The Middle East: Reflections from the Side-lines Part 2
In Part 2 of a new series of ‘reflections from the side-lines’ of geopolitics, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton - Senior Advisor in geopolitics at Audley, Associate Fellow at RUSI, and former SAS officer - analyses and offers predictions for politics in the Middle East.
The views expressed by the author in this piece are their own, and do not represent those of Audley. Written 23rd January 2025.
Read Part 1 here.
Biden has provided one critical input to the shaping of world affairs over the past half-year: dithering weakness. Nowhere has this been more in evidence than in the Middle East, where the tectonic plates have shifted more than anywhere else on earth. Netanyahu has grasped Biden’s failing as his opportunity to re-order the entire balance of power in the region, as well as his free ticket to revive his own political fortunes at home. On the back of it, he has torn up a US-stamped rule book that has governed and restricted Israel’s shaping of its near-abroad for the past seventy years. And all this with little more than an occasional, toothless Presidential censure – certainly nothing so fundamental as to interrupt the flow of US weapons and intelligence.
Israel’s dismantling of the offensive capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s two proxies on its borders, and the near complete destruction in a retaliatory strike by the Israeli air force of Iran’s own air defences – leaving the theocracy vulnerable to the point of near-helplessness – led directly to the fall of the Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria. With Russia, Assad’s other guarantor, mired in Ukraine and therefore also unable to intervene militarily, pro-government forces across Syria simply melted away as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist militia abetted by Turkey, swept down on Damascus from its stronghold in the north-west. Follow-up Israeli airstrikes put paid to the rump legacy of Syria’s air defences and its air and missile forces, all as failsafe in the event of the emergent regime in Damascus returning to a position of active hostility towards Israel. The sum of this has left Netanyahu free to welcome in Donald Trump’s second term with his country seemingly in a position of strength and security not seen since the end of the Yom Kippur War.
Although it is still too fluid a situation for us to be definitive about the winners and losers of what has occurred since Israeli troops crossed into Lebanon on October 1, it is rather easier to identify who has lost. Both are autocracies: Russia and Iran. For Putin, Russia’s 2015 direct military intervention to secure Syria for the Assad regime and then to sustain it in power has become something of a leitmotif for his and Russia’s dependability as an ally. That has now been called seriously into question; the only direct support afforded to Assad came in the form of refuge in Moscow for the dictator and his immediate family. It is a sign of weakness that will not have gone unnoticed by the swathe of Putin acolytes across sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, who are reliant, to a greater or lesser degree, on Putin’s assurance of hard power. It also chips away at the Russian President’s own position internally. Though not yet threatening him directly, the shockwave of Syria can only add to pressures emanating from the continuing ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine – planned to last three weeks, now about to enter its third year – and the still simmering fall-out from Prigozhin’s failed coup, more particularly the ominously sluggish reaction to it by elements of the Russian security apparatus. The Siloviki will be taking note. Then, there’s the setback to Russian strategic ambitions on the southern, Mediterranean flank of NATO, represented by the forced evacuation of warships and submarines from Latakia, the Russian naval base on the coast of Syria (their only one in the Med) to a pro tempore alternative in less-than-stable Libya.
But if events in the Middle East are proving to be a setback for Russia, they are an unmitigated disaster for Iran, or for its regime at least. Fifteen months ago, a spider’s web of Iranian proxies encircled the state of Israel. Israeli intelligence services seem not to have been as aware of the threat as they should have been, as each proxy exerted different pressures at different points, probing for weaknesses and, all the time, planning. Now, but a single strand of that web remains intact. Only the Houthis in Yemen, with their ability to cause global disruption by denying access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, remain extant as players to be reckoned with.
Russia and Iran this month signed a mutual defence agreement. It does not change the strategic configuration of the region. United, anyway, in their shared hatred of the West, they have been militarily in support of one another since finding common cause in Syria, reinforcing that through Iran supplying Shaheed drones to Russia in exchange for nuclear technology and know-how. Feeling the need to formalise their alliance reflects the deterioration of their positions, but it also represents a further wake-up call to the West. With its carefully nurtured web of proxy actors no longer there to fight its corner, and with its own air defences in tatters, Iran may now see the development of a nuclear weapon and its delivery system as its only recourse. In that light, the newly minted treaty takes on new and ominous meaning.
What’s Next?
Disclaimer: I am ringing my guesstimates about with the Teflon caveat that this is what could happen, not what will happen. In Donald Trump, whose influence will be felt in all of the major political shifts of the next few years, we are dealing with one of the most unpredictable leaders in modern history.
The shifting balance of power in the region and the current vulnerability of Iran can only be seen by Netanyahu – and perhaps by Trump too – as the greatest and maybe the last opportunity to remove by direct action the threat of a future Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. This could take the form of surgical air strikes, presaging and supporting ground operations in specific areas for specific periods to destroy nuclear facilities, including those that are subterranean. But beyond this limited strategic objective could lie a grand strategic aim, that of effecting regime change itself. One might precipitate the other, through simultaneous covert operations against the leadership and other key actors and critical points – and all with the active support of the US, and possibly its direct participation too. For the best chance of success, the time is now, before Iran can reconstitute its air defences and re-establish its networks, and whilst Russia is still committed to, and therefore distracted by, active operations in Ukraine. If this scenario, or a version of it, were to unfold, we would witness a major shift in the balance of power, not just in the region, but globally, with one of the four horsemen of the autocracies pitched from the saddle and an ancient people freed from the yoke.
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Look out for Jamie’s reflections and predictions for Ukraine and Russia, coming soon.
Read his previous ‘reflections from the side-lines,’ ‘Geo-politics, The Threat to The West, and The European Dilemma,’ here.
For more on the decisions moving the geopolitical landscape, listen to Audley’s global affairs podcast The Diptel here.
By Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Senior Advisor at Audley and former SAS officer.
Image credit/Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/License