“We need to think in depth and with self-confidence of how to prepare ourselves to deal with developments through the creation of a joint Arab force,” an enthusiastic Abdel Fattah El Sisi told Arab leaders in 2015.
A clip of the Egyptian President making this comment – part of his address to an Arab summit hosted by Egypt – is being aired now at regular intervals by a state-affiliated TV network known to be close to the government and its security agencies.
Addressing an online meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Sunday, Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Iranian attacks on its neighbours made it necessary to activate the concept of joint Arab action, including the creation of a force, to protect states and deal effectively with threats.
A 2015 Arab summit resolution said a joint force could deal with “threats to the security and stability” of member nations as well as terrorism. It could also have a mandate to deal with peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.
The resolution also proposed the creation of an Arab Defence Council made up of the foreign and defence ministers of participating nations, and a separate council of their military chiefs of staff to lay down plans on how to deal with potential threats.
But more than a decade after Mr El Sisi first floated the idea of the force, it sounds more like a distant dream than a practical project, according to experts.
They spoke of differences over what constitutes Arab national security and the difficulties involved in getting all 22 Arab League member states to agree on the force's size, leadership, location of its headquarters and precise mandate.
Strategic and political analyst Samir Ragheb, a retired Egyptian army brigadier, believes talk about creating a joint Arab force now is ill-timed, surfacing when immediate action is needed to help protect Arab states subjected to Iranian attacks, or ensuring the safety of strategic waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz.
“Isn't that more urgent than institutional architecture now?” Mr Ragheb told The National. “We're talking about building the house while the fire is burning. The conversation about a 'joint Arab force' risks becoming a way of appearing to act while avoiding the harder, more immediate decisions."
He and other experts believe that regional alliances grouping some but not all Arab nations are probably the best way to establish an effective defence mechanism.
“The Iranian threat is now tangible and shared – that tends to concentrate minds. And the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement that had complicated the picture has effectively collapsed under the weight of this conflict. So the political atmosphere among Gulf states specifically is more cohesive than it's been in years,” Mr Ragheb said.
“But what I think is feasible, and may already be happening quietly, is a narrow Gulf framework: Gulf Co-operation Council states co-ordinating on air defence, intelligence sharing and logistics – without using the politically loaded label of a 'joint Arab force',” he said.
“No one wants to be seen publicly championing that banner right now. The symbolism carries too much history. The practical co-ordination, however, may be advancing behind closed doors.
“The idea of an Arab joint force may never see the light of day as a reality. It's a romantic idea, much like the idea of a common Arab market. What is practical and within reach is a military alliance that groups Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They have held many war drills together, speak the same language and have mostly similar weapons.”
Mohammed Megahed Elzayat, a prominent strategic analyst, says hurdles to the creation of a joint Arab force are far greater than questions of size, leadership or operational details.
“There is no Arab consensus on what exactly is national Arab security or agreement on the most potent enemies,” Mr Elzayat of the Egyptian Centre of Thought and Strategic Studies, an independent think tank, told The National.
“There's been a joint Arab defence accord in existence since the 1950s and it had rarely been implemented, but when Israel defeated the Arabs in 1967, virtually every Arab country supported Egypt, Jordan and Syria in any way they could, whether militarily or through the oil embargo by the Gulf nations.”
Mr Elzayat, like Mr Ragheb, sees a joint Arab force as a mostly untenable dream, and contends that Gulf Arab states gave a good example of what can be done without one in the face of Iranian missiles and drones.
“Take the United Arab Emirates as an example. It intercepted 90 per cent of Iranian missiles and drones targeting it using its own capabilities,” he said.
