Geopolitical, strategic layers of conflict unfolding in Greater Mideast
By Armen Petrosyan
Regional affairs expert
The change in world order, which started in Eastern Europe with the Ukrainian war in February 2022, as predicted, created prerequisites for substantive changes in some other regions as well. The regions that were inevitably affected by the indirect confrontation between Russia and the West, as well as those where there are frozen deep conflicts and undisguised revisionist aspirations, became the scene of such developments. As it is usually recorded in similar historical periods, such processes usually lead to radical changes in geopolitical and security environments in different regions.
The most obvious examples of the abovementioned are the substantive changes recorded in the framework of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue in the South Caucasus, as well as the multi-layered, hybrid confrontation reactivated in the Middle East by the latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course, it is hard to see a direct connection in the activation processes of the two conflicts mentioned above. However, the time span of the developments, as well as the highly harmonious strategic cooperation between the main players Azerbaijan and Israel, inevitably generalize the logical chain of events. Hence, the one-day aggression of September 19, 2023, unleashed by Azerbaijani authorities against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, who were exhausted from a 10-month siege, may have been a little surprise for the expansionist Aliyev regime, but the calculated maximum result of this political plan led to the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and the forced displacement of more than 150,000 local Armenians who left Nagorno-Karabakh since 2020.
Historical Nagorno-Karabakh inhabited by Armenians for millennia was completely depopulated. The Azerbaijani authorities could not have carried out this operation without shadow deals, especially with the key ally Turkey, as well as with Russia, which assumed the role of guarantor of security in Nagorno-Karabakh by the Trilateral Statement of November 9, 2020, and deployed its peacekeeping units in the region. One of the obvious components of the mentioned but yet-to-be-made-public agreement was Azerbaijan’s refusal to negotiate on Western platforms that compete with Russia in the historical stage of global confrontation and the renewal of the talk of the implementation of regional routes unblocking process with corridor logic.
As for the geopolitical and regional political consequences of the process in Nagorno-Karabakh, they are actually within the logic of the development of the realities recorded by the results of the 44-Day War. That is to say, as a result of the Russia-Turkey-Azerbaijan deal, the positions of another regional player, Iran, are once again hit significantly, as well as the positions of the Western players, Washington and Brussels — who initiated active substantive steps aimed at reducing Moscow’s role in the South Caucasus after the start of the Ukraine war.
Azerbaijan’s successful military-strategic operation could not but inspire Israel, one of its key partners in the large region. The latter has long sought to find a radical solution to the most explosive and bloody Palestinian issue in the world today, especially concerning the Gaza Strip, which has a population of about 2.4 million Palestinians and is considered one of the most densely populated regions on earth.
The surprise large-scale attack of the Islamic organization Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, that caused unprecedented human, material, and reputational damage (with more than 1,300 lives and 240 captives taken) became a very opportune occasion for the implementation of such a policy.
Of course, the Al-Aqsa Flood military operation contained enormous miscalculations at the tactical level, despite pursuing the most serious strategic goals. In particular, the timing of the attack was also determined to disrupt the Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization process, which is of strategic importance for solving the Palestinian problem.
This is a cornerstone circumstance because, for example, the Abraham Accords signed between a number of important Arab countries (such as the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) and Israel in 2020–2021 with the mediation of the US were rightly assessed by Palestinians as a strategic omission since the logic of acting with a common pan-Arab front against the Jewish state was undermined. It implied a complete solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict in one package, exclusively along the borders existing before the 1967 Six-Day War and the creation of a Palestinian state with East Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.
Especially since the middle of 2023, the Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization process reactivated by the efforts of the White House — one of the key preconditions of which was the demand for the creation of the Palestinian state — gradually lost its importance compared to other strategic opportunities promised to Al-Riyadh (such as the implementation of the Saudi nuclear program and new opportunities for cooperation in the military-technical sphere).
If successful, the process would definitely have a negative impact on the implementation of the ultimate goals of the Palestinian movement. Therefore, in the context of the above-mentioned, the relentless war between Israel and Hamas, which has been going on for five months, has solved the Palestinian side’s problem at least in the medium term, temporarily disrupting the Riyadh-Tel Aviv settlement.
