The major natural gas deal between Israel and Egypt, announced last Wednesday in a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirming the government’s approval of the agreement, cannot be overlooked.

In detail, this is the largest energy deal ever concluded between the two countries. Israel is expected to earn approximately $130 billion by exporting more than 130 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Egypt through 2040, until the full contractual volume is delivered.

The gas will be sourced from Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field, which holds reserves exceeding 600 billion cubic meters. The scale of the agreement effectively positions Egypt and Israel as major long-term commercial partners, given the size of the deal relative to both economies.

While Israel currently exports gas to Egypt under an existing contract, the volumes and duration of that agreement cannot compare to those stipulated in the new deal.

Although the deal is economically significant, its geopolitical implications are even more profound, given that the two neighboring states are bound by a peace treaty but have yet to achieve full diplomatic normalization, aside from close security and high-level political coordination.

Despite the severity of the war in Gaza, which saw significant tension in relations between Israel and Egypt over the increasing number of casualties and the scale of destruction in Gaza Strip, the tension remained limited within boundaries that neither party exceeded.

Despite all of Egypt's protests against Israeli actions in the Gaza war and the deployment of armored vehicles near Rafah on the Egyptian side of the border, Egypt continued to play its role as a mediator between Hamas and Israel and maintained its special relations with the United States, which, following Hamas’s October 7 attack, known as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, had given something of a green light to Israel to overturn the regional table on everyone, starting with Hamas in Gaza and reaching all the arenas where Iran held decisive influence.

Egypt did not fall into the Iranian trap, nor did it fall into the trap of Israel which tried to impose the burden of hosting two million citizens from Gaza on it, aiming to displace them to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Jordan, facing pressures from the Muslim Brotherhood and on its eastern borders from Iraqi 'Popular Mobilization' militias, and from the north by drug smuggling and arms trafficking groups of the 'Quds Force' stationed in Syria, and by air from Iranian missiles and drones on their way to Israel, successfully contained the public anger over Israel's practices during the Gaza war, maintained its strategic relations with the Americans and GCC countries, and managed to control its angry public amid significant challenges produced by the Gaza war.

The massive Egyptian-Israeli deal agreement indicates that the region has moved beyond populism and outdated slogans, and that state interests can coexist with public sentiment even when the two diverge. In practical terms, while the Egyptian public was angered by what it witnessed in Gaza, that anger did not translate into renewed calls for involvement in new wars. The government, by contrast, continued to pursue its objectives through diplomacy, preserving its strategic freedom of choice and preventing Iran from exploiting the situation.

From a practical standpoint, Iran is now discovering that the Arab world has not fallen into its long-standing trap. It has not been granted new platforms to expand its influence; instead, Tehran has lost ground in two key arenas: Syria and Lebanon, and it was encircled in Iraq down to its very heart during the 12-day war.

As a new Arab phase launches in the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (which recently signed a maritime border agreement with Cyprus), Iran remained on the region's periphery, persisting in recycling old geopolitical approaches, under the weight of slogans that have become rejected not only in the Arab world but in the heart of Tehran itself. Iran’s ruling system has not changed. The region has.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar