Future of the Middle East Remains in Question
A program sponsored by the World Affairs Councils in Atlanta and Miami spotlighted the many unresolved questions that hang over that part of the world.
How power has shifted in the last year-and-a-half and the role that Iran and Israel will play in the future of the Middle East were discussed recently in a joint presentation online by the World Affairs Councils in Atlanta and Miami.
The two organizations hosted Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Midview, the Israel Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and a former senior fellow for Israel affairs at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.
He discussed the future of the Middle East with Alex Vatanka who founded the Middle East Institute Iran program and is a specialist in Iranian domestic and regional policies.
As a result of Israel’s successes in neutralizing Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, along with the fall of the Assad government in Syria has, according to Vatanka, created a new regional power equation in the Middle East.
“The last few decades have been one of promoting the idea that proxies that Iran has recruited among Arab populations, places like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, to some extent in Yemen, that these proxies can do the fighting for Iran, that Iran can sit back and enjoy the show. What the Israelis have done with the support of partners like the United States, is to sort of say, well, that’s not going to happen anymore.”
Israel’s strategic success, which has reshaped the military balance of power in the Middle, could lead over the longer term to new diplomatic opportunities.
While Israel has the upper hand in the region, there are still challenges that Israel faces in the future with the decline in diplomatic relations with Europe and the legal issues that have been raised, according to Nimrod Goren, in the charges made against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In parallel to all those improvements to the security on the political, national, and state level issues, when you go deeper, and you look at Israel’s relations in Europe, particularly on unofficial levels, we see a decline. You see relations between Israel and the public and civil society, academia, culture, business in Europe decline. All of that impacts the power, not necessarily the military power, but the soft power, the positioning of Israel. So that’s an issue.”
On the plus side, what began in 2018 with the signing of the Abraham Accords between the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Israel has the potential for further diplomatic engagement with Arab states. The big question mark is the future of Palestine.
“The other issue is whether Israel could leverage all of its achievement on the battlefield to diplomatic gains in trying to improve its regional relations,” Goren said. “So, all of those are still up in the air.”
But Goren is optimistic about the relation Israel has with its former enemies, Egypt and Jordan, with whom it has peace. Relations between Israel and those two countries remained relatively stable, despite the tension over the treatment of Palestinians.
“So, that was kind of an important calculation,” Goren said, “in the regional outlook, because it showed the new reality in which Israel is much more accepted in the Middle East than in decades of isolation. That wasn’t temporary, that wasn’t by chance, That’s a strategic decision by those countries, Egypt and Jordan. And that’s, I think, a very important point that Israelis are taking note of.”
The big strategic loser is Iran, which invested heavily in proxies in Lebanon and Gaza that were quickly demolished by Israel, with the aid and encouragement of the United States.
Iran faces a critical decision, according to Vatanka, the Iranian expert, on whether to focus on its proxies far from Iran or focus on its own problems at home.
“Do they give it up and go back and look at what they need to do at home to lessen the distance between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people?” Vatanka asked. “Because here’s another simple reality, what the regime of the Islamic Republic is doing in the region has very little support among the Iranian people. The Iranian people don’t want to be sanctioned. They want to have the basic things that everybody wants to have on a human level.”
There is continuing unrest in Iran as a result of the sanctions that the U.S. and other nations have imposed. Despite tough talk from Washington in the first months of the Trump administration, there are some signs that Iran may be open to renewing diplomatic talks. But with over 45 years of ill will and the role that Iran has assumed in the region, such talks may be difficult to resume.
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