The Middle East is currently undergoing rapid strategic transformations. These changes are far from over. It is fair to say that the geostrategic map of the region as a whole is being redesigned.
Recent regional developments have taken place, including the normalization of relations between multiple Arab countries in addition to Egypt and Jordan, such as the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Republic of Sudan, on the one hand, and Israel, on the other.
Official US statements confirm the existence of other agreements to come. This major qualitative progress is not limited to politics. Indeed, the main feature of these agreements is that they have rapidly evolved towards economic, technological and scientific cooperation.
This reveals a new network of strategic relations that will inevitably change the regional map. According to President Trump’s official statements, it is clear that many Arab countries will normalize their relations with Israel in the coming years,
We are on the eve of a new Middle East. The map of new strategic alliances can be mapped according to the size, levels and aspects of the announced and planned economic cooperation between the Arab states and Israel. This reality, still under construction, is producing new strategic data that will surely redefine the regional configuration.
Traditional frameworks will disappear and new concepts will emerge, reflecting the new strategic reality. As a result, this reality poses new challenges for some states in the region, including Iran and Turkey. They are trying to impose colonial projects and take advantage of the moment of disintegration and turmoil in the Arab regional system in order to perpetuate a new form of colonial rule in Arab countries that have been in a state of general chaos since 2011.
If we, as observers, can predict that Arab-Israeli alliances will emerge in the coming days, we can point out that there is a new regional strategic reality that is undeniable by other regional powers.
Iran, for example, which has been wandering around the Arab region since the signing of the unfortunate nuclear agreement in 2015, as well as Turkey, which has returned to the colonial past and illegal interventions, cannot pursue their project with the same enthusiasm and at an accelerated pace for fear that an Arab-Israeli alliance will thwart them.
But the national security accounts of two countries are not what they used to be. They were pushing conflicts into foreign territory and using sectarian weapons and militias to carry out interventionist projects, drawing on a divided and fragmented regional landscape that greatly contributed to fuelling their hostile tendencies towards the Arab neighborhood.
To be sure, the Iranian mullahs are deeply concerned, as shown by the unprovoked reactions and statements of the regime’s leadership and the IRGC on normalization of relations between the Arab states and Israel.
Bold steps by the Arab states to unlock relations with Israel were absent from Iran’s strategic thinking. The mullahs have always ruled this measure unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future. But the UAE’s strategic approach and the bold steps taken to circumvent the regional reality in which the mullahs want to corner the GCC has confused the Iranian regime.
The UAE’s approach has created a new strategic reality and changed the rules of the game that the Iranian and Turkish regimes relied on to infiltrate countries in the region and satisfy their colonial ambitions. It has also upset all traditional ideas and plans regarding the balance of power and existing and potential alliance models in the Middle East.
Israel is no longer an enemy of many Arab countries, according to the new state of affairs. The slogans of the mullahs and the sultan are no longer as fashionable as they have been for years.
Some speak of new strategic axes and alliances that will be born within the framework of this new era. But I must say that a major conflict will occur between the objectives, interests and even intentions of the forces of good, development and peace in the region on the one hand, and the forces of evil, destruction and violence on the other, which will not automatically produce alliances or axes.
But it will nonetheless create a strategic ground for cooperation between the forces of peace, stability and security. Cooperation is perhaps more powerful and inevitable than any formal framework that shapes an alliance and focuses on traditional formulas.
The people of the region, having lived through conflicts, tensions, threats, and encroachments, will inevitably favor peace, stabilization, and job creation for millions of young Arabs in search of a better future.
