To fully decode the shifting middle east security dynamics, Etel Solingen’s coalitional theory divulges how domestic political cohesion drives external strategic triumphs. Attendance of six-day state funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by millions of people was a declaration of institutional survival, complete socio-political cohesion and a profound position of strength, in addition to being a strategic messaging and power show of the country’s resolve, unity, and resistance. Iran’s leadership has shown that it is possible to maximize the absolute profits without sacrificing its core ideological values in a unified state with strong internal cohesiveness and a long civilizational strength.
With the historic Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Iran successfully turned its geographic and asymmetric power into a decisive triumph. The Iran was able to secure a grand diplomatic settlement that fully preserves its territorial integrity and compels its historical adversaries to fund its long-term national reconstruction by leveraging its strong domestic cohesion instead of being isolated by external military aggregation. Most Gulf nations have now begun to negotiate direct and independent treaties with Tehran after realizing that Iran’s strategic influence in the Middle East is a permanent fact. Iran’s position in the post-war middle east Regional Security Complex (RSC) has significantly improved as a result of this systemic rebalancing. According to Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s historical map, the Middle Eastern RSC has consistently been a conflict zone characterized by a significant lack of predictability and the interests of outside powers. The current post-war baseline demonstrates that Iran has effectively broken this asymmetric encirclement and demonstrated that the Middle East can function as a subsystem with significant autonomy of its own against the Israel. In order to transform the regional complex into a mature ecosystem where inter-state interactions take precedence over external interference, the core sub-complex has moved from a unipolar, western-dominated alignment towards an equilibrium where regional states act as an essential sovereign anchor.
In addition, this regional victory reflects the broader systemic degradation occurring within the western alliance framework. The crisis has exposed deep structural problems in NATO’s burden-sharing structure. When Washington rerouted its resources to address the middle east war, NATO’s long-standing dilemma created a great deal of conflict. During the current NATO Summit in Ankara, Secretary General Mark Rutte was forced to exert intense pressure on European cities to raise their domestic military spending in order to meet the benchmark. The loss of the unified, global dominance of the Western security umbrella is demonstrated by this transatlantic clash.
As a way forward, neoliberal theory demonstrates that complex interdependence changes the incentive structures of all global actors. The same can be true for middle east Muslim world including Arabs, Iran and Turkey states, where the cost of any future conflict becomes unaffordable by tying neighboring countries to shared infrastructure, energy pipelines, trade, tourism and people to people contact. A state’s survival and success in this linked ecosystem will be able to resolve Palestine issue against Israel, rather than alienating from its neighbors and seeking power maximization.
The ultimate lesson of the post-war transition is that true security in Middle East countries cannot be enforced through external power balancing or military dominance race under structural realism. Instead, it can be won by a self-reliant, robust, interconnected new regional security complex that is skillfully woven through a dense web of diplomatic transparency and economic interdependence, making local autonomy, harmony and joint defense as the most logical strategy for countering external threat, in future.
The writer is former director CASS & also Phd scholar.