As for Israel, the current situation uses the realities of the global order no less successfully, based on the logic of the “war is an opportunity” formula. In particular, the explicit goal is to maximally change the current status quo of the Palestinian issue as a cancerous unresolved legacy left over from the previous world order. That is, to establish full control over the Gaza Strip, at least in the short term, and later, if possible, to do away with the plan for the formation of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli Army is carrying out a “punitive operation” in Gaza known as “Iron Swords”, the declared goal of which is to remove the hold of Hamas over Gaza and to form a more controllable government in the region. Meanwhile, it can be concluded from the current three-phase operation of the Israeli army that Tel Aviv’s plans in Gaza are more profound, aimed at the desolation of the territory as much as possible. Despite the constant calls and demands of the international community, as well as Israel’s key allies, the most right-wing, pro-religious cabinet formed throughout the history of Israel continues its military operations with obvious elements of crimes against humanity (as a result of Israeli Armed Forces’ actions that claimed 28,000 victims, left 67,000 wounded, and displaced 70% of the region’s population). However, the professed goals of the Israeli side have not yielded significant results, especially because of the principled stand of Egypt and Jordan, which are also supported by Iran, Turkey, other Arab and Muslim countries, the United Nations, and the European Union.
The war in Gaza has a deep geopolitical layer. This is also the reason that it carries predictable risks of continuous expansion and turning into a regional-scale war, despite the noticeable efforts of its main actors to contain it.
In particular, one of the obvious layers of this confrontation is Israel’s efforts at weakening Iran’s regional influence and disintegrating the “axis of resistance”. This fits into the logic of Israel’s primary program, aimed at improving its security, in general, and finally neutralizing possible threats from pro-Iranian groups located in Syria and Lebanon, in particular. Alongside the Israel-Hamas confrontation, the military tension on the Israel-Lebanon border and the frequent Israeli military operations in Syria are aimed at this.
Despite the apparent difficulties, however, the realities of today’s world let us assess the implementation of the above-mentioned programs of Israel as very realistic in theoretical terms. Of course, the Israelis cannot succeed without the all-around support provided to them by their allies, especially the United States, at the military, diplomatic-political, financial, and psychological levels. It is precisely thanks to the diplomatic and strategic support of Washington that Israel is able, in the face of various external pressures, to continue solving its problems in Gaza at the expense of deepening the humanitarian disaster there.
One of the strategic agendas followed by the US is to neutralize the effective united anti-Israeli action in the region by involving formal players, such as various Arab-Muslim governments. However, it should be stated that the existing deep competitive environment in the region between a number of players (including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Iran, etc.) does not already allow the formation of a united anti-Israel front. As an example, the weakening of Iran’s regional influence and escalating tensions between Egypt and Israel or Egypt and the US are in the interests of many of the above-mentioned players.
This is the reason why a number of players with significant potential to influence Israel, in particular, and the war, in general, do not initiate more substantive actions than some diplomatic steps and strong anti-Israel rhetoric. For example, the lion’s share of Israel’s oil supplies is provided by Turkey. Thus, it would have been much more influential if the Turkish ruling elite, instead of issuing anti-Israeli statements that regularly accuse Tel Aviv of committing genocide, cut the oil supply from Turkey to Israel even for a week. Such a measure could have made a significant impact on Tel Aviv’s ability to continue the war. Iran, in particular, has repeatedly brought up this tactic in conversations, but it has not yet been implemented due to the aforementioned competitive realities.
Even if we put the war in Gaza aside, there would still be obvious tendencies to increase tensions in the region. Although such regional tensions are often evaluated within the framework of the US-Iran confrontation, they seem to be mostly engrained in the nature of the Middle East. In particular, there are many non-state players involved in regional processes, who are associated with some Middle Eastern and extra-regional players yet not fully influenced by them. Among them are the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine, Ansarullah (the Houthis) in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, and several resistance groups in Syria, along with a number of terrorist groups such as the Daesh (Islamic State) and Al-Qaeda, which have always taken advantage of any tension arising in the region to advance their goals and interests. Vivid examples of the role played by non-state players are the destabilization of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden by the Yemeni Ansarullah in support of Hamas, the regular targeting of Israeli territory by Hezbollah, the attacks against American military bases by Iraqi and Syrian groups, and the terrorist activities of the Daesh in Iran.
To summarize, it can be confirmed that deep geopolitical changes are manifesting in the Middle East as well. They have had a substantive impact on the geopolitical and security image of this region. Various military tensions in the region, with unique characteristics, warn of the possibility of a larger confrontation, despite global efforts to avoid it.