What stood out was Egypt’s absence, the largest Arab country by population, home to the Arab world’s biggest army, and Saudi Arabia’s historic partner in Arab alliances and defence arrangements for decades. According to a report published by Middle East Eye and translated by NoonPost, citing three informed Saudi sources, the absence came by Saudi decision, as Riyadh did not want to include Cairo in the agreement “at least for the time being.”
This was not a passing diplomatic incident. Rather, it reflects deeper tension and divergence in the relationship between Cairo and Riyadh, surfacing at times and receding at others. The kingdom, which was the biggest backer of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime after he came to power in 2013, no longer views Egypt as the indispensable ally it once was, but as a burden that takes more than it gives — and a leader now closer to Abu Dhabi and more tightly bound to its regional calculations.
This in-depth report seeks to unpack that shift, trace the reasons behind the decline in the negotiating weight of the Arab world’s most populous country and largest military power, and understand why Cairo has failed to convince Riyadh that it is a partner with an independent decision-making capacity.
Why has Riyadh lost trust in Cairo?
Returning to the Middle East Eye report, the Saudi sources’ testimony to the British outlet reveals the sharpness of sentiment inside decision-making circles. One of those sources, a prominent former adviser to the Saudi royal family who remains close to the centres of power, summed up the view of Cairo in harsh terms: “Egypt has always been a burden on us and on the United States. It never returns the favour. It takes and takes without giving anything in return.”
According to the sources, Saudi reservations rest on three main reasons. First, Riyadh pumped about $25 billion into supporting the Egyptian economy after the ouster of the late President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Sisi’s rise to power, without seeing what it considers comparable support from Egypt on major security files.
The second was what one source described as Egypt’s “weak and unreliable role” in the war against the Houthis, as well as during the US-Israeli war on Iran. The third, and most sensitive, reason concerns what the sources described as Cairo’s “subordination” to Abu Dhabi, at a time when tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi had escalated, and their differences had spilt into the open since late 2025.
Notably, all three sources said Egypt sent air defence systems and fighter jets to Abu Dhabi in response to the Iranian attacks, and that Sisi visited his Emirati counterpart, Mohammed bin Zayed, more than once during the war. During one of those visits, the official Emirates News Agency, WAM, revealed that Sisi and bin Zayed inspected what it described as the “Egyptian fighter jet detachment” stationed in the UAE, in order to “review readiness and the efforts being made to enhance operational capabilities and preparedness for various challenges.”
The three Saudi sources say Sisi took no similar steps toward Saudi Arabia, and from this angle Riyadh read his alignment with Abu Dhabi as a clear tilt. The sources went further, listing Emirati policies they see as conflicting even with Egypt’s own interests, from involvement in Somaliland to the strategic relationship with Israel, support for Ethiopia in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam dispute, and backing for the Rapid Support Forces militia in Sudan. According to one source, Riyadh concluded that Cairo’s continued engagement with Abu Dhabi “deepened doubts about Egypt’s reliability as a strategic partner.”
By contrast, Ankara appeared to want Egypt inside the alliance. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Cairo was a “natural partner” and could join in the future after resolving “technical issues,” noting that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision is for the agreement not to remain confined to the three founding states.
The Saudi sources mocked the narrative that Egypt itself had refused to join, with the former adviser calling it “laughable,” adding that “Sisi would have been eager to join to reap financial gains, as usual.” He also said decision-makers in the kingdom have “serious concerns about Sisi’s loyalty” and that “he cannot be trusted” in the way the Turkish and Pakistani leaderships are trusted. One source went further, arguing that the Egyptian army should focus on “investing in its military manufacturing capabilities instead of being preoccupied with running food factories.”
This harsh judgment came amid a broader regional debate over Egypt’s declining role. The Economist commented on footage of the Emirati president taking Sisi to a shopping mall and then accompanying him to inspect the Egyptian fighter jet detachment, arguing that the scene told Egyptians much about their country’s diminished standing. Egyptians still see their country as “the mother of the world,” yet the UAE appears closer to a newly ascendant power that emerged from the desert.
In its report titled “The mother of the world versus the rising state,” the British magazine said Egyptians feel uneasy about what they see as an Emirati encirclement of their larger country, with its long history of regional dominance, through separatist movements, militias and rulers allied with Abu Dhabi.
