The Aggravated Struggle for Regional Power in the Middle East: American Allies Saudi Arabia and Israel versus Iran

Abstract

The present contribution first describes the aggravated Middle Eastern power competition in the 21st century, thereby emphasizing two aspects: the concentration of participants in the regional power game to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran, including shifts in regional power distribution; and the recent trend of entanglement of the Israeli–Iranian conflict with that between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Second, it contributes to an explanation of these developments by discussing the explanatory power of approaches based on three paradigms: primordialism, rationalism, and social constructivism. It is shown that a rationalist school of thought – structural realism – does not perform perfectly but nonetheless does rather well in explaining the aggravated power competition in the Middle East and the entanglement of the rivalries of each of the two American allies with Iran. At the same time, it is shown that the best way of bridging some of the explanatory gaps of structural realism in the case of Middle Eastern power politics is to epistemologically embed insights from rationalist schools of thought in a setting of a positivist version of social constructivism. On this fundament, the article explores a Copenhagen School‐inspired approach of securitization to better comprehend recent developments of aggravated Middle Eastern power conflicts.

Fluctuating Regional (Dis‐)Order in the Post‐Arab Uprising Middle East

“…The merit of scrutinizing this important feature of the contemporary Middle East in this thematic section goes to Yom (), who discusses US Middle Eastern foreign policy and explains the end of American hegemony within the region. All other contributions, which focus on Middle Eastern relations in the strict sense, confirm Yom’s findings by highlighting some of the ongoing consequences: Beck () with regards to the diminishing role of the USA in the struggle for regional leadership, Richter () in terms of the decline of US hegemony as a necessary condition of the emergence of new petro‐aggressions in the Gulf, and Hinnebusch () in reference to the battle of Syria’s reconstruction with little to no US involvement after a devastating civil war. Last but not least, May (2020) highlights some of the conditions for lasting military interventions by regional actors under the new circumstances of diminishing US hegemony.…”

“…In the wake of the Arab Uprisings, the Arab League and the GCC became a mere foreign policy tool of Saudi Arabia. Beck () exemplifies this with the Arab League’s condemnation of Iranian ally Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in March 2016, and Kneuer et al show this using the example of the GCC intervention in Bahrain in 2011. The GCC failed to play a mediating role in the severe conflict between its members Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain on the one hand and Qatar on the other, which culminated in the imposition of a fully‐fledged embargo spearheaded by the former on the latter in 2017 (Neubauer, ).…”

“…Yet, the causes stem from genuinely regional dynamics, as is discussed by several authors of this thematic section. Beck () who deals with the currently three most powerful regional actors – Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – argues that the Saudi–Iranian rivalry and its intriguing entanglement with the Israeli–Iranian contestation is the result of a reconfiguration of regional powers facilitated by the partial US retreat from the Middle East. Richter () and Darwich () painstakingly describe the role that regional actors have been playing independently of the USA.…”

“…An approach based on the idea of a Middle Eastern Cold War is ultimately bound to the limits of realism. However, as Beck () shows by embarking on the productive tradition of theoretical pluralism in Middle Eastern Studies (Ryan, ), the dynamics of regional affairs following the Arab Uprisings can hardly be understood without exceeding the limits of realism and therefore should take into account the insights derived from alternative schools of thought such as institutionalism, liberalism, and social constructivism. Initially, theoretical pluralism was no more than the eclectic application of diverse approaches.…”

“…Securitization policies are strategic and aim at legitimizing extra‐ordinary measures that under regular conditions would not be justifiable. The targeted audiences of securitization policies are social and political groups and actors on the domestic and/or international level (Buzan et al, ; for an application to the Middle East, see: Beck, ; Calculli and Legrenzi, ).…”