Comparing to 1000 years ago, today, the Middle East looks like more civilized region. The countries themselves are not dealing with horrible wars between each other continuously like Babylonians, Sumerians and Assyrians or Egyptians and Hittites do. Of course there are some problems now in Iraq and Syria however this turmoil is not widespread in the region.
Three powers in the region seems to try to gain power among the others. There three are Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Egypt may be counted on the side of Saudi Arabia in this game. Turkey, Russia, EU, China and the US are watchers and sometimes supporters or of these three fragments. This rivalry as mentioned at the beginning looks like a competition in diplomacy mostly. It looks like Cold War of Middle East version. If we were in Babylonians time normally these three should fight with each other up to the end, consequently this fight would end with the termination of at least two of these civilizations.
Thanks to the diplomacy and secret intelligence agencies nowadays this kind of rivalry can only be seen on the news TV channels like BBC, CNN...etc sometimes, but most of the theatre between them is invisible for the ordinary people like us.
Gaining power and becoming a dominant in all aspects in the Middle East looks very difficult. Because all these three would like to be the only king of the region, any rise of power is coming across with an anti-hegemonical power. When Iran goes further a little bit, it can find itself with an obstacle or same for Israel. In logic, Shia Iran should be the best friend of Israel against Sunni Saudi Arabia because of historical reasons. As Iran should deal not only with Saudi Arabia but also Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Oman and Sunni parts of Iraq and Syria. And same for Israel.
Therefore in logic Israel and Iran need to combine their power against the others mentioned above. On the other hand, they look like they are busy with dealing with each other. If we consider the words as real Israel and Iran defeated themselves at least 10 times in the past 3 years.
Turkey here can be the most strongest fortification. Although its politics are focused on the EU, in the last 2 or 3 years they also begun to intervene in the Middle East at least to protect their own interests. They are developing good relationships with northern Iraq which is not good for Iran and also watching closely the Palestine Problem which is not good for Israel. On the paper it looks like a chess game with multi combinations. Syria problem for instance, Iran gives endless support to the government together with Russia and China both having a power in security council of the UN. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other hand seems supporting the uprisings. There is one empty point here: The decision of he US and the EU.
It seems they did not decide yet and the turmoil in Syria seems to continue for at least 1-2 years. Than which solution would be best for which country? In Afghanistan everything settled and Taliban lose power. This was good for both the US and Iran. In the Iraq, a peaceful northern federation, a Sunni center and Shia South were acceptable again for the US and Iran and also Turkey with some reservations. Now Syria can follow the Iraq policy. An Alawite state on the coast, a Sunni republic and a Shia republic. Additionally maybe a federal region on the north for the Kurds which implies Switzerland confederation model.
What will happen in the future of Syria mostly depends on the negotiations between the powers that will be known by us maybe 10 years later. But it is very obvious that an invisible war is happening between them and the results would be seen clearly when this Cold War of Middle East version is completed.
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