The Middle East at the Hour of the Great Partition: War, Faith, and Illusions of Peace
Géostratégie Magazine
June 2025
Written by
Roula Merhej
In his latest book Engrenages, Pierre Lellouche offers a lucid assessment: the major threats that were once theoretical are now materializing before our eyes. Multilateralism is faltering; a paralyzed United Nations struggles to manage major crises, confining its humanitarian agencies to a marginal role. Nuclear proliferation has brought the issue of armaments back to the forefront. NATO member states have just reaffirmed their commitment to devote at least 2% of their GDP to military spending, a threshold that some countries already aim to exceed, targeting 3 to 4%.
Europe, nearly invisible on the global strategic stage, remains incapable of speaking with a single voice, trapped by its internal divisions and diplomatic contradictions. It limits itself to the role of an alarmed observer, never truly weighing in on the balance of power. Its democratic ideal is faltering under the blows of an unapologetic, globalized authoritarianism that it lacks both the means and the courage to contain. International law may bark, but resolute leaders redraw the map of the world with no regard for rules.
The United States, after a partial withdrawal from global affairs under Trump, is now fully committed alongside Israel, abandoning any strategic ambiguity. After long allowing uncertainty to linger over a potential intervention against Iran, Trump sealed this alignment on June 22, 2025, with Operation Midnight Hammer: fourteen GBU-57 bombs dropped on Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. Certainly the greatest military success of recent years. This show of force reignites the clash of civilizations. Trump unpredictable? Certainly. But he has put American power back at the center of the game: he leads, commands, and dominates.
Unlike the farce surrounding Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction, Iran's uranium enrichment (confirmed by the IAEA) represented a proven danger. The combination of this emerging arsenal and radical Shiite ideology created a global risk. Prior to the strikes, Iran possessed a stockpile sufficient to design nuclear weapons. Never since its creation has the Hebrew state gambled so directly with its survival, despite the fatigue of an Israeli army worn down by multiple fronts. Benjamin Netanyahu, weakened on both the domestic and international stages, sees in this conflict an opportunity to restore his image and to sketch the contours of the Middle East he envisions...under Trump's unwavering wing.
The Abraham Accords are being revived, notably thanks to the weakening of Shiite power. Posters proclaiming a peaceful Middle East now adorn Tel Aviv, but this diplomatic euphoria (or wartime communication) conceals a geopolitical mirage. The fault lines remain, and illusions of peace mask the brutality on the ground.
Saudi Arabia is quietly savoring the weakening, if not the annihilation of Iran's capabilities, long perceived as an existential threat to its security and regional hegemony. In this conflict, Riyadh sees more than a mere strategic rebalancing: it reads a historic revenge of Sunnism over Shiism, that doctrinal and political enemy that has challenged its supremacy for centuries. For the Gulf monarchies, Iran's partial subjugation is not merely a geopolitical gain; it represents the restoration of a religious and tribal order in which radical Shiism, a vector of instability, is finally contained.
Syria's silence, meanwhile, reveals the priorities of a regime led by Ahmed el-Charaa, more concerned with consolidating its power and securing its alliances. By moving closer to Israel, el-Charaa enacts a historic shift, definitively burying the Shiite axis in which Assad's Syria had been trapped for decades.
As for Lebanon, it remains imprisoned by its own cowardice: a paralyzed state where leaders come and go without ever daring to confront Hezbollah's insolence. For despite its gradual military weakening and the loss of its regional aura, the Shiite militia retains almost intact its arsenal and its capacity for disruption, openly defying a government incapable of disarming it, or even restoring a minimal level of national sovereignty.
Thus, Sunnis are regaining the upper hand on a Middle Eastern stage long dominated by Iranian power projection, while Beirut remains a mere spectator, hostage to a Hezbollah in its final hours that still dictates the rules. History may record that Tehran's partial downfall offered Sunni monarchies their greatest ideological victory in decades—and Lebanon a brutal reminder of its own strategic insignificance. When will the awakening come?
Amid this historic upheaval, another danger is emerging: Sunni fundamentalism, itself freed from fear of Iran and once again raising its head. The deadly explosion that struck Saint Elias Church in Damascus on June 22, killing 25 people and claimed by radical Salafist groups, is a reminder that the defeat of the Shiites does not extinguish the jihadist threat: it fuels it. The region has rid itself of one peril only to unleash another, more unpredictable and even more brutal, that could resurface.
In this region under constant recomposition, every hour reshapes the balance of power. Iran, even weakened by the partial destruction of its strategic infrastructure, retains formidable asymmetric capabilities. Will it activate its networks of influence to strike American and Israeli interests? Will the Revolutionary Guards see their authority challenged, or will they retain their dominance? Have the latest strikes reshuffled the deck, or have they strengthened the regime's resilience? The mullahocracy is playing for survival and centrality in a chess game with regional and global ramifications.
Meanwhile, human tragedies are pushed into the background. Palestinians, Israelis, Kurds, Lebanese, Syrians, Druze, and Iranians are paying the price of a conflict that transcends borders. Will the region tip toward a negotiated order, or sink into a prolonged cycle of violence? For the Middle Eastern crisis is not confined to a regional theater: it threatens global energy supplies and exacerbates rivalries among major powers over strategic routes. Will this interdependence be enough to contain escalation?
Israel appears to be reconnecting with the biblical imagery of a powerful and uncontested kingdom. Without king or temple, but with the United States, and technology and military power as scepters, the Hebrew state imagines itself as the heir of David, master of a reshaped Middle East. Let us recall the words of Cyrus the Great: "I am the friend of humanity (...) I rule not by fear, but by justice." He knew how to combine power and tolerance to build an empire. Will the decision-makers of the Middle East manage to transform force into stability and destruction into reason? More than ever, it is up to the mobilization of a sovereign people to reverse the course of its destiny.
Will the Middle East become the cradle of a new global balance or the stage for the great partition whose knell the United States has just sounded?