Is A New Middle East Forming?

While the region remains a powder keg in many ways, it is clear that regional elites are ready to focus on cooperation and development.

A substantial amount of ink and blood has been spilled throughout the many failed attempts to create a “new” Middle East. Yet the region’s response to recent events highlights a new trend in its geopolitics—namely a real shift towards ruthless pragmatism and cooperation. Indeed, even amid a less-than-shadowy war between arch-rivals Iran and Israel, the region’s leaders have largely come to accept that the conflict-infested Middle East of old does not fit into their grand strategies or national interests. This realization is slowly forming a truly new Middle East from within.

This transformation is hardly perfect. As the conflict in Sudan highlights, competition in areas deemed acceptable battlegrounds across the Arab world remains an issue, often at the expense of national sovereignty and its population. This reality was recently or still is the case in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine,Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia. Tel Aviv and Tehran have proven adept at creating arenas to compete in, just as Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) continue to fight any semblance of democracy out of fear of Islamist rule.

No one should expect these dynamics to change overnight. Rather, connecting relatively small, isolated moments from the last few years highlights big changes underway. These moments include the end of the blockade of Qatar, Gulf statere-normalization efforts with the former Assad regime, the ceasefire in Yemenbetween the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis, and the Chinese-backed Saudi Arabia-Iran re-normalization agreement. Each moment reflected a pragmatic desire to focus on economic development through cooperation—a focus stemming from the fear produced by the Arab Spring and the lack of individual freedom and opportunity that undergirded it.

Still, these moments are significant. They mark major turning points away from conflict and a tumultuous Arab Spring period in which the region’s counter-revolutionary autocrats threw everything and the kitchen sink at even the most remote threats to their rule. The important point to focus on is the pragmatic push away from conflict even when relations with a specific opponent did not improve—a ruthlessly pragmatic approach appearing after the region’s leaders realized that hawkish policies were failing to resolve their problems.

The Hamas attacks of October 7 may have solidified this shift towards that ruthless pragmatism. Many experts and leaders rightly worried that the attack and subsequent Israeli response would foster a regional conflict of epic proportions. In the past, such fears would have likely been realized due to regional leaders’ distrust for their neighbors and general refusal to cooperate. While a regional conflict has broken out between Israel and Iran, its scale has fallen short of the worst projections. This is at least partly due to a shift away from zero-sum regional policies on the part of Middle East leaders.

Reflecting this dynamic, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and former Iranian President and hardliner Ebrahim Raisi held their first call since normalizing relations months earlier. They stressed the importance of stabilizing the situation and preventing an expansion of the conflict. Importantly, this publicized call was the first between their respective positions in Tehran and Riyadh in years. Then, the two countries engaged each other and other Arab and Muslim states at multiple Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summits on the issue of Gaza.

Short of Iran’s worst hawkish impulses, regional leaders have since largely been in lockstep on the issue of Palestine after a period that witnessed the issue pushed aside. However, cooperation goes beyond clear interests in preventing a regional war that harms everyone—a relatively easy issue to agree on at the moment. Indeed, outside of normal jockeying for influence and relative power —actions all states participate in to advance their interests—diplomatic and economic cooperation is expanding as well.

This is particularly apparent in Syria, where the region is heavily interested in the new Syrian caretaker government succeeding in transitioning the country away from Ba’athist rule. Gulf countries are uniformly interested in supporting the transition by investing in the country’s reconstruction and continue to advocatefor sanctions relief. Even traditional rivals like Turkey and Qatar, on one hand, and Saudi Arabia, on the other, appear dead set on ensuring Damascus has the economic, diplomatic, and military support it needs today—even if the Gulf still views Turkish influence in Syria skeptically.

Military cooperation is another field with promising signs of the regional pragmatism and cooperation needed to advance development and stability. Turkey has worked with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on military and economic deals in recent years, with the former receiving investments from the wealthy Gulf states to prop up its ailing economy and the latter receiving military technology and hardware from Ankara’s growing defense sector amid U.S. limitations under the Biden administration.

Just a few years ago, neo-Ottomanism was a major regional boogieman for its real or perceived expansionist tendencies and support for Islamist groups in conjunction with Qatar. The Gulf maligned and blockaded Doha for its support of such groups in a clear message to the two allies. Now, these countries are working together to achieve shared interests.

Still, the region hardly presents sunshine and rainbows. Each of these examples comes with contradictions, and no two regional states are fully aligned with one another. Even Riyadh and Abu Dhabi compete over business and trade, seeking to be the preeminent geoeconomic power in the Middle East. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry is hardly dead after a few friendly handshakes and a revival of the pro-Palestine bloc. Turkey still receives neo-Ottoman accusations and, with its newfound influence with Syria’s new leaders, those accusations are understandably back.

Ultimately, positive change takes time and will have setbacks. The region remains a powder keg waiting to explode, facing severe underdevelopment, radical militias and terrorist groups, arms races that could reach the nuclear level, open conflict, and unsustainable autocracy.

But at second glance, it is clear that regional leaders hope to enter a new age for the Middle East —one that promotes economic development, trade, and stability. It has always been in their hands to take it, should they choose to do so.