Newsweek34%
Where the New Middle East Order Stands Today 33%
By Tom O'Connor52%
6/26/2026, 8:00:00 AM
Topics: Iran War, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey, India, Pakistan, International Affairs
Keywords: Iran War, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey, India, Pakistan, International Affairs
BS Summary: This article contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Negativity Bias, and Overconfidence Bias, with Ambiguity (Equivocation) as the most egregious example at 23% saturation with 344 hits. Analysis detected 3,038 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,494 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.4% and a BS Rank of 33% (14,320 of 21,168 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 67.60% of the article peer group.
As the United States and Iran work toward a lasting peace agreement, the course of the near-four-month-long conflict and the ensuing efforts to end it are already having profound effects on the geopolitical fault lines of the Middle East.
The region has long been in a state of flux.
The cascade of conflicts involving Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and, most recently, Iran, has only further challenged traditional alignments involving key players.
While the emerging blocs remain fluid and subject to unpredictable shifts, the outcome thus far has been the consolidation of at least three rough coalitions based on the convergence of nations seeking to assert their immediate interests at a volatile moment for the Middle East.
"The war with Iran will accelerate the development of regional alliances, and a general détente with Iran, as many parties increasingly question the staying power of the United States," Prem Kumar, former National Security Council senior director for the Middle East now serving as CEO of the DGA Group, told Newsweek.
"The UAE will reinforce its alliance with Israel, the Saudis will invest more in their ties to Turkey and Pakistan, and Iran will seek to shore up Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas while it establishes a new modus vivendi with its Gulf neighbors," Kumar said.
Arab countries have largely condemned Israel's military operations across the region since the war was first sparked in Gaza in October 2023 with a deadly attack by the Palestinian Hamas movement.
But as the battle has spread throughout the region, divisions have intensified, especially among the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that includes leading members Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates alongside Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.
The UAE and Bahrain had already broken with GCC partners by recognizing Israel back in 2020 as part of the U.S.-mediated Abraham Accords that also came to include Sudan and Morocco.
The UAE has since accelerated cooperation with Israel on various fronts, including military and intelligence ties.
This relationship has drawn particular scorn from Iran, which targeted the UAE more than any other country throughout the conflict.
When it comes to Israel, Emirati political analyst Salem Al Ketbi argued that "the war has reinforced the broader principle that bilateral relationships should contribute to regional stability rather than regional polarization."
"The UAE continues to view diplomacy, economic cooperation, and de-escalation as complementary rather than contradictory objectives," Al Ketbi told Newsweek.
In this vein, he said that "the war has reinforced rather than transformed the UAE’s strategic outlook."
This doctrine dictates that "dialogue remains essential, but recent events have demonstrated that dialogue alone cannot provide durable regional stability without credible deterrence, respect for sovereignty, and adherence to international law."
The alignment of the UAE and Israel has also ushered in a third major actor, India, which has fostered growing ties with both nations.
Al Ketbi acknowledged that "the war has fundamentally altered the regional security environment," but he warned that the lessons drawn served as a cautionary tale against reliance on security blocs.
"Rather than strengthening competing axes, it has demonstrated the limits of regional polarization and the high cost of military confrontation," Al Ketbi said.
"It has also reinforced an important lesson: Gulf security cannot be treated as a secondary issue within broader U.S.-Iran or Israel-Iran calculations."
The Saudi Coalition
Saudi Arabia, the top economy and traditional center of power in the GCC, has sought to reassert its influence as the UAE expands its presence across several theaters.
Abu Dhabi has been accused of aiding rebel factions in Libya and Sudan, while a UAE-backed southern separatist movement in Yemen was defeated by the divided country's Saudi-led government earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Iran's Yemeni ally, Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, continues to maintain control of much of the country.
The powerful group has demonstrated the capacity to disrupt not only regional security but the global economy through attacks on maritime shipping—not unlike the Islamic Republic's wartime weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz.
While Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought to downplay notions of a schism manifesting between the two top GCC powers, the latter's breakaway alignment with Israel has become increasingly visible.
"Undoubtedly, an 'axis' strategy has clearly taken shape, most notably the UAE-Israel axis, which has evolved from economic normalization into a robust security alliance," former Saudi diplomat Saad Abdullah Al Hammad told Newsweek.
