In the intricate morass of Middle Eastern geopolitics, where alliances shift like the burning sands, a subtle but seismic power shift has unfolded over decades. By 2025, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf ally Qatar have emerged as the region’s dominant players, capitalizing on Israel’s U.S.-backed military campaigns against Iran to reshape the balance of power.
This ascent is not a recent phenomenon but the culmination of a strategy rooted in the 1980s, when oil wealth transformed these Gulf nations into global influencers. While Egypt and Turkey wield significant regional clout—owing to their proximity to Israel, military might, and ideological reach—they have been outpaced by the Gulf’s stealth empire, built on billions in covert investments across the United States, Europe, Asia, and beyond.
Drawing on historical insights from Hoag Levins’ 1983 book Arab Reach: The Secret War Against Israel, this story reveals how Saudi Arabia’s oil-driven influence, unlike the constrained ambitions of Cairo and Istanbul, has positioned it as the Middle East’s preeminent power broker in 2025.
Oil as a Weapon
The roots of Saudi Arabia’s global ascendancy trace back to the 1973 oil embargo, a watershed moment that flooded Riyadh’s coffers with unprecedented wealth. As Levins details in Arab Reach, Saudi Arabia swiftly recognized oil as more than a commodity—it was a geopolitical weapon.
By the 1980s, the kingdom was channeling billions into Western economies, buying influence in ways that neither Turkey nor Egypt could match. In the United States, a pivotal moment came in 1981 with the $8.5 billion AWACS deal, a sale of advanced surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia that Israel fiercely opposed. Despite Jerusalem’s protests, Riyadh’s investments in U.S. Treasury bonds and lobbying firms secured Washington’s approval, marking a turning point where economic clout trumped traditional alliances.
By 2025, this strategy has evolved into a sophisticated web of influence, with Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion in U.S. investments—including stakes in tech giants and AI startups—ensuring its voice resonates in Washington’s halls of power. This silent dominance allows Saudi Arabia to shape U.S. policy with minimal scrutiny, a luxury neither Turkey nor Egypt enjoys.
A Quiet Empire in Europe
In Europe, Saudi Arabia’s reach is equally profound. Levins describes how, in the 1980s, the kingdom invested heavily in London’s financial sector, snapping up real estate and bank shares to create a quiet empire on the Thames. These moves shielded Riyadh from criticism over its human rights record while amplifying its anti-Israel lobbying.
By 2025, the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s ownership of assets like Newcastle United and tech startups has deepened this influence, allowing the kingdom to sway European narratives on the Middle East. Qatar, too, has followed suit, leveraging its liquefied natural gas wealth to fund Al Jazeera and invest in Western media, crafting a global image that balances diplomacy with soft power.
This contrasts starkly with Turkey, whose vocal criticism of Israel and strained relations with the European Union—over issues like Cyprus and migration—draw constant scrutiny, limiting its ability to operate covertly. Egypt, meanwhile, lacks the financial muscle to project influence beyond its borders, its ambitions curtailed by economic woes and reliance on Gulf aid.
Asia’s Energy Lifeline
Asia tells a similar story. Levins’ Arab Reach recounts how Saudi Arabia secured Japan’s energy dependency in the 1980s through long-term oil contracts and infrastructure investments, aligning Tokyo with Arab interests.
By 2025, these ties have expanded to include Qatar’s LNG deals with South Korea and Saudi investments in Asian tech, ensuring Gulf influence in a region critical to global trade.
Turkey’s economic outreach in Asia, while growing, pales in comparison, hampered by chronic inflation and a devalued lira. Egypt’s presence in Asia is negligible, its focus consumed by domestic survival. Even in South America, where Saudi Arabia invested in Brazilian agriculture and energy, the Gulf’s economic footprint indirectly supports anti-Israel sentiment in global forums like the United Nations, a strategy Levins noted as early as 1983.
