Lead:
Egypt's foreign ministry intensified diplomatic engagement on multiple fronts this week, conducting a series of high-level telephone contacts with counterparts in Qatar, Switzerland, Lebanon, and African institutions, while closely monitoring Israeli military escalation in both the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Simultaneously, Cairo expressed measured optimism over the possibility of a final US-Iran nuclear agreement, positioning itself as a stakeholder in regional de-escalation at a particularly volatile moment.
Details:
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty held separate telephone conversations with his Qatari counterpart, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis. According to El-Fagr and El-Balad, both calls addressed regional developments and bilateral relations, with the Egypt-Switzerland call specifically emphasizing the importance of proceeding with the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement — a signal of Cairo's continued investment in Palestinian file management.
On the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts, El-Balad reported that Israel's defence minister Israel Katz publicly indicated his country would expand military operations in the West Bank "if necessary," while the Israeli military simultaneously issued evacuation warnings to residents of three towns in the Sidon district of southern Lebanon and conducted an airstrike on the town of Majdal Zoun in the Tyre district. Palestine's permanent mission in Geneva issued a formal warning, cited by El-Balad, of a serious and unprecedented escalation of forced displacement in the West Bank, calling for urgent international action.
Egypt responded on multiple diplomatic tracks. Sada and El-Balad reported that Foreign Minister Abdelatty contacted Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to reaffirm Cairo's support for Lebanon and call for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Separately, Egypt condemned what it described as repeated Iranian attacks targeting Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait, characterising them as violations of sovereignty, according to NewsDayEgypt.
Regarding the US-Iran nuclear file, Egypt's foreign ministry issued a formal statement — reported by both NewsDayEgypt and El-Fagr — welcoming President Donald Trump's cancellation of planned military strikes against Iran and expressing hope that the current diplomatic window would lead to a final, binding agreement. Iran's foreign ministry, as reported by El-Balad, stated that agreement had been reached on most clauses but that no final deal had been signed, with Tehran reserving its official position for a later announcement.
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