On September 15th Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded historic normalization agreements with his Bahraini and Emirati counterparts at a ceremony held on the iconic White House lawn. In his speech, Netanyahu thanked the leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain for their commitment to “working with the United States and Israel to expand the Circle of Peace.” Many are heralding Israeli-Arab normalization as the dawn of a new era holding peace and prosperity for the Middle East. Yet under closer scrutiny, Netanyahu’s “Circle of Peace” represents one aspect of a complex, new geopolitical equation, the emergence of which by no means promises a more secure future.
The recent diplomatic breakthrough between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain—all small states in a violent corner of the globe—point to the emergence of a regional security environment that is increasingly assuming a bipolar orientation. This is not the first time the Middle Eastern power politics have assumed such a pattern; during the Cold War decades, the region resembled a board of checkers divided between pro-Western and pro-Soviet states.
This previous bipolar order broke down in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, replaced by the short-lived vision of a monopolar system arrayed beneath the hegemon’s—in this case America’s—global security umbrella. But the optimistic hopes of the 1990s gave way to a more sober reality following the events of September 11th, 2001.
The American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan set off a domino-effect of regional changes whose ripples continue to influence power relations today. In the midst of an increasingly chaotic, multipolar world, today the Middle East more closely resembles a game of chess, with far greater complexity, room for maneuver, and diversity of forces than was ever-present in the Cold War era.
The first pole of the nascent bipolar order is the American-sponsored “Circle of Peace”. This term first emerged in the optimistic decade of the 1990s, as Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) concluded the Oslo Accords, quickly followed by the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. US President Bill Clinton employed this term in his address at the 1995 signing of the Oslo II Accord between Israel and the PLO, remarking: “We will press forward with our efforts until the Circle of Peace is closed, a circle which must include Syria and Lebanon if peace is to be complete.” Presenting himself as the peace-maker of this generation, Netenyahu has embraced the paradigm of the “Circle of Peace” as a cornerstone of contemporary Israel’s foreign policy.
A restrictive headcount for the Circle of Peace includes Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain, with the US hovering overhead as a superpower guarantor. But, Israel’s covert ties with Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Morocco situate these states within, albeit on the edge of, the American-sponsored Circle as well.
Roughly speaking, this assemblage of states acts as a regional partnership united together by a few core values and objectives, namely: a strong American military presence in the region; the support of reactionary, Sunni regimes (all of the above-mentioned states are religious monarchies, barring the exception of Egypt, which remains a troubled autocracy under President Sisi); maintaining the free flow of energy resources from the region to the global market; and more generally, the promotion of free-markets and socio-economic development in the American mold. Yet at its core, this security partnership is premised on America’s capacity—and political will—to project economic and military power overseas.
While Israeli-Arab normalization marks a meaningful expansion of the Circle of Peace, this bloc is competing for influence and resources with another regional bloc—the Iranian-sponsored “Axis of Resistance” (aka Shia Crescent), which is pursuing a radically different agenda than the Pax Americana trumpeted by Israel and its Arab allies.
Since the early days of the 1979 Revolution, a fundamental principle of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been militant resistance to American, Israeli, and Western influence at home and abroad. While the 1990s witnessed a moderating trend in the conduct of its foreign and domestic policy agendas, Iran’s strategic outlook underwent a process of reorientation as a result of 9/11 and the subsequent American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the early 2000s, Iran began to perceive itself as caught in a state of strategic encirclement by the US military. In response, the Iranian defense establishment began an ambitious buildup of asymmetric military capabilities in an effort to counterbalance America’s increasingly concrete footprint in the region.
While more diffuse than the Circle of Peace, the Axis of Resistance is likewise held together by a few core concepts, namely: resistance to American and Israeli influence in the region, militarily, diplomatically, and economically; the embrace of a pan-Shia identity uniting Iranian and Arab-Shia interests; the maintenance of an overland connection from Tehran to the Mediterranean coast; and on the operational level the use of asymmetric and unconventional techniques.
On the plane of great powers sponsorship, Russia and China are emerging as increasingly dependable guarantors of Iran’s Axis of Resistance in terms of military and economic support in light of ongoing American sanctions, not to mention the diplomatic power they wield via permanent seats on the UN Security Council.
One prominent prong of Iran’s asymmetric paradigm has been engagement with Shia actors—state and non-state—across the Arab-Middle East. Since the early 1980s, the Islamic Republican Guard Corps and its covert operations wing, the Quds Force, have expanded Iranian influence throughout the region by directly working with proxy groups and Shia militias abroad.
The formation of Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982 stands as the first iteration of a replicable strategy that is presently being propagated in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In large part thanks to the efforts exerted by Qassem Suleimani, former head of the Quds Force, over the past two decades, Iran now maintains intimate ties with both regimes and powerful non-state actors in multiple conflict zones across the region. Taking advantage of pre-existing domestic strife or simply generating it themselves, the eclectic umbrella of violent non-state actors Iran supports have extended their influence deep into the domestic security environments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip.
During the Cold War decades, the contours of regional alliances were defined in more explicitly political terms. Today, a more complex set of motivations are driving the bipolarization of the Middle East. For starters, the Cold War overlay of a binary struggle between global superpowers is no longer applicable to the situation at hand, particularly so for the Axis of Resistance.
Rather than turning to a single sponsor, Iran engages with a variety of power players that contribute a pragmatism and long-term outlook to its external agenda. Military coordination with Russia in Syria, a 25-year strategic pact with China, and ongoing EU support for the Iran nuclear deal all exhibit this multidimensionality in practice.
At the local level, Iranian-backed militias compete for power in ever more fractured states. The result is a region saturated with intersecting, global interests that are pursued by an increasingly amorphous and violent dramatis personae of international, state, and non-state actors.
A further departure from the Cold War precedent is the fact that power relations and identity politics in the contemporary Middle East are increasingly defined along ethnic, religious, and sectarian lines. Applied to the dynamic under discussion, the Circle of Peace may be seen as essentially composed of vulnerable Sunni autocracies that have made (or are weighing) the strategic choice to strive for security with Israel at their side and America at their back. Conversely, the Axis of Resistance is religious fundamentalist front bolstering state and non-state Shia actors across the Middle East, alongside limited collaboration with pariah Sunni actors like Turkey and various Palestinian groups, in a joint front against the region’s American-led alternative.
In sum, the modern Middle East is drifting towards a bipolar order that resembles, though is far more fragmented than, that observed during the Cold-War era. The question this observation begs is: what effect will this new process of regional bipolarization have on the security climate of the Middle East in the years to come?
Nowadays, proxy conflicts cum civil wars are defining battle spaces across the region, where sectarian militias rather than conventional armies clash. Meanwhile, a more diverse set of great powers (namely the US, China, Russia, the EU, and India) with conflicting interests in the region are maneuvering for strategic resources and partnerships.
At the time of writing, the “Circle of Peace” and the “Axis of Resistance” are both at high-water marks in terms of their geographic extent. However, underlying this seeming parity is a profoundly unstable equilibrium. If the current drift towards a bipolar regional system continues, the result will likely be a region more deeply riven by internal divides, and increasingly plagued by the outbreak of conflicts waged along ethnic and religious faultlines.
The Emerging Bipolarity of 21st Century Middle East
The American-led Circle of Peace is confronted by Iran’s Axis of Resistance, pitting the region’s Sunni countries against their Shia counterparts.
September 26, 2020
(Left to Right) Bahrain FM Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and UAE FM Abdullah bin Zayed signing the Abraham Accords on Sept 15, 2020 SOURCE: REUTERS