Essay | The Death of the Old Middle East—and the Dangerous New World Replacing It
The most dangerous theater is in South Asia. Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, have been enemies ever since the bloody partition in 1947 that divided them along religious lines. They have since fought five wars—most recently in 2025.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a chronically unstable garrison state with swaggering paladins and feudal political dynasties vying with popular Islamism, surging debts, economic stagnation, internal repression and two bloody insurgencies. Not only does it have a hair-trigger rivalry with India but a new minor war with its ungrateful ally in Afghanistan, the Taliban, which it has been bombing over the past week.
Traditionally Pakistan balanced two patrons: China and the U.S. Pakistan recently turned Trumpian favor (Trump has described Pakistan’s chief of defense forces, Asim Munir, as “my favorite field marshal”) into influence through mediation with Iran, business transactions and the new alliance with Saudis and Turks.
Simultaneously, India, the world’s most populous state and a potential superpower, balances a deepening alignment with Israel—where its Hindu nationalism finds some affinities with Israeli nationalism—with its traditional links with (and oil dependence on) Iran, as well as its friendship with Russia, reflecting its old Soviet alliance.
Its plan for an India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), joining India, the Gulf and the E.U., was expected to add in Israel but was put on hold by the Oct. 7 wars. Offering a a different vision to the Mecca alliance, it may eventually be reactivated creating a new economic Eurasian region.
Convergence 5
500 miles
500 km
East Africa and the Red Sea are already in the midst of a brutal neo-imperial conflicts. In this scramble for Africa, the empires are no longer European but Middle Eastern and African. Now, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf are more invested in picking winners and losers in the region.
SUDAN: The Houthi attacks on Saudi pipelines, seizure of the Bab al-Mandeb strait, and attacks on Riyadh have helped focus the Middle East powers on an intensifying battle over the war-torn African coastline. It’s a place where boutique powers of the Gulf already have major, almost neo-imperial, interests, seeking gold and ports and farm land in Sudan to feed their desert-dwelling populations. The atrocities of the civil war in Sudan have spun so out of control that many are now seeking a halt—before it spreads.
SOMALIA: Israel and the U.A.E. are supporting Somaliland—which declared independence from Somalia in the 1990s and is making a new push for international recognition—and may seek bases there to use against the Houthis. Somalia is resisting that effort and is backed by the Saudis and the Turks, the latter of whom are stationing forces there like an imperial power.
ETHIOPIA: The country simultaneously comports like an expansionist empire while facing multiple insurgences. The landlocked country is on a quest for a Red Sea port that may be granted by Somaliland or seized in a new war from Eritrea. Ethiopia just this month accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of inciting rebel violence against it.
Convergence 6
The Sahel is the region that runs east-west across the southernmost part of North Africa, where beleaguered juntas of young officers are battling jihadist militias in a band of failing states, backed traditionally by former imperial power France and recently by Russia and its mercenaries.
If or when one of these states falls, the jihadists could ride southward into Nigeria or north to converge with civil war in Libya and even menace the taut, anxious order of Egypt.
FOR NOW THESE convergences mean that the very name Middle East may soon be obsolete—business and politics alike need to coordinate their strategies for a wider region.
Calling it West Asia misses Africa and Europe. Using the fashionable term SWANA, which stands for Southwest Asia North Africa doesn’t include the Byzantine, Central Asian, East African and indeed South Asian theaters.
I prefer something like SEMESTEA which would bring together South Europe, Middle East, Sahara, South Asia and East Africa.
Whatever catches on, one of the few pleasures of today’s alarming geopolitics is the coining of new acronyms. Let us enjoy that at least.
It is important to realize the fluidity of the region now: These new conjunctions are flexible and overlapping. The Mecca Pact does not rule out the very current Abraham Accords nor an India-Arabia-Israel corridor.
The great peril is that the Russo-Ukraine war merges with the U.S.-Iran-Israel war and any India-Pakistan conflict: If the fires in these separate arenas join up in what pyrologists called flashover, a fire becomes an inferno that could become a world war.
It has always been the case that any megapower that seeks multi-domain planetary power must have a presence in the Middle East be it Cold War superpowers, Europeans or the Ottomans.
Today, China is still not ready for full engagement, but its mustering of a battle fleet makes it tempting to take advantage of U.S. follies: It’s worth noting how often Xi Jinping mentions the eunuch Admiral Zheng He and the Ming Dynasty treasure fleets that visited Arabia and East Africa between 1405 and 1433.
The Saudis and the nervous powers of the region want China, the most important business partner, engaged in the region even if they know Beijing can’t replace Washington as a reliable security partner.
The present conflicts—the Oct. 7 Wars that include the war against Iran—are unlikely to end cleanly for a while, if only because Iran lacks a united leadership after the 37-year reign of Ali Khamenei.
The irony is that Iranian attacks on Arab states have made an American presence all the more necessary to many nations in the region. No one trusts America, but many desperately crave its presence and protection. Similarly, they are making Israel, whatever its flaws, more strategically attractive to Arab powers than it has ever been.
In recent negotiations, the U.S., subject to the rivalries of the Trumpian court, has seemed to be running different, even contradictory policies for Turkey, Lebanon and Iran.
But however impetuous the start of the war in February may have seemed, the operation in Venezuela and the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025 showed that this administration can act with stealth and focus
And now seven months into the Iran war, Trump’s blockade of Iran seems to be working. Oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz and other sources including the Saudi east-west pipeline are rising toward prewar levels for now. How will Iran’s Revolutionary Guard react? There is nothing so dangerous as a wounded tiger.
However that ends, the growing convergence of theaters and peril of flashover means that a measured, coherent America is more essential than ever—it is the only power capable of managing this new increasingly dangerous, converging world.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian and the author of bestselling and prize-winning books about Russian and Middle Eastern history that are published in 48 languages and include “Catherine the Great & Potemkin” and “Jerusalem: The Biography—A History of the Middle East.” He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he earned his Doctorate of Philosophy. His latest book is “The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East.”
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Comments
Post a Comment