Are friends forever? And the enemies? Alliances are, by nature, temporary. They make sense to the extent that the member countries share a perception of the threats and of what the alliance can do to eliminate, avert or alleviate them. That alliances are not eternal does not mean that they can change every two for three or that allies can shamelessly display their differences. It is difficult to provide peace of mind to alliance members and deter potential enemies if there are not acceptable levels of cohesion and trust. The Middle East and North Africa stand out due to the mistrust and lack of cohesion between countries that, a priori, are aligned. This occurs among the countries of the region, but also in their relations with international partners. Arab, Israeli, Turkish or Iranian leaders consider that they should not only protect themselves from their rivals, but also from those who call themselves their friends.
This adds complexity to a system in which several countries aspire to be a regional power, but none have the strength to prevail over the others. Furthermore, there is not a single fault line that explains the positioning of the different actors, but rather there are many, and they overlap and intertwine. It is often said that it is a region penetrated by the great international powers, and it is true that it is one of the regions that has experienced the most and often disastrous international interventions, such as Iraq in 2003. However, the countries of the region are nobody’s puppets, they are very jealous of their autonomy and are capable of changing their orbit if they consider that their former partners no longer serve them. An added factor of complexity is that it is a region made up of highly centralized states and in which, at the same time, there are many actors who challenge the monopoly of the State, such as Hizbullah in Lebanon or the various militias in Libya. Despite this enormous dispersion, there are regional mechanisms such as the Arab League or subregional ones such as the Gulf Cooperation Council. However, when tensions between their members intensify – and in recent years this has been the trend – these organizations end up becoming a showcase for disunity instead of tools for collective action. The usual military alliance projects, that is, a kind of Arab NATO, have never come to fruition.
To decipher a region in which friends are not forever, enemies perhaps are not forever, and the frameworks that should reduce the perception of threat have serious deficiencies, it is necessary to stop to understand the priorities and strategies of the main regional powers. From Turkish tightrope to Saudi mistrust, from the promise of an Egyptian return to Israel’s struggle to break its isolation, from the Iranian effort to maintain the cohesion of its satellites to the rivalries between small Gulf countries, the dance of alliances and counter-alliances it is gaining pace and its effects are clearly spilling over the borders of the Middle East.
Turkey is an expert at balancing, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made the event more difficult. Turkey is a NATO partner, but does not apply the sanctions regime against Russia. Ankara supplies the Ukrainian army with drones, but Erdogan shakes Putin’s hand regularly. The motives of Turkey and its president are understandable: it is facing an economic crisis with runaway inflation and fears that the costs of a break with Moscow are not only economic but also security. Russia is not only the neighbor to the north, but its presence in Syria, a country with which Turkey has a 900-kilometre border, increases the costs of a possible confrontation. The constant frustrations of the Turkish government and its president, in their relations with the US and the EU, are not helping either.
This balancing act is also reflected in relations with Arab countries and Israel. Following the Arab Springs, Turkey aspired to be a regional leader and cemented a priority relationship with Qatar. In this process he gained enemies: the Egypt of Al Sisi, whose coup Erdogan tirelessly denounced; the Saudi Arabia of Mohamed bin Salman, especially after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in the Istanbul consulate; United Arab Emirates, with whom Turkey has clashed in almost all regional conflicts by having a diametrically opposed opinion on the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, favorable to the Turks, hostile to the Emiratis; and finally Israel, the object of fierce criticism from Erdogan in his efforts to win the support of its citizens and also of Arab societies. But since 2021 Turkey is making gestures towards all these countries. Ankara seems to have come to the conclusion that in times of great uncertainty it is too risky to have such difficult relations with so many countries at once.
Saudi foreign policy has been based on a few premises: the security guarantee provided by the US in exchange for its collaboration on regional and energy issues; a conservative approach and defender of the status quo; the perception that Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution posed an existential threat to the Saudi regime; the will to act as a benchmark for Sunni Islam, using religion as a foreign policy tool; and the conviction that the rest of the Arab monarchies of the Gulf should respect their hegemony.
Some of these pillars have shaken. Tensions with the US are recurring, and the establishment in Riyadh doubts that security guarantees are still in force. Would the US defend them in the event of a confrontation with Iran? Or a popular protest? In addition, the Saudis view with concern the fact that there are countries like Qatar that, being in what they consider their backyard, do not accept their dominance and are even capable of resisting the blockade that was imposed on them in 2017. Worse still, they feel that Iran is trying to surround them, and this is how they interpreted the popular protests in Bahrain in 2011 or the seizure of the capital of Yemen by the Houthis in 2015. Faced with this situation, the current crown prince has decided to toughen his positions, strengthen his own enforcement capabilities, adopt a more offensive foreign policy, and diversify international partners. The pre-eminence of the US as a partner in defense matters is still a reality, but so is the attempt to increase dialogue with Moscow, Beijing and New Delhi.
It is normal for a country that calls itself the Mother of the World (Umm al Dunia) to aspire to play a leading role in its region. But in recent decades Egyptian leadership has been waning. The year 1979 was a turning point: after normalization with Israel, he was expelled from the Arab League and did not rejoin until a decade later. In other circumstances, the 2011 protests could have put the country in a position to lead a wave of change in the Arab world. But the succession of political crises, the urgency of attending to the social and economic needs of the population, and the triumph of the counterrevolution in the region and also within the country, led him away from this path.
