Intimidated by Iran’s belligerent and suicidal proxies, pressured into submission by a craven, isolationist USA, countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are succumbing to the Islamic Republic as the new regional powerhouse.
Only a dilapidated Israel, torn by internecine strife, stands in the way of Iran’s ascendance – but not for long. Under inordinate American pressure, even Israel has refrained from retaliating having been attacked by 300 Iranian projectiles in April.
Iran’s proxies – most notably Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the militias in Syria and Iraq – have created an unbreachable firewall around it. Iran uses them to bully countries and regimes in the Middle East into submission.
Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs visited Tehran after four decades incommunicado. He begged the ayatollahs to ease up on the infiltration and subversion in his country. But Iran is hellbent on regime change there.
Having been blackmailed by the USA into retreat in its fight against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, snatching defeat from the jaws of unequivocal victory, the Saudis gave up on their erstwhile crumbling and unreliable geriatric ally across the ocean. They and the Abu Dhabis resorted to a dynamic and assertive China which successfully brokered in short order last year a deal with Iran and the resumption of diplomatic relations.
The latest of the toppling dominoes are Turkey and Egypt, both ostensibly allies of the West. Both are cozying up to Iran, now widely perceived as a proxy of China and Russia in the Middle East. Egypt has been conducting high-level negotiations with Iran ever since the summit in Riadh in November 2023.
The USA might be next to make peace with a nuclear Iran, should it reconcile itself to the inevitable redrawing of the balance of power in the region.
The USA, in the meantime, is on the precipice of another Trump presidency, marked by extreme isolationism. China and its newly acquired satellite Russia, are on the ascendance, geopolitically. They are also far more reliable allies than the West as Zelensky and al-Assad could confirm.
Israel is caught in a maelstrom: the USA, its only partner, is a broken reed. Iran, its bitterest foe, soon to go nuclear, undeterred, committed to the extermination of the Jewish state, is undoubtedly the next regional power bar none. Israel is the only entity to block Iran’s way to regional hegemony. But not for long, it seems.
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