President Donald Trump has signed a law ending all American sanctions on Syria, one month after the Islamist former rebels who now run the government joined the fight against the Islamic State. Throughout the year, Middle East Policy has covered many such disruptions of the regional order, from Iran’s terrible 2024 (and its even worse 2025) to the new US agenda for failed Arab states, Saudi Arabia’s out-maneuvering Washington on Israel normalization, and the Red Sea’s transition into a hybrid security complex.
Readers can access our recent and archival coverage in an Early View of the Winter 2025 journal; our special issues, The October 7 Emergencies and The Israel-Iran War; and our offerings from Fall 2025, Summer 2025, and Spring 2025. If you find this newsletter useful, please forward to others you believe will benefit, and consider following us on the social media sites X, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.
One of our five most-read articles, an open-access analysis by Thomas Juneau, explored Iran’s annus horribilis—by which he referred to 2024. Published just a few weeks before Israel’s unprecedented strikes on nuclear scientists and infrastructure, the piece inventoried the Islamic Republic’s setbacks and miscalculations in the wake of the October 7 attacks:
Israel pounded Hamas in the Gaza Strip; the group has not been vanquished but is severely weakened. Hezbollah, long the jewel in the crown of Iran-backed armed groups, also suffered heavy blows at the hands of Israel, especially in the second half of the year. The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the only state among the Islamic Republic’s regional partners, collapsed in December after a rebel offensive that lasted less than two weeks.
Perhaps most important, “Tit-for-tat exchanges with Israel in April and October humiliatingly illustrated Iran’s relative conventional military inferiority.” However, Juneau cautioned in May, the regime’s demise cannot be taken for granted: “The coming years will undoubtedly see aggressive Iranian efforts to claw back its losses.”
Indeed, the regime is doing so, even after the June 2025 war with Israel and the United States. In his timely deep dive, Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi highlighted the areas where Tehran was the most vulnerable and those where it demonstrated resilience. Israel severely damaged air-defense and radar systems, according to a confidential source, and drones were little help given the distances they had to cover. However, the author showed, Iran’s missile launches penetrated the Israeli homeland.
Amid “serious concerns…about the Islamic Republic’s future,” Bagheri Dolatabadi observed, the regime took several immediate steps, including restructuring the system of security advisers, purging spies, and passing laws to prevent the disclosure of damage to the nuclear program. On the potential for a second war, the author saw the success of Iranian missiles against Israel’s defenses as potentially more of a sticking point than the nuclear program—if talks are to resume.
To understand if a diplomatic route is still possible, Banafsheh Keynoush’s open-access article probed the history of the nuclear crisis to determine lessons that should inform future negotiations. “Limiting Iran’s enrichment capacity in exchange for relief of sanctions on Iranian defense programs, the rebuilding of homeland defenses, and the development of an advanced civilian nuclear capacity” are potential compromises, she wrote. “However, the Trump administration’s continued narrative of dominating the outcome of a nuclear deal, and the Iranian elite’s consensus over unlimited enrichment and breaking US hegemony, are major obstacles.”
But is there any possibility for interstate cooperation that could denuclearize the region? Robert Mason contended that in exchange for American security guarantees, Israel could be incentivized to join a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. This would help to curb Iranian ambitions and prevent rich states like Saudi Arabia from making dashes toward a nuclear deterrent.
The central puzzle of the post-October 7 disorder is not solely the Israel-Iran conflict. In an open-access analysis in the forthcoming issue, Guilain Denoeux and Robert Springborg show that the Trump administration is leading a new approach to rebuilding collapsed states—away from inclusion, compromise, reconciliation, accountability, and citizenship, and instead toward elevating strongmen who can impose political and social order. As Washington takes its hands off the process, the authors contend, it is leaving support for these leaders to “an emerging Council of the Middle East, comprised of the leading Arab Gulf states, Turkey, and Israel.”
Denoeux and Springborg contend that this process has already taken place in Syria, and a version could be replicated in places where the United States had tried to impose democracy, including “Sudan, Libya, and to some extent Palestine.” But while the new approach may be seen as expedient, the article points out two contradictions: Israel may be interested in maintaining disorder; and the proposed solution relies “on authoritarianism to contain social, economic, and political discontent.”
The forthcoming issue tackles two other features of the new regional order. Federico Donelli’s open-access article examines the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea ships and sees more than just a disruption to global commerce. “These events challenge the conventional view that the land domain is fragmented and prone to conflict, while the maritime domain is cooperative and regime-governed,” he argues. Such an arena should be considered a hybrid regional security complex, which yields insights for policy makers: “Adopt integrated, cross-domain strategies combining short-term crisis management with long-term governance initiatives.”
And while the increasing influence of China is not a new phenomenon—we have covered it extensively, including in a guest-edited 2024 issue—Xiaoyu Wang, Salman K. Al-Dhafeeire, and Degang Sun show that it has allowed Saudi Arabia to ramp up its defense and security sectors while furthering the diversification of its economy. Riyadh’s hedging between the two superpowers also helped win enormous concessions from Washington, including F-35s and advanced chips for artificial intelligence, without having to normalize relations with Israel.
An Early View of the forthcoming winter issue is available now. And readers can find many other evaluations of the new regional disorder below.
The Best of Middle East Policy 2025: New Regional (Dis)order
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau—open access!
The June 2025 Israeli War: Iran’s Assessment and Regional Consequences
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi—free to read!
The Perils of Nuclear Talks after the US-Israel War on Iran
Banafsheh Keynoush—open access!
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason
From Rebuilding to Restoring Political Order: A New Agenda for Failed Arab States
Guilain Denoeux | Robert Springborg—open access!
Maritime Disruption in Yemen: The Making of a Hybrid Red Sea Order
Federico Donelli—open access!
Saudi Arabia’s US-China Hedging Strategy and Its Regional Impact
Xiaoyu Wang | Salman K. Al-Dhafeeire | Degang Sun
The Development and Political Effects of a Pan-Arab Corporate Elite
Hannes Baumann | Alice Hooper—open access!
Antinomies of Alignment Redux: The United Arab Emirates and the United States
Fred H. Lawson | Matteo Legrenzi—open access!
The Corridor War in the Middle East
Arash Reisinezhad | Arsham Reisinezhad
Forgotten Fighters in Their Own Words: Pan-Arab Volunteers in Syria-Iraq
Djallil Lounnas | Israa Mezzyane
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže
The Gaza War and the Future of the Abraham Accords
Mahmood Monshipouri | Manochehr Dorraj | John Fields
How to Address the Saudi Nuclear Program? An Israeli Dilemma
Niv Farago
The China Factor in US-Saudi Talks for a Defense Pact
Ghulam Ali | Peng Nian
Arab-Israeli Gas Diplomacy: Interdependence and a Path Toward Peace?
Gawdat Bahgat
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher | Gadi Hitman—open access!
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Conflict?
Banafsheh Keynoush—open access!
Javad Heiran-Nia, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri
Steffen Hertog, Locked Out of Development
Reviewed by Ahalla Tsauro
Karel Černý, Instability in the Middle East
Reviewed by Alper Çakır
Biden’s Gaza Failure, the Syrian Revolution, and the Folly of US Middle East Policy
A.R. Joyce