Summary

This 9000-word assessment draws on open-source reporting, verified casualty data from IAEA verification reports, commodity market data, and analysis from institutions including the Carnegie Endowment, CSIS, the Arms Control Association, the House of Commons Library, and the Atlantic Council, current as of March 5, 2026. All claims are sourced and hyperlinked throughout. Nonetheless, the prevailing fog of war and systematic disinformation require a grain of salt with every claim and piece of evidence used throughout this report.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, a joint air campaign against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, destroyed the country’s air defences and navy, struck nearly 2,000 targets across 24 provinces, and systematically decapitated the political and military leadership of the Islamic Republic. Iran retaliated with over 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones across nine countries, striking Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and others. The IRGC declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. Brent crude surged above $82. Qatar halted all LNG production, removing 20% of global supply. Gulf stock markets plunged while the Tel Aviv exchange hit a record high.

This report assesses the strategic implications of the conflict across six dimensions.

1. First, Iran faces an existential crisis of its own making: decades of sectarian overreach, nuclear brinkmanship, and economic mismanagement produced the conditions for its destruction, though the scale of the current assault and its human toll, including the killing of an estimated 148 schoolgirls in a single strike, transcends any strategic rationalisation.

2. Second, Israel’s objective is state collapse rather than regime change, applying centrifugal force along ethnic fault lines in an environment where the reconstruction of a destroyed state has become near-impossible, with catastrophic spillover risks for Pakistan, the Arab Gulf, Türkiye, and Europe.

3. Third, the Gulf monarchies face the failure of the US-Israeli security architecture: their cities absorb missiles from a war they refused to join while Washington stonewalls interceptor resupply, and the UAE’s deep defence-industrial entanglement with Israel has compromised Gulf security more thoroughly than Iranian subversion ever managed.

4. Fourth, Türkiye confronts dual threats from a disintegrating Iran and an Israel already positioning Ankara as the next strategic adversary, driving a military-industrial acceleration and nuclear ambiguity without precedent in the Muslim world.

5. Fifth, the 20th century’s holdout regimes, from Iran to Venezuela to Cuba, are collapsing simultaneously while Russia proves unable to support its allies and China positions itself as the principal beneficiary of American overextension.

6. Sixth, the war has exposed the complete collapse of the rules-based international order and the strategic irrelevance of Europe, while validating the case for a Türkiye-Levant-Gulf integration corridor and simultaneously materially threatening it.

The situation as of March 5, 2026, is too volatile for any honest analyst to project outcomes with confidence.

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The Endgame for Iran

The images emerging from Tehran, of craters, burning apartment blocks, civil defence teams pulling bodies from collapsed infrastructure, have for much of the past decade been the images of Damascus and Aleppo, cities that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian regime spent an estimated $30–50 billion sustaining under bombardment in the service of his sectarian empire. Khamenei bankrolled the Assad regime’s war against the Syrian people, armed Hezbollah to the teeth, funded the Houthis, cultivated a network of Shia militias across Iraq, and pursued nuclear ambiguity while his own population slid into destitution. He is no victim. In some sense, Khamenei died as he forced millions of others to live: under airstrikes, with nowhere to go. The Islamic Republic’s leadership made catastrophic strategic errors over two decades, building simultaneously a sectarian architecture that alienated every major Sunni power in the region, an ambiguous nuclear programme that gave the United States and Israel the pretext they needed, and an economy so hollowed by sanctions, corruption, and mismanagement that it could not sustain even basic air defences when the moment came. Iran set the strategic scene for its own destruction. That does not make what followed just. It does make it explicable.

On February 28, 2026, at approximately 2:30 AM EST, the United States and Israel launched simultaneous air campaigns against Iran. The American operation, codenamed Operation Epic Fury, was paired with Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion, the largest combat sortie in Israeli Air Force history. By March 4, CENTCOM confirmed nearly 2,000 Iranian targets struck with over 2,000 munitions across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The opening strike hit the Leadership House compound in Tehran, killing Khamenei and his wife, among other members of his family. Within 48 hours, confirmed dead included Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, former SNSC Secretary Ali Shamkhani, SPND chief Hossein Jabal Amelian, and at least 40 senior officials. The Assembly of Experts was bombed while convening to elect a new Supreme Leader. Iran’s parliament, broadcasting headquarters, and Supreme National Security Council were all destroyed. The target list tells the story: every institution capable of selecting a successor, issuing orders, or broadcasting to the population was hit. This was systematic political decapitation.

