Scavenger Hunt: Middle East’s Middle Powers Scramble For The Spoils

Peloni:  A thorough description of the segmenting interests of the various regional powers in the Middle East as 2025 comes to an end.

Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez | Memri | Dec 30, 2025

There are, as usual, some narratives out there on the Middle East. One of them has Israel and the United Arab Emirates as predatory powers preying on the innocent. Another has the forces of light in the region warring against a rising Islamist tide orchestrated by Turkey and Qatar and their allies.

Both narratives are largely false, relying on established prejudices for and against certain countries. But they do illuminate a very concrete reality, which is an ongoing, intense struggle for power, for spoils, for wealth, and for influence by the greater Middle East’s “Middle Powers.” But while ideology – the promotion or opposition to Islamism – does play an important role in several cases, the struggle is more complex, as geographic or historic interests all come into play. This means that sometimes old adversaries find themselves more or less on the same side supporting or opposing a certain regime. There are wheels within wheels in the struggle.

The “Middle Powers” are either rising states or the old major regional powers seeking to hang on. An example of the former would be the UAE and of the latter would be Egypt. In some cases – Turkey and Iran, for example – these are both states that see themselves as rising and are also ancient regional powerhouses.

The list of these Middle East “Middle Powers” exerting influence and seeking to project power would include Turkey, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The fields of contention and competition range from – at least – the African Sahel and the Horn of Africa to the Levant. The hottest battlefields are in Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Israel’s recognition of the state of Somaliland as an independent country on December 26, 2025 was only the latest salvo in this regional struggle. The decision is good for Israel and, of course, good for Somaliland. The new state is strategically located and is supported by Israel’s allies in Ethiopia and the UAE. The Israeli decision was condemned by the African Union, which has been distancing itself from Israel for years and by Turkey and Egypt, who are the major patrons of Somalia – from which Somaliland claims independence. Israel doesn’t seem to lose much by the recognition except that this was strongly opposed by Saudi Arabia, a country with which Israel wanted to have better relations.

If Turkey and Egypt are on the same side on the issue of Somaliland, when it comes to Libya, they are on opposing sides. Turkey supports the Islamist regime in Tripoli while Egypt (and the UAE) support the Haftar regime based in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, south of Libya is Sudan and its brutal civil war, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world for the past two years. Unlike Libya but like Somaliland, Egypt and Turkey are on the same side, supporting the Sudanese Army (SAF) regime based in Port Sudan and led by General Al-Burhan. The heavily Islamist-influenced SAF is also supported by Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. SAF’s opponent, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General “Hemedti” Dagalo are supported by the UAE and by the Haftar regime in Libya.

If Sudan is confusing, then Yemen is crazy. There, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE oppose the Iran-supported Houthi terrorist regime in Sanaa – but these two Arab states oppose each other in South Yemen, with the UAE backing those who want to see the return of an independent South Yemen while Saudi Arabia backs those in the South opposed to the secessionists. Saudi aircraft have actually bombed UAE-supported Yemeni fighters.

The strange bedfellows of Sudan and Yemen are also played out in Syria. This is mostly a struggle for influence and power between Turkey and Israel. The new Syrian government led by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a former jihadi, is propped up by Turkey and Qatar and bitterly opposed by Israel. Saudi Arabia supports Al-Sharaa, as does the United States.

But Al-Sharaa is not just opposed by Israel but also targeted by Iran and Hizbullah, by the Syrian Kurds and, more quietly and ambiguously, by the United Arab Emirates. While Iran and Hizbullah try to push for an Alawite state on the Syrian coast, Israel protects and promotes a Druze statelet, Bashan, named after the biblical land of Bashan and in roughly the same area. Both statelets would be in strong opposition to the Damascus government.

Those that seek to portray these struggles as merely between Sunni Islamists against reformist or liberal powers are betrayed by the facts. In Sudan, Islamist Turkey and anti-Islamist Egypt support the army. There is in all of this that old refrain of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – but the situation is more complex than that. Egypt hopes that in Sudan it is supporting a pro-Egypt regime of Sudanese Army generals, a regime similar to its own. Others – Turkey, Qatar, Iran – are betting that the SAF regime could turn out to be an Islamist one, like the Omar Al-Bashir regime that was overthrown in 2019. And both the anti-Islamist RSF in Sudan and Haftar forces in Libya have at least some Islamists in their ranks, although not as many as their adversaries do.

In Syria, Israel fears the replacement of what was an Iranian satellite, the Assad regime, by a Turkish and Qatari satellite, i.e. the Al-Sharaa regime. The real fear seems to be not that Syria will remain weak and divided, but that it could succeed to a certain extent. A Sunni Islamist success story on Israel’s border seems like a nightmare. And the anti-Islamist Arab regimes don’t want to see an Islamist success story anywhere in the region.

The fragmentation of old alliances continues. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were close allies not too long ago; now they are adversaries in Sudan and South Yemen and, probably, in Syria.

The origin of this chaotic situation is rooted in recent history. Much of it is the long aftermath of the convulsions triggered by the Arab Spring (this would apply to Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Syria), the fall of established regimes, attempts by Islamist revolutionaries to seize power, and security vacuums. But it is also about geography, water, gold, oil, trade routes and maneuvering for future military advantage.

Strangely enough, except for Libya, where NATO helped to overthrow Qaddafi in 2011, this turmoil was not really a Western creation. The United States, Russia, and China are connected to some of these crises, but not in a major or direct way. The great powers are mostly interested observers, but are not the ones pulling the strings. This is homegrown chaos, fear, greed, and ambition by the region and in the region.