WHAT WILL THE MIDDLE EAST LOOK LIKE AFTER THE IRAN WAR? / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

What Will the Middle East Look Like After the Iran War?

The war with Iran was never really about defeating Tehran – it was about creating space for a new regional order to take shape.

By: Kamran Bokhari

The United States, as we’ve written before, is in the process of implementing a new global geostrategy that would allow Washington to offload some of its security responsibilities to allied partners. 

But that can’t happen if the existing conflicts in Eurasia are not addressed.

In the Middle East, stability requires fundamentally altering the strategic environment created by nearly 50 years of Iranian influence, which has consistently upset a durable balance of power. 

The ongoing war there is less about “defeating” Iran than about creating the conditions for U.S. allies to take the reins. 

There is no returning to an era in which Washington is the Middle East's principal security guarantor; its objective is to transition from regional hegemon to offshore actor with its finger on the scales.

This broader strategic transformation is far more important than the tactical ebb and flow of day-to-day operations. 

It’s unclear when the current fighting between the United States and Iran will end or what the government in Tehran will look like when it does. 

What is clear is the larger geopolitical trajectory, the defining feature of which is the emergence of a new regional security architecture built around a network of countries – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, with support from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Azerbaijan – taking a leadership role so that there can be a self-sustaining balance of power. 

The challenge is not only aligning these countries, all of which have their own interests and priorities, but integrating them into a workable relationship with Israel. 

The three most consequential actors in the emerging order – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – either lack formal diplomatic ties with Israel or, in Ankara's case, have seen relations deteriorate as they compete over the future of Syria and by extension the broader region. 

The fact that Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan maintain formal relations with Israel is the foundation on which a broader regional framework can be built. 

The long-term viability of that framework will depend on whether these actors can set their differences aside and establish pragmatic relations with Israel.

This is a tall order. 

The conflict triggered by the Oct. 7 attacks has intensified public anger and political sensitivities in the Arab and Muslim worlds. 

Although Iran has suffered major setbacks, it continues to exploit the war to harness popular sentiment, sustain its ideological narrative and obstruct broader regional alignments. 

In that sense, Arab and Muslim states with leadership aspirations are geopolitically constrained by Israel and Iran.

In many ways, Arab and Muslim states see Iran's regional ambitions as a more fundamental strategic threat than Israel's policies toward the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria. 

Iran is a far larger state with greater demographic, geographic and military resources, and Tehran has sought to exploit the chronic weaknesses of the Arab state system to expand its influence and shape the regional balance of power in its favor. 

It has used the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the broader Arab-Israeli conflict as instruments of its imperial ambitions – championing Muslim resistance while using proxy networks to project power throughout the region. 

For many Arab and Muslim governments, Iran's strategy of confronting Israel through non-state actors is a greater threat to regional stability because it stokes divisions, empowers militias and undermines state sovereignty.

The concerns that convinced the U.S. and Israel to act against Iran – Tehran’s proxy network, its ballistic missile and drone capabilities, and the pursuit of nuclear weapons – are things that animate the fears of Turkey, the Arab states and Pakistan. 

For the Arab states, especially those on the Arabian Peninsula, the growth of Iranian offensive military capabilities is a strategic vulnerability. 

The emergence of an Iran-aligned government in Syria under the Assad regime in the 1980s, the collapse of the Baathist government in Iraq in the early 2000s and its subsequent drift into Tehran's sphere of influence, and the instability unleashed by the 2011 Arab Spring created successive opportunities for Iran to undermine Arab security. 

The 2014 empowerment of the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen ultimately brought this challenge closer to the Arabian Peninsula.

Turkey was historically a Western-oriented power anchored by its NATO membership, European aspirations and institutional ties with the West, but things began to change in the late 2000s as the government pursued a strategic pivot toward the Middle East. 

Ankara’s efforts to expand its regional influence collided with Iran’s, even as Tehran had a head start and became the dominant power in Iraq and Syria, both of which border Turkey. 

Tehran’s efforts to penetrate the Arab world naturally created backlash, culminating in the Israeli military campaign that degraded Hamas and Hezbollah in 2024 – both Iranian proxies – as military forces. 

The collapse of Iran’s regional proxy network created a strategic opening for Turkey, which was able, with the help of its allies in the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement, to help shape the emergence of a new political order in Syria by the end of that year.

Iran’s position in Iraq – once considered rock solid – is increasingly vulnerable as Baghdad and Washington increasingly curb the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite militias and strengthen state control over armed groups. 

The emergence of a Sunni- and Kurdish-aligned political order in Syria, combined with Turkey’s desire to expand its influence in Iraq and Washington’s apparent support for Ankara’s regional role, has further challenged Tehran’s leverage. 

The war against the U.S. has also strained the Iranian regime despite its ability to disrupt maritime trade and fire missiles into Arab states. 

Yet the conflict has produced a fundamental psychological shift among Arab governments. 

Iran attacking them as and when it has an interest in doing so is the new normal – one that will shape their calculations for years to come.

This long-term threat comes as Washington seeks to offload security responsibilities to its allies. 

To be sure, the Trump administration undertook this geostrategic doctrine well before the war with Iran. 

The underlying logic was that U.S. forces would stand down as capable Arab and Muslim partners stood up, creating a more sustainable regional security environment based on shared responsibility rather than U.S. dominance. 

When Washington launched military operations against Iran, it had already decided to reduce its assets positioned within striking distance of Tehran. 

The strategic calculation was that even after the conflict, the U.S. would not return to its previous force posture in the region.

The U.S.-Iran conflict is unlikely to end anytime soon. 

The Iranian regime, even in its diminished condition, will almost certainly survive in the near term so long as the U.S. declines to put boots on the ground and there is no viable domestic insurgent alternative. 

Over time, however, Tehran will be forced to rethink its position as the war, the death of senior political and military leadership, and the devolution within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reshape the balance of power inside Iran itself.

Whereas Europe has NATO and the European Union to provide institutional frameworks on which allies can build, the Middle East is more of a blank canvas. 

It therefore requires regional integration mechanisms to manage Iran as it hurtles toward uncertainty and Israel as it undergoes its own evolution. 

For the region’s stakeholders, the challenge will be constructing a sustainable security architecture in which Arab states, Turkey, Pakistan and other partners can collectively manage as Washington reduces its direct military and financial exposure to the world’s most strategically volatile region.