Voices from the Arab press: Weighing Iran's decline, Israel's strategy and Infantino's Arab support

For two decades, Iran managed to transform itself into a dominant regional power in the Middle East, but this was not primarily the result of its economic, technological, or military strength, nor of the appeal of the state model it represented. Rather, it resulted from several circumstances.

Second was the absence of an effective Arab axis, amid a lack of consensus among Arab states over needs and priorities.

Fourth was Israeli intransigence toward the peace process, which enabled Iran to appropriate the Palestinian cause and claim the mantle of resistance, particularly through its unlimited support for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This served American policy in two ways: the devastation of the Arab East helped guarantee Israel’s security for the long term, while the Iranian threat could be used as a scarecrow to push Arab governments toward seeking American protection, opening relations with Israel and normalizing with it, or joining some form of shared regional political, security, and economic order.

But this arrangement could not last indefinitely. After two decades, from 2003 to 2025, American investment in Iran’s regional role effectively ended, as circumstances in the Middle East changed. Two developments were particularly important.

The first was the Oct. 7 al-Aqsa Flood operation, which unleashed Israel’s ferocious war against the Palestinians and its effort to break Iranian influence throughout the region, including by striking Tehran’s militia proxies.

The second was the Iranian regime’s attempt to acquire nuclear and advanced missile capabilities.

A third, more recent factor was Iran’s attempt to strangle the global economy by weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz while threatening neighboring Gulf states.

The paradox is that al-Aqsa Flood – the dramatic culmination of the militia-based military strategy championed by Iran’s resistance axis, accompanied by Hezbollah’s support for Hamas, Houthi missile attacks from Yemen, attacks by Iraqi factions, and the slogan of “unity of the fronts” – also marked the high point of Iran’s and its proxies’ failure.

In a remarkably rapid and devastating sequence, Israel managed within three months to cripple Hezbollah’s power, destroy Syrian military capabilities after the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, and curtail the influence of Iraqi militias.

Nor did the US and Israel stop there. They subsequently waged war against Iran in two phases, followed by a third round of attacks last July, in a conflict that has yet to end.

Perhaps Iran’s greatest loss in this continuing war has been its narrative about itself – regionally, internationally, and before its own people. For two decades it cultivated an image of an invincible state capable of confronting not only Israel but even the US, while boasting that it could erase Israel within days. Those claims proved to be slogans that quickly lost credibility when put to the test.

Iran also lost its image and status as leader of the resistance axis, after distancing itself from Israel’s two-year war against Gaza and leaving Hamas to its fate, just as it refrained from rescuing Hezbollah, the crown jewel of its regional militia network, after the devastating Israeli blows of autumn 2024.

Internationally, Iran’s conception of an emerging multipolar world and the imminent decline of the US has also been exposed. The BRICS countries – China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa – have proved unable to do much in the face of American power, whether politically, economically, technologically, or militarily.

It is unlikely that the Egyptian Football Association’s support for FIFA president Gianni Infantino will change, even if FIFA announces severe penalties against Egypt’s coach and several national-team players.

There is no point comparing the Egyptian federation with the White House and expecting Infantino to intervene and overturn Egyptian sanctions, as he did when a red card given to an American player during the World Cup was rescinded.

The Egyptian federation had already declared its support for Infantino when the current campaign against him began, even though Hany Hassan Abou Rida, president of the Egyptian Football Association, was not among the members of the executive committee of the Confederation of African Football who supposedly endorsed Infantino at its latest meeting.

CAF announced that its executive committee had unanimously backed him, but prominent journalist Romain Molina subsequently claimed that only four members actually did so: CAF president Patrice Motsepe of South Africa, Moroccan federation president Fouzi Lekjaa, Mauritanian federation president Ahmed Yahya, and Djibouti federation president Souleiman Waberi.

None of this means Egypt’s position toward Infantino has changed. Egypt remains among the Arab countries that have publicly backed him, alongside Morocco, Mauritania, Qatar, Sudan, and Djibouti – and, of course, Lebanon, since Infantino became a Lebanese citizen after President Joseph Aoun granted him citizenship last December.

Aoun said the decision reflected Lebanon’s appreciation for everything Infantino has done to develop soccer worldwide. Infantino, who also holds Italian and Swiss citizenship, responded that he did not consider Lebanon a second or third country, but a country he loved and belonged to – perhaps also a reference to his Lebanese wife, Leena Al Ashqar.

While some Arab countries publicly support Infantino and others do so privately, Bahrain and Jordan continue to oppose his remaining FIFA president. A new dispute erupted recently between Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, president of the Qatar Football Association.

