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The Fall 2025 issue of Middle East Policy is now available in an Early View. The journal’s 165th installment analyzes dehumanization in the Gaza war, the effects of Israel’s June bombings on Iran, and the potential for both regional integration and further division across sectors of economics, trade, and social services.
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In their article on pan-Arab fighters, Djallil Lounnas and Israa Mezzyane trace the formation and mobilization of the Arab Nationalist Guard, a secular, highly ideological organization that constituted the largest group of anti-Islamic State fighters in Syria. It was also the third-largest transnational non-jihadist movement fighting on the side of Damascus. As one member told the authors as part of their extensive interviews with participants and leaders in the movement: “The Islamic State? Never! They are agents of imperialism!”
Lounnas and Mezzyane explore the origins of the neo-pan-Arab movement and show how it gained steam in 2010 with an ambitious agenda:
1. renewing Arab cultural heritage
2. calling for Arab unity as a response to divisions enforced by former colonists and outside hegemons
3. establishing democratic governments as a response to autocracy in the Arab world
4. creating independent economic and social-development programs to reduce if not eliminate dependence on forces outside the region
5. fostering social justice and reducing economic and social inequality
6. securing national independence free of foreign interference, liberating territories occupied by external powers, and preventing further dismemberment and secessions of Arab provinces.
To distinguish between the Nasserist era of the 1950s and 1960s and today’s pan-Arabism, one neo-nationalist leader tells Lounnas and Mezzyane:
There are many things that continue to exist in the pan-Arab doxa, while many others have changed. What changed is the concept of Arab. Today, we consider it, in a very broad sense, as an inclusive, universalist concept. In the past, despite what was claimed, it was seen through an ethnic definition. Today, the idea is to absorb the religious and ethnic contradictions that have always existed and caused divisions by insisting on the Arab language and culture, even more than before. Today, Berbers, Kurds, etcetera are considered part of the Arab nation. It is an inclusive umma.
While some pan-Arab fighters traveled to resist the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the movement grew a decade later through the Arab Nationalist Guard. The authors relate its origins and actions, and examine its relationship to Iran and Hezbollah—ostensible allies in Syria. The Arab nationalists found common cause with them in resistance to Israel and imperialism.
Ultimately, the estimated 1,000 pan-Arabist fighters were driven to fight for Damascus due to their commitment not to Tehran and Hezbollah, or even Bashar al-Assad, but to the nationalist cause. The authors describe one young leader’s perspective:
Syria had experienced an atrocious cycle of violence where the very authoritarian nature of the Assad regime was to be blamed. There was no question, he said, that Damascus should have implemented radical political changes, including economic and anticorruption reforms. But he maintained that his Arab nationalism compelled him to fight for the regime.
But with Assad’s ouster in December 2024, another fighter tells Lounnas and Mezzyane, “This is a major blow to the pan-Arab dream.”
The Fall 2025 issue of Middle East Policy includes four open-access pieces: Yagil Levy’s examination of the Israeli dehumanization of Palestinians through disregard; Banafsheh Keynoush’s analysis of the future of Iran nuclear talks; Hannes Baumann and Alice Hooper’s tracing of a pan-Arab corporate elite through the network of transnational interlocking directorships; and Namig Abbasov and Emil A. Souleimanov’s examination of how the new regime in Syria signals the marginalization of Russia in regional geopolitics.
If you’re still with us...please check out our special issue marking two years since the deadly Hamas attacks and the Israeli reprisals, The October 7 Emergencies. We will officially launch this collection next week. It features our recent coverage of the Gaza war and its spread across the region, as well as works from our archives that illuminate resistance in the West Bank and Washington’s role as Israel reshapes the Middle Eastern order. Of the 14 original articles and four book reviews, 11 are free to read, even without a subscription.
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