We discussed the deteriorating situation in the Middle East and the American position regarding different crises with Mohammed Soliman, Director of the Strategic Technology and Cybersecurity Program at the Middle East Institute. Denys Kolesnyk, a French consultant and analyst, conducted the interview.
Since Hamas’s attack against Israel last October, the Middle East seems to be even farther away from any normalisation and peace. In general terms, how would you characterise current geopolitical challenges in the region and foreign powers’ influence on the regional agenda?
Let’s differentiate between the leaders and the public. Then, let’s distinguish between what’s strategic and what’s tactical. There is dismay among Arab leaders about the Israeli military operation in Gaza over the deaths and casualties. They cannot tolerate this, not only because of the public but also because of genuine concern over the death tolls and how this impacts the broader region.
Does that mean that they diverted away from other endeavours to pursue normalisation with Israel? I believe that is still on the table. However, it will take time and more work on the Israeli and American sides to determine a path forward in terms of a more integrated region, including the necessary steps that should be taken to provide political horizons for Palestinians.
As for foreign powers’ influence on regional affairs, generally speaking, it’s fair to say that in the Middle East, there’s no one in charge at this point. The idea that great powers can call the shots and dictate every move in the region has proven wrong constantly. The whole region is destabilised, and there’s a missing balance of power.
While multiple regional powers are fighting for influence, global powers, mainly the United States, are trying to impose some sort of agenda or a way forward. This is clashing and leading to a much more chaotic landscape, where, again, I don’t believe that there’s anyone in charge today of regional affairs.
Moreover, I think everyone, including every leader in the regional capitals, is responding and reacting in real-time rather than taking the lead in any of the kinds of discourses we are witnessing at this moment.
Iran is taking a more assertive stance since the derailment of the Israeli-Saudi normalisation process. The Houthis have been disrupting international shipping and even managed to render the Israeli port of Eilat useless, as no ship dares to dock there. And just recently, the Houthis – Iran’s proxies – threatened to intensify strikes, while China, Russia, and Iran started joint manoeuvres in the waters around the Gulf of Oman. What does Tehran want to achieve?
I mean, Iran’s proxies, though largely aligned, have somewhat different goals and interests when it comes to the ongoing war in Gaza and the broader region. Iran seeks to derail the diplomatic integration of Israel throughout the region, which it fears would lead to a more consolidated geopolitical front challenging its power projection across the Middle East.
Given this, it sees the current moment as an opportunity to sow divisions between the US, Israel, and the Gulf while reasserting Iranian strength. And this being said, Iran has spent decades nurturing proxy networks under the umbrella of the Axis of Resistance. That vast web could now expand from Iran and Iraq to Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.
However, while these proxies are ideologically aligned with Iran, generally speaking, they have their own interests. In the case of the Houthis, it is a political and military group with deep religious and social roots engaged in a power struggle over its own space and political legitimacy in Yemen. Some of their actions could be interpreted as a way for them to be accepted more broadly in the region.
The same applies to Hezbollah, which is also very aligned with Iran but still acting within a Lebanese context in terms of how they see themselves escalating with Israel. This is why, thus far, you see that the confrontation across the Lebanese-Israeli border remains under a certain threshold.
So, to summarise, Iran has its objective, which is blocking Israel from integrating with the region. And while its regional proxy groups, of course, are primarily aligned with that, they diverge on many tactical decisions and some long-term objectives because they are acting within their own local context.
According to some thoughts, because Iran was not happy about the Israeli-Arab reconciliation or normalisation process in the region, the October 7th attack was inspired by the Iranians. What is your take on it? Do you think the Iranians and the Iranian regime have so much influence over Hamas, or is this influence a lot exaggerated by foreign commentators and observers?
Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamic movement. Iran is a Shia power, and consequently, most of its proxies adhere to Shia Islam. There are significant theological disparities and ideological contradictions with certain groups like Hamas, as evidenced during the Syrian Civil War. In my assessment, based on the information that’s publicly available, it seems that Hamas acted within its own calculus and rationale to carry out its terrorist attack.
The Red Sea crisis has affected foreign trade, and the US has gathered an international coalition of more than a dozen countries to defend international shipping in that part of the world. But winning against the Houthis seems possible only with boots on the ground. How do you see a potential solution for this crisis?
It’s always difficult to fight a non-state actor. The Houthis are agile enough to harass shipping from many locations and use cheap equipment. American-British airstrikes could degrade the Houthis’ capabilities, but they could not eliminate the threat that they present to naval access to the Red Sea.
This being said, the coalition can always work on intercepting the flows of Iranian-made munition and equipment that make their way to Yemen and are later used by the Houthis. Working with Yemen’s neighbours is an essential factor here. However, the original point remains that countering non-state actors is always a very difficult job. And we don’t have to overthink it since we have the Taliban in Afghanistan as a prime example.
What was the origin of the Houthis’ idea to attack the maritime routes in the Red Sea?
It seems that, based on the Houthi’s online propaganda, they wanted to use the Palestinian cause to raise their profile and increase legitimacy among Arab and Muslim populations around the region and across the world.
I understand. Let’s jump to the US. In his State of the Union address, Joseph Biden mentioned Israel 13 times and Ukraine 10 times. Those two countries were the most mentioned in his speech, surpassing China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Is it safe to say that the Biden administration’s key overseas focus is Ukraine and Israel? In general terms, what is Biden’s approach toward the Middle East?
While Ukraine and Israel are taking up considerable space in the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda, China remains among the president’s top priorities. Not only for the president, but also the president’s chief rival, former president Donald Trump. However, Ukraine and Israel are more of an immediate urgency for Washington for many political and domestic reasons.
As such, we will see the president and his team dedicating many of their trips, speeches, meetings, and press conferences to the situation in Ukraine, particularly when it comes to Russian aggression and the need to support Ukraine so that it can resist and maintain its territorial integrity. And at the same time, the US will continue supporting Israel when it comes to the war in Gaza.
As for Biden’s administration’s Middle East policy, let’s be frank: when Joe Biden came to power in 2021, he believed that the Middle East was not his top priority. So when he walked into the Oval Office, he had this notion that he should dedicate more time to the question of China. Asia-first is the major priority, then Europe, and later the Middle East. The heightened attention given to the Quad, AUKUS, and other Asia-centric mini-laterals is evidence of this. This prioritisation is what I personally advocated for and should have been complemented by looking into the Middle East through the rise of Asia. Moreover, I have also been proactively speaking and writing about how to link our own interests in Asia by expanding the geopolitical and geoeconomic boundaries of the Middle East eastward to South Asia, a concept that I call West Asia.
But then the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened, which forced the president to refocus on the Middle East. This was due to various reasons, from the need to ensure energy security and have buy-in from Saudi Arabia and the UAE in terms of the OPEC+ arrangement over energy supply lines to the question of sanctions, which is extremely important given how enormous the economies of the Gulf states are.
This quick reorientation evolved a bit afterwards. Biden’s visit to Jeddah, and I was there when he visited Saudi Arabia for the US GCC+3 summit, clearly started to open more channels with Middle Eastern countries, especially the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Egyptians. Then they moved to another phase, and that was before October 7, when the Biden administration had been building on the Abraham Accords and wanted to have this sort of Saudi normalisation. So, their approach to the Middle East was not as coherent as their approach to China in the Indo-Pacific and Ukraine in Europe.
I would say they evolved from saying, “It’s not a top priority, for now”, to say, “We need Middle Eastern partners over the question of energy vis-a-vis Ukraine. Later, let’s rebuild on the Abraham Accords and see where we can get in terms of normalising and integrating Israel in the region.”
These are the three significant phases of the Biden Middle East policy. But what matters with what I’m saying is that the policy evolved, which is good. It’s always good that you can revise your views when it comes to foreign policy. The caveat, however, is that they somehow accepted the premise that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to be permanently asleep and that, therefore, they should refrain from doing or spending political capital on that. Because of this rationale, they ended up with the sort of discourse we have right now.
When the Hamas attack on Israel happened, the collective West was firmly on the Israeli side. But then, when the Israelis went deep into the Gaza Strip with a ground operation, the rhetoric started to shift. There were words of support for Israel and its right to defend itself, but at the same time, the voices were saying that Israel was going too much in the wrong direction. So, what does the current internal debate in the United States look like?
You summarised it perfectly. As the Israeli operation in Gaza resulted in more deaths among Palestinians, especially now that more than 31,000 Palestinians were killed, domestic pressure rose in Western democracies. And it’s interesting to see that because this is the very thing that President Biden warned the Israelis not to do when he visited the country right after that attack when he said, “Justice must be done. But I caution that, while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Senate majority leader Senator Chuck Schumer has also publicly discussed the need for a different Israeli leadership. This is not out of nowhere but rather a manifestation of what we are approaching, and that’s almost six months of this war causing political shockwaves across the American political spectrum. The public rhetoric is changing, as you have rightly pointed out.
However, Washington is trying to strike a balance by saying there’s a difference between the Israeli government and the Israeli people. That was made clear by Vice President Kamala Harris. Of course, the president always emphasises that. So even though they have political troubles with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, their support for the war, in my view, doesn’t seem to be waning or changing.
They are trying simultaneously to strike a balance between providing humanitarian aid and their support for Israel’s military operation. However, these two objectives will be met differently based on where the voters are on the political spectrum. In the United States, and this is not a secret, we have seen a significant number of voters dismayed at the current discourse.
Egypt is one of the significant regional countries and the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Currently, we observe the Egyptian authorities building a wall in the Sinai Peninsula to block Palestinian refugees. What is Cairo’s stance regarding regional conflicts? What are Egypt’s key priorities and ambitions?
Cairo is very concerned, but is contained at present by the state of the Egyptian economy. Egypt maintains a significant military, good relationships with most of the regional and global powers, and has a history, traditions, demographics, and strategic geographic location.
However, their economic struggles are not allowing them to be what they used to be regarding power projection. Yes, the Egyptians are active in Libya, in the Red Sea, the East Mediterranean, and in Sudan. In other words, I’m not saying that they’re “going to be” a player; they already _are_ a player, but not as they used to be.
Partially this is because the region has changed. The centres of power have changed, so this is not about “the fall” of Egypt. What is really happening is that the rise of other regional powers such as the Gulf states, and the resulting fight for geopolitical space, which is always very difficult, means Egypt now faces regional competition. For a country struggling economically and trying to project power far from its borders, this is a difficult challenge.
The second issue is that the hopes of Egypt to blossom as a post-colonial nation have always run into problems, namely regional conflict. That has been their mantra for 50 years, since Anwar Sadat and the peace agreement with Israel: Egypt is a country that always wants to seek de-escalation in the region.
That was very clear in the Lebanon war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the other subsequent military operations, armed conflicts and civil wars. This is where they’re always hesitant about non-state actors trying to take on nation-states. This is their rationale. They constantly seek de-escalation because they don’t believe conflict suits anyone’s interests.
As for Egypt’s stance on the crisis in Gaza, the Egyptians made it very clear they oppose the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or their displacement into the Sinai peninsula. First, they believe the displacement of Palestinians would not be temporary but permanent, so they would not be able to come back. Second, they believed that this would bring Egypt and Israel into conflict—the Camp David Accords would effectively be rendered obsolete. Not because they would be denounced but because it would mean that Sinai would again be a theatre of conflict with Israel.
So there’s a political question, along with a strategic and national security question about how they view the current conflict. This is why they have been acting as a mediator alongside the Qataris to reach a ceasefire or at least a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel.
In other words, the Egyptians don’t want to let the Palestinian refugees in and build a wall to avoid a possible conflict with Israel if the refugees are allowed into the Sinai. Is it a purely security matter for Cairo?
It is a national security issue that goes to the core of the Camp David Accords. This is why we see many high-level engagements between the Israelis and the Egyptians over that question. Prime Minister Netanyahu understands, or at least the Egyptians hope that he understands, that this is a red line for Cairo at the moment.
Before the Russo-Ukrainian war, Saudi Arabia was one of the key allies of the United States in the region. They were aligned on the United States’ foreign policy. However, when the Russo-Ukrainian war happened, the United States and the collective Western decided to ask the Saudis to play in a way that would cause the oil price to go down, but the Saudis refused. Since this war, they have been gaining power, not only in the region but also starting to gain weight on the world stage with a more independent policy. How could you explain this move?
