Unipolarity and Middle East Peace
Shai Feldman
July 7, 2025
For the first time in three decades, America today enjoys unrivaled hegemony over the Middle East—giving the Trump administration a unique opportunity to implement an enduring peace agreement.
The 22 months that began with Hamas’ horrific attack against Israel’s southern communities on October 7, 2023 and that have led to the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June 2025 have changed the strategic map of the Middle East. Most dramatically, the United States has emerged as by far the most important external player in the region, resulting in a new unipolar moment in Middle East history. In this new regional configuration, America has no significant external competitors. Russia could not even prevent the downfall of Bashar Assad’s regime, despite its huge previous investments in that regime’s defense.
Hence the striking resemblance between this new environment and the Middle East that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and the victory of the US-led coalition in the January 1991 First Gulf War. That first unipolar moment allowed President George HW Bush and Secretary of State James Baker to convene the Madrid Peace conference, to open the successful Israel-Jordan peace negotiations and the less successful Israeli-Syrian negotiations, to create the conditions that allowed the pathbreaking Israeli-PLO Oslo Accords, and to launch the now-forgotten multilateral talks encompassing Israel, the PLO, and 13 Arab governments to address the region’s most pressing issues.
Similarly, the new unipolar moment now allowed US President Donald Trump to dictate a deadline—within 60 days, or else—for Iran to accept his demand that it would abandon its uranium enrichment activities. When Iran failed to commit itself to doing so, Trump gave Israel a green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Some 10 days later, Trump joined the fight directly by sending America’s own B-2 bombers to bomb Fordow and other Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump’s action was in sharp contrast to the Obama administration’s failure to punish Syria’s President Bashar Assad for the use of chemical weapons against his domestic opponents, despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to dissuade him from doing so. Indeed, Trump’s recent action was now also compared to his own failure to react to Iran’s attacks on Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities in Saudi Arabia five years earlier. Yet Trump now also made it very clear that the United States would not permit Israel to go beyond the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Thus, when Israel launched its fighter pilots in retaliation to an Iranian violation of the cease-fire concluded—and as Trump saw that violation as minor and suspected that Israel was adding regime change in Iran to its objectives—he did not hesitate to order Israel to turn its planes around.
Another dimension of the restored US dominance of the Middle East is that its primary military tool for establishing such dominance—the US Central Command (CENTCOM)—has become the region’s most important military organization. Enhanced by the decision in January 2021 to transfer responsibility for Israel from the US European Command (EUCOM) to CENTCOM, the latter also became the primary framework for coordination among the region’s militaries to counter Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and November 2024 and during the 12-day war in June 2025.
A Region Transformed
Within the Middle East, the most dramatic change that took place during the past 22 months was the collapse of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance.” Designed by the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, the Axis members were committed to cooperate in battling the Islamic Republic’s adversaries, primarily the United States (the so-called “great Satan”) and Israel (the “small Satan”). In addition to Iran, the Axis included the Palestinians’ Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias.
A key role in this architecture of the Axis was assigned to Hezbollah, whose arsenal of thousands of Iranian-supplied rockets and missiles was expected to deter any Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Almost as important was the role of Bashar Assad’s Syria, which facilitated the transfer of massive quantities of weapons and ammunition from Iran to Lebanon and helped orchestrate Hezbollah’s “precision” project, devoted to increasing the accuracy of the rockets and missiles that Hezbollah possessed.
Following Soleimani’s elimination at the hands of US special forces in January 2020, two other leaders spear-headed the Axis. One was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was not only a charismatic speaker but also possessed a strategic mind, allowing him to acquire as much influence on the Axis’ direction as Soleimani’s. Yet Nasrallah was also prone to miscalculations, as when he failed to anticipate Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah’s cross border attack in July 2006, embroiling Lebanon in a 34-day deadly war with Israel.
Nasrallah similarly underestimated Israel’s capabilities and resolve when he compared the Jewish state to a “spider’s web,” leading him to associate Hezbollah with Hamas’ October 7 attack against Israel’s southern communities. That combined arms attack was designed and orchestrated by a third extremely talented individual, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. It allowed the armed NGO to breach the Gaza-Israel border in tens of locations simultaneously.
During its war with Iran, Israel followed up the elimination of Soleimani by killing Nasrallah and Sinwar, and by decapitating a strata of Iran’s IRGC and other military leaders—as well as many of the country’s top nuclear scientists. As a result, and at least for some time, the Axis of Resistance will continue to suffer a leadership deficit, affecting the overall distribution of power in the Middle East to the Axis’ detriment.
