World Politics Review published on 10 March 2026 an analysis titled "War and Disorder Are Mobilizing the Middle East's Middle Powers" by Dalia Ghanem and Ahmed Morsy, both with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs in Doha.
A new loosely aligned "statist Quad" of traditional middle powers--Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey--is trying to reassert itself and actively coordinate on the region's most volatile crises. The four countries are fundamentally statist powers that view governing systems in which centralized authority, often with the military as its backbone, as the sole guarantor of social order.
Acting sometimes in concert, sometimes on their own, they are seeking to intervene in a regional order whose current chaos poses an existential threat to their national interests. They have focused so far on the crises in Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somaliland, Libya, and the Sahel region of Africa.
