Three key developments have taken place on the geo-strategic scene in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past 15-months.
Israel devastated Hamas’ infrastructure in Gaza and acutely diluted Hizbullah’s military capabilities and political influence in Lebanon. After almost 55 years in power, the regime that former president Hafez Al-Assad installed and entrenched in Syria and then passed on to his son Bashar fell to militant Islamist groups backed by Turkey.
These developments have given rise to six strategic changes in the region.
One – for the first time in over 15 years, Israel has shifted its strategic posture from shielding itself behind walls and the Iron Dome defence system towards fiercely attacking the powers it deems risks to its national security.
The significance of this change transcends military operations. Israel now sees itself as formally at war on multiple fronts as part of a strategic confrontation not only against the militant groups surrounding it, or even against Iran, but also with the support of large segments of Israeli society that see it as necessary for the existence of their state. This mindset will last much longer than military and economic mobilisation and will continue to empower hard-right groups in Israeli politics for years to come.
Israel has been winning against Hamas and Hizbullah and also crucially against Iran. Hard-right thinking is always expansionary, seeking to build on its successes. It is for this reason that there are influential voices in Israel that want to go after Iran now, either by further strikes to significantly delay its nuclear programme, or by encouraging local opponents to challenge the regime of the Islamic Republic.
Two – Iran has lost most of the political ground it has secured in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two decades. It now lacks the political and economic means to attempt to recapture the ground it has lost. This is why Lebanon and Syria, where Iran has had strong influence for decades, are now moving sharply out of the Islamic Republic’s orbit.
However, Iran will not accept a total loss in the Eastern Mediterranean, because this would have acutely negative echoes back home, and it continues to have serious interests in one particular place in the region – Iraq. Iran will strive to preserve its influence in the latter country, especially since whereas it was investing resources to perpetuate its presence in Lebanon and Syria, it is reaping economic benefits from its presence in Iraq.
Three – after over a century of absence Turkey is back in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is also ideologically and nationally driven by a belief in an expansive role for Islam, not only in domestic politics but also in international relations. The returning Turkey is also driven by a sense that it deserves, and commands the means for, a highly influential role in its wider neighbourhood.
Four – militant Islamism has finally achieved the goal it has aimed at for over a century since the early 20th-century incarnations of militant Islamist groups tried to create ramshackle caliphates after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Militant Islamist groups now have a primary political position in a strategically important Arab country, Syria, something that has not happened since the fall of the Mamelukes at the beginning of the 19th century.
Five – the momentous success of militant Islamism has come at the expense of the idea of Arab nationalism. Of course, the Al-Assad regime in Syria had long lost any real links to the legitimation and identity tenets of Arab nationalism. However, in theory and in its rhetoric it still attached itself, and Syria, to that ideology.
Today, Syria is in the hands of groups whose leadership has non-Arab fighters in its senior ranks and who are backed by the power that modern Arab nationalism was born 150 years ago to wrestle the Arab world out from under its control – Turkey.
Six – Maronite Christians might return to steer Lebanon. Over the past 40 years since the height of the Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon has been under the major influence, and often the outright control, of the Al-Assad regime in Syria or groups close to Iran. Now, the Maronites, the founders of modern Lebanon almost exactly a century ago, have been given the chance to lead a new project to redefine the country.
This is consequential. Lebanon has long lost its position as the region’s media, educational, and entertainment hub, but it remains one of the most important geopolitical and political-economy theatres in the wider Middle East. If a new Lebanese project can be formed, the nature of such a project will have spillover effects far beyond the country.
These six developments come at a time when the Arab world faces key, not only challenges, but perhaps also more importantly, questions about its meaning and definition, let alone its trajectory and future.
The next article in this series will present these challenges and questions.
The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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