Iran’s air defences, a layered combination of Russian S-300 and Tor systems, Chinese HQ-9B batteries, and domestic Bavar-373 platforms, collapsed comprehensively under coordinated electronic warfare, cyber operations, and physical destruction. Multiple S-300 radar arrays were destroyed in the initial waves. The US SEAD campaign reduced Iranian radar coverage to near zero within the first 24 hours. These systems had already been severely degraded during the June 2025 Twelve-Day War and never fully recovered. Trump claimed Iran had “no air detection, or radar.” An Israeli F-35I scored what appears to be the first air-to-air kill of a manned fighter by a fifth-generation stealth aircraft, shooting down an Iranian Yak-130 over Tehran. The IAEA confirmed damage to entrance buildings at Natanz and access roads at Fordow, with “some localised radioactive as well as chemical release inside affected facilities,” though no major off-site contamination was detected. The nuclear programme, already set back by the June 2025 strikes, has sustained further damage, the full extent of which remains unclear.

Iran’s retaliation, designated Operation True Promise IV, launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones at nine countries: Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. A NATO missile defence system intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile heading toward Türkiye. The UAE absorbed 174 ballistic missiles, 689 drones, and 8 cruise missiles; Dubai International Airport was struck, the Burj Al Arab was damaged, and AWS data centres were knocked offline. Qatar’s LNG facilities at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed were hit, prompting QatarEnergy to halt all production and removing roughly 20% of global LNG supply from the market. In Kuwait, the US Embassy was struck and closed indefinitely; three Kuwaiti F/A-18s shot down three US F-15Es in a friendly-fire incident. The volume of Iranian launches dropped 86% for missiles and 73% for drones from Day 1 to Day 5, indicating severe stockpile attrition. The IRGC declared the Strait of Hormuz closed on March 2. Iran’s navy, such as it was, was annihilated; Admiral Cooper stated that there is “not a single Iranian ship underway” in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman. On March 4, a US submarine torpedoed and sank the frigate IRIS Dena in international waters off Sri Lanka, killing at least 87 of its 180 crew, the first submarine kill of a surface vessel since the Falklands War. The Dena had been returning from India’s International Fleet Review at Visakhapatnam, where Iran’s naval commander had met India’s Chief of the Naval Staff just days earlier. That an Iranian warship could be sunk by an American torpedo while transiting from a joint exercise with India, with Indian naval officers still processing the diplomatic implications, encapsulates the scale of Iran’s foreign policy failure: it maintained relationships it assumed would offer at least informal protection, and they offered nothing. At least 2,400 Iranians have been killed by Day 6 according to the Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights, including an estimated 310 civilians. The deadliest single incident was a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, less than 60 metres from an IRGC naval base, which killed an estimated 148 to 180 schoolgirls.

The multi-front picture extends beyond Iran’s borders. In Iraq, Iran’s last remaining sphere of proxy influence, the situation is fracturing in real time. Iran-backed militias have fired at US bases in Erbil. On March 2, there were reports of thousands of Kurdish PJAK seeking to launch a military offensive into Iranian territory from Iraqi Kurdistan under the newly formed Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan. CNN reported that the CIA is negotiating with Kurdish groups to support an internal uprising. The KRG’s territory may possibly be used as a staging ground for operations into Iran. In Lebanon, Hezbollah violated its 2024 ceasefire on March 2, firing rockets at an Israeli military base near Haifa. Israel has launched airstrikes on Lebanon in response. The war is rapidly metastasising.

The question of who governs Iran in Khamenei’s absence has no clear answer. Within 48 hours of his death, a three-member leadership council was formed in accordance with the constitution to manage the transition. President Masoud Pezeshkian declared that seeking revenge is Iran’s “duty and legitimate right.” But Iran’s power structure has never been a single point of authority; it is a complex, multilayered system in which elected government, the IRGC and its vast economic holdings, the regular military (Artesh), the Basij paramilitary, the clerical establishment, and multiple ideological and factional currents all exercise influence through overlapping and sometimes competing hierarchies. The destruction of the Assembly of Experts, the Supreme National Security Council, and much of the senior military leadership has simultaneously severed several of these nodes, but others remain intact. The IRGC, in particular, possesses its own chain of command, intelligence apparatus, economic infrastructure, and internal cohesion. Whether the system collapses into factional infighting, consolidates around the IRGC as a garrison state, or manages a genuine constitutional succession is unknowable at this stage. What is clear is that the decapitation was not total, and assumptions of rapid state collapse may prove premature.

The human and economic costs of the first six days are already staggering, and they extend far beyond Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of global seaborne oil transits, is functionally closed. The Houthis simultaneously announced the resumption of attacks on Red Sea shipping, threatening the Suez Canal alternative and creating a pincer on global maritime trade that has no modern precedent: both of the Middle East’s critical chokepoints are now simultaneously contested. Roughly 3,200 ships sit idle in the Gulf, with another 500 waiting outside. Brent crude surged from approximately $73 to above $82, with Goldman Sachs warning it could reach $100 if disruption persists for five additional weeks. VLCC freight rates hit an all-time record of $423,736 per day. War-risk insurance has been cancelled for ships transiting the Gulf from March 5. LME aluminium surged to $3,418 per ton as Gulf smelters representing 8–9% of global output declared force majeure; Qatar’s Qatalum began a controlled shutdown that could take six to twelve months to reverse. Urea fertiliser prices spiked at the worst possible moment, coinciding with Northern Hemisphere spring planting; 25–33% of globally traded nitrogen transits through Hormuz. The Dubai DFM plunged 4.65% on reopening after a two-day suspension. Saudi and Egyptian markets slumped. Kuwait suspended trading entirely. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, by contrast, surged 4.61% to a record high.

The information environment is saturated and deliberately polluted. On March 4, four reports broke simultaneously, each containing verifiable elements wrapped in strategic amplification. The Washington Post reported that MBS had privately lobbied Trump for strikes despite publicly favouring diplomacy; Saudi Arabia flatly denied it, and Chatham House had documented Middle Eastern governments lobbying against the attack. Middle East Eye reported Türkiye preparing a buffer zone in Iranian Azerbaijan, framing genuine contingency planning as aggressive pan-Turkic intent. OC Media reported Azerbaijani troops deployed to the Iranian border; Baku officially declared neutrality. Israeli outlet i24NEWS ran an exclusive on thousands of Kurdish fighters entering Iran, confirmed in part but amplified well beyond verified scale. BBC Verify’s Shayan Sardarizadeh stated this conflict “might have already broken the record” for AI-generated disinformation in wartime. The pattern across all four stories is consistent: each contains a kernel of reality, strategically leaked, amplified, or of dubious origin, designed to stretch the IRGC’s attention across multiple ethnic and geographic fronts simultaneously. The purpose is to provoke a response that fuels the very centrifugal forces the reports describe. Whether Iran takes the bait remains to be seen.

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The Endgame for Israel

The negotiations were a ruse. On this point, the evidence is by now overwhelming. Five rounds of US-Iran talks took place between April and May 2025, mediated by Oman, all indirect and all inconclusive. Trump’s 60-day ultimatum expired on June 12. Israel struck on June 13, two days before the scheduled sixth round. The Twelve-Day War killed over 30 senior IRGC commanders, at least 14 nuclear scientists, and set back Iran’s nuclear programme by months. On June 21, the US entered with Operation Midnight Hammer: seven B-2 bombers dropped 14 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Fordow and Natanz, the first operational use of the largest conventional bombs in the American arsenal. A ceasefire was brokered on June 24. Talks resumed tentatively in February 2026, with a round in Oman on February 6 and a final round in Geneva around February 26. Omani mediators spoke of unprecedented openness. Two days later, Operation Epic Fury launched. According to the Omani foreign minister, both the June 2025 and February 2026 strikes occurred at moments when negotiations had achieved significant progress. The Arms Control Association assessed that the June strikes were designed to sabotage the talks as much as they were intended to damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The pattern is unmistakable: military preparations ran in parallel with diplomacy throughout, and strikes were launched within 48 hours of diplomatic sessions both times. The two carrier strike groups (USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford), the THAAD battery deployments, the F-22 repositioning to Gulf bases, and the pre-positioning of B-2 bombers at Diego Garcia all occurred during the diplomatic period, not after it. These preparations are inconsistent with genuine negotiation. They are consistent with using talks as cover for positioning. The sceptic’s response, that diplomacy was exhausted and strikes followed its failure, does not survive contact with logistical realities: you do not forward-deploy 200 aircraft and two carrier groups as a contingency. You deploy them because you intend to use them. The talks were a cover for positioning.

The events on October 7, 2023, accelerated an existing trajectory. Israel has regarded the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities as the strategic crown jewel for at least two decades, across governments of every political composition. What October 7 provided was the political licence to act, both domestically and in Washington, and a sequence of conflicts that systematically dismantled Iran’s proxy architecture before the final blow. Hamas was ground down in Gaza. Hezbollah’s senior leadership was decimated from September 2024 onward, its military capabilities severely curtailed by Israeli bombardment and the closure of Syrian supply routes. The Assad regime collapsed in December 2024, severing Tehran’s land bridge to the Mediterranean and writing off decades of investment. The Houthis were degraded. Iran’s Axis of Resistance, which at its peak could threaten Israel from four directions simultaneously, was reduced to a shell. Each step narrowed Iran’s retaliatory options and expanded Israel’s freedom of action. Whether the war came in 2026 or 2036, its arrival was a matter of timing and opportunity, not of principle.

The stated objective is regime change. The actual objective appears to be something more radical: state collapse. Former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera on March 3 that Israel has “no real interest in smooth regime change” and that most Israeli leaders “regard that as a kind of fairytale.” Israel is “more interested in regime and state collapse,” he said. “They want Iran to implode, and if the spillover from that takes in Iraq, the Gulf and much of the region, so much the better.” Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert and senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, stated Israel’s position bluntly, “If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn’t care less about the future . . . [or] the stability of Iran.”

The Jerusalem Post editorialised in June 2025 for a Middle East coalition supporting Iran’s partition, with security guarantees to the Sunni, Kurdish, and Baloch regions willing to break away. 32 Knesset members signed a 2023 declaration calling for Iran’s partition into six parts. The FDD’s Brenda Shaffer has advocated Iran’s fragmentation along ethnic lines comparable to Yugoslavia. Netanyahu addressed Iranians in Farsi after Khamenei’s death, urging them to “come to the streets, come out in your millions, to finish the job,” while Israel simultaneously declared that any new supreme leader would be a target for elimination.

This is consistent with a long pattern most explicitly articulated in the 1996 report, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, which has deeply influenced Israeli grand strategy. Israel has applied centrifugal force to rival states for decades: cultivating Kurdish autonomy in Iraq as a counterweight to Baghdad, building alliances with Druze and Maronite factions in Lebanon, supporting South Sudanese independence to weaken Khartoum, and, more recently, recognising Somaliland via the UAE to fracture Somali sovereignty. The strategy is consistent: identify ethnic, sectarian, or regional fault lines within adversary states and apply resources to widen them. Iran represents the application of this logic at an unprecedented scale.

The analytical framework that best captures Israel’s strategy is the distinction between centripetal and centrifugal forces, articulated by Ali Terrenoire in his work on coordination crises and state formation. Centripetal forces are those that pull political coordination toward the centre, scaling up collective action through institutions, parties, and eventually the state itself. Centrifugal forces disperse coordination outward, fragmenting power away from the centre toward smaller, weaker hierarchies or toward individuals who lack the capacity to rebuild what was destroyed. Israel’s strategy in Iran is the deliberate application of centrifugal force from without: ethnic separatism promotion, CIA coordination with Kurdish militants, information warfare amplifying Baloch, Azeri, and Arab grievances, and the systematic destruction of every institution capable of coordinating a national response. The danger, as Terrenoire argues, is that the background conditions of the 21st century have tipped decisively toward centrifugal dominance. The capacity for collective action, the ability of dispersed populations to organise and build new institutions, has been eroding globally for decades. The state, in this framing, becomes something like a vestigial technology from an earlier era of political capacity: still maintained where it exists, but extraordinarily difficult to construct from scratch once destroyed. Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria’s 14-year disintegration, and the current Sudan conflict are all examples of this logic in motion. Only Syria has thus far been able to break the pattern. Iran, with 90 million people across a territory the size of Western Europe, would represent the largest such experiment in history.

The fracture lines in Iran include the Kurds (10-15% of the population), Azerbaijanis (approximately 16%), Baloch (2-3%), and Arabs (approximately 2%), all of whom have potential organisations, cross-border kinship ties, and historical grievances that external actors are actively exploiting. The CPFIK’s formation on February 22, uniting five Kurdish parties under a self-determination banner, is the most organised separatist threat to emerge in Iran in decades. Baloch groups operate across a border zone extending into Pakistan and Afghanistan. Arab separatism in oil-rich Khuzestan carries weight disproportionate to its demographic size because of the province’s petroleum infrastructure. Yet the centripetal counter-forces are substantial. Iranian Azerbaijanis are predominantly Shia, have produced multiple Iranian dynasties, and most frame demands in terms of cultural rights rather than independence. Responsible Statecraft notes that Iran is a 90-million-strong nation with a deep sense of historical and cultural identity, and the Iran-Iraq War’s rally-around-the-flag legacy runs deep. The surviving Iranian leadership has already pivoted from religious legitimacy to survivalist nationalism, with Ali Larijani warning publicly that Israel’s ultimate goal is the partition of Iran. Whether this nationalist framing can hold under sustained bombardment, economic collapse, and coordinated ethnic insurgency is an open question.

The consequences of failure would not be confined to Iran. Baloch separatism does not stop at the Iranian border but extends directly into Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state of 240 million people whose own Balochistan province has experienced decades of insurgency. Kurdish autonomy in a collapsed Iran would embolden movements in Iraq and Türkiye, threatening two states that are central to the corridor thesis Vizier has developed over the past year. Azeri separatism would draw in Azerbaijan and, by extension, Türkiye and Russia. Refugee flows could reach tens of millions; the EU Agency for Asylum has warned of displacement “of unprecedented magnitude.”#

Pakistan deserves particular attention here. It is the only Muslim-majority state that can credibly be described as a hard sovereign power: it possesses nuclear weapons, an intelligence apparatus of considerable reach, and an air force that held its own against India during the May 2025 four-day war triggered by the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, in stark contrast to Iran’s total aerial collapse against Israel. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission described Pakistan’s performance as having “showcased” its military capabilities. Pakistan’s deepening ties to both Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, and the emerging architecture of a mutual defence pact between these three states, represent precisely the kind of centripetal counterweight that Israel’s strategy is designed to prevent. Israel’s ring of fire works only if no peer competitor can consolidate on the other side. Pakistan, with its nuclear deterrent and hardened military institutions, is the one actor in the Muslim world that cannot be subjected to the same centrifugal treatment. This is why Israeli strategists, from Bennett’s February 17 speech onward, have begun framing the Türkiye-Saudi-Pakistan axis as the next threat horizon, even before the current war with Iran has concluded.

