Pax Israeliana for the Middle East

The youngest country in the Middle East is the one redrawing the region’s contours. Israel didn’t yet exist when two diplomats—Britain’s Mark Sykes and the Frenchman François Georges-Picot—sketched a map of influence in May 1916 to divide the provinces of the dying Ottoman Empire. In the folds of those poorly drawn outlines, the seeds of a century of conflict grew. The agreement inaugurated the era of Franco-British tutelage, under the maxim of “divide and rule,” pitting Arab tribes against each other after seducing them with promises of nation-states.

Today, the new Trump-Netanyahu tandem has replaced the rules and guidelines of those diplomats with missiles and drones to reshape the Middle East. The order established after World War I by the Sykes-Picot Agreement has been challenged at least twice. The first time was with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, following the partition of Palestine and its subsequent occupation. The second time was with the rise of the Islamic State, which in 2014 temporarily erased the border separating Syria from Iraq.

With the last 29 months of the offensive there comes a third wave. Israel has bombed seven neighboring countries: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Qatar and Yemen, in addition to Gaza, and occupied new territories in the first two. This cartographic upheaval also has a political dimension that aspires to establish a new paradigm in the region. It puts an end to the era of Western tutelage—first Franco-British and then American—with the withdrawal of U.S. Troops, and opens another where a Pax Israeliana is being imposed, with the Jewish state as the new regional hegemonic power. New alliances are being forged that revive old colonialist dynamics with a supremacist tinge of military domination.

The Cold War context has been replaced by an increasingly multipolar world in which the United States is reluctant to transition and relinquish its position as global leader. 9,500 km away as the crow flies from Washington, Israel is preparing to lead a new Middle East. The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, armed with his MAGA doctrine, and the rise of far-right figures in European leadership positions have opened what Israeli hawks consider “a unique historical opportunity” to fulfill the expansionist ambitions of the Zionist far right.

This is not only about consolidating Israel’s military and technological supremacy over its neighbors—Israel having emerged victorious from the two major Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, and ending in a draw in 1973—but also about reshaping regional alliances. The Abraham Accords have served as a roadmap by which the U.S. Has shifted the international community’s focus from the recognition of a Palestinian state to placing Israel at the center, and its recognition by the rest of the Arab countries as the new objective.

Hamas’s attack on October 7, far from derailing these agreements and strengthening the recent rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, has left the Gulf monarchies between a rock and a hard place. The historic competition between the Sunni powers and Shia Iran for leadership of the Muslim world has been the flame that Netanyahu and his advisors have skillfully stoked over the past two decades to forge a tactical alliance, transforming their former enemies into new allies.

Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have already positioned themselves as partners of Israel, even though Netanyahu’s sphere of influence simultaneously fuels the Islamophobic rhetoric of his other allies, represented by the far right in Europe. Three Sunni monarchies—Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—played a key role in Israel’s defense against Iran’s missile response during the 12-day war in 2025. However, for now, participating in the offensive is a much more significant undertaking.

The tired old Shia-Sunni dichotomy has proven far less decisive than the rivalry between two of the region’s three major non-Arab powers: Israel and Iran. The third, Turkey—a NATO member that has yet to make a move—remains Israel’s last remaining competitor. In this equation, the two Muslim theocracies—Sunni Riyadh and Shia Tehran—have ultimately been displaced in the Middle East by the Jewish state.

The only way out of the crossfire in which the Gulf monarchies find themselves is to join Israel’s side. This alliance is difficult for Arab public opinion to accept, given the vivid images of tens of thousands of Muslim children dying of starvation, bombings, or amputations by Israeli drones. Within their palaces, the region’s leaders also have fresh memories of the so-called Arab Spring, which since 2011 has dethroned six Arab autocrats—from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria—and plunged their countries into bankruptcy or war. The third path is embodied by the countries that have defied the established order: the oil powers of Iraq and Iran, along with pan-Arabist Syria. This is the path that has led to an inevitable and tragic end for Saddam Hussein, Ali Khamenei, and Bashar al-Assad—who together held power for 85 years.

The emerging new paradigm moves away from diplomacy and back to the law of the strongest: align with Israel or be eliminated—literally or economically. Even those who have submitted to the new Israeli order, such as Qatar and the new Syria, have been bombed by Israeli fighter jets. Just as the old European powers did, the young Israel is resorting to the same “divide and rule” strategy in Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, fomenting schisms between Shiites and Sunnis, and between Arab tribes and Kurds, Christians, or Druze.

Messianic vision

In this new tandem, anchored in the personalistic politics and messianic vision of both leaders, it is Netanyahu who leads the new strategy in the Middle East and who convinced Trump to derail the diplomatic process by attacking a country while still at the negotiating table. The Europe that was once the architect of the Middle East, now fading amidst smokescreens, has been left out of this new equation. The decision lies with its own leaders, who have preferred to be swept along by the expanding wave of this bellicose duo rather than defend international law or European interests in the region.

Trump and Netanyahu’s narrative about the need for regime change in Iran sounds like déjà vu, especially to Iranian ears. Iranians are trying to rid themselves of the ayatollahs’ regime, but not to have the U.S. Or Mossad impose a new Shah on them. They haven’t forgotten Operation Ajax, through which the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during 25 long years of repression and plundering of Iran’s national resources.

The original sin was the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadegh when he attempted to nationalize Iranian oil. This eventually triggered the 1979 Islamic Revolution and, subsequently, the co-optation of the militias it supports in the region. Seven decades later, young Iranians wonder what their country would be like today if British and American spies hadn’t thwarted its first democratic government. From a historical perspective, the current attempt at regime change in Iran is, in essence, a belated effort to undo the consequences of the 1953 coup.

There is nothing to suggest that reimposing a new order in the region by force will offer a different outcome in 2026 than it did a century ago.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition