WHO WILL RUN THE MIDDLE EAST? / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Who Will Run the Middle East?

Three candidates are vying for long-term power.

By Ridvan Bari Urcosta

The Middle East is undergoing a fundamental transformation, one prompted in equal parts by the seismic events of the past 15 years and by the U.S. imperative to delegate regional responsibility to capable partners. 

Toward that end, Washington has three candidates: Israel, Iran and a coalition of Sunni Arab states led by Turkey – each of which has its own vision for the future. 

This marks an important departure from the “managerial” era of superpower dominance and, in theory, the arrival of sovereign Muslim countries with power equal to China, Russia, Europe and India. 

The coming decade will be defined by the delicate and potentially volatile interplay among these regional poles. 

For the United States, the challenge lies in balancing them against one another.

Turkey and the Big Four

The Middle East spent the late 20th century fragmented, its trajectory defined by regional players like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia as they maneuvered between Cold War superpowers. 

It was a period of instability and external dependence. 

The geopolitical shocks of 2011-2014 – namely, the fallout of the Arab Spring – compelled Turkey to leverage a burgeoning domestic military-industrial complex to assert a more autonomous strategic role. 

This pivot culminated in the 2021 Shusha Declaration, which explicitly articulated Turkey’s geopolitical ascent through the institutional, economic and security-based integration of the Turkic world, effectively repositioning Ankara as the primary architect of a new, influential geopolitical hub running from the South Caucasus to Central Asia. 

Its influence in the Balkans and its participation in NATO only reinforce its ascent. 

Put simply, Turkey’s grand strategy is to operate on a multiregional and multicontinental chessboard simultaneously – not as a traditional hegemon but as the center of a sophisticated network of alliances that includes Central Asia, Pakistan and even the Horn of Africa.

Turkey’s rise coincides with the emergence of what we call the Big Four – countries that can reasonably lay claim to leadership in the Muslim world. 

They are Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 

This informal geopolitical grouping has been actively engaged in recent crises, including Gaza and Iran. 

Turkey is the de facto leader, given its technological, economic and geopolitical status, but its alliances with the other three are crucial to its objectives.

To be clear, the grouping lacks any real formal institutionalization. 

Yet, deepening economic, technological and military cooperation will create the conditions for alliance-building. 

A good example is the Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense pact signed in 2025; a similar framework could be extended into a wider mutual defense arrangement among these states. 

Indeed, Pakistan has called for Turkey and Qatar to join this defense pact.

The concept of a Big Four should be taken seriously in its own right. 

But with Pakistan involved, this potential alliance would acquire nuclear power, which would absolutely alter power dynamics with Israel (and, in Pakistan’s case, India). 

Azerbaijan’s “participation” is important, too, because it gives Turkey a new level of diplomacy built largely on geoeconomics and connectivity. 

After 2021, Azerbaijan effectively bridged the gap that had separated Central Asia and the South Caucasus from the Middle East. 

Since then, economic and diplomatic activity between these regions has risen at an explosive pace. 

In this context, Russia and China’s influence, which has constrained Turkic expansion, has been weakened.

Turkey is also active in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa. 

If Ankara continues on its path to power, these two regions are likely to be arenas of confrontation. 

Without securing borderlands in the Levant, Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean, domination in the Middle East will elude Ankara. 

It’s little surprise, then, that the Turkish government has recently prepared legislation to formalize claims in disputed areas of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean – an institutional expression of the well-known Turkish geopolitical doctrine of the Blue Homeland.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have proposed several initiatives that demonstrate their commitment toward a greater share of regional responsibility. 

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently offered a platform of cooperation that would include all countries of the region, including Iran and Israel.

Israel

The problem is that Ankara faces systematic opposition from an organized Israeli-led coalition, which also includes Cyprus, Greece, France, the United Arab Emirates and, to some degree, India. 

Israel very much sees itself as a regional hegemon that will determine the future of the region. It also sees Turkey as a near-existential threat. 

But it seems to be aware that it does not have the capabilities to lead a coalition against Turkey on its own. 

Its strategy, then, is to build an intercontinental coalition.

Before Hamas’ October 2023 attack, relations between Israel and Turkey were basically pragmatic, and even afterward, they limited their tensions to aggressive public statements. 

However, following Turkey’s success in Syria after the toppling of Bashar Assad’s regime, Israel appears to have shifted its stance toward Ankara. 

With the Syrian issue effectively settled, Ankara gained near-complete control over its southern borderlands. 

With Washington’s assistance, Turkey also achieved breakthroughs in addressing Kurdish separatism.

At the same time, Israel intensified efforts to build strategic depth to its north, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. 