Questions on Gulf Rapprochement

The question this war poses to the Gulf monarchies is not whether they can afford to defend themselves. Nor is it what side they wish to take: they fear the outcome regardless. It is whether the security architecture they have built over four decades, anchored to Washington and increasingly entangled with Tel Aviv, actually serves their interests at all. The evidence from the past six days suggests that it does not.

Before the strikes began, all six GCC members categorically refused to allow their bases and airspace to be used against Iran. They were attacked anyway. The UAE absorbed 174 ballistic missiles, 689 drones, and 8 cruise missiles. Qatar lost its entire LNG export capacity. Kuwait’s airport was struck. The US Embassy in Riyadh was hit by drone fire. Carnegie described the predicament as an impossible choice: strike back and be seen as fighting alongside Israel, or remain passive while your cities burn. Neither option serves Gulf interests. Both serve Israeli ones. The interceptor crisis compounds the vulnerability. During the June 2025 war, the US deployed approximately 150 THAAD interceptors to defend Israel, roughly a quarter of its total stock. Bloomberg reported stocks as dangerously low. Middle East Eye reported in March 2026 that the US is “stonewalling” Gulf requests to replenish interceptor supplies as pressure mounts on the Gulf states to join the war effort. A single THAAD interceptor costs approximately $11 million, meaning production cannot keep pace with consumption. The UAE has burned through a significant portion of an interceptor stockpile that took years to build, and Washington’s priority is Israel, not Abu Dhabi.

The UAE’s predicament is, in significant part, self-inflicted. Since the Abraham Accords in 2020, Abu Dhabi has positioned itself as Israel’s deepest defence-industrial partner in the Arab world. Elbit Systems signed a $2.3 billion deal with the UAE in December 2025, the largest in the company’s history, for advanced aircraft protection systems to be manufactured inside the Emirates over eight years. IAI sold batteries of its Barak MX air defence system to Abu Dhabi shortly after normalisation. EDGE Group acquired a 30% stake in Thirdeye Systems, an Israeli company specialising in anti-drone technology. The two countries share data on common threats through a joint intelligence platform nicknamed Crystal Ball. 34 Israeli arms companies participated at IDEX 2025 in Abu Dhabi. Arab officials from several countries told Middle East Eye that the UAE is more supportive of Israeli plans for the Gaza Strip than any of its Gulf neighbours. One Saudi analyst described it plainly: the UAE has been “preparing itself to be the disruptor of the Arab consensus,” and that is “the main utility of the UAE for the US and Israel.”

The result is that the Abraham Accords defence relationship has compromised Gulf security more thoroughly than Iran and Hezbollah ever managed through direct subversion. Tehran’s intelligence penetration of the Gulf was always limited by the fundamental asymmetry between Shia networks and Sunni-majority societies. Israel’s penetration, by contrast, came through the front door in the form of capital flows, surveillance technology contracts, defence procurement, shared intelligence platforms, and the political alignment of Abu Dhabi’s leadership with Israeli strategic objectives in Gaza, Syria, and the Horn of Africa. The UAE became the vector through which Israeli military technology, intelligence architecture, and strategic priorities entered the Gulf ecosystem. When Iran’s retaliatory missiles struck Dubai, they struck a city whose defence infrastructure was partly designed, supplied, and integrated by the very state that provoked the attack. The Emirati population is now paying the price for a strategic alignment it was never consulted on and from which it derives no security benefit.

The question is what follows. The Saudi-UAE divergence had been widening for over a year before this war, driven by fundamentally different strategic doctrines. In December 2025, Saudi aircraft struck a UAE-linked weapons shipment at Mukalla port in Yemen, the first kinetic exchange between nominal allies, after UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council forces launched offensives in Hadramawt and Al-Mahra provinces near Saudi borders. The fissure extended across multiple theatres: in Sudan, Saudi Arabia supports the Sudanese Armed Forces while the UAE stands accused of arming the Rapid Support Forces; in Somalia, the UAE recognised breakaway Somaliland and invested $440 million in Berbera Port while Saudi Arabia condemned Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Analysts at War on the Rocks characterised the split as reflecting Saudi “de-escalatory developmentalism,” which treats state collapse as the primary danger, versus Emirati “pre-emptive activism,” which intervenes aggressively to shape outcomes before they deteriorate. Now both face Iranian missile fire, and MBS has phoned MBZ expressing solidarity. But shared threat does not erase structural disagreement.

