cairo put it: “If the countries of the region are unable to prevent a potential strike on Iran, they must at least contain the Zionist threat—because Tehran will not be the final stop.”

Israel cannot succeed in re-engineering the region except through the retreat or surrender of the forces opposed to it, whether states or factions. Only in such a vacuum can Tel Aviv control the region’s resources and impose its will and decision-making power. Hence, the need for an agenda of ‘counter-engineering’—one that hems in the Zionist project and blocks its attempts at expansion.

In this context, it is no longer a secret that Cairo and Riyadh’s positions intersect in the search for decisive solutions to the region’s burning files—from Yemen and the Red Sea to Libya and Sudan, and on to Gaza. This is according to statements issued by the Egyptian presidency and the Saudi Foreign Ministry following the visit of Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan to Cairo. The convergence with Ankara then followed, through economic and defense mechanisms agreed upon during the Turkish president’s visits to Riyadh and Cairo, all pointing to the emergence of a shared vision aimed at confronting Israel’s project of regional hegemony.

And if Iran succeeds in escaping the trap Israel seeks to set for it, avoids the potential strike Washington has threatened—and manages to confine negotiations with the United States to the nuclear file—then it should become the fourth pillar of the axis now taking shape. Only then can rules be laid down for a Middle East that reflects the interests of its peoples—not the interests of their enemies.