Peloni: This is an important article. Khaled Hasan, Egyptian-British national security and foreign policy researcher, presents the fallout following the recent Doha strike as being a series of alliance systems poised against Israel.
Khaled Hassan | The Grand Strategy | Sep 21, 2025
The Alliances Reshaping the Region: from 1967 to the Doha Strikes
In a private conversation with Jewish leaders, and in public, I compared Israel’s triumph in 1967 over a coalition of Arab states including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, with support from other Arab countries like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, with its recent strikes against Hamas leaders in Doha.
This comparison was deliberate in ways I have and haven’t explained. The pros, which I explained publicly, are clear: deterrence is back on the menu. Like the 1967 triumph, the Doha strikes showed the world and Israel’s adversaries that Israel means business and that its enemies aren’t far from its reach. And, much like in 1967, Israel surprised its adversaries with its capabilities.
What I haven’t addressed in public, however, is the cons of the strike. Much like the 1967 triumph and ensuing shock across much of the Arab world, both events seem to have triggered the formation of dangerous alliances that profoundly reshaped the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape, particularly the nature and dynamics of anti-Israel alliances.
The most transformative Middle East developments often arrive unheralded. The rapid crystallisation of new security pacts in the wake of the Doha strikes is one such shift. Where the 1967 war cemented a unified Arab front against Israel, the post-Doha landscape is defined by a more complex, multipolar alignment system—one defined by pragmatic, bilateral security partnerships that transcend traditional ideological divides and threaten to isolate Israel within an increasingly coordinated network of capable adversaries.
From Pan-Arabism to Pragmatic Alignment
The 1967 Arab coalition embodied Nasserist pan-Arabism—an ideological commitment to collective Arab action against Israel, however fractured in execution. The contemporary response reflects a pragmatic realpolitik born of perceived American unreliability and Israeli escalation. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt are pursuing security through tailored bilateral partnerships rather than ideological unity.
This shift represents a fundamental philosophical departure. The 1967 alliance sought to eradicate Israel through collective military action. The 2025 alignments seek to create overlapping deterrents that constrain Israeli freedom of action while advancing regional leadership ambitions. As one analysis noted, Gulf states are pursuing “strategic autonomy” amid concerns about “US unpredictability and commitment to their defence”. This recalibration reflects not merely anger over the Doha strike, but a deeper calculation that the US security umbrella has, perhaps irreparably, frayed.
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