More than a quarter of all Arabs believe Israel poses the greatest threat to their region, followed by the US and Iran, a pan-Arab poll conducted by the Arab Center Washington DC revealed on Tuesday.

Across 15 countries surveyed, 28 percent of Arabs said they consider Israel the foremost threat to their own nations.

The areas with the highest threat assessment for Israel were the Mashreq, otherwise known as the Levant (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria), at 58 percent, and the Nile Valley (Egypt, Sudan) at 38 percent.

The Maghreb (Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia) and the Gulf (Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) had the lowest threat assessments for Israel at nine percent in each region, but also had the highest number of respondents who said they do not know, or do not wish to answer the question, at 47 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

In the Mashreq, the US and Iran polled equally at 16 percent as the second biggest threat to that region, while in the Gulf, Iran is considered the biggest security threat by 14 percent of respondents.

Across the Maghreb, the Nile Valley, and the Gulf, fewer than eight percent of respondents saw the US as a major security threat.

Meanwhile, one-third of respondents in the Nile Valley said the second biggest threat after Israel is the Arab Gulf states.

The 2025 Arab Opinion Index (AOI) was conducted between November 2024 and August 2025 in 15 Arab countries: Algeria; Egypt; Iraq; Jordan; Kuwait; Lebanon; Libya; Mauritania; Morocco; Palestine; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Sudan; Syria; and Tunisia.

The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with a sample of 40,130 respondents.

The AOI is the largest public opinion survey in the Arab world, Laila Omar, a researcher with Arab Center DC and an anthropology professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told the audience at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, where the findings were unveiled.