Egypt continues to be a cultural and political beacon in the Middle East. It's control of the Suez Canal, cold peace with Israel, concern about neighbouring Gaza, mediation and interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood are all points of significance. Egypt and what would become the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in 1981, have enjoyed relations which go back to the Egypt Eyalet in the Ottoman Empire and the earlier manifestations of Saudi and Wahhabi power in the Arabian peninsula. The relationship has suffered at times, such as during the Egyptian - Saudi proxy war in Yemen in the 1960s and after Egypt signed a peace accord with Israel in 1979. More recently, states such as Egypt and Syria supported the GCC states politically and militarily during the 1991 Gulf War and aimed to set up a deterrence force following it, based on the Damascus Declaration. However, an Arab regional security force did not amount to much until the GCC Peninsula Shield Force (PSF) was strengthened and deployed to Bahrain during protests in Manama in 2011.

The Egyptian military is the largest in the Arab world, and there is a close, and expanding, defence and security relationship between Egypt and the GCC states. For example, Saudi Arabia and the UAE helped finance a Russian arms deal for Egypt worth $2 billion in 2014. Egyptian troops have been involved in defending Saudi Arabia's northern border from a threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in July 2014. Egypt and the UAE both launched airstrikes against Islamist rebels, Libya Dawn, in August 2014, surprising U.S. officials. Furthermore, Egypt was quick to send warships to consolidate the GCC state forces fighting a Houthi insurgency in Yemen in March 2015. This commitment was significantly enhanced by the deployment of 800 Egyptian ground forces in September 2015. Egypt is therefore an important Sunni ally of the GCC states, marked by its inclusion in Saudi Arabia's new Sunni counterterrorism alliance.

In terms of socio-economic linkages, the 1970s and 1980s remains the golden era for Egyptian migrant labour in Arab states (mainly in the GCC). A number of factors have caused a decline in the number of Egyptians found in the Arab Gulf states today: the end of the first Gulf War, the fall in the oil price, a decline in the number of construction workers from Arab states (usually in favour of Asian labour), and various indigenisation processes replacing foreign labour with young nationals who demand more job opportunities.