The three countries which have become the triangle that
governs the Middle East - Iran, Israel, and Turkey – trace their role as three
regional police stations back to the Cold War period, or, the East-West
confrontation.
اضافة اعلان
Turkey and Iran are on the peripheral borders of NATO; the
first is a member while the second is a close ally of the US. Israel is a close
ally of the US and was the main barrier against the Arabs drifting toward
socialist orientation and the Soviet Union. Iran was the guardian of Gulf oil,
Turkey the protector of NATO’s flank against Soviet expansion, and Israel keeps
the Arab internecine wars within the Arab circumference.
After the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the fall of the
shah regime, the trusted triangle lost one of its major points: Iran.
Consequently, the strategic balance became difficult to maintain, so since that
day, the search for an alternative to this missing point started, as did the
serious soul searching of whether the emergent mullah regime could be
rehabilitated in order to assume the role of its predecessor.
The true meaning of the New Middle East started taking shape: Iran’s influence spreading from the Gulf throughout Iraq to Syria, Lebanon and ambivalent Gaza, becoming thus a Mediterranean power, Israel spreading its wings towards the Arab Gulf states and North Africa, and Turkey expanding through Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria.
It would not be fair to say that the Arab world was dormant
throughout such developments, as the first one to realize the potential of its
own candidacy as a third point was Anwar Sadat’s Egypt, followed by a serious
attempt by Qatar, then Saudi Arabia and, finally, the United Arab Emirates. But
for all intents and purposes, it was becoming gradually apparent that the missing
point in the triangle is not supposed to be an Arab country, because the third
police station must be from the region but not of it, as the complete triangle
must govern the Arab world, albeit with its own contradictions and
convergences.
Then the Warsaw Pact collapsed, the Berlin wall fell, and
the Cold War as we knew it ended with the assumption that it marked the end of
history and the final triumph of the capitalist system and liberal democracy.
However, in the Middle East, a new phase started with the emergence of the
concept of New Middle East. While debates were raging about this concept by the
late Shimon Peres, along with arguments about Israeli integration in the
region, the concept took a totally different dimension regarding the traditional
role of the three police stations governing the Arab world, and that was
incorporating the Arabs in the three countries’ individual vision, rather than
them incorporating in the region.
The true meaning of the New Middle East started taking
shape: Iran’s influence spreading from the Gulf throughout Iraq to Syria,
Lebanon and ambivalent Gaza, becoming thus a Mediterranean power, Israel
spreading its wings towards the Arab Gulf states and North Africa, and Turkey
expanding through Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria.
As for the Arab states, the more the individual Arab state
becomes a police state, the better it is, as it seems, for the project of the
New Middle East.
However, this is not a new Arab phenomenon. In pre-Islamic
Arabia, some Arabs were the clients of the Byzantine Empire, some of the
Persian Empire, others of the Abyssinian Empire, and the ones that remained
independent were destroyed by the Arabs of the desert.
The writer is a former private adviser to HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal.
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