Analysis
As Iranian power recedes, Turkey and its Sunni allies are filling the vacuum
2025 could be a year of tremendous uncertainty in the Middle East
January 8, 2025 12:32
3 min read
2025 could be a year of tremendous uncertainty in the Middle East
January 8, 2025 12:32Last year was a historic year for the Middle East. It began with Israel locked in the opening stages of a war on several fronts that threatened to spill over into an all-out regional conflagration. With the commencement of open confrontation between Israel and Iran in April, this possibility appeared closer than ever.
Yet by the year’s end, the picture had substantially altered. From June onwards, Israel scored a series of strategic successes against the Iran-led regional bloc, leaving it bruised and diminished. The killings of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and October 7 architect Yahya Sinwar, the decimation of Lebanese Hezbollah’s senior and mid-level leadership, and the October 26 retaliation raid that destroyed Iranian air defences exposed Tehran’s proxy alliance as lacking any coherent response to Israel’s conventional superiority.
The history-making advance by the Syrian rebels on Damascus in late November was made possible only by this prior weakening of Iran and its proxies. The Lebanese Hezbollah that existed before mid-2024 would have advanced rapidly eastwards and almost certainly stopped Hayat Tahrir al Sham somewhere around Hama. But by November that organisation no longer existed.
The result of this sequence of events is that the strategic balance of the region has substantially shifted. So what might 2025 bring for the Middle East?
First, it is important to understand that the Iran-led regional alliance is down but by no means out. Tehran and its allies remain the main threat to Israel, to the West and to hopes for regional stability. Iran’s clients still control Lebanon. They have the upper hand in Iraq, where the Shia militias are a powerful force within the government of Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani. The Iran-aligned Houthis still control the Yemeni capital and the greater part of its coastline. As has been acutely apparent over the last few weeks, the Houthis are not susceptible to the usual cost-benefit analyses by which deterrence between states is built. Indifferent to the fate of their own people, 80 per cent of whom are dependent on international aid, the Yemeni Shia Islamists appear determined to continue their attacks on Israel and their terrorising of shipping on the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea route.
Similarly, Hamas’s refusal to surrender, despite the decimation of its forces in Gaza, is testimony to the continued loyalty that movement can inspire among its most dedicated cadres, and to its continued ability to suppress any sentiments of opposition to its rule.
Both these ongoing campaigns should be sufficient to cure any excessive optimism regarding Iran’s setbacks in 2024. Tehran’s conventional inferiority has been laid bare. But its ability to continue to weaponise poverty and the continued unrivalled popularity and vigour of political Islam at the popular level in the Arab world remain intact.
With the inauguration of a new US president Israel is likely to seek support for an invigorated campaign against Iran, with the ultimate objective now being the bringing down of the Iranian regime. There is in the Israeli political and security establishment a growing conviction that the Iranian regime is currently both more vulnerable than ever before, yet potentially more dangerous.
Its vulnerability comes from the blows inflicted on it in the second half of 2024. The danger is that with its proxy strategy severely set back, Iran may turn toward other elements of power projection. The ballistic missile programme and the nuclear project are the other two components. There appears to be a widespread view in Israeli leadership circles that the new incumbent in the White House will be in agreement regarding the need for a new, forward strategy against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Whether or not that is true is likely to become apparent in the course of 2025.
It is also important to bear in mind that the main effect of diminishing Iranian power in the region over the last year, in addition to a renewed respect for and awareness of Israeli capacities and power, is the advance of Turkey. HTS’s victory in Syria was a result of the strategic acumen and Islamist commitment of Turkish President Recep Tayepp Erdogan. Ankara’s domiciling of the Syrian rebels in the northwest of the country made possible the HTS offensive.
In the year ahead, Turkey will seek to consolidate its control of Syria by entrenching HTS and Sunni Islamist control and crushing alternative centres of power in the country. The Turkish/HTS taking of Damascus is likely to lead to a resurgence of Sunni political Islam in the region. This may also lead to conflict with Shia elements, for example in the framework of the continued Shia domination of Lebanon and Iraq. Many former officials of the Assad regime have made their way to Lebanon. It is likely that they may seek to foment unrest among non-Sunni supporters of the former regime against the new rulers.
But any notion that the revival of the fortunes of Sunni Islamism represents a net gain for the West and its allies should be dismissed.
The advance of Turkey and its clients raises an alternative banner for political Islam in the region, one with in many ways greater capacity and sophistication than Iran.
It introduces a third focus of power, in addition to the Iran-led bloc, and the loose alliance of US-aligned states centred on Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
2025 will see competition between these three blocs, with the stance of the US, and the extent of its involvement, perhaps the key element that will determine the course of events. Buckle up – the ride is far from over.