In 1998, my university students asked me a question that seemed too big for a clear answer at the time: What is the future of the Middle East?
I told them that I believed the Middle East was heading toward becoming like a large joint-stock company, with the United States as its chairman of the board, and that the main conflict in the future would not simply be between Arabs and Israel, but over who would take on the executive management of this regional company. I predicted that the main contenders in this conflict would be Israel, Iran, and Turkey.
Nearly three decades later, it seems we are at the heart of that conflict. The central question in the Middle East today is no longer simply who occupies land, who wins a war, or who has the most military power. The deeper question is: Who will establish the rules of the regional order? Who defines the boundaries of states’ influence? Who decides the future of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean? And who holds the power to influence Arab decisions?
The region has gradually moved from a phase in which the Arab world, despite its weakness and divisions, was one of the makers of the regional order, to a phase in which it has largely become a battleground for the struggle over that order. Here lies the true tragedy.
During the second half of the 20th century, the main conflict in the region was defined as the Arab-Israeli conflict. There were competing Arab projects: Nasserist, Ba’athist, monarchical, and Islamic, and the Arab states themselves, regardless of their policies, were key players in shaping the region’s future.
Today, the map has changed. We are faced with three main regional projects: Israeli, Turkish, and Iranian, each with a different vision of its role, position, and boundaries of influence. Amid these projects, Arab states move independently, sometimes according to their national interests, and at other times according to their regimes’ interests and security concerns.
Thus, there is practically no single “Arab axis” in confrontation with other axes. Some Arab states are leaning toward the United States, some coordinate with Turkey, some have forged strategic relations with Israel, others have aligned with Iran, and some are trying to establish balanced relations with all.
Even within the Gulf itself, countries no longer act as a single political bloc; each nation has its own calculations, relationships, and alliances. The changes happening in 2026 indicate that some regional countries are indeed seeking new security arrangements and alliances after old confidences were shaken by the traditional regional order’s inability to provide stability.
When we talk about “Greater Israel,” it is an oversimplification to limit the concept strictly to a specific geographic map stretching from one location to another. There are religious and nationalist Israeli streams that indeed hold expansive geographical visions, but the more strategically significant concept is Greater Israel as the main hegemonic power in the Middle East.
In other words, Israel may not need to occupy all territories to achieve its project. The most effective form of hegemony might be to become the military, technological, and intelligence power that no major regional decision can ignore.
Israel possesses significant military and technological superiority, a deep strategic alliance with the United States, and intelligence and military capabilities that far exceed its geographical size and population.
From this perspective, weakening competing regional powers and preventing the emergence of a military power capable of balancing Israel are key components of its security vision.
Over the past decades, Iran has been the biggest regional challenge to this vision. But weakening Iran does not mean the end of the struggle over the regional order. It may simply reveal the next competitor. And that competitor is Turkey.
Turkey also does not need to restore the Ottoman Empire to become the most influential power in its geographical sphere.
The modern Turkish project is more complex and pragmatic than that. Turkey aims to be the state without whose consideration a decision in Syria, Iraq, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and parts of the Arab region cannot be made.
It uses the economy, trade, energy, defense industry, military power, diplomacy, cultural relations, as well as its position in NATO, to build a wide sphere of influence.
It is a mistake to simply label this as “new Ottomanism.” Recent studies suggest that current Turkish policies are more akin to attempting to build a regional order that serves Turkey’s security and interests and prevents its adversaries from shaping its surrounding environment, rather than trying to recreate a historic empire.
But the rise of Turkey’s role increasingly positions Ankara in opposition to the Israeli project.
The overlapping strategic interests of the two projects in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as their extension toward the Red Sea routes, trade, energy pathways, and influence within the regional political system, have turned the Turkish-Israeli relationship from periodic political disputes into more structural strategic competition.
Iran, since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, built its regional project differently. It relied not only on conventional military power, but also on creating a wide network of political and military alliances extending from Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and Yemen.
The Shiite component played a central role in many of these networks, but reducing the Iranian project to merely a “Shiite project” does not fully explain its behavior. Primarily, it is a state project striving to create strategic depth that prevents its adversaries from encircling it and grants it leverage beyond its borders.
However, this project has taken significant hits in recent years, and the regional environment that allowed it to expand has changed.