Having renounced being the regional hegemon, Egypt redirected its energies towards its immediate neighbourhood: Palestine, Libya and the Nile basin. In this repositioning exercise it has also striven for autonomy. Although Egypt usually coincides with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it has shown that it can also go it alone. For example, early on Egypt opted to reconcile with El Asad, contrary to what Saudi Arabia was advocating at the time. Egyptian involvement in the Saudi offensive in Yemen has also been far less than Riyadh had hoped. Along the same lines, Egypt has made a clear commitment to diversify its international partners. One of the areas where this is most visible is in terms of arms purchases from France and Russia so as not to depend so much on the US.
At the end of 2020, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco announced the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel. This would not have been possible without strong US involvement, still led by Donald Trump. Neither the political changes in the US nor in Israel have changed adherence to what its promoters call the Abraham Accords. The Israeli commitment is clear: to achieve normalization of relations with the Arab regimes without having to make substantive concessions with respect to Palestine. And they are getting closer to achieving it. To achieve this, the Israelis target threats such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood that would be shared by many Arab regimes. He is also confident that, sooner or later, Saudi Arabia will follow in the footsteps of its Gulf neighbors and definitively tip the balance. If he succeeds, he will have substantially modified one of the main institutions of the Arab order: solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
The game of full normalization is played, primarily, in your immediate neighborhood. Along these lines, the Israelis convened the Negev forum, which was attended by representatives of Egypt, the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the US. Some hope that this configuration will serve to structure a more stable cooperation framework that would include the security agenda. This would mean a substantial change for the regional order. However, Israel is deploying this strategy beyond the Middle East. Israel is looking for partners in Africa, a continent where the Palestinian cause continues to have a mobilizing capacity; it has strengthened bilateral cooperation with India in what some call an Indo-Abrahamic axis; and, albeit more gradually, it has also promoted relations with China in sensitive areas such as technology and connectivity.
Iran has displayed its regional influence thanks to the articulation of a network of actors who share revolutionary, anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric. It is what in Tehran they call the “axis of resistance”. One of the peculiarities of this axis is that it integrates non-state actors such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian Shiite militias. And although the Shiite component is predominant, within the resistance there is room for Sunni Muslims such as Hamas or regimes such as Bashar al-Assad, whose hard core is controlled by Alawite families but in which people of different confessions participate.
In the last decade, this axis has turned more out of step than Tehran would have liked. The main display of dissent was carried out by Hamas, which out of solidarity with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood decided not to support Al Asad. As for Hezbollah and the Iranian Shiite militias, it is increasingly difficult for them to present themselves as the resistance when the Lebanese and Iraqi populations see them as participants in clientelist and kleptocratic systems. Faced with the difficulties that their allies may experience, and with the discontent that the Iranian leadership has to deal with in its own streets, the response of the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is always the same: point the finger at an international conspiracy. .
Among the five traditional powers in the region were four states with large territory or population (Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) and one undeclared nuclear power (Israel). The novelty is that in the last decade countries that have neither one nor the other also aspire to exert influence in the entire region without subservient to any of the traditional regional powers. The small State of Qatar – smaller than the province of Lleida and with a population of barely three million inhabitants, of which just over 10% are nationals – was the first to break the schemes. To project his influence he used neither military force nor religion, but mediating diplomacy and information through the Al Jazeera network. It has been followed by the United Arab Emirates, and more specifically, Abu Dhabi and its current emir, Mohamed bin Zayed. The Emirates offers a narrative that combines modernization and authoritarianism and is making a great commitment to cutting-edge technologies, in terms of artificial intelligence, renewables or even space missions.
Both countries have put considerable effort into reinforcing their autonomy from a Saudi Arabia that continues to consider itself the big brother among the Gulf Arab monarchies. The Emirates has used seduction, and Mohamed bin Zayed has positioned himself as a mentor to the Saudi crown prince. This has not prevented the Emiratis from disagreeing with the Saudis and exploring alternative policies in Yemen, supporting the secessionists in the south, or in Syria, betting on the rehabilitation of Al Assad. Qatar, for its part, has opted for differentiation and the search for alliances outside the Arab family as witnessed by the powerful bilateral relationship with Erdogan’s Turkey that has included, among many other things, the opening of a Turkish military base in Qatari soil. Another strategy that the Qataris and Emiratis share is to cultivate direct dialogue with the US and other global powers. Despite all these coincidences, Doha and Abu Dhabi have not gone hand in hand, but have positioned themselves on opposite sides with respect to the many sources of conflict that dot the region.
The dispersion, fragmentation, and mistrust that characterize the Middle East have effects beyond its borders. The competition between regional powers is projected with special intensity in adjacent regions such as the Horn of Africa, the Sahel or the Caucasus, assuming an added factor of tension for especially conflictive regions.
Regional powers, both traditional and aspiring, also deploy all their instruments of persuasion in the great world capitals in the hope of winning allies and, above all, to discredit their potential rivals. For their part, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, Brussels and Paris approach the Middle East as part of broader geopolitical spaces that include the entire African continent or the Indo-Pacific and where issues are settled. as central as energy security or food security.
In fact, one of the side effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been to enhance the global significance of the Middle East and its alliance dances. The latest episode has been the Western disappointment with the decision of the producing countries, including supposed allies such as Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, to reduce production to maintain high prices. There will be many more episodes, disappointments and script changes. And in this long saga of intrigues, all the main players, from outside and inside the region, will continue to wonder if their friends really are.
Eduard Soler i Lecha is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Senior Research Associate at CIDOB (Barcelona Center for International Affairs). @solerlecha.
