The New Great Game in the Middle East

Arab nationalism is, for all practical purposes, dead. The so-called “Arab World” has lost its unifying concern, Israel, and its outside support. It has disintegrated into geopolitical blocs, with three major non-Arab powers, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, competing for domination of the Levant region. Indeed, the heyday of twentieth-century Arab nationalism, when Egypt sought to unite the Arab people and Arab nationalist movements dominated the politics of the region, has been long over.

Egypt gave up its role as the leader of the Arab World after the signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978, just before Iran emerged as the prime revolutionary force in the region. In 1991, the radical Arab regimes lost their key global backer, the Soviet Union, and the region came under American hegemony.

In the aftermath of the disastrous U.S.-led Iraq War, today’s Middle East looks very different, including in terms of its place in the international system. The United States has begun to disengage from the region in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and Russia has ceased to be a Middle Eastern power after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Regional powers are now in charge,

In a way, much of what has been referred to as the Levant, a sub-region that borders the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to the west and Iraq to the east, has been balkanized with Iran, with its hegemonic objectives, Israel, led by a nationalist government, and Turkey, whose leader daydreams about reviving the Ottoman Empire, maintaining spheres of influence.

In that context, the Arab Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, are playing a secondary role in this new balance of power. In 1973, they assisted their Arab brethren in their attack on Israel. Now, they are cooperating with Israel to contain Iran.

Israel’s sphere of influence includes, in addition to the West Bank and Gaza, also the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, much of southern Lebanon, and Syria’s Golan Heights and Mount Hermon.

After the loss of its proxies in the Gaza Strip (Hamas) and Syria (Assad), Iran still maintains its influence in Lebanon through the weakened Shia Hezbollah group and in Iraq through its Shia allies and regards Israel as its chief strategic rival in the region.

Turkey, like Israel, has been a beneficiary of the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, hoping that the Islamist regime in Damascus would embrace it as a military and economic patron, which it probably would.

Turkish Armed Forces and its ally, the Syrian National Army, have occupied areas of northern Syria since the Syrian Civil War, a mini-state under the dual control of the local council and Turkish military administration.  

At the same time, Turkey has been concerned over what it sees as the threat of Kurdish nationalism in Syria, where during the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds established the Autonomous Administration of North and East of the country backed by the United States.

The Kurdish population of Syria is the country’s largest ethnic minority, the majority of whom were originally Turkish Kurds who crossed the border during the twentieth century and are concentrated around the Syria-Turkey border. Many of them seek political autonomy for what they regard as Western Kurdistan, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.

From that perspective, both Turkey and Israel face a challenge from two stateless peoples, the Kurds in the case of Turkey and the Palestinians in the case of Israel, who seek political independence.

Yet both Ankara and Jerusalem insist that full political independence for those people would pose an existential threat to them. At best, both peoples have been offered a limited form of political autonomy.

And then there is the large Druze minority in Syria as well as Assad’s sect, the Alawites, that had ruled Syria during his regime. One can expect continuing ethnic and sectarian tensions in the country in the coming years that may involve the Israelis (on the side of the Druze), the Iranians (on the side of the Alawites), and the Turks (on the side of the Sunni majority).

At the same time, President-elect Donald Trump, who may come under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear military facilities, would probably decide to refuse the invitation to inject U.S. military forces into the region and its many conflicts.

And if the Iranians end up acquiring a nuclear military capability, it is more likely than not that the Turks would have to consider the nuclear option as well, raising the specter of a mutually assured destruction (MAD) posture involving three regional powers.

Leon Hadar is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).

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