This change in the region’s power structure is further enhanced by the parallel increase in the potency of the US-led and CENTCOM-coordinated counter-Axis coalition. The latter proved its robust capacity in defeating Iran’s ballistic missile attacks against Israel, first in April and November 2024, and later during the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June 2025. The degree of cooperation with Israel and coordination among Arab states—notably Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Abraham Accords states—joined by the United States. THAAD ballistic missile defense units were deployed in Israel, an unprecedented move. As a result, most rockets and missiles launched by Iran were intercepted before they reached Israel’s airspace.
A final extremely consequential change in the regional distribution of power was the downfall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024. The dramatic event and the first few months of the new regime in Damascus already entailed a number of strategic surprises. First, no foreign expert or external intelligence agency anticipated the ease and speed with which the Assad regime collapsed. Second, no one expected Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Shara’a, a former member of Al-Qaida, to reinvent himself so quickly from a life of conflict and violence to the pursuit of prosperity and stability.
For those willing to listen, al-Shara’a made very clear that he intends to ally Syria with the economic power of the United States, Europe, and the region’s GCC leaders seeking economic prosperity rather than with states such as Russia that supported Assad, embraced turmoil, and acted often as spoilers. While initial signs that al-Shara’a might consider normalizing relations with Israel and joining the Abraham Accords proved premature, there are credible indications that Syria is distancing itself from Iran and might embrace an extended armistice with Israel, encouraged by U.S. lifting of sanctions.
New Opportunities for Peace
With Steve Witkoff appointed as US Special Representative to the Middle East, the Trump-Witkoff team began serving as the new parallels to the Bush-Baker team of 1991. In November 2024, after Trump’s re-election and during the transition between the two administrations, the new team cooperated with Biden-appointed negotiators to conclude a ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas. In the aftermath of that agreement, the new team focused its efforts on attempting to conclude a new Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release agreement, as well as in attempting to negotiate a new agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear efforts in the aftermath of the 12-day Israel-Iran war. Additionally, Trump officials continue to be involved in monitoring compliance by Israel and Lebanon with the ceasefire agreement that the two governments signed, also in November 2024.
Yet the unipolar moment described here provides opportunities that go far beyond the agreements already reached and currently attempted. The most significant of these would be an agreement to create the conditions for Israel and Hamas to end their war, for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza, and for Israel’s Hamas-held hostages to be released. For such a withdrawal to take place without exposing Israel’s southern communities to new October 7-type attacks, an alternative to Hamas in governing Gaza must be created. Yet the creation of such an address would require the blessing of the Palestinian Authority and cooperation by key Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Such cooperation would be essential for implementing a key dimension of the proposed agreement: providing security and stability in Gaza and Israel’s south, especially during the transition to post-Hamas governance. (The structure and requirements of the suggested transition period are elaborated at greater length in Chapter 3 of Arabs and Israelis: From October 7 to Peacemaking, co-authored with Abdel Monem Said Aly and Khalil Shikaki.)
During this transition period, the IDF and Hamas would need to be replaced by a newly created Palestinian security force, backed by the aforementioned key Arab states. Yet such backing would not be forthcoming without Israel committing itself to a path towards independent Palestinian statehood—and without the United States guaranteeing Israel’s compliance with that commitment. Such a promise would also meet Saudi Arabia’s condition for “normalizing” its relations with Israel, thus providing the latter a very strong incentive to abide by its promise.
Until very recently, creating such a complex security regime in Gaza would have been considered unrealistic. But the current unipolar moment provides the Trump administration a unique opportunity to design such a regime and to implement it without worry about potential spoilers who could resist and undermine its construction. Moreover, having already established himself as a courageous revolutionary leader, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will likely prove an able and willing partner to President Trump in building the proposed security regime. Finally, with Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran having deepened Israel’s reliance and dependence on US support, it is difficult to see how Jerusalem would be able to resist President Trump’s urging that it meet Saudi Arabia’s and other Arab states’ conditions for cooperating in creating the security regime that would allow Israel’s withdrawal, the release of the hostages, and ending of the war.
About the Author: Shai Feldman
Shai Feldman is the Raymond Frankel Chair of Israeli Politics and Society at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. In 2005-2019 he was the Center’s founding director. During 2019-2022 Feldman served as president of Sapir Academic College in Israel, located less than two miles from the Gaza Strip.
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