Has Iran lost the Middle East? Not so fast.

Plus this week's review of great new research in the MENA Academy!

Israel’s offensive against Iran and its allies has clearly taken a heavy toll on the ‘Axis of Resistance.’ Last fall’s decapitation of Hezbollah and decimation of its ranks reduced its ability to threaten northern Israel, at tremendous cost to Lebanese lives. The fall of the Asad regime cost Iran its only Arab state ally and severed the lifeline to Hezbollah. And two direct Iranian missile barrages did little significant damage inside of Israel. There is something of a consensus these days that Iran has been defanged and the Axis of Resistance broken, and that an unleashed Israel has successfully remade the Middle East by force. That’s what Afshon Ostovar, author of the new book Wars of Ambition and a leading expert on Iranian regional policy, thought when I interviewed him on the podcast last month. It’s what you hear not only in Washington but across the Middle East, and it’s become a standard starting point for most discussions of regional order and US foreign policy. But is it right?

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to be included in a fascinating workshop at the University of Pennyslvania’s Perry World House alongside a number of experts on Iran from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. They had a lot to say about Iranian domestic politics and deeper historical questions. The memos for the workshop will be published soon, and we worked under a Chatham House rule, so I won’t presume to speak for the other participants. But I’m happy to share my own thoughts here. My mandate was to discuss Iran’s place within the region and to evaluate both how its setbacks might impact its regional posture and whether it could plausibly restore its position.

My take, put briefly, is that the conventional wisdom about Iran’s strategic setback described above is right in the short run — but very questionable in the medium to long term, particularly as Israel and the United States do everything they can to create the conditions for a revival of Iranian political power. Iran has indeed suffered very real strategic setbacks at the hand of its enemies which can’t be easily repaired. the limited impact of its two missile barrages, and the willingness of U.S.-allied regimes such as Jordan’s to support Israel’s defenses despite Gaza, deflated its image at least. With a new leadership, reportedly demoralized membership, and a hostile broader political landscape, Hezbollah is struggling to rebuild its financial position, to say nothing of its arsenal. It will likely recover — it always has in the past, it is deeply rooted in Lebanese Shi’a society, and no other actor (including the Lebanese Armed Forces) has the capacity to impose its will on it even now. But in the short term, even as it rebuilds its position it is unlikely to be able to — or interested in — renewed war with Israel or even credibly threatening retaliation.

Syria’s collapse matters in a number of ways as well, not only because it cost Iran an ally and a supply route to Lebanon, but because of the message sent by the sudden Asad regime collapse. Iran invested a great deal in Asad’s survival, an investment which many economically struggling Iranians resented and publicly criticized in recent years. The collapse of regime military forces — in part because smothering sanctions had hollowed out the Syrian state, years of conflict had degraded the willingness of conscript soldiers to fight for the regime’s survival, and Israeli military strikes had suddenly shifted the balance of power by decimating Hezbollah and taking out Iranian assets across the country — had to send warning flags about Iran’s own stability. That Asad’s regime was replaced by a Salafi-jihadist Sunni insurgent group, very much of the type that Iran and its allies had been battling for decades in Iraq and Syria, posed a potential threat to Iran’s position in Iraq and even to Iran itself (a perspective evidently shared, for what it’s worth, by the Trump administration).

But there are limits. While Iran’s missile strikes on Israel did not produce the spectacular results many feared or hoped for, we don’t actually know to what extent Iran intentionally limited its attack as part of a controlled escalation strategy or whether it has the capability to do more if it chooses. That’s a similar analytical problem we’ve seen repeatedly in Iraq, where it’s hard to know whether attacks on U.S. bases are intentionally not killing American personnel or if it’s just been luck. Perceptions matter, and it’s clear that Iranian military threat to Israel has been substantially degraded in both American and Israeli eyes. But perceptions can change quickly — and analysts may be underestimating Iran’s ability and willingness to engage in innovative nonconventional attacks if it deems them necessary to restore deterrence.

