The “Middle East” is a geographical term with many definitions. The most widely accepted one is that it consists primarily of the Arab world and a number of its non-Arabic-speaking neighbours; chiefly, Iran, Turkey and Israel. Israel's position in the “Middle Eastern order” is much different than that of Iran and Turkey, which are linked to the Arab world by religion, despite the cultural and ethnic differences between them. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Middle Eastern order is the “Arab regional order” plus the Arabs' strong neighbours that are vying for control over it — namely, Israel, Iran and Turkey. In terms of outward form, at least, the balance of powers in this Middle Eastern order leans in favour of the Arab world. This far-flung world covers an area of 14 million square km: Iran has an area of 1.7 million square km; Turkey, 750,000 square km; and Israel, 22,000 square km. The Arab world has a population of over 400 million people (Iran and Turkey's populations are approximately 80 million each, and Israel's population is eight million). Total income of the Arab world is twice that of Turkey, three times that of Iran and 10 times that of Israel. Yet, according to realities on the ground, the actual or effective balance of powers is the diametric opposite. The Arab world has lost most of its rounds of military and political conflict with Israel, which still occupies the bulk of Palestinian territory and the Syrian Golan Heights. Iran has succeeded in expanding its influence in the region after having penetrated and threatened the sovereignty of a large number of Arab states, especially Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain. After its emergence as a major political and economic force in the region, Turkey now treats the Arab world with an imperialist arrogance reminiscent of the era of the Ottoman caliphate. Therefore, it is the Arab world today that, in spite of its immense resources and potential, appears as the “sick man” of the region whom neighbouring countries hope to hasten to his death and then scramble to secure their share of the inheritance. The Arab world, as we know, is existentially and integrally linked with the rise of Islam as a religion and with the Islamic conquests as a movement of major historical interactions at the political, cultural, social and economic levels. As it was an Arab prophet that received and disseminated the revelation of this divine faith, it was only natural that the banner of the Islamic calling would be borne, after the death of its prophet, by Arab figures, and that the Islamic conquests would be launched from the Arabian Peninsula under Arab commanders. In like manner, it was natural that Arabs would lead the Islamic empire in its early eras, especially during the periods of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the Umayyad empire, before leadership passed to non-Arab peoples or dynasties in subsequent phases. It is also well known that the Islamic conquests had different effects in different regions. In the area that is now known as the Arab world, the people not only embraced the Islamic faith but also adopted the language of the Qur'an as their language and the vehicle for their culture and civilisation, even for those inhabitants who did not convert to Islam. In other regions, such as Iran and Turkey, the people embraced Islam as a religion but incorporated it into their particular cultural and civilisational fabric. When the winds of “ethno -nationalist” ideas began to blow and assert their powerful impact on the formation of political maps of a new world order, led by the colonialist West, it was easy for a country such as Iran to retain its Islamic faith and adopt the Shia doctrine as a state religion under the Safavid kingdom without relinquishing its “Persian” nationalism. This was perfectly clear in the era of the “Shahenshah” Riza Pahlavi. In like manner, it was easy for Turkey, under those circumstances, to retain its Islamic faith without relinquishing its “Turanist” identity, as was clear in the era of the Ataturk republic. But for those countries that were now Arab in language and culture, it was difficult for them to revert to their ancient civilisational roots, be they Pharaonic, Babylonian or Phoenician. They would encounter a major dilemma when, in subsequent eras, their political and intellectual elites were unable to identify and distinguish between “national”, “ethnic” and “religious” dimensions when formulating policies and strategies. The competition between Iran and Turkey to control the region had continued for a long time until Turkey settled it in its favour when it became the seat of the Ottoman Empire, which asserted hegemony over the Middle East for many centuries. As the Ottoman Empire entered its decline, Britain embraced the Zionist project as a means to prevent the emergence of a unified Arab state from the Ottoman ruins. Toward this end, London pledged its support for the Zionist project and furnished it everything it needed to grow and thrive. By the time that Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, a new player was fully prepared to assert a powerful influence on regional events and interplay. It is noteworthy that that new artificially created interloper quickly found common ground with (Ataturk) Turkey and (Pahlavi) Iran, despite the differences in ethnic and religious identities, in the framework of the US-led Western camp during the Cold War. It is simultaneously important to note that a pan-Arab current opposed to that Iranian-Turkish-Israeli triangle emerged at the time. It was led by Nasserist Egypt and supported by the Soviet Union. However, it did not survive long under the impact of the debilitating blows delivered by the defeat in the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, the death of Gamel Abdel-Nasser in 1970 and the separate peace treaty that Anwar Al-Sadat signed with Israel in 1979. In tandem with the steady erosion of the Arab nationalist trend, a resurgent Islamist trend, in its extremist and moderate forms, had a growing influence on the policies of regional powers and the balance of powers between them. Two major events had an enormous impact on the dynamics of the balance of power in the Middle Eastern order: Iran's Islamic Revolution and the rise to power, through the ballot box, of the Islamist-oriented Refah (Welfare) Party and its successor, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), in Turkey. The first event gave rise to a Shia fundamentalist political system based on the principle known as vilayet-e faqih, or the guardianship of Islamic jurists. The development precipitated alarm throughout the region at the spectre of Iranian designs to “export the revolution”, which contributed to the outbreak of the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran War. There followed a series of events that ultimately led to the destruction of Iraq and gave Iran the opportunity to penetrate deeply and pervasively into that large Arab country. The second event gave rise to a new Turkey capable of achieving major economic and political achievements. Gradually, it began to present itself as a force determined to steer developments in the region, especially following the eruption of the Syrian crisis. To the foregoing we should add that Israel was the power that most benefitted from the interplay in the region over recent decades, and is now in a position to consider terminating the Palestinian cause. When we put all these facts together, we can only conclude that the Arab world, as a whole, has emerged as the greatest loser from the whole gamut of developments. No longer an effective player in the management of regional affairs, it has been reduced to the stage on which the three neighbours — Israel, Iran and Turkey — are competing to stake out their realms of control and influence. The situation in the region today is such that there is no room for any Arab state, on its own, to emerge from its current problems, regardless of the size of the country or its population, or even its socio-political cohesion. Saudi Arabia, the richest Arab country, faces grave security challenges along its southern border and it is leading a costly regional war whose outcome cannot be guaranteed. Egypt, at the heart of the Arab world and the most pivotal and influential state, faces even graver security challenges on its eastern, southern and western borders. Meanwhile, the other less-influential and less-powerful countries are hardly better off and, indeed, most of them are gripped by civil war and strife. Clearly, therefore, the notions of “Egypt comes first” or “Saudi Arabia comes first” that were called into play in previous crises are now useless. Either the Arab countries rise together or they fall together. From time to time, some people in the Arab world pop up and start circulating the idea that Iran is the greatest threat to the security of the region because of its fundamentalist sectarian order. They say we need a “moderate” Islamic coalition to counter it. To me, such ideas are a recipe for igniting sectarian strife that would flare up throughout the entire region. In fact, I believe that they are little more than a sinister cover for the pernicious call to create a “Sunni” alliance to lock horns with the “Shia” threat. This is precisely what Israel wants and it is already using various means to become a part of that coalition. The Arab world has only one way out of its predicament: a serious drive to rebuild the “Arab order” on new foundations, different in nature from those that were proposed in the 1950s and 1960s. The new Arab order must be one that respects the nation state, that guarantees the rights inherent in the concept of citizenship, and that empowers the peoples of this order to participate in the processes that forge its future, in the framework of a thoroughly studied and carefully designed integrative process. Is anyone out there ready to take up the challenge? The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