"While it was initially grounded in economics, technology and institutional normalization, it gradually transformed post-war into an explicit regional security axis countering Iranian threats and fostering deeper intelligence cooperation, despite the political costs arising from sensitive regional public opinion," Al Hammad said.
As for Riyadh, Al Hammad said that the kingdom's strategy was shifting "toward regional leadership across economic, diplomatic, and security tracks, adopting a policy of hedging rather than expansion."
"This involved a delicate balancing act between Washington and Tehran, with a focus on avoiding security attrition in the Gulf and Yemen," Al Hammad said.
"Even as tensions with Iran subsided, Riyadh found itself in an environment where it could not fully rely on a stable American security umbrella.
Consequently, the war drove the kingdom to diversify its partnerships."
This includes growing ties with Turkey, once viewed as a regional rival to Saudi Arabia.
The Middle East's only NATO member has expanded its own footprint across the region, including partnerships with Libya, Qatar and the Syrian government that toppled longtime President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
The Saudi pivot also involves a security pact forged with Pakistan months prior to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and in the immediate aftermath of Israel's strike on Qatar last September.
Pakistan is the world's sole Muslim nuclear weapons state and—with key support from Qatar—has hosted the U.S.-Iran negotiations.
As the yet undetermined outcome of these talks casts skepticism over the future of U.S. security commitments to the region, such foreign partnerships may only grow in strategic value.
"This creates a relative vacuum in security leadership, potentially driving regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, and Iran—toward greater autonomy and an intensified race for indirect influence," Al Hammad said.
"Conversely, the likelihood of all-out war diminishes, while the probability of 'shadow wars'—limited strikes, cyber operations, and proxy conflicts—rises," Al Hammad said.
"This marks a transition for the region from 'stable deterrence' to 'volatile deterrence.'"
The Iranian Axis
Despite suffering severe setbacks throughout nearly 1,000 days of war since its initial intervention in the Israel-Hamas conflict, Iran's Axis of Resistance remains intact.
With the exception of Assad's downfall in Syria, the predominantly Shiite Muslim coalition has largely weathered the slaying of top leaders and scores of fighters along with the targeting of vast quantities of military capabilities by the U.S. and Israel.
Iran has also consolidated ties with great power partners China and Russia.
But the Islamic Republic views its network of non-state actors spanning Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and beyond the Middle East to include Afghanistan and Pakistan as a crucial element of its asymmetrical defense doctrine.
The importance of the Axis of Resistance is demonstrated by Tehran's insistence on demanding that any ceasefire with the U.S. include an end to Israel's parallel conflict with one of Iran's oldest and most influential allies, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.
This is despite the U.S.' call for Iran to sever ties with its militia partners, and Israel's determination to press on with operations against Hamas and Hezbollah.
A number of Iranian experts have told Newsweek that the Islamic Republic would be unlikely to back down on this front, even at the risk of threatening to unravel negotiations with the U.S.
As Iranian analyst Hassan Beheshtipour recently explained, "from Tehran's perspective, supporting strategic partners in the resistance front is not a 'cost' but an integral part of the national security equation."
But Al Hammad also pointed out a shift in Iran's orientation since the outbreak of its decisive confrontation with its two top foes.
"With regard to Iran, it is transitioning from an expansionist project to a repositioning phase," Al Hammad said.
"Post-war Iran is shifting from a direct influence project to a 'low-cost influence' model through proxies, reducing direct involvement and increasing reliance on asymmetric attacks, while maintaining what could be termed a flexible, decentralized deterrent axis."
"This aligns with the logic that the conflict did not eliminate Iran but rather reshaped its tools," he added.
Consequently, regional actors traditionally skeptical of Tehran's designs and bound to Washington's security umbrella find themselves recalibrating.
"While most Gulf Arab states will continue to value their relationship with the U.S., they now know they cannot be entirely dependent on Washington," Kumar, the former NSC official, said.
"They need the ability to protect themselves by themselves from missile and drone attacks, to facilitate cargo exiting the Gulf via routes that bypass Hormuz, and to establish economic ties with Iran that could serve as a break on future conflict," he added.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Frances Mao and Edward Cummins.
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