And critically, while this often falls off the Israel-centric radar in these discussions, Iran has emphatically NOT lost its perceived and real capability to inflict grievous harm on the Gulf states, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The attacks, with plausible deniability but assumed to be on Iranian orders, on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil refineries in 2019 and on Abu Dhabi in January 2022 — and the absence of any meaningful American response — are still front and center in Gulf minds. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have to assume that any Israeli or American war with Iran could result in an Iranian response that lays waste to their countries and their oil industry (and profoundly damages the global economy, if Trump still cares about that). That’s actually more likely if direct retaliation against Israel seems inadequate or ineffective. The Iran-Saudi reconciliation which China helped broker, and a reported new outreach by the UAE to Iran, are partial and minimal but likely reflect this strategic reality.

Nor has Israel (or the United States) been able to break the Houthi blockade on shipping or its periodic missile strikes. The Houthis quietly succeeded in dramatically slowing shipping through the Red Sea, harming not only Israel but also Egypt, and more recently escalated to direct missile strikes against Israel. While the Houthis paused the blockade because of the Gaza ceasefire (giving lie to the popular suggestion that the blockade wasn’t “really” about Gaza), but when the ceasefire seemingly inevitably ends they will likely resume attacks to deter shipping. A movement which survived and thrived during half a decade of systematic Saudi bombing is not likely to be badly damaged by occasional Israel or American strikes — even if those have damaging consequences for Yemeni civilians, like the attack on the Hodeida port or the FTO designation, that doesn’t much affect Houthi calculations. If anything, it gives them a convenient excuse for ongoing humanitarian and economic problems.

And Iran remains in a dominant position in Iraq both politically and militarily. That fault line could get hot very fast, especially if the Trump administrations sees Iraq militias as low hanging fruit to maintain the offensive against Iranian proxies - especially since Trump likely fondly recalls his ‘sucessful’ assassination of Qassem Soleimani on Iraqi soil. But those militias are both (mostly) aligned with Iran and organically connected to the Iraqi state, a situation which hasn’t been meaningfully changed even by the efforts of a pro-US prime minister.

That paints an overall portrait of an Iranian regional posture which has suffered real setbacks but retains considerable strengths. It’s possible, as some have argued, that Iran may conclude based on the events of the last six months that the “resistance” game is no longer worth it, and decide to end its regional policies. But that seems unlikely. Decades of experience suggest that Iran’s leaders, including both the IRGC and the senior religious establishment, places great value on its regional power — and they seem unlikely to become less hawkish at a time the US and Israel are openly musing about war.

Even more, Iran’s experience over the last several decades suggests that it is simply very good — much better than the United States — at navigating fractured states and turbulent political environments. Iran excels within the warscape, one might say, and everything Israel has done this past year has expanded the scope and intensity of that warscape. The United States is contributing to regional instability by not restraining Israel — on the contrary, continuing to rush unprecedented quantities of bombs and munitions to Israel while floating delusional ideas about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Washington is simultaneously unilaterally disarming in the “soft power” competition over the region’s future by suddenly pulling most of its economic and military aid to struggling states in the region. USAID was especially active in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen (and the West Bank) — the precise geographic arena in which the battle over Iran’s regional presence plays out. As the American retreat devastates those economies — hitting particularly hard in those sectors served by civil society, ostensibly the most pro-American segments of those communities —Iran and other local militia actors will have ample opportunity to fill the void.

And the strategic environment is rich with opportunities for a renewed Resistance, as the Gaza ceasefire teeters on the brink and Israel expands into the West Bank. Put bluntly, Israel and the United States seem keen to do whatever they can to inflame and destabilize the Levant, without the slightest thought as to whether the resulting chaos will serve their interests. Whatever the extent of its recent military setbacks, Iran is going to find ample opportunity to rebuild its networks and to mobilize a new resistance axis if it chooses to do so. Resistance to the US and Israel is a role in search of a hero, as Nasser once put it. Iran may be a tortured and problematic antihero, little loved by most of the regional public, but nobody else is currently stepping up (though I would actually expect a more popular new mobilization to center not around Iran but on resurgent Sunni jihadist insurgencies inspired by Syria and backed by Turkey).

None of this is to downplay the very real military and political setbacks which Iran and Hezbollah, in particular, have suffered over the last six months. But I’m old enough to have seen multiple rounds of “Iran is losing” discourse. There’s more behind it this time than usual, but there’s also a lot of reasons — detailed here — to suspect that the setbacks will be temporary.

And now, it’s time for an update with new research from the MENA Academy!

This week, we feature Hesham Sallam’s outstanding analysis of the polarization between Islamists and leftists in Egypt after 2013 - one of the best I’ve seen of that critical moment. Our second feature is Loretta Dell’Aguzzo’s analysis of Saudi involvement in Yemen over decades which shows how repeated intervention shaped the ‘weakness’ of the Yemeni state. We follow with two articles in the leading journal International Security which draw on Middle Eastern cases — the UAE’s positioning between China and the US, and the logic of arms sales to the Middle East before 1967. We then present two articles on feminist politics in North Africa, one on Morocco and Tunisia and the other on the Algerian 2019 Hirak movement. Finally, while it’s not technically “political science”, I very much enjoyed Mandana Limbert’s new article on homeland and prayer in the early twentieth century western Indian Ocean - and I think you will too!

Hesham Sallam, “Authenticity and national loyalty: the intellectual roots of Islamist-leftist affective polarisation in post-2013 Egypt,” Journal of North African Studies (March 2025). ABSTRACT: This article examines how the evolution of ideational conflicts between Islamist and leftist intellectual advocates over the past four decades has shaped the dominant discourse and narrative through which leftists have sought to justify the repression of Islamist currents in the aftermath of the 2013 coup. Since the mid-1970s, debates and conflicts between Islamist and leftist intellectuals and activists have generated a variety of historical narratives and a repertoire of language that endorsed the political exclusion of ideological rivals. The 1970s and 1980s saw the advent of an Islamist ‘authenticity critique’ of the left. That critique argued that leftist movements do not enjoy an organic connection with Egyptian society, presenting them as foreign implants with questionable national loyalties. The political victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s and Islamist attacks against secular intellectuals in the 1990s, paved the way for a leftist counter-critique of Islamists, one that continues to shape leftist discourse in the contemporary moment. Adopting a strong nationalist veneer, the counter-critique held that it was the Islamist movement that lacked authentic roots in Egyptian society, while arguing that Islamists’ loyalties lie not with Egypt, but with international networks of Islamist groups and governments. By historicising the discursive and narrative battles between Islamist and leftist currents, the article contributes to our understanding of the intellectual origins of ‘affective polarization’ in post-2013 Egypt, shedding light on why it has taken on an exclusionary and violent turn.

Loretta Dell’Aguzzo, “Authoritarian Sponsorship of Weak States: Saudi Arabia’s Extended Patronage Network in Yemen,” The International Spectator (February 2025). ABSTRACT: In recent decades, scholars have devoted much attention to the importance of ‘black knights’ – that is, non-democracies that seek to weaken the liberal performance of another country or bolster the power of fellow autocrats through various means – in promoting authoritarian survival, overlooking instead how specific characteristics of the recipients of international support influence the foreign policy of authoritarian sponsors. An analysis of relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Yemen since 1970 highlights that target states’ capacity is crucial to understanding the strategies adopted by authoritarian sponsors. In their relations with vulnerable states, these countries appear more likely to use aid conditionality and to extend their patronage network beyond the incumbents’ inner circle, acquiring multiple non-state clients with the goal of pressuring target governments from within. Moreover, the permissive domestic opportunity structures of weak states make authoritarian powers more inclined to attempt to spread their regime ideology abroad.

Sheena Greitens and Isaac Kardon, “Security without Exclusivity: Hybrid Alignment under U.S.-China Competition,” International Security (February 2025). ABSTRACT: This article explores an emerging dynamic in the international system: Countries across the world are engaged in simultaneous security cooperation with both China and the United States. China and the United States, however, do not provide the same types of security goods. The United States primarily offers regional security—assistance that improves partners’ capabilities to deter or deny external threats to their territory. China primarily offers regime security—assistance that builds partners’ capabilities to control their territory and populations, and often, to prevent threats to a regime's hold on power. Many countries benefit from both types of assistance, and neither China nor the United States is in a strong position to demand exclusivity from third countries. As a result, a growing number of countries are developing nonexclusive, differentiated security relationships with both great powers. We call this phenomenon “security hybridization” and demonstrate that it is theoretically and empirically distinct from traditional balancing and omnibalancing. We illustrate this dynamic with two case studies—Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. Each country engages in defense cooperation with the United States and, simultaneously, pursues increasingly robust internal security cooperation with China. Security hybridization distinguishes today's great power competition from Cold War rivalry and will likely shape patterns of domestic and global security in the years ahead.

