Questions of power and memory: The Saudi–Egyptian clash over Iran

It is an old story, though one that keeps returning. In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, wasted little time calling in American forces to protect them. Those forces would later become the nucleus of the permanent US military bases now scattered across the Gulf.

At that distant moment in time, the Middle East still contained political and cultural forces capable of acting, of influencing events. They quickly formulated a position meant to slow the American rush to war، what became known as the “three noes”: no to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, no to war and the destruction of Iraq, and no to American military intervention in the region. It was not a reflexive politics of negation. Those “noes” carried proposals, among them a solution mediated through the Arab League.

But another current moved faster. An international coalition assembled to wage war on Iraq, its front rows decorated with an Arab façade، provided by Syria and Egypt, both rewarded with financial gains. Saddam was expelled from Kuwait, Iraq was shattered, sanctions were imposed, and the American troops remained. They multiplied.

That moment marked the beginning of a profound transformation in the region: the erosion of the Arab system, the decline of its major states, the rise of money as an absolute value, alignment with the strongest power, and Israel’s consolidation of dominance. Over three and a half decades, those shifts have gradually produced the landscape we now inhabit.

The story had another chapter. In 2011, the danger returned—not from neighboring armies, but from the region’s own peoples, in the form of the Arab uprisings. Saudi tanks crossed into Bahrain to crush its revolution, with the blessing of the same Western powers that had briefly celebrated the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen. And Gulf money would finance the gradual dismantling of the rest.

The question of reproach

Over the past week, a sharp tone has emerged in the speeches of some Saudi intellectuals directed toward their Egyptian counterparts. An anger tinged with astonishment, expressed through reproaching Egyptians with the defeat of 1967.

This came after a significant number of Egyptian intellectuals voiced opposition to the war and the destruction of Iran, insisting instead on the principle of resisting Israel. By contrast, many Gulf voices restrict themselves to wishing for a decisive end to the war—preferably with the collapse of the Iranian regime, or at least the permanent clipping of its wings, along with every resistance movement in the region.

Sometimes these Gulf voices betray another anxiety: that Donald Trump, a man of sudden whims, might abruptly end the war and leave them exposed. Their fears are not unfounded. Only weeks ago he was content with abducting Venezuela’s president and reaching oil agreements with the vice president. He simply abandoned the US-funded opposition that had believed he would carry them into power.

There is a strange paradox here. Those geographically distant from the war—in Cairo, for example, where missiles are not falling—often express positions opposite to those who would presumably benefit most from the war ending immediately and restoring a sense of security.

This contradiction has nothing to do with a “complex of defeat,” nor with identification with Iran simply because it possesses missiles Egypt does not. That shallow explanation collapses under the weight of history. When the Gulf regimes themselves felt threatened by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, they summoned the very armies defeated in 1967—Egyptian and Syrian—to help defend them.

The question of history

The roots of this contradiction lie deeper—in the political and social alignments forged during the era of genocide in Gaza, which the Gulf states possessed the power to halt but did not.

It is, in essence, a return to the core of the Arab–Israeli conflict and to the conviction that Israel must not emerge victorious from this confrontation. Especially now, as the map of allies and enemies shifts and Israel presses forward with its aggressive expansion, speaking openly of redrawing the Middle East. Egypt, in such visions, faces profound risks.

The Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait—are unlikely to face the same dangers. Their organic ties to the United States and Israel offer protection, even when they have not formally signed the Abraham Accords.

The differences in how these states were formed cannot be ignored. Egypt’s national identity did not emerge from the accidental discovery of a nonrenewable natural resource like oil. It developed through centuries of labor around the Nile—the river as guarantor of life—alongside a long historical effort to create additional sources of livelihood.

One of those sources now under threat is the Suez Canal, endangered by emerging trade alliances stretching from India to the Gulf to Israel. The canal was carved with the sweat and blood of tens of thousands of Egyptians. Today it once again stands at the center of geopolitical struggles.

This creates a different relationship between Egyptians and the foundations of their survival—the Nile, the land, the canal, the High Dam—compared with some Gulf elites’ relationship to their states. In those states, wealth appeared in the form of oil and gas. The states themselves were built through top-down decisions, not through the slow historical development of a nation or a people, and always under the protection of an external guardian.

This difference produces two contrasting relationships with foreign powers. For Egyptians, the foreigner has long been a historical threat. In the Gulf, by contrast, the foreigner organized the extraction of natural wealth, protected it, and often shaped the destinies of the states themselves.

It raises a larger question about the Gulf’s modernization: is it development or consumption? And what has the imbalanced relationship with the West done to the foundations of these states and their political positions?

The question of the complex

Yes, we Egyptians carry the trauma of the 1967 defeat. But that trauma extends far beyond Egypt—to Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Jordanians.

A defeat of that magnitude inevitably leaves fractures that may take decades to heal—assuming genuine rebuilding ever occurs. How could it be otherwise when sudden blows from foreign powers shattered a vast project of development and independence, reducing many of its achievements to ashes?

Here lies one possible meeting point with Iran—not the regime, but the people.

Both Egypt and Iran once pursued genuine development projects. Earlier still there were the visions of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Mohammad Mossadegh—projects to build independent national capitalisms in the early twentieth century. In both cases, global capitalist forces played decisive roles in crushing them.

The Egyptian sense of being threatened is therefore neither irrational nor new. It predates the destruction of Iran today; it reaches back at least to the destruction of Iraq three and a half decades ago.

Yet the trauma of defeat has at least one useful side: it sharpens awareness of the enemy—its nature, its shifting alliances, and its methods of domination. For much of the region outside the Gulf, this trauma entrenched a collective understanding that Israel and the United States are adversaries from whom no good can be expected.

Even if Sadat, and later Mubarak, along with the rest of the region’s regimes, tried to convince us otherwise, the truth remains. Faced with today’s Iranian scene, millions can’t help but recall past assaults and defeats.

In an instant, many drew a line between the 1970 massacre at Bahr Al-Baqar Primary School and the 2026 tragedy at the Iranian girls’ school, and we realize that the Zionist project—artificially imposed on this region—continues to threaten us.

Reproaching our peoples because they confronted colonial power in past wars makes little sense. It is like reproaching someone for defending their livelihood and their life.

Is resistance a disgrace? Should Palestinians be condemned for clinging to their land and rights for eighty years? Or should that perseverance be honored? Are they to be condemned simply because the two states now assaulting Lebanon and Iran are also bent on annihilating them?

The question of money

Ultimately, the difference is about.

For some, wealth becomes sacred, and comfort itself becomes the highest virtue—especially when scenes of destruction in Gaza or southern Lebanon are contrasted with the immense luxury visible in parts of the Gulf.

This difference recalls the fundamental divide in how wealth is acquired: whether it appears by chance, as a natural resource, or is produced through struggle and sacrifice.

The contradiction between intellectuals from these different worlds is almost inevitable. Some come from societies that sacrificed large portions of their resources to educate their children and build theaters, literature, cinema, television, visual arts, universities, and scientific institutions.

Others inhabit states with vast financial surpluses—almost immeasurable wealth—where money purchases football clubs, star players, intellectuals, artists, and entertainers, producing what might be called a permanent festival culture.

This is not a matter of racial superiority. No people is inherently better than another.

It is a question of how states are built, what they depend upon, and what interests they ultimately serve.

And that is why two intellectuals—one Saudi, the other Egyptian—may look at the destruction of a country and its people and reach entirely different conclusions about what it means, and about the future being built in the region for the wealthy alone.