Sheikh Salman declared that the AFC and its members oppose Infantino, placing Asia alongside Europe and North America in the coalition against him. The Qatari federation president responded that Qatar had never authorized Sheikh Salman to speak on its behalf or determine whom it would support in the next FIFA election, stressing that Qatar would remain one of Infantino’s strongest supporters.

That, in turn, raises questions about the position of Qatar’s Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who might be expected, as a Qatari, to support Infantino but is simultaneously president of Paris Saint-Germain and, more importantly, head of the European clubs’ association on a continent now leading the campaign against the FIFA president.

Following Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank makes clear that it is pursuing both tactical and strategic objectives simultaneously, moving beyond commitments it previously made under US President Donald Trump’s plan and the agenda of Nickolay Mladenov, the Peace Council’s high representative for Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected any conditions from Hamas for accepting disarmament, potentially freezing the entire process until another intervention by Jared Kushner, the US special peace envoy, and Mladenov’s Peace Council. Washington has recently attempted precisely such pressure to prevent Netanyahu from completely sabotaging the American plan.

Israel, meanwhile, is planning buffer zones and model communities inside Gaza. A “green zone” is being constructed in eastern Rafah, while the Yellow Line is being shifted and Israeli forces are moving from contact zones deeper into residential areas.

This indicates that Israel is creating a new reality across roughly 70% of the territory where it maintains a presence, while simultaneously seeking to crowd Palestinians into the remaining area as preparation for their eventual transfer to countries that have indicated a willingness to receive them.

American companies and organizations are also providing financial support for Palestinian emigration from Gaza, with the aim of emptying the Strip of its inhabitants. This concept is hardly new to Israeli strategic thinking.

Netanyahu’s government is betting on freezing the current situation on its own terms until parliamentary elections in October and the formation of what Netanyahu calls an “all-Israel government.” It is therefore unlikely that Kushner or Mladenov will succeed in restraining Israeli behavior.

Israel’s plan for the West Bank appears even more comprehensive and is advancing rapidly, in an effort to alter realities on the ground through settlement expansion, bypass roads, alternative corridors, and thousands of new housing units. Before beginning its current recess, the Knesset approved a series of measures designed to accelerate settlement plans and connect major settlements deep inside the West Bank.

These developments also extend to Islamic and Christian holy sites, violating agreements that place their custodianship in Jordanian hands.

Israel is also demolishing Palestinian refugee camps and establishing unauthorized outposts in their place, pending formal approval by the government body responsible for settlements, while arming settlers and protecting their daily movements.

All of this forms part of the current governing coalition’s program and is proceeding according to an agreed timetable in Jerusalem, Nablus, Jenin, and elsewhere. Full implementation of the settlement project would require the displacement of thousands of Palestinians abroad, including to Jordan, which Israel’s far Right regards as the “alternative homeland” capable of absorbing them.

The West Bank project therefore increasingly resembles what is happening in Gaza, with Israel exploiting the region’s current upheaval to advance both. Israel appears determined to accelerate these plans at both the demographic and strategic levels, with the central objective of emptying Palestinian territory of its Palestinian inhabitants.

Just as birth comes only after the pains of labor that bring something new into being, the centuries preceding the French Revolution witnessed what became known as the Enlightenment in science and knowledge. Together with the Napoleonic wars that followed, this helped give birth to the modern nation-state, a political form that surpassed the old empires and the struggles among European thrones whose subjects extended across other continents.

The first Industrial Revolution transformed steam into the power behind machines, fast ships, faster trains, and artillery capable of directing destruction at cities and killing entire communities.

In Europe, the nation-state became a model propagated through both ideas and force, and from the 20th century onward its influence spread across the world.

Nowhere in the Arab region was the nation-state celebrated more strongly than after the First and Second World Wars. Today, however, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan face extraordinarily difficult questions and nearly impossible tests, more than a decade after the emergence of what became known as the Arab Spring.

While that upheaval shook the form of the Arab state established after the Second World War, the countries that survived it or successfully confronted it were those that did not merely preserve the nation-state, but built national projects designed to protect and sustain it.

Yet the same period opened the door to intervention by neighboring powers, foremost among them Iran and Israel, each expanding through different instruments: Iran through militias and armed proxies, Israel through military force and settlements.

There is no longer any doubt about the Iranian and Israeli projects to reshape the Middle East, whether through Tehran’s arms extending into Arab countries, or through Israeli power, backed by the US or acting without it. The region is now consumed by multiple wars.

The fifth Gaza war is still under way, while the fourth Gulf war has become fragmented between intense American military strikes and Iranian responses directed either against the Arab Gulf states themselves or through allied proxies. Most notably, missiles have been launched from Iraq toward Saudi Arabia, provoking retaliatory strikes against Popular Mobilization Forces positions on Iraqi soil.