19 Mar 2024
Thursday 29 December 2016 - 16:45
Story Code : 244902

A new balance of power in the Middle East

Financial Times|: Russia and Iran have had a good year confounding their adversaries in the Middle East.

Officials from Russia, Iran and Turkey were preening themselves earlier this month ahead of a trilateral meeting in Moscow of foreign and defence ministers, to discuss Syria after Aleppo. Were they inviting their US counterparts? No. A realpolitik parley is no place for Panglossian procrastinators who, furthermore, would spoil the triumph of Russia and Iran as they savour the destruction of rebel Aleppo and the salvage of a rump state for Bashar al-Assad, their Syrian client.

Turkey, to be fair, was more focused on the realpolitik than the triumphalism. Ankara has had to give up its support for Sunni rebels trying to topple the Assad regime, and move towards Russia and Iran to prevent Syrian Kurdish fighters allied with insurgent Turkish Kurds from consolidating a self-governing entity along its borders.

In either case, it is not so easy to escape the carnage of Syria. On the eve of the ministers meeting, Andrei Karlov, Russias ambassador to Turkey, was shot dead by an Ankara policeman, who shouted Dont forget Aleppo. The truck murders in a Berlin Christmas market that same evening highlighted how easily terror can strike. But it is remarkable, given the way Mr Putins air force has eviscerated Syrias Sunni rebels (rather than Isis jihadis), that Russia has suffered little reprisal.

Yes, alongside the jihadist atrocities in Paris and Nice, Brussels and Istanbul, a Russian airliner was brought down by a bomb over Sinai shortly after Russia intervened in Syria. European officials say the Russian plane was not the original target. That could now change. Mr Putin said the Karlov murder was aimed at sabotaging the peace process in Syria a breathtakingly cynical remark that makes one suspect Russia, as well as the west, is likely to have more occasions to remember Aleppo.

As they look towards 2017, Russia and Iran can, nonetheless, consider they have had a good year confounding their adversaries in the Middle East and that the west, and its allies in the region, is in exploitable disarray. The Kremlin seems to be getting away with its cyber intervention in the US election. It is having some success in dividing Europe and erecting an illiberal democratic pole inside the EU. And President Putin has a new admirer in US president-elect Donald Trump.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who rules Egypt, are already Putin fans. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels rightwing premier, has cultivated the Russian leader. Mohammed bin Salman, the young deputy crown prince in de facto charge of Saudi Arabia, has developed what one Arab official calls a functional relationship with Mr Putin.

Dyspeptic about the perceived weakness of Barack Obamas administration, disillusioned with the EU, these western pillars in the Middle East are brittle.

After the chaos of governments overthrown in 2011 and 2013, Egypt has been recast into a hardened security state. Under Mr Sisi, policy is divorced from politics and short-circuited by the security services. Egypts economy is vulnerable after a falling out with Saudi Arabia, its main financial patron. Nato ally Turkey, meanwhile, is turning eastward, as Mr Erdogan tests its institutions to destruction in the purges that followed Julys failed coup and his moves towards one-man rule. In both countries the jails are full.

Israel looks set to end all talk of an independent Palestinian state, and possibly annex not just Jewish settlements but most of the occupied West Bank, taking advantage of Mr Trumps appointment of pro-settler aides. Yet Mr Obamas parting shot abstaining on last weeks UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements and secretary of state John Kerrys reiteration of US support for Palestinian rights as well as for Israels security, are a reminder that most of the world regards Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land as illegal.

Prince Mohammeds plan to reform Saudi Arabia and wean it away from oil pulls in the other direction. But it will fail unless he seizes control of education from Wahhabi clerics who pump fanaticism into the kingdom and the Muslim world.

Shia Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabias regional rival, would seem to be on a roll. Victory in Aleppo has cemented its Shia Arab axis from Baghdad to Beirut. But Mr Trump has Tehran in his sights. He has threatened to tear up or make unworkable the nuclear deal Iran reached with the US and five world powers including Russia. That would empower Irans hardliners and their adventurism, and foment the conflict within Islam that frames and disfigures the Middle East, between Shia and Sunni supremacists, with mutually reinforcing alibis for their jihads.

The self-declared caliphate of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will probably collapse in 2017. But after Isis loses Mosul and, eventually, Raqqa, it will turn to local insurgency and international terrorism. Aleppo is stampeding the Sunni towards despairing extremism, too.

Isis and al-Qaeda still have a lot going for them: the Assads are still in place alongside Shia-backed regimes in Baghdad and Beirut; the US and Russia, Turkey and Iran as recruiting sergeants; an institutional vacuum and rotting states; and their replacement by paramilitaries and warlords. Then there will be a Trump administration of emphatic instincts, unswerving prejudices, but uncertain direction a truly wild card.
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