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James’ edited remarks at the 9th International Symposium on Politics and Society in the Islamic World, Lodz, Poland, October 21-23, 2026.
Good morning,
No doubt you will agree that discussing where the Middle East is going in 10-15 minutes is mission impossible. So, what I would like to do is give you a staccato of bullet points that hopefully will inform a discussion that I look forward to.
Let me start by suggesting that the Iran and Yemen wars are unlikely to end any time soon. Worse than that, escalation is inevitable with potentially far-reaching consequences. There are multiple reasons for this.
For starters, neither the United States nor Iran or the Gulf states have a sustained interest in maintaining a situation of no peace, no war. What we may be witnessing is the quiet before the storm. After a few weeks of tit-for tat exchanges, the United States has for at least the past two weeks refrained from responding to stepped up Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The question is why. It’s unlikely because of alleged progress in indirect talks. My best explanation is that US President Donald Trump wants to decide on next steps after the November 3 US midterm Congressional elections. The question is whether Trump will again make the mistake of asking Israel to join a renewed attack on Iran. This week’s unannounced visit to Israel by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s endorsement of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel’s October 27 election does not bode well.
Talks between the United States and Iran are going nowhere, given that the warring parties, except for the United States, see their wars as existential. That is true for Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Palestinians. For the US, it’s the misguided belief in the country and the president’s omnipotence.
As a result, for the US, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis negotiations are a zero-sum game aimed at defeating the other with warring parties believing that time is on their side.
Trump’s bombastic rhetoric about wiping Iranian civilisation off the face of the earth and sending the Islamic Republic to hell has changed perceptions of the war among many Iranians, including many opposed to the regime. They no longer see the war as targeting the regime but as a war that threatens the integrity of Iran as a nation state.
Meanwhile, the Saudi-Yemeni war will likely grind to a stalemate with the Saudis unwilling to commit ground troops, the internationally recognised government’s forcing lacking cohesion, and the kingdom’s allies willing to come to its defence but unwilling to participate in cross border offensive operations.
Destabilisation and regime change is increasingly the key subtext of Middle Eastern conflicts. Israel leaves no doubt about that. Trump regularly refers to it even if he also denies it. The Houthis call openly for the toppling of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Echoing Israeli attitudes towards Hamas and Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia sees the presence of the Houthis on its borders as an unacceptable threat.
The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can, at least, weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions and often thwarts diplomacy, heightens the risk of prolonged wars, and turns disputes into existential conflicts.
That notion is entertained not only by the United States and Israel, but also Iran. Iran scholar Karim Sadjadpour tells the story of a UK-educated Iranian official who argued a decade ago, when challenged that funding of groups like Hamas, Palestinian Jihad, and Hezbollah served Iran’s interests better than spending the money on training Palestinians and Lebanese to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers.
“What good would that have done for us? Do you think if we sent them abroad to become doctors, lawyers, and professors, they would return to southern Lebanon and Gaza to fight Israel?” the official asked.
Despite the perceived unreliability of the United States as the guarantor of Gulf security, the US will remain the backbone of regional security while Gulf states seek to diversify their defence relationships, the Saudi, Turkish, Pakistani defence pact being one example.. Even so. the US presence will become more conditional and consultative.
Massive Gulf investment in defence, particularly in anti-air defence, drones, and missiles is likely to push Gulf states to adopt more offensive strategies. Gulf states will want to lay down a marker that they can’t be bullied and can give as good as they get. For its part, Iran may want to disprove that by striking hard at the Gulf states, not if but when full-fledged hostilities resume.
Although not necessarily coordinated or centrally managed, the Iran and Yemen wars are increasingly intertwined expanding to include in the Horn of Africa, and Israel eyeballing Turkey with Syria as a potential battlefield.
The perceived US inability to maintain security in the Gulf could force China to rethink its reliance on the United States to ensure the free flow of oil and goods through the Middle East’s chokepoints, the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab. A more proactive China seeking to protect its interests could change the balance of power in the Middle East.
The Middle East is on the edge of a nuclear arms race with the US envisioning a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia with safeguards that are less strict than those maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency while demanding that Iran agree to safeguards that go far beyond the IAEA standards. The war and US double standards in its nuclear export policy have fuelled calls in Iran to opt for a nuclear weapons capability. That could revive Saudi and Turkish ambitions. It could also blow new life into calls for a nuclear-free-zone in the Middle East with Israel’s refusal to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal being the major stumbling block. So could Pakistan as it is increasingly drawn into the Middle East, which opens a whole different can of worms.
Israel’s new security doctrine adopted and implemented in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state positions Israel in Arab and Muslim eyes as a threat on par with Iran. The doctrine defines the Palestinian issue as an “Arab ploy to destroy Israel,” asserts that war, settlements, occupation, and pre-emptive strikes are essential for national security, portrayed peace as “unattainable,” advocates the destabilisation of Arab states viewed as “collections of tribes and ethnic groups,” rather than nations states, and postulates that Israel’s Jewish identity takes precedence over democracy.
Israel’s new security doctrine is not simply a response to the Hamas attack. It’s the product of decades Israel’s move to the right and of religious ultra-nationalism’s “march through the institutions,” a phrase coined by 1960s German left-wing student leader Rudi Dutschke. The religious ultranationalists have turned the military, long Israel’s pre-eminent secular institution, not only into the militant spearhead of a policy to disenfranchise Palestinians, but also into a misogynous institution that deepens fault lines between Israel’s secular and religious communities.
The doctrine, coupled with Israel’s war conduct, closes the door on any rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The US-Israeli relationship is no longer a given with Netanyahu and senior military officers predicting a breakdown in relations and arguing that dependence on the United States may no longer be in Israel’s interest.
Several issues are potential litmus tests of where US-Israeli relations may be heading.
One is whether and how Israel prosecutes vigilante settlers who allegedly attacked a Washington Post reporter and European diplomats. Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist and US ambassador to Israel who believes in a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, has called for their prosecution to the extent of the law.
Another is how long Trump will tolerate Israel’s thwarting of any progress in Gaza of his peace plan and Board of Peace.
A third limus test are the negotiations on a new US-Israeli military memorandum of understanding. The current Obama era MOU that guaranteed Israel $38 billion over a period of 10 years expires in 2028. Both Israel and the US see a new MOU has fundamentally changing the two countries’ relationship by transiting Israel from a recipient of foreign aid to a strategic partner.
Finally, Israeli elections may shave off the rough edges of Israeli strategy by, for example, reigning in vigilante settlers, but a Netanyahu defeat and an opposition victory would bring to office a government that does not disagree on Netanyahu’s fundamental policies, including rejection of a Palestinian state, confrontation with Iran, and continued settlement of the West Bank. The immediate question is whether Netanyahu will accept an election result in which he is defeated and if he doesn’t what that may mean for Israel and the region.
Allow me to end by quoting President Trump: “Thank you for your attention.”