Israel has at least partially tried in these areas to construct a loose confederation of ethnic and religious communities. 

For example, it has engaged the Syrian Druze community, which in some cases views Israel as a guarantor of its security and continued existence.

As a result, by early 2025, the competition between Turkey and Israel for influence in the Levant and beyond became more explicit. 

This contest now includes the Horn of Africa and parts of the Indian Ocean. 

In the latter, Israel operates in coordination with the United Arab Emirates – a relationship that counts among Israel’s most significant diplomatic achievements in recent decades.

It’s unclear if Israel’s coalition will include the United States. 

Washington supports Turkey’s presence in Syria, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. 

One could argue that we are witnessing a convergence of U.S. and Turkish geopolitical interests in Eurasia. 

The Middle Corridor, for example, is now presented as the TRIPP project (the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity). 

The U.S. wants to muddy Eurasia’s geopolitical waters for traditional benefactors like China, India, Europe and Russia. 

By enabling the Big Four to develop into a more functional and substantive framework, Washington could help transform the Middle East into a zone of geopolitical and geoeconomic power that would, in turn, compete for influence and wealth across Eurasia alongside other Eurasian powers.

Nonetheless, a key issue for Washington remains how to manage the emerging Israeli-Turkish rivalry. 

In the optimal scenario, the U.S. would find a way to accommodate the interests of both sides within a single geopolitical project. 

The Board of Peace may be Washington’s attempt to do just that – bringing Sunni powers closer to Israel in an effort to settle the Palestinian issue.

Iran

Iran has not abandoned its pursuit of regional leadership or its so-called axis of resistance, but it appears increasingly focused on controlling key chokepoints, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Shatt al Arab delta, and consolidating influence inside Iraq. 

There is a significant risk that Iran will attempt to expand its control over the southern shores of the Persian Gulf by undermining the existing regional order, and it appears to seek an international regime for Hormuz analogous to Turkey’s position over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. 

At the same time, elimination of its regional proxy network seems unlikely in the near future. 

(And even if Tehran did curtail or relinquish this network, another regional power with leadership ambitions would likely seek to absorb or accommodate these actors within its own strategic culture.)

In other words, Iran is now pursuing a markedly pragmatic grand strategy, enabled – at least in part – by the decapitation of its leadership, which shifted decision-making toward geopolitical realism. 

Rather than an ideological revolutionary actor, Iran now operates more in accordance with traditional Persian imperial logic. 

Ironically, this has resulted in more Israeli strikes and the broader escalation of the conflict with the U.S.-Israeli coalition. 

Over time, Iran could find itself more directly competing with Turkey for influence in the South Caucasus, Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

Israel will be forced to adjust. 

Before last year’s 12-day conflict with Iran, Israel’s assumption was that weakening Iran and aligning with the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, would be sufficient to give it leverage over other regional actors. 

It hoped that a “new” Iran would become a key component of the emerging geopolitical architecture of the Greater Middle East. 

Since then, however, things have shifted toward a different scenario. 

Israel is now seeking a method for managing Turkey and Iran simultaneously.

Central to this effort is India, whose prime minister recently visited Israel for talks that reportedly concentrated on military-technological cooperation. 

For India, preventing a Turkish or broader Muslim project for the Greater Middle East is a major geopolitical imperative. 

To that end, late last year it rekindled ties with Afghanistan, and it also has increased its activity in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. 

It has especially focused on improving military cooperation with Armenia, Cyprus and Greece, and may pursue the same with Israel.

Conclusion

The Middle East is moving beyond colonial and post-colonial legacies and shedding the final remnants of the Cold War-era architecture. 

Sunni Muslim states are developing their own alliance system under Turkey’s leadership, which could produce another center of gravity in Eurasia – one that could compete with China, Russia, Europe and India for influence across the continent. 

This is not a restoration of the Ottoman Empire but a complex, quasi-alliance security arrangement.

Israel is taking serious steps, based on the Abraham Accords, to advance its own version of a new security architecture for the Middle East. 

It now operates in all corners of the Greater Middle East and will compete with Turkey and Iran for regional hegemony. 

Iran appears to be reverting somewhat toward a Persian imperial strategy, a departure from the revolutionary Shiite ethos of 1979. 

If Tehran fails to secure a place within the emerging Big Four, it may move closer to India and, over time, toward tighter security coordination with smaller Eastern Mediterranean powers and Russia. 

Finally, the United States continues to hover over the region, retaining the capacity to shape outcomes through selective support and influence.

These dynamics do not yield a definitive answer to who will ultimately dominate the Middle East or its periphery, or whether Israel and Turkey will arrive at a modus vivendi in a post-American Middle East.