Saudi Arabia’s own record here is not clean. Riyadh pursued the normalisation track with Israel through the Biden-era negotiations, entertaining the Abraham Accords framework on the condition of Palestinian statehood, a security pact with Washington, and a civilian nuclear programme. MBS met with Kushner and Israeli envoys repeatedly. The kingdom was willing, in principle, to follow the UAE’s path if the price was right. That this failed was largely a function of Israeli intransigence on Palestine, not Saudi principled opposition to normalisation itself. The Saudi pivot toward military independence and regional alliance-building with countries like Pakistan and Türkiye is not a long-standing conviction; it is a correction, born of the recognition that the American security umbrella is unreliable and that Israeli partnership carries costs that the UAE’s experience has made visible. Acknowledging this does not weaken the pivot; it makes it more credible because it is driven by strategic learning rather than ideology.

Qatar occupies a distinct and exposed position. It hosts Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East and CENTCOM’s forward headquarters, making it simultaneously a target for Iranian retaliation and a platform for the very strikes that provoked it. QatarEnergy’s halt of all LNG production has removed roughly 20% of global supply, devastating European energy markets. Qatar has historically maintained a diplomatic channel with Tehran that neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE possessed, and it co-funded Syria’s reconstruction alongside Türkiye and Saudi Arabia. Whether Doha now reassesses the American presence on its soil, and what terms it extracts for continued hosting, will be one of the most consequential quiet negotiations of the coming months.

The deeper question is whether Saudi Arabia uses this moment to recognise, finally and operationally, that the US-Israel axis does not have Saudi interests at heart, that the American security umbrella is a transactional instrument that can be withdrawn or redirected at will, and that the only durable path to Gulf security runs through military-industrial sovereignty, indigenous production capacity, and regional alliances built outside Washington’s orbit. Türkiye-Saudi partnerships, the mutual defence pact architecture with Pakistan, and the corridor integration thesis all point in this direction. Whether the UAE attempts to leverage the crisis to reassert its position, or whether Riyadh reins it in and leads a genuine pivot toward strategic independence, will determine the character of Gulf coordination for a generation.

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Türkiye Races Against Time

Türkiye faces a threat environment without precedent in the republic’s history, and it is responding with a military-industrial acceleration without precedent either. To the east, Iran is disintegrating under bombardment, raising the prospect of state collapse on a 534-kilometre shared border, refugee flows potentially numbering in the millions, Kurdish insurgent sanctuaries in a power vacuum, and the possible emergence of an ungoverned nuclear-capable territory. Türkiye has already built a 204-kilometre security wall along its border in Van province. Middle East Eye reported that senior foreign ministry officials briefed lawmakers on contingency scenarios, including a buffer zone inside Iranian territory.

To the west and south, Israel is already being positioned as the next target. On February 17, eleven days before the strikes on Iran, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett delivered a landmark speech at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations declaring that “Türkiye is the new Iran.” He called Erdoğan “sophisticated, dangerous,” accused Ankara and Doha of “nourishing the Islamic Brotherhood monster,” warned of a “hostile Sunni axis with nuclear Pakistan,” and stated that Türkiye was attempting to “flip Saudi Arabia against Israel.” His strategic prescription was explicit: “do everything to accelerate the fall” of Iran’s regime while simultaneously preparing to confront Türkiye. Bennett is not a marginal figure. He is expected to run well in Israel’s elections later this year, and his framing of Türkiye as a structural adversary represents an emerging bipartisan consensus within Israel’s security establishment that transcends the Netanyahu government.

The institutional infrastructure for this discursive shift is already being constructed. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Washington’s most influential pro-Israel think tank, has been running a sustained campaign against Türkiye through its dedicated Türkiye Program, led by Sinan Ciddi. The FDD has published analyses framing Türkiye’s defence industry as a threat, its relationship with Pakistan as dangerous, and its involvement in Syria as destabilising. It has explicitly advocated a 3+1 partnership of the United States, Greece, Israel, and Cyprus as a counter-Türkiye architecture, with the stated aim of deepening defence ties “eyeing Türkiye.” Whether this discursive campaign translates into operational military planning against Türkiye is a separate question, and the distinction matters. But the pattern is clear: the same institutional ecosystem that spent two decades building the case for confrontation with Iran, from think-tank reports through congressional lobbying to weapons procurement, is now being redirected toward Türkiye. Discourse precedes action and establishes the frame within which policy becomes thinkable. The Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral held its 10th summit in December 2025, signing comprehensive military cooperation agreements covering joint exercises, UAV cooperation, and discussions on a rapid-deployment brigade. Greece is pursuing $27 billion in military modernisation, heavily reliant on Israeli weapons: PULS rocket artillery, LORA ballistic missiles, and an “Achilles Shield” air defence system. Netanyahu used the summit to send a direct warning to Türkiye, declaring that “those who fantasise they can re-establish their empires and their dominion over our lands” should “forget it.” The eastern Mediterranean is being reorganised around an anti-Türkiye axis, and the institutional, financial, and military resources being committed to it are substantial.