Jennifer Spindel, “Boom, Bling, Backbone, or Blip? The Signaling Inherent in Arms Transfers,” International Security (February 2025). ABSTRACT: Why do states send and seek conventional weapons? Though it may seem obvious that the balance of power motivates states to do so, numerous conventional arms transfers do not conform to the balance of power logic. This article argues that states seek weapons because arms transfers send signals about political alignments. Misunderstanding this signaling dynamic is part of the reason why the arms trade literature reaches divergent findings about the causes and consequences of arms sales. To explain how signaling dynamics operate alongside balance of power considerations, this article proposes a theory of arms transfers as symbolic signals. The article presents a typology of conventional weapons based on the weapons’ military utility and prestige and shows that different types of conventional weapons transfers send different signals about the political closeness or distance between the sender and receiver. I examine the case of arms sales to the Middle East before the 1967 Six-Day War to show the signaling function of arms transfers.

Sammy Badran and Brian Turbull, “The nexus between authoritarian consolidation and feminism in Tunisia and Morocco,” Journal of North African Studies (February 2025). ABSTRACT: Survey data of men in the Middle East and North Africa suggest that there is selective support for women’s rights. For example, men tend to conform to traditionally conservative stances on inheritance rights but widely support women's education. This dichotomy is often reflected by male-led regimes in the region. Recently, Tunisia’s populist strong-man, Kais Said, has led a dramatic backslide in democratic norms and institutions, while also appointing the Arab world's first female prime minister alongside regularly proclaiming descriptive support for an array of women’s rights. Critics have accused Said’s appointment as an attempted ‘whitewash’ of his autocratic consolidation of power. The apparent contradiction between autocratic leaders clamping down on democratic institutions while simultaneously pushing more progressive social norms begs the question: Do autocrats use descriptive support for feminist causes to help them consolidate power? To investigate this question, we review the actions of consolidating regimes in Tunisia and Morocco, with a focus on executive discourse, ministerial appointments, and governmental policies to determine the level of descriptive support these regimes are proclaiming for feminist causes.

Rim Chaif and Christopher Etheridge, ““Misogyny Was in the Atmosphere”: Feminist Perspectives on Social Media Use in the 2019 Algerian Pro-Democratic Demonstrations,” Social Media + Society (February 2025). ABSTRACT: Public and vocal calls by Algerian feminist groups to revise restrictive laws about women during the 2019 Hirak (“protest” in Arabic) were met with physical and online violence from both pro-government and reformist groups. Theories considering the role of public spaces in advancing democratic efforts differ on strategy and method for inclusion of marginalized voices. Through structured open-ended questionnaires with Algerian feminist demonstrators, this study probes the perceived efficacy of various democratic-advancing tactics. Findings show a reticence on the part of Algerian feminists in cultivating open social media spaces or efforts to assimilate into a single public and echo previous findings of those advocating for a more disputed perspective on democracy.

Mandana Limbert, “Homeland Is Where the Soul Resides: Travel Prayer, Passports, and Nation in the Western Indian Ocean,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (February 2025). ABSTRACT: This article examines conflicting notions of political home or homeland (waṭan) in the early twentieth-century Western Indian Ocean. In a period of colonial consolidation and shifts in trans-oceanic mobility, determining political belonging took on urgency for both British officials and Omani intellectuals and migrants. This article examines how, in contrast to both anti-colonial nationalists and British colonial officials, homeland in Omani religious scholarship was neither bounded territorially nor articulated through origins or subjecthood. Yet, it was spatial, affective, and hierarchically determined. And, it was manifest, embodied, and performed in the daily requirements of prayer. Spatial but not territorial, necessary but personally, hierarchically, and affectively decided, this pious notion of homeland has for the most part been replaced by the nation-state form. Yet, legacies of attachment to waṭan outside the bounded territorial model occasionally surface, operating as a simultaneous, but not synonymous, expression of political and personal belonging.