According to the magazine, Egypt’s main concerns centre on the UAE’s growing closeness to two regional powers that directly affect Cairo’s interests: Ethiopia under Abiy Ahmed and Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu. Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam, which some Egyptians believe Abu Dhabi encouraged, threatens Nile flows, Egypt’s essential lifeline. At the same time, continued Israeli pressure on Gaza could push the enclave’s residents, including Islamists, toward Egyptian territory.
Another recent report by the same magazine said Egypt played little to no role in the war with Iran after its position as a mediator receded in favour of Pakistan, Turkey and the Gulf states. Nor did the Egyptian army, the largest in the Arab world, play a prominent role in defending Egypt’s neighbours, despite Gulf states having provided Cairo with tens of billions of dollars since Sisi seized power following the 2013 coup.
The Egyptian authorities strongly rejected these successive reports by the British magazine. The Egyptian State Information Service issued an official statement attacking The Economist, saying its analyses stemmed from a narrow and biased view and ignored the depth of Egypt’s strategic relations with its Arab brothers. It insisted that Cairo’s policy of containing regional conflicts reflects, in its view, diplomatic wisdom rather than any sign of weakness or decline in its role.
As for the Middle East Eye report on Saudi Arabia’s refusal to include Cairo in the Mecca Agreement, the Egyptian response came in a general Foreign Ministry statement calling on Arab and international media to verify accuracy and avoid publishing what it described as “false and inaccurate” information regarding Egyptian affairs, and to rely on official Egyptian sources when reporting information related to Cairo.
Old fractures in the Cairo-Riyadh relationship
Saudi doubts about the independence of Egyptian decision-making did not emerge overnight. They are the product of a long accumulation of moments of tension that left their mark on the strategic calculations between the two capitals. Yemen was among the first and most consequential of those moments. When Egypt joined the Saudi-led Operation Decisive Storm coalition against the Houthis in 2015, it limited itself to a modest naval and air role and, despite pressure, refrained from sending ground troops.
That decision was also tied to an old wound in Egypt’s military memory, dating back to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s intervention in the Yemeni civil war beginning in 1962, when he sent tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers into Yemen’s mountains in support of the republicans against the royalists backed by Saudi Arabia.
The war drained the Egyptian army for years before it began withdrawing in the aftermath of the June 1967 defeat. That experience, in which Egypt lost thousands of soldiers, entrenched a deep sensitivity toward any new ground involvement in Yemen. When Cairo was asked to return militarily to the same arena decades later, it chose caution, while Riyadh read that caution as shirking.
The episode that shook the relationship more deeply, however, was the Tiran and Sanafir islands. In April 2016, during Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s visit to Cairo, the Egyptian government announced that the two islands fell within Saudi territorial waters under a maritime border demarcation agreement between the two countries, triggering a rare wave of public anger under Sisi.
Cairo and other cities saw widespread protests, with opponents raising the slogan that the president had “sold” Egyptian land in exchange for Gulf support. The case then moved to the courts, where the Administrative Court annulled the agreement in June 2016, and the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the annulment in January 2017, alongside other conflicting judicial rulings on the agreement.
In the end, the Egyptian parliament ratified the agreement in June 2017 despite the earlier court rulings, before the Supreme Constitutional Court settled the controversy in March 2018, on the eve of the Saudi crown prince’s visit to Cairo. The result was that an episode meant to strengthen trust with Riyadh instead weakened Sisi’s image at home and, in the public mind, linked dependence on Gulf support to surrendering sovereignty.
Between those two events came an even sharper crisis in 2016. In October of that year, Egypt voted in the Security Council in favour of a Russian draft resolution on Syria that Riyadh strongly opposed, prompting Saudi Arabia’s envoy to describe Egypt’s position as “painful.”
At the same time, Saudi Aramco halted shipments of petroleum products to Egypt totalling 700,000 tons per month under a five-year contract worth nearly $23 billion, without a clear official explanation. Cairo was forced to seek alternative tenders, while Kuwait helped cover the shortfall. The suspension lasted about six months before shipments resumed in March 2017. Although Aramco framed the dispute as commercial, Cairo widely read the move as a message of political anger.
An older wound also remained present in the background of the relationship: the audio leaks attributed in 2015 to Sisi’s office. In those recordings, aired by an Egyptian opposition channel and said by a British forensic audio company to contain “fairly strong” evidence that the voice was indeed Sisi’s, the Egyptian president and his then-chief of staff, Abbas Kamel, were heard speaking dismissively about the wealth of the Gulf states.
