There Will Be No “New” Middle East

A “new Middle East” seems to always be on the horizon. In 1982, Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon envisioned a new order in the Middle East, with a free Lebanon under a pro-Western Maronite government and a Palestinian State in Jordan. An Israeli invasion of Lebanon would destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and ensure Israel’s security.

Shimon Peres and Tom Friedman promised a “New Middle East” in the aftermath of the Oslo Agreement in 1993. Instead of fighting, young Palestinians and Israelis would launch high-tech start-ups. The Lexus would smash the olive tree and usher in the “end of History.”

Then, a democratic and pro-American Middle East was supposed to emerge, starting with Iraq, after President George W. Bush’s exercises in “regime change” and “democracy promotion” in the 2000s.

That was followed by the “Arab Spring” in the early 2010s, which was expected to launch a wave of liberal-democratic revolutions in the Middle East led by all the young Facebook users assembled in Tahrir Square.

There was also talk about a new and improved Middle East after the signing of the Abraham Accords of 2020, which led to the normalization of ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel and the formation of an Arab-Israeli strategic bloc to contain Iran.

And here we go again: Israel’s success in delivering a military blow to Iran and its Middle Eastern proxies is raising hopes for a new order in the region. A free Lebanon would emerge from the rubble of the Hezbollah-Israel war. With Iran cut down to size, an Israeli-Saudi détente could become possible in the form of a NATO-like “Abraham Alliance.”

In a recent message to the Iranian people, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu envisaged a regime change of sorts in the Middle East and imagined the day when Persians and Jews live in peace.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with dreaming the impossible dream or, at least, looking forward to better days ahead. The problem is that sometimes political leaders take their fantasies too seriously and employ them to mobilize support for costly policies. As the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Hence, Sharon’s pipe dreams led to a long and disastrous war in Lebanon that ended up drawing Israel into a quagmire. Maronite leader Bachir Gemayel was assassinated. The PLO survived. Then came the Palestinian intifada in 1987. The 1993 Oslo Agreement ignited expectations for peace that failed to materialize. Later, President Bill Clinton’s botched attempt at another peace process at Camp David in 1999 was immediately followed by the Second Intifada. Sharon presided over Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The Iraq War proved to be a strategic catastrophe of historic proportions, while the military intervention in Afghanistan turned into America’s longest war. The wars led to the collapse of the balance of power in the Middle East, which allowed Iran to emerge eventually as a regional hegemon, leading a group of Shiite proxies.  

The dreams about promoting democracy in the Middle East helped propel America into the disastrous and bloody effort to oust Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. The Middle East degenerated into an open sandbox of civil wars, including ISIS’s attempts to control countries in the region.

In retrospect, Netanyahu’s attempt to marginalize the Palestinian problem through the Abraham Accords proved to be a mistake that blew up in Israel’s face on October 7, 2023. Iran and its allies seemed to emerge as the strategic winners—at least for a while.

But it would be a mistake to frame the successful Israeli exercise in reversing the wins by Iran and its proxies as another opportunity to usher in a new Middle East. Unfortunately, we are left with the same old, same old. Hezbollah will remain a significant political and military player in Lebanon, and it’s unlikely that its recent setbacks will change the balance of power in that country.

Israel is certainly not in a position to “defeat” Iran. A retaliatory move by Israel against Iran, in particular an attack on its nuclear sites and oil sites, would almost certainly lead to a regional military conflagration that would eventually draw in the United States.

U.S. military intervention that is bound to lead to Iranian attacks on American military sites and U.S. allies in the region will only hurt Israel’s long-term interests. Indeed, a United States bogged down in another Middle East War, this time as part of an effort to protect Israel, could ignite a major anti-Israel political backlash in America, especially if it would affect the presidential election. A new U.S. military intervention in a Middle East war would more likely than not accelerate U.S. disengagement from the Middle East, which happens to be Iran’s primary goal.

Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post.

Image: Ameer Massad / Shutterstock.com.