The War That Brought Arabs and Israel Closer: The Birth of the Middle East’s Informal NATO S. Rouzbeh ۲۰۲۶/۰۴/۰۹ The latest war is driving the Middle East beyond symbolic diplomacy towards practical security cooperation. Though no formal NATO-style pact exists, a layered network linking Israel, the United States and some Arab states is taking shape around intelligence-sharing, air defence and the protection of energy and shipping routes—bringing strategic alignment as well as risks of deeper regional polarisation. The term ‘Arab NATO’ is not new. For years, political and security circles have discussed an Arab coalition to contain Iran, but the idea has usually remained a slogan or faltered against conflicting interests among Arab governments, the Palestinian issue and doubts about America’s genuine commitment. So if someone now rushes to say that ‘a regional NATO has been formed’, it sounds more like an excited headline than analysis. What is taking shape in the Middle East is not yet a formal NATO-style treaty: it has no collective-defence clause, no publicly announced unified command, and no clear legal structure. But that is not the whole story either, because beneath the surface of the crisis, a real network of security convergence, air defence, intelligence-sharing and strategic coordination is emerging—and this network may matter more than any grandiose pact on paper. From the outset, the Abraham Accords were more than a project for a diplomatic photo opportunity. The process began in 2020 not only to normalise relations with Israel, but also to build a new regional order in which some Arab governments, Israel and the United States could draw closer in response to shared threats. Even so, the process slowed politically and publicly in the years that followed, especially after the Gaza war. Saudi Arabia is a clear example: it still makes overt normalisation conditional on the Palestinian issue. And even a Reuters report on 8 May 2025 showed that Washington was no longer making Israel’s recognition an immediate condition for advancing civilian nuclear talks with Riyadh. This alone shows how costly and obstructed the path to formal normalisation remains. But the recent war has shifted the region’s logic from symbolic politics to survival and security. When conflict crosses the line from statements and diplomatic protests to missiles, drones, energy infrastructure, ports, shipping and the security of cities, governments no longer make decisions solely in the language of ideals or public opinion; they do so in the language of security necessity. It is precisely at this point that Iran, even if it seeks to intimidate the Arab world through threats and pressure or distance it from Israel, may achieve the opposite result. Attacking Arab countries or endangering energy routes does more to remind them that a shared threat demands a shared response than to divide them. Reuters’ report of 27 March 2026 recorded exactly this change in tone: Gulf Arab governments had told the United States that merely ending the war would not be enough, and that any agreement must durably limit Iran’s missile and drone capabilities and prevent Tehran from using energy and the Strait of Hormuz as instruments of pressure. This is no longer the language of diplomatic caution; it is the language of strategic containment. This is where it becomes clear why ‘informal NATO’ is a more accurate description than ‘Arab NATO’. What is being built is not a purely Arab formal pact. Israel is at its centre, the United States is its guarantor and coordinator, and some Arab governments—from the UAE and Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, more cautiously—are drawing closer to it. This new alignment is therefore neither simply Arab nor simply defensive; it is a multilayered operational bloc in which intelligence cooperation, early warning, air defence, the interception of missiles and drones, maritime security and even the protection of energy infrastructure are intertwined. There is no shortage of institutional evidence of this process. On 13 January 2026, CENTCOM announced the opening of a new air-defence operations cell at Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, involving regional partners, to strengthen the integration of air and missile defence. This is more than just military news; it shows that the idea of security cooperation has moved beyond discussion and theory into operational mechanisms. The significance of this development becomes clearer still when we consider it alongside the posture statement by General Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM commander. In June 2025, he stated that US relations with regional partners had underpinned the Middle East Air Defence initiative and that this model had helped counter threats from Iran. This means that what is happening in the Middle East today is not a journalistic fantasy, but part of America’s security planning for the region: a design that seeks to create the core functions of a defence alliance through a network, step by step, without announcing a politically costly treaty. If we recognise NATO only by its formal signature, we might say that no such thing exists yet. But if we look at NATO in terms of function—that is, defensive integration, a division of responsibilities, intelligence coordination and readiness for a joint response—then we must acknowledge that the Middle East is experiencing an informal, locally adapted version of the same logic. Meanwhile, Arab relations with Israel are undergoing a dual transformation. At the political and public level, many Arab governments are still unwilling to bear the full cost of openly aligning themselves with Israel. The Palestinian issue, anger among Arab public opinion and the negative legacy of the Gaza war remain obstacles. But at the practical and security level, those same governments may increasingly see Israel not simply as a political problem, but as a technical and intelligence partner—a country with advantages in missile interception, multilayered air defence, surveillance technology and integration into the US security network. In other words, the recent war may not have created political love between Arabs and Israel, but it has created a kind of strategic necessity between them. That is an important distinction. Lasting alliances do not always spring from mutual affection; sometimes they are born of shared fear and a shared threat. On the other hand, the more direct and far-reaching the Iranian threat appears, the more Gulf Arab governments are reaching the conclusion that their security is no longer purely a national matter. The security of ports, oil and gas facilities, airports, coastal cities and shipping routes has become a regional, even global, concern. On 5 April 2026, Reuters reported that the war had placed the Strait of Hormuz and the energy market in a paralysing situation, and that the disruption was putting pressure on the foundations of the global economy. In such circumstances, energy security is no longer merely an economic issue; it becomes a cornerstone of political and military convergence. This is where Washington, Israel and the Gulf Arabs find more interests in common, and terms such as ‘collective deterrence’ and ‘integrated air defence’ move from military vocabulary closer to political reality. But this process creates risks as well as opportunities. The more cohesive this security bloc becomes, the further the region may move towards polarisation. On one side will be the United States, Israel and some Arab governments; on the other, Iran and its proxy or aligned networks. This means that even if direct wars subside, the logic of confrontation will endure. Instead of comprehensive peace, something like ‘armed stability’ may take shape: stability built on containment, a balance of threats and security coordination, rather than genuine political reconciliation. Such an order may prevent immediate collapse, but it will not necessarily make the region more peaceful, fairer or less tense. It will only make it more organised and more divided into blocs. So, if we want to understand this moment properly, we must avoid two mistakes. The first is to imagine that everything is as it was before, and that the Abraham Accords or the idea of an Arab NATO were merely publicity and are now over. No, they are not over; they have simply shifted from the diplomatic level to the security level. The second mistake is to announce excitedly that a new, formal NATO has been born. That is not true either—not yet. The truth lies somewhere between the two: the latest war has revived the half-dormant project of Arab-Israeli rapprochement, but not in the form of an open treaty. Instead, it is taking shape as a network of deterrence and operational cooperation that each new Iranian attack could make more cohesive. This is where the headline may begin to make sense: the war that was supposed to tear the region apart has, in practice, brought some Arabs and Israel closer—not out of friendship, but out of necessity. And many of history’s most important alliances have begun precisely this way. S. Rouzbeh Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-6b2eaa9d-c59b-5d4d-fb28-f3d6c5e79714 Please credit the author and link to this edition.