The most famous phrase described Gulf money as “like rice,” a reference to its abundance, alongside talk of transferring billions of it into army accounts. Although Cairo denied the leaks’ authenticity, they reinforced in some Gulf decision-making circles the impression that the Egyptian leadership viewed support as expected and deserved, while also holding a condescending view of its financiers. From this angle, the Saudi adviser’s 2026 remark to Middle East Eye that Egypt “takes and takes without giving anything in return” appears to be an extension of an old tone in the relationship.
The definition of power has changed.
This scene raises a fundamental question: How can a country with one of the region’s largest armies, a unique geographic position controlling the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, bordering Libya, Gaza and Sudan, and a population exceeding 110 million, see its negotiating weight decline to this extent?
Part of the answer lies in the changing concept of “regional power” itself. Army size, territory and population are no longer the most valuable currency on their own, as other factors have risen in importance, such as financial liquidity, investment capacity, networked influence through ports, armed proxies and security companies, as well as diplomatic presence and influence networks in Washington and other capitals.
Here the contrast between Egypt and the UAE stands out. Abu Dhabi, despite its small population, has become the more practically influential actor in arenas such as Sudan, Libya and the Horn of Africa through a network of ports, proxies and investments. By contrast, Egypt, with its huge army and direct proximity to these arenas, finds itself limited in its ability to shape conflicts that affect its security and interests. In the new regional lexicon, power is also measured by the scale of influence a state can build, finance and deploy.
Egypt’s economic crisis has worsened this imbalance. Since 2022, the country has faced one of the most severe foreign currency crises in its modern history. The pound was devalued several times before the exchange rate was floated in March 2024, when it fell to around 50 pounds to the dollar. Cairo also turned to the International Monetary Fund under a program expanded to $8 billion, in exchange for commitments that included cutting government spending, curbing some major projects and selling state-owned assets.
External debt surpassed $155 billion, while the Suez Canal, according to the Egyptian presidency, lost about $7 billion in revenue during 2024, with returns dropping to around $4 billion compared with a record of more than $10 billion in 2023, due to Houthi attacks and disruption to shipping in the Red Sea.
In this context, the need for Gulf deposits, international financing, and foreign investment has narrowed Cairo’s room to manoeuvre. Gulf investment deals have become a vital source of foreign currency and financial relief, adding a heavy economic constraint to Egyptian political decision-making in its relations with Gulf states.
Abu Dhabi digs deeper into the Egyptian economy.
The Egyptian-Emirati relationship was not built on money alone. It also rested on deep ideological alignment. Since the ouster of elected President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Abu Dhabi found in Sisi — a fierce adversary of the Muslim Brotherhood — an ideal ally in its regional battle against political Islam.
The then-crown prince of Abu Dhabi visited Cairo just weeks after the ouster. At the same time, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait injected about $30 billion in deposits, grants and petroleum products between 2013 and 2016. That moment defined a relationship that would deepen over the years.
In Libya, this ideological convergence turned into military and political coordination. Cairo and Abu Dhabi strongly backed retired Gen. Khalifa Hifter against the UN-backed government in Tripoli, and there was repeated talk of joint airstrikes in 2014 and 2016, while Egypt later drew a red line at Sirte and Jufra.
But this coordination, which once appeared solid, began to show major cracks, most notably over Sudan. When the UAE backed the Rapid Support Forces militia in its war against the Sudanese army and used Hifter’s networks in eastern Libya to funnel weapons, fuel, and fighters to the RSF through the border triangle between Egypt, Libya, and Sudan, Cairo found itself on the opposite side. Egypt supports the Sudanese army and sees the RSF as a direct threat to its national security on its southern border.
Tensions peaked when Egypt, according to Western and Egyptian reports, carried out airstrikes on RSF convoys inside the border triangle in January 2026, alongside Egyptian and Saudi pressure on Hifter to halt the flow of Emirati weapons to the RSF.
But political friction does not erase the scale of economic dependence. In recent years, Abu Dhabi has shifted from a major financier to a broad-based owner and investor across expanding sectors of the Egyptian economy, which helps explain part of Saudi Arabia’s concerns about how independent Egyptian decision-making is from Emirati influence.
The Ras El Hekma deal in February 2024 was the clearest example. It was worth $35 billion under the leadership of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund ADQ, including about $24 billion in cash in exchange for development rights to the Mediterranean coastal city, plus converting $11 billion in existing Emirati deposits at the Central Bank of Egypt into investments.
The Egyptian state retained a 35% stake in the project, while the deal was described as the largest direct investment in the country’s history. It served as a lifeline, allowing Cairo to bolster its foreign currency reserves and paving the way for the currency float and an expanded IMF agreement just weeks later. At the same time, the deal exposed the scale of the crisis that pushed the state to mortgage strategic stretches of its coastline to attract liquidity and ease financial pressure.