Syria lies between Türkiye and Israel, and both understand its significance. Israel considers Syria the new frontline with Türkiye, the buffer through which Turkish influence projects southward toward the Gulf and through which the corridor thesis becomes geographically operational. Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have invested heavily in Syria’s reconstruction: the Syrian-Saudi Investment Forum in July 2025 produced 47 agreements worth $6.4 billion; Turkish-Syrian economic integration has accelerated through the JETCO framework established in August 2025; and Qatar committed $4 billion to rebuild Damascus International Airport and Syria’s power grid. A stable, unified Syria is the linchpin of the corridor. Israel’s continued occupation of the Quneitra buffer zone and parts of southern Syria, its airstrikes on Syrian territory, and its explicit interest in keeping Syria weak all serve to prevent the corridor from consolidating. The war in Iran has temporarily redirected attention, but the contest over Syria’s future has only intensified as a result. If Iran collapses, the corridor becomes more urgent and more viable; if it survives as a weakened garrison state, the corridor becomes more necessary as a hedge. Either way, Syria is where the Israeli and Turkish visions for regional order collide.

Türkiye’s response to this dual threat has been a defence-industrial mobilisation without parallel in the Muslim world. The 2026 defence and security budget reached approximately $27.3 billion, representing roughly 2.3% of GDP. Defence and aerospace exports surpassed $10 billion for the first time in 2025, a figure that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The programme list reads like a catalogue of sovereign military capability: the KAAN fifth-generation fighter, whose first non-demonstrator prototype is targeted for flight by the end of April 2026, with a serial production contract to be signed this year; the Bayraktar Kızılelma unmanned combat aircraft, now in low-rate serial production and described by Selçuk Bayraktar as “the future of aviation combat”; the Steel Dome multi-layered air defence system, targeted for operational status by 2030; the Tayfun ballistic missile, which conducted a warhead test firing in December 2025; a 60,000-ton aircraft carrier in the design phase alongside 39 naval vessels being built simultaneously; and ammunition production capacity being scaled from 4,000 rounds annually to 65,000, with a target of one million. The KAAN has been publicly displayed with Saudi markings, signalling that Riyadh is exploring investment in the programme. The HÜRJET advanced trainer secured a €2.6 billion export contract with Spain. Indonesia has signed for KAAN. Türkiye is building a defence-industrial base that can arm not only itself but its allies, and it is doing so at a pace that Israeli and American planners are only beginning to reckon with. The trajectory is extraordinary. But a sober assessment must note the gap between announcement and operational readiness. The KAAN has not yet flown in its production configuration. Steel Dome is targeted for 2030, not 2026. The Kızılelma is in low-rate serial production, not full operational deployment. The ammunition scaling targets are ambitions, not achievements. The systems that would matter most in a confrontation with a fifth-generation adversary, integrated air defence, stealth fighters, deep-strike cruise missiles with indigenous engines, are years from full operational capability. Türkiye is in a race against time, and it knows it.

Türkiye also carries domestic political vulnerabilities. The Kurdish question within Türkiye itself remains unresolved, and the PKK’s historical relationship with Israeli intelligence provides a potential lever that Tel Aviv could exploit in any escalation. The Turkish economy, while large, is under pressure from persistent inflation and lira depreciation, which constrains the real purchasing power of defence spending. And Türkiye’s NATO membership, while unreliable as a defensive shield (72% of Turks do not trust the alliance), simultaneously constrains Israel’s freedom of action against it: an attack on a NATO member would, at minimum, trigger a political crisis within the alliance that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv wants. These factors moderate the threat picture without eliminating it.

Erdoğan’s response to the war in Iran reflects these constraints. He condemned the strikes as a clear violation of sovereignty while simultaneously calling Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states “unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances.” This dual condemnation is genuine, not performative. Türkiye needs stability above all else. A collapsed Iran, with millions of refugees flooding across the border, Kurdish insurgent sanctuaries in a power vacuum, and the possible emergence of an ungoverned nuclear-capable territory, would make Türkiye the first victim of the chaos. Ankara has no interest in the Islamic Republic surviving in its current form, yet it emphatically opposes the alternative that Israel appears to be engineering. Analysts at Brookings assessed that Türkiye “doesn’t want another war at its doorstep” and “fears the day after.”

