Egypt

Egypt is an Arab republic of roughly 105 million people controlling the Suez Canal, the maritime chokepoint through which a large share of world trade passes and which generates around $9 billion a year in canal revenue. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has governed since 2014, and the country holds a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, the CAMP David Accords, that anchors its regional diplomatic standing.

Cairo receives roughly $1.3 billion a year in US military aid and has positioned itself as a mediator on both the Iran conflict and Gaza diplomacy, one of four states, alongside Qatar, Pakistan and Oman, that have put forward Ceasefire proposals during the war. That mediating role depends on Egypt maintaining relationships across rival camps rather than aligning fully with any one bloc, a posture it also brought to the Saudi-led Red Sea naval Coalition it helped found.

Egypt's reliance on imported and domestically produced gas, underscored by the Damietta terminal's importance to its energy supply, makes it structurally exposed to any disruption of Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean shipping, a vulnerability the Damietta strike sharpened by landing on Egyptian soil itself rather than merely along shipping lanes it monitors.