Ras El Hekma was only the visible tip of this growing presence. Before it, in April 2022, the UAE’s ADQ acquired stakes worth $1.8 billion in five listed Egyptian companies, including about 17% of Commercial International Bank, Egypt’s largest private bank, 21.5% of Abu Qir Fertilisers, 20% of MOPCO Fertilisers, 32% of Alexandria Container & Cargo Handling and 12.6% of Fawry.
According to an investigation by Zawia3, the fund made profits of about $890 million in just 26 months from those acquisitions — nearly half the value of its original investment — feeding a narrative inside Egypt that Abu Dhabi had “bought Egypt’s assets for next to nothing,” taking advantage of the economic crisis and Cairo’s urgent need for hard currency.
Emirati influence has also extended to ports and logistics zones. Abu Dhabi Ports and DP World operate a broad network of Egyptian projects and facilities, including a 30-year concession to develop Safaga Port and a 50-year agreement to develop an industrial zone in East Port Said, in addition to a strong presence in Ain Sokhna Port, where DP World has invested more than $1.3 billion over nearly two decades.
In real estate, UAE-based Aldar entered the Egyptian market through its acquisition, in partnership with ADQ, of SODIC for about $387 million. Emaar Misr also expanded its coastal projects and, with a Saudi partner, launched a major project in the Ras El Hekma area in 2025. In the energy sector, Masdar is leading an onshore wind project with a capacity of up to 10 gigawatts and expected investments exceeding $10 billion, though the project is still under development.
This expansion is unfolding beneath the surface of muted public anger. In Egypt’s public sphere, the narrative of “selling Egypt” is common, with economists, opposition figures, and journalists criticising the country’s transformation into assets for sale, even as space to express that anger remains narrow under restrictions on freedoms.
The resentment is not limited to the street. Reports also describe official Egyptian unease over the Emirati role in Sudan and diverging interests in the Horn of Africa, where Abu Dhabi supports separatist tendencies in Somaliland and maintains a presence at Berbera Port. At the same time, Cairo insists on the unity of Somalia and Sudan and rejects the memorandum of understanding signed between Ethiopia and Somaliland in early 2024. This divergence is what Riyadh is betting on, and what makes describing Egypt as “an extension of Abu Dhabi” a characterisation that overlooks the underlying tensions.
The money map between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh
To understand Egypt’s position between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, read the money map carefully, because it reveals two different philosophies of exercising influence. The Emirati model is based on structural acquisition — buying assets, infrastructure, ports and land in a way that builds long-term influence that is difficult to reverse. The Saudi model is more cautious and gradual, centred on depositing money and investing it under conditions tied to reform.
On the Emirati side, the portfolio exceeds $35 billion in the Ras El Hekma deal alone, plus $1.8 billion in the stock market, earlier deposits at the central bank partly converted into assets, and a network of ports alongside real estate and energy projects. That is why the UAE is by far the largest foreign direct investor in Egypt compared with all other countries.
On the Saudi side, the numbers appear more restrained. Saudi deposits at the Central Bank of Egypt stood at about $5.3 billion at the end of 2023. The kingdom also established the Saudi Egyptian Investment Co., التابعة لصندوق الاستثمارات العامة, in 2022, which acquired stakes worth $1.3 billion in four Egyptian state-owned companies, including e-finance.
In September 2024, the Saudi crown prince directed the Public Investment Fund to inject $5 billion into Egypt “as a first phase,” with a view to converting deposits into investments. But many Saudi promises have remained ink on paper or stalled in implementation amid disputes over the valuation of assets Riyadh wants to buy.
Overall, cumulative Saudi investments in Egypt reached about $25 billion to $26 billion through more than 8,000 companies, while trade volume exceeded $16 billion in 2024, up 28%.
The political significance of this divergence is profound. The most famous statement encapsulating the Saudi shift came from Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan in Davos in early 2023, when he said plainly: “We used to give direct grants and deposits without strings attached, and we are changing that. We are working with multilateral institutions actually to say we need to see reforms.” He added: “We are taxing our people and we expect others to do the same and make an effort. We want to help, but we want you to do your part.”
Although the remarks were general and covered countries in the region and allies of the kingdom receiving economic support, such as Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan, analyses and economic reports at the time linked the statement directly to Egypt’s economic situation, given that it is one of the largest recipients of traditional Saudi support and deposits.