Turkey’s Loud Ambitions
Turkey, for all its regional swagger, cannot match this global reach. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ankara has carved out a role as a vocal supporter of Islamic causes, hosting Hamas leaders and aligning with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its military prowess—NATO’s second-largest army—and bases in Qatar and Somalia give it local clout, particularly in countering Israel’s influence.
Yet Turkey’s economic constraints tell a different story. In the 1980s, while Saudi Arabia was buying influence in Western capitals, Turkey was grappling with economic crises and IMF loans. By 2025, with inflation soaring and U.S. relations strained over issues like the Russian S-400 missile purchase, Turkey’s global ambitions remain limited. Its outspoken rhetoric, while resonant in the Muslim world, lacks the covert finesse of Saudi Arabia’s checkbook diplomacy, as Levins described. Ankara’s influence is loud but localized, unable to rival the Gulf’s quiet, far-reaching networks.
Egypt’s Tethered Influence
Egypt, too, faces structural limitations. Its strategic position—controlling the Suez Canal and the Rafah crossing into Gaza—makes it a critical player in Israel’s security considerations. Cairo’s role in brokering ceasefires, such as the 2025 Israel-Hamas deal, underscores its regional importance. But Egypt’s economic dependence on Gulf states undercuts its autonomy.
Since the 1980s, as Levins implies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have propped up Egypt’s economy with billions in loans and grants, particularly after the 2011 Arab Spring and 2013 coup. This financial lifeline, while stabilizing Cairo, ties it to Gulf interests, positioning Egypt as a junior partner in the regional order. Unlike Saudi Arabia’s global investments, Egypt’s resources are consumed by domestic challenges—30% inflation in 2023 and reliance on $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid—leaving little for international influence. Cairo’s role, while vital locally, lacks the global scope of Riyadh and Doha.
The Gulf’s Triumph in 2025
By 2025, the Gulf’s strategic advantage is clear. Israel’s U.S.-directed campaigns against Iran’s proxies—Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and forces in Syria—have weakened Tehran, creating a power vacuum that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are uniquely positioned to exploit. Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic engagement in post-Assad Syria, including a landmark 2025 visit by its foreign minister to Damascus, reflects its growing influence in areas once dominated by Iran.
Qatar, meanwhile, has leveraged its role as a U.S.-aligned mediator in Gaza, brokering the 2025 ceasefire and shaping post-war governance alongside Egypt and the UAE. These moves, enabled by decades of economic leverage, align with the U.S.-driven regional order, where Gulf states serve as pivotal players. Turkey’s ideological alignment with Hamas and Egypt’s mediation efforts, while significant, lack the economic and diplomatic depth to rival the Gulf’s global network.
Shaping the Narrative
The Gulf’s dominance is not just about money—it’s about narrative control. Saudi Arabia’s investments in Western media and academia, from U.S. think tanks to London’s financial press, allow it to shape perceptions with a subtlety Turkey’s fiery rhetoric cannot achieve.
Qatar’s Al Jazeera, funded by LNG wealth, amplifies this influence, balancing pro-Palestinian coverage with diplomatic pragmatism. This soft power, rooted in the strategies Levins outlined, ensures that Riyadh and Doha face less criticism than Iran or even Turkey, whose actions draw Western ire. Egypt, constrained by its economic realities, has no comparable platform to project influence beyond its immediate region.
Dominance by Design
As the Middle East enters a new chapter in 2025, Saudi Arabia and Qatar stand as the architects of a reconfigured order, their oil wealth and strategic foresight outpacing the ambitions of Turkey and Egypt.
While Cairo and Istanbul remain critical players in Israel’s immediate security environment, their influence is tethered to regional dynamics and economic limitations. The Gulf, by contrast, has built a global empire, quietly woven through decades of investments in the West, Asia, and beyond.
As Levins warned in Arab Reach, this is not a product of chance but of design—a design that, by 2025, has positioned Saudi Arabia and Qatar as the Middle East’s true power brokers, reshaping the region in their favor while the world looks elsewhere.