The nuclear question is being raised. On February 9, 2026, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told CNN Türk that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Türkiye “may inevitably be forced to join the same race.” He declined to answer when asked directly whether Türkiye should possess nuclear weapons, describing the issue as “high-level strategic.” In July 2025, Fidan described the NPT as “structurally unfair,” arguing that the framework is unsustainable in a world where Israel possesses an undeclared arsenal of an estimated 80 to 400 warheads outside international oversight. Erdoğan himself argued in 2019 that he could not accept a world in which the five permanent Security Council members could possess nuclear weapons while Türkiye could not. A July 2025 poll indicated that 71% of Turkish respondents support developing a national nuclear weapon. 72% do not believe NATO would defend Türkiye in the event of aggression. Türkiye’s first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, built by Russia’s Rosatom, is expected to begin operations between 2026 and 2028, and further plants are planned with South Korean or Chinese involvement. The Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) characterises Ankara’s approach as deliberate strategic ambiguity, refraining from explicit declarations while gradually expanding civilian nuclear infrastructure and outlining red lines that could trigger weaponisation. Given the threat environment Türkiye now faces, on two fronts simultaneously, with a NATO alliance it does not trust, and American security guarantees it considers unreliable, the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent would be a rational, if transformative, strategic decision. The war in Iran has made this calculus more urgent.

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The End of the 20th Century

In January 2026, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve against Venezuela, bombing Caracas, disabling air defences, and physically abducting President Nicolás Maduro from his compound in a special forces raid. He now sits in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on narcoterrorism charges. Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Venezuelan operation, has spent the months since asking whether it is next; the Trump administration has done little to discourage this assumption. Russia, the traditional patron of both, is consumed by its war in Ukraine, unable to project power beyond its immediate theatre and watching its weapons systems humiliated in Iranian service: the S-300 batteries it sold to Tehran collapsed under American electronic warfare within hours. Rosatom evacuated staff from Iran’s Bushehr reactor. Moscow pushed for a UN Security Council emergency session and issued stern statements. It did nothing material. It could not.

Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia: the 20th century’s holdout regimes, built on revolutionary ideology, resource rents, and Cold War-era alliance structures, are simultaneously collapsing or cornered. The Islamic Republic, founded in 1979, may not survive 2026 in its current form. Cuba’s economy has contracted every year since 2019, and its protector has been removed from the board. Russia’s conventional military credibility has been shattered in Ukraine and now again, vicariously, in Iran. These were the states that defined the “anti-imperialist” axis for half a century, and they are being dismantled or degraded in rapid succession. The old order is dying. What replaces it is the question.

The sinking of the IRIS Dena illustrates a quieter dimension of this collapse. India hosted Iran’s naval commander at the International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam in February 2026, conducted joint exercises through MILAN, and watched as an American submarine torpedoed the departing Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka’s coast while the Sri Lankan navy pulled bodies from the water. India, the world’s third-largest oil importer and heavily dependent on Gulf crude transiting the Strait of Hormuz, has been conspicuously silent on the conflict. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced with fanfare at the 2023 G20 summit as Washington’s answer to China’s Belt and Road, is now functionally dead. Its route runs through the UAE and Israel, both under missile fire, and Saudi normalisation with Israel, which was its political prerequisite, is unthinkable for the foreseeable future. India’s relationship with Iran, such as it was, has been exposed as hollow at the moment it mattered. Tehran maintained the relationship on the assumption that it offered at least informal protection or diplomatic cover. New Delhi maintained it as a hedge against Chinese influence and a source of discounted oil. Neither assumption survived contact with American military power. The India-Iran relationship fits into the broader pattern of post-Cold War hedging strategies that have proven worthless when tested; relationships maintained for optionality that delivered nothing as options narrowed.

Only China appears to be sailing into the 21st century, with its relative strategic position strengthened, at least against a United States that is haemorrhaging resources and credibility across multiple theatres simultaneously. China faces its own considerable headwinds: a protracted property crisis, demographic decline, deflationary pressures, and an intensifying technology war with Washington all constrain Beijing’s room for manoeuvre. Yet in the specific context of the Middle East, China’s position improves with every dollar the US spends and every interceptor it expends on a conflict that draws American assets away from the Indo-Pacific.

Russia’s impotence deserves particular attention because it reveals the (lack of) credibility of non-Western security partnerships. Moscow sold Iran the S-300 systems that failed within hours. It co-developed relationships with Iranian defence planners for over a decade. It evacuated Rosatom staff from Bushehr when the strikes began, pushed for a UNSC emergency session, and issued stern condemnations. It could do nothing material. Its conventional military credibility, already shattered by the war in Ukraine, has now been further damaged by the spectacle of its weapons systems collapsing under American electronic warfare. Russian-affiliated media outlets have, however, been active in a different capacity: amplifying the Türkiye-invasion narrative, promoