Who Wins in a Broken Middle East?
Last year I explored the future for political Islam in the region by examining the three dominant currents:
Salafi-Jihadi groups, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda
Iran’s Shia-led regional project
The nationalist Islamic axis spearheaded by Turkey and Qatar.
In light of recent events in the Middle East; the war on Gaza, the collapse of the Assad regime and HTS’s rise to power, and more recently the Israeli attacks on Iran, former strong players are weakening while others are charting a new influence map. It can be easy to get swept away with breaking news of strikes (the sirens don’t help) assassinations and other developments to lose sight of the broader picture and a potential new map of the Middle East - one that can be even more chaotic.
Three Things You Should Know:
A Weaker Iran
A weaker Iran will reorganize power alliances, proxy battles, and regional bargaining.
On the regional and international stage, Iran has already lost its footing: Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah has successfully removed Iran’s best-trained and best-equipped proxy. Hezbollah not only served as Iran’s military front in the Levant; it also acted as its economic outlet. For years, Hezbollah oversaw the sale of Iran’s sanctioned oil, providing the economically strained Islamic Republic with some breathing room. Another loss for Iran was the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, when rebel forces advanced on Damascus without much resistance, leaving Iran more isolated and shrinking its sphere of influence to roughly its geographic borders.
This brings us to the remaining players in the so-called axis of resistance: the Popular Mobilization Corps (PMC) in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis have charted their own negotiation path with the United States, and the PMC has considerably scaled down rhetoric and attacks since President Trump took office, giving added momentum to Iraq’s moderate government.
This shift of power—the Houthis’ independent negotiations and the PMC’s withdrawal—has greatly weakened one of Iran’s most powerful cards: negotiations by proxy. For decades, Iran adopted an offensive-defense strategy; by propping up proxies throughout the Middle East and using them to attack enemy targets, Tehran avoided negotiating on its own terrain, leaving talks to the groups it controlled. With that card gone, or at least paused, Iran has returned to the nuclear table.
Domestically, the regime is weaker as well. The protests after the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, the widespread trucker strikes in May 2025, and the creation of the United Youth of Iran in December 2022 all show a population increasingly displeased with leadership, civil-rights conditions, and economic hardship. Yet these protest movements are far from able to mount a government-seizing approach. Opposition, both domestic and abroad, lacks unity and cohesive projects and would be unable to form a government in the event of regime collapse. This leaves Iran prone to civil unrest and clashes, possibly leading to strengthened state control and a more authoritarian system.
Regardless of which scenario unfolds, one certainty is a weakened Iran, leaving a power vacuum in the region—a vacuum that might propel the PMC down an uncertain path with consequences for all, while giving the counter Turkish-Qatari project room to expand.
The Surviving Limbs:
With Hezbollah immobilized, Assad gone and Iran weakened, the axis of resistance, surviving limbs are faced with an uncertain future. The PMC in Iraq, while it has successfully integrated itself into the state apparatus, will lose the strategic direction Al Quds Force provided. Additionally, the arms and training that IRGC provided - which gave the PMC a leg up against other factions - will also affect their standing in Iraq’s security environment. Another breaking point is the group’s long internal fractioning, looking from the outside some might view the PMC as a coherent hegemon, but in reality there are different players with different ideological and leadership commitment and alliances, a great in-depth analysis of this transformation within the PMC can be found in Michael Knight’s work here. In the case of a collapsed Iranian regime, or a weakened one, the PMC might splinter into different groups based on the different goals and ideological adherence 1) Pragmatic current which mainly used the PMC umbrella to control key border crossings and create a parallel trafficking economy to self sustain, will continue focusing on the domestic gains and their control over key areas - possibly leading to an increased reliance on black market for revenue. 2)The Sistani faction is more domestically oriented and takes Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as its ideological reference. Sistani has opposed Iran’s plans for Iraq and called for a national-focused Shia movement. Liwaa al-Arin, the most prominent brigade, will likely be absorbed completely into the Iraqi state. 3) the hardliners, might pose the most challenge to the stability and future of Iraq; Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl Al Haq are completely aligned with Iran and are directly controlled by Al Quds Force, they enjoy the closest relationship with IRGC, a relationship that allowed for advanced weapons, training and intelligence sharing, with this central connection diminished these groups might find themselves in a fight or flight situation - our best prediction for their future direction will be clearer after the upcoming Iraqi elections. If Al Fath alliance, the hardliners political arm in the Iraqi government, suffers defeat it will signal their decline and the soon to be dismantling of the groups at the hands of the Iraqi state, with regional and international backing, a move that will inevitably force the hardliners to revert back to their founding as an insurgent group, re-introducing yet another cycle of violence to the Iraqi scene, increasing sectarian tension and possibly returning Iran to a civil war it struggled to move forward from.
A regional competition: The Iranian national project is too large to disappear. The question will be 1) who enjoys the spoils of war (energy, investment, etc.) and 2) who tries to control the new Middle East scenario. I have written before about some of the power games that are changing. The Iranian project up until a few months ago was a sprawling network of influence and proxies across Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria (and influential online). The US project is chaotic and fragmented. Dissolving one of its largest and most effective tools of soft power - USAID - deceased US power in the region. US intentions with Iran are driven and divided by the personal views of President Trump, support from the neoconservatives (Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton) and opposition from the far left (Bernie Sanders) mainstream Democrats (Tim Kaine) MAGA Republicans (Majorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon) and the libertarian Republicans (Thaomas Massie, Rand Paul). Frighteningly, there is the threat of ISIS on the Iranian border with Afghanistan - not only is a weakened Iran means more lax borders fighters can easily cross, linking the ISIS strong Khurasan division to its Iraq one, the group might also seize a weakness to attack the Shia power, triggering another wave of sectarian war that would reverberate from Tehran to Beirut.
But the project which is gaining momentum is the Turkish/Qatari project. For over a decade Turkey and Qatar have been using both soft and hard power tools to advance their Islamist Nationalist project in the region. In Egypt as well as in Tunis they backed the Muslim Brotherhood governments that came to power following the protests of the Arab Spring. In Syria they took a more aggressive stance, openly arming, training and financing radical militant groups such as Ahrar As-Sham.
Both Turkey and Qatar host Muslim Brotherhood networks, acting as strategic hubs for their global reach. The Brotherhood, once viewed as a primarily political movement, has grown increasingly radical in recent years as I have written and shown. The war on Gaza has particularly boosted their audience and popularity. This recent escalation includes openly advocating violent opposition or even revolutionary overthrow of governments they deem oppressive or insufficiently aligned with their ideology. This radical turn signals an increasing willingness by Turkey and Qatar to indirectly or directly support destabilizing actions as instruments of regional influence. If you host an entity which calls for actions against moderate states like Jordan, you are de facto supporting the position.
The interplay between these competing regional projects—Iranian resilience although with vulnerabilities, American strategic incoherence, and an assertive Turkish-Qatari alliance—creates a complex, volatile scenario. The Middle East stands at a critical juncture, with each actor seeking to reshape the region’s power balance. How these dynamics unfold in the coming months and years will affect regional stability, determining who ultimately controls the spoils of this geopolitical rivalry and the levers of influence across our region.
My Take:
I previously wrote a piece called A Radical Deja Vu, about how developments with the Muslim Brotherhood and radicalization just repeat their actions from the late 1990s. So, here we have another Deja vu, but from 2003. A US president who campaigned on ‘no more forever wars’ and looked to lessen US presence abroad now finds himself being pulled back by the neoconservatives much like how Michael Corleone gets pulled back by the family business. But could Iran be a repeat of Iraq? First, history will see the occupation of Iraq as a failed experiment. Iraq is much better off without Saddam Hussein, but for many years it was an anarchic, violent, desperate place as a result of poor planning and mistaken strategies. The pain of the Iraq project is why many of us in Jordan and elsewhere dread another nation building ambition in the region.
Iran is not a centralized system like Assad’s Syria or Saddam’s Iraq. It is not so dependent on one man. It is a system. It is more like the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Neither of those states collapsed in a way that fostered in democracy and prosperity. Russia went through turmoil that brought about organized crime and oligarchy before choosing iron-fisted management. Yugoslavia erupted into violence and escaped after years of fighting and also US and EU investment and support. But the US and EU cannot guarantee that level of support for a collapsed Iran 1) Iran is not part of Europe and eligible for EU style partnerships 2) Iran is a very large, diverse state and expensive to engage. 3) Iran has gone through years of US actions in the region as well as domestic anti-US propaganda. No new entity that results from US support or funding will be easily accepted by the population - at least not yet. 4) The US and EU are already committed to supporting Ukraine and have sent money and weapons even to the point of controversy. They will not have the capacity to also assist nation-building in Iran (outside of the infamous roundtables, seminars, policy papers, and notes of concern). Lindsay Graham shared the neoconservative outlook on ‘going all in’ on attacking Iran. “Wouldn’t the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn’t Iran be better off? It’s time to close the chapter on the Ayatollah and his henchmen. Let’s close it soon and start a new chapter in the Mideast, one of tolerance, hope, and peace.” Take that quote apart and ask what it would require. It would require a more unified US stance, it would require resources the US and EU do not have to give, and it would take years. Given the recent records of Afghanistan and Iraq, we would be naive to assume that an attack without an exit strategy, and an attempted regime change with no endgame would be in the best interest of the region. Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be stopped. Iran’s autocracy over its own people can be resisted, Iranian hegemony through proxies can be weakened, but the replacement of diplomacy and joint action with bombing and hegemonic destruction is a serious error and a lesson we should have learned from recent history. It was said most succinctly by His Majesty King Abdullah II in Europe yesterday:
“History teaches us that wars are rarely just about territory. They are battles over worldviews—over which ideas and ideals will shape our future..... peace imposed by force or fear would never last.”