Week signals: Meddle, muddle, Middle East
Plus: watch points for Southeast Asia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Angola, and Mozambique.
This week:
IN REVIEW. Decision time for the Middle East.
UP AHEAD. The ASEAN summits, facts on the ground in Ukraine, municipal elections on Europe’s fault line, Biden goes to Luanda, and Mozambique votes.
The Week in Review: Four scenarios for a region on edge
The week began with a populist victory in Austria and will end with a presidential coronation in Tunisia (all serious opponents have been jailed). In between, there was a transfer of power in Mexico, the announcement of elections in Japan, the fall of a key city in Ukraine, and a vice-presidential debate in the United States.
All this would have made for a busy week in election-cycle geopolitics, particularly between the key leader summits of the year and amid the slow-burn crises of Haiti, mpox, Sudan, and more. But that's forgetting the Middle East.
Heading into the anniversary of the 7 October massacre, and amid the holiest days of the Jewish year, the most decisive events in decades are unfolding in the world's most volatile region. How things transpire in the coming weeks could determine the Middle East's balance of power, where Israel or Iran will see definitive victory or defeat (perhaps giving way to a rising Turkey or Saudi Arabia. It could also determine great power relations globally, where a self-isolating US and a distracted Europe give way to a risk-taking Russia and opportunistic China. Or perhaps not.
It's often the events considered inconsequential by their contemporaries that prove consequential to history, and vice versa. Certainly, there's a lot that looks consequential about Israel's current battles with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and potentially Iran. But then, these foes have been fighting, covertly or overtly, for years. Powers and politicians ebb and flow. Domestic concerns tend to trump the strategic. Distant powers lose interest. Technological changes shift supply chains and undo old certainties. Central concerns lose relevance. So, with that in mind, we have prepared four scenarios for the region – two bad, two less-bad – which we rank from least to most likely: