Though far from its borders, the latest Iran war places Egypt in the unenviable position of balancing its vital ties with the US, growing relations with Iran and strategic alliance with Gulf Arab states.
Egypt, the Arab nation with the region's strongest military, shifted its diplomatic machine into top gear in the run-up to the war, trying – to no avail – to prevent a conflict it knew would hurt its regional interests and could reverse the modest economic gains it had made in recent months after years of crisis.
"We in Egypt had tried through a sincere effort in recent months to head off the crisis by bringing closer the positions of the United States and Iran so that a deal can be reached," Egypt's president Abdel Fattah El Sisi said on Sunday night.
"Very big developments unfolded quickly in the last two days and we in Egypt were keen to emphasise the need to deescalate, bring calm or even stop the war altogether, although I doubt that will happen."
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty had spent hours on the phone with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi and the director of the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA, Rafael Grossi, to find a way out of the US-Iran stand-off over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Immediately after the US and Israel unleashed their aerial firepower on Iran, Mr El Sisi held phone calls on Saturday with the leaders of five Gulf allies: the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He spoke to the Sultan of Oman on Sunday.
Iran, meanwhile, retaliated with strikes targeting Israel and several Gulf states.
Presidential statements issued after the calls were nearly identical, with each citing Mr El Sisi stressing to Gulf leaders Egypt's “solidarity” and warning that any breach of their nations' sovereignty poses a “direct threat” to regional stability.
In an implicit reference to the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, the statements also cited diplomacy as the “only means” to resolve the crisis and warned that military escalation would lead only to more violence.
While they seem to be full of diplomatic parlance, the statements reflected Egypt's dilemma as it deals with what many see as a potential regional war that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East.
Egypt's balancing act was further manifested in a statement by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry on the outbreak of the war, which was withdrawn, amended, and reissued with additions emphasising Egypt's solidarity with the Gulf Arab states targeted by Iran.
Both versions condemned the Iranian regime for its attacks on those nations, saying such hostile actions jeopardised the stability of the region.
Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the presidential statements directly mentioned the US or Israel, but did say the “dangerous military escalation” could plunge the entire Middle East into chaos.
“The Egyptians did not want to condemn the US and strain relations with the Trump administration,” said Michael Hanna, a director of the International Crisis Group in New York. “They could have condemned Israel but it would have looked silly to do that without doing the same to its war partner, the US."
While Egypt's relations with Israel have been fraught with tension since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, relations between Mr El Sisi and US President Donald Trump have grown close, with the pair routinely expressing deep admiration for each other.
Criticising the US over its actions in Iran would have hurt those ties at a time when Cairo is looking to Mr Trump to resolve several issues of strategic significance to Egypt: the implementation of the US leader's Gaza peace plan, his declared intention to mediate in Cairo's bitter water dispute with Ethiopia and ending the civil war in Sudan.
A Washington ally for close to 50 years, Egypt receives $1.3 billion annually in US military aid and relies on White House support when seeking financial bailouts from organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
That caution in dealing with the Trump administration has been consistently evident since the Republican President began his second term in office last year, with Egypt's officialdom avoiding any direct criticism of US policies or of the US leader himself.
That policy left criticism of the latest US and Israeli strikes against Iran to pro-government pundits and independent voices on social media, the only space where Egyptians enjoy relative freedom of speech.
One of those pundits is prominent military and strategic analyst Samir Ragab, a retired army general known to be close to the government.
“The survival of Iran as an independent power is a necessity for the region's strategic balance,” Gen Ragab told a TV interviewer on Saturday night. “It's not in our [Egypt's] interest to see the collapse of Iran or the demise of its regime.”
Egypt and Iran have ended a prolonged period of tension dating back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Cairo angered the clergy-ruled country by giving asylum to the ailing shah. Relations further deteriorated when Iran glorified the main assassin of president Anwar Sadat in 1981 by naming a Tehran street after him.
However, Egypt and Iran had not restored full diplomatic relations despite their improved relations and the high-level consultations between the two regional powerhouses involving meetings between Mr El Sisi and Iranian leaders, and frequent talks between the countries' foreign ministers.
Egypt's reluctance to establish full diplomatic relations with Iran is widely considered an act of solidarity with Cairo's Arab allies in the Gulf, who strongly oppose Tehran's perceived meddling in Arab affairs and support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen's Houthis.
Gulf Arab states have repeatedly come to the rescue of Egypt's often ailing economy, with bailouts of billions of dollars in investments, loans and central bank deposits over the past decade alone.
