The following is an edited transcript of the 105th in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The event took place on July 16, 2021, via Zoom, with Council President Richard J. Schmierer moderating, and Council Executive Director Bassima Alghussein serving as discussant. 

The following is an edited transcript of the 106th in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The event took place on October 22, 2021, via Zoom, with Council Executive Director Bassima Alghussein moderating.

The Middle East is notorious for its deep-rooted state rivalries based on ethnic and sectarian divisions. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey are the three major powers in the region that seek hegemony, impelling the smaller states to choose their allies. At the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, these major powers engaged in a blame game about the spread of the virus in the region, further straining their diplomatic relations. In this article, I map out this blame game among the major powers as well as other political groups and nonstate actors in the Middle East.

Iran's foreign policy changed with the spread of Covid-19 in three main ways. First, the pandemic propelled its health diplomacy into prominence. Second, the pandemic altered the customary view of the country's diplomacy. For more than four decades, Iran has regarded this diplomacy from the perspective of humanitarianism and ethics. But the pandemic imparted new object lessons. Third, the pandemic ushered Iran into a new era of cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO).

The normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain had a major impact on other entities in the Middle East. One of the important players was the Al Thani administration in Qatar. This was the third time Doha needed to respond to a peace treaty with Israel. Every time, Qatar has chosen a different way. In the cases of both the Egypt–Israel peace treaty and the Abraham Accords, Doha objected. In the 1990s, however, the Al Thani regime supported rapprochement with Israel, for two reasons. The first was the opinion of the Palestinian community.

One of Israel's first political strategies was its establishment of relations with non-Arab states through its “periphery doctrine.” As a means of balancing pan-Arabism and outflanking its hostile Arab neighbors, the strategy served to enhance Israel's security and economic ties, and reduce regional isolation. Today, Israel operates under a “reverse periphery doctrine,” having recently formed or improved ties with several Arab Gulf states and Eastern Mediterranean countries.

Although the member states of the Shiite Crescent—Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon—have recently gained partial success in regional competition, they face a governance crisis due to the growing public dissatisfaction in each country. This has undermined their achievements and made them the field of conflict between the proponents of secular and political Islam.

In the last five years, Turkish foreign policy in the regional and international arenas has followed a neorealist approach, mostly defensive, by establishing either cooperation or conflict with its allies, based on the dynamics of its domestic politics and the structure of the international system.