Accordingly, this was not merely a financial policy but a redefinition of the relationship. Under the new Saudi policy, Egypt no longer deserves support simply because it is Egypt.
The labour and remittances card
Another sensitive and intriguing card in this equation is Egyptian labour in the Gulf and its remittances. Remittances from Egyptians working abroad are among the country’s largest sources of foreign currency and, according to the Central Bank of Egypt, jumped to a record $41.5 billion in 2025, up 40.5% from the previous year. Most of that came from Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, which hosts about 1.5 million Egyptians and is the largest source of remittances at about $8 billion in 2023-24, followed by the UAE, which hosts about 1.3 million Egyptians whose remittances amount to about $3.6 billion.
Reports have circulated about pressure through restrictions on work visas or tighter residency procedures for Egyptians, but these reports remain officially unconfirmed. There has been no Emirati or Saudi announcement of political restrictions specifically targeting Egyptians, and the Saudi move to suspend short-term visas in April 2025 covered 14 countries and was linked to the Hajj season, not to pressure on Cairo.
As for the UAE, reports have repeatedly surfaced that Emirati authorities abruptly cancelled the residencies and visas of hundreds of Egyptians while they were outside the country on summer vacation. The measure affected a range of categories, including engineers, teachers, technicians and investors, with no official explanation for the reasons.
According to a NoonPost report, the reasons behind the sudden cancellation of Egyptians’ residencies in the UAE boil down to two main hypotheses. The first is the possibility of broad administrative and security reviews, while the second attributes the matter to indirect political messages tied to regional and economic shifts.
Scenarios for Egypt’s alignment
Cairo’s orientation between the two Gulf powers has four possible paths. The first — and the most likely in the near term — is continued reliance on Abu Dhabi and deeper economic dependence, given that Emirati investments have become structural and difficult to unwind, and Egypt’s need for foreign currency persists. But this path carries the seeds of its own tension: The deeper the divergence over Sudan and the Horn of Africa, the wider the gap between the two sides’ interests.
The second path is an attempt to rebalance toward Riyadh through the Sudan and Red Sea files. Egyptian and Saudi interests intersect in supporting the Sudanese army and Sudan’s unity, rejecting separatist tendencies, securing the Red Sea and curbing Emirati influence.
Signs of this convergence have appeared in joint pressure on Hifter, in Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan’s visit to Cairo in early 2026, and in affirmations of “identical” positions on the unity and sovereignty of states in Sudan, Yemen and Somaliland. But the Saudi-Egyptian disagreement over Egypt’s usefulness and reliability as a security partner, as revealed by its exclusion from the Mecca Agreement, places a low ceiling on this rapprochement.
The third path is diversification toward other parties such as Qatar, Turkey, China, Russia and the European Union, and using those relationships as a bargaining chip. Cairo has already begun repairing its ties with Ankara and Doha, and we have seen Turkey publicly push, according to its foreign minister’s statement, for Egypt to be included in the Mecca Agreement. But Egypt’s ability to manoeuvre remains limited by its financial dependence on the Gulf and Washington.
The fourth path — the bleakest — is a slide into prolonged regional marginalisation, in which Egypt shifts from making the regional order to receiving its decisions. It is called upon for mediation when major powers need it, as in the Gaza and Iran ceasefire files, and excluded from security arrangements when the need for it declines.
Most likely, Cairo will try to combine these paths: keeping Abu Dhabi’s financial lifeline, moving closer to Riyadh on Sudan and brandishing diversification cards. But this delicate balance presupposes room to manoeuvre that a debt-laden state constrained by IMF conditions may not have.
At its core, Egypt’s paradox is one of size versus weight. Egypt remains the largest Arab country by population, home to the biggest army and guardian of the world’s most important shipping lane. But for the first time in decades, it no longer possesses the price of its own presence. Once money became the measure of power, Cairo found itself in the position of the recipient. At the same time, its absence from the Mecca room points to the fading of the era when Egypt was the centre of Arab gravity and to the transfer of decision-making power to capitals that possess financial surplus and the political and diplomatic influence that comes with it.
More dangerous in Riyadh’s view is its perception of Egypt as subordinate to Abu Dhabi. That judgment remains debatable in light of the divergences between Cairo and Abu Dhabi over Sudan and the Horn of Africa, as we have detailed. Still, it reflects a painful reality: Egypt has lost the ability to convince its partners that it makes independent decisions. A country whose economy depends on other people’s deposits and assets will struggle to persuade others that its political decision-making is independent.