This applies not exclusively to the Saudis. Fresh off visits to New Delhi and the Middle East, from the atmosphere and my conversations, multipolarity didn’t feel like a distant term but a manifested reality gradually taking place around the globe. It’s not just the Middle Eastern powers, but also Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Brazil, you name it. What’s happening right now is that there is a power shift from the West to the East. And at this point, it is undeniable.
We’re living in a multi-dimensional, multipolar order. While the United States is still the world’s dominant security provider, in economic terms, it is no longer the leader. The rise of Asia is evidence of this.
Not only economics but also technology. The Asian powers, such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, are at the top of the technology food chain. So when you have these factors, which is, again, the shift of power from West to East, those middle powers and regional powers will focus on their national interest, and rightly so. And we, as Westerners, also need to recognise the fact that many countries used to be very aligned with us, but that’s not going to be the case anymore.
When I was in New Delhi for the Raisina Dialogue, listening to the diversity of views regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War among the attendees, what stood out to me was how different the perspectives on the war were outside the West. And I’m going to reiterate what the Indian foreign minister said: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”
Its clear that the game has changed. It’s not 1995 anymore and we’re mistaken in viewing the global environment as we used to 30 years ago. Different countries evolved, gained power, gained confidence, and are prioritising their national interest, as we do prioritise our national interest. This is not something that they should be ashamed of.
What Ukraine and Gaza, which occurred back-to-back, prove to them is that the West is not consistent. So, they ask, why should we be? If you are not consistent, why should we be consistent? If we are saying it’s just a matter of national interest, it’s also their national interest to maintain access to Russian energy and cooperate with Moscow because Russia is an important country.
When I mentioned India, Indonesia, or Brazil, those are big countries, demographically and economically. Those countries are difficult to ignore. And this is going to be the way forward. It’s not going to be an anomaly; it’s going to be the norm.
Egypt is a more or less important but declining player in the region. Iran has important ambitions, as does Saudi Arabia and Turkey. There’s also a war-torn Syria that has been recently reintegrated due to Saudi Arabia’s position in the Arab League. So, how could you describe the situation evolving in the Middle East, given the interests of every internal actor?
In my opinion, the original sin in the Middle East was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The missing balance of power in the region at this moment can be traced back to the fall of Baghdad. Because of that, Iran became a trans-regional power. The Gaza war is also a very important marker here, a watershed moment because Iran was able to activate four different theatres at the same time: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, all together synchronised. Why? Because we allowed this to happen strategically by invading Iraq and dismantling the Iraqi military. Even though ten years prior, George H. W. Bush kept Saddam in place because he understood the concept of balance of power and what it meant in terms of the future of the region.
So the region has a missing balance of power, and the resulting cycle of conflict is going nowhere. Why? Because we’re not able to contain aggressors in the region. We’re not able to build coalitions.
To give you an optimistic perspective, the favourable scenario is where the United States will act in a way that would build coalitions that seeks a balance of power. In my thesis, it was always not the Middle East; it was Asia, expanding the map, bringing India to the context, be able to rethink the map differently in a way that avoids us focusing on nation-building because America cannot do nation-building.
We need to build order in the region to coordinate the interests of these different parties because these interests are wildly divergent. If Iran wants to maintain control over four different capitals and expand that, this is a costly project. We need to build coalitions to check the aggressiveness of any regional power. That means Saudi Arabia and Egypt consolidate that core, giving them leeway and supporting them to lead by example.
I’m not going to go far in saying we need an “Arab NATO” since NATO is an exceptional vehicle for Europe based on specific historical circumstances. However, we need to bring the same concepts that Washington uses in the Indo-Pacific, from AUKUS to Quad, to the region.
We also need to think about the question of new strategic security coalitions because America maintained an exclusive bilateral relationship with its regional partners and did not cohere this into a broader multilateral format that will be able to take charge.
And would the pessimistic scenario mean to continue in the same way?
Yes, continuing the same way means more deterioration and more disintegration. So, yes, it sounds on paper like more of the same, but more of the same means more conflict, death, and destabilisation of trade, sea lanes, and energy supply lines. Therefore, it carries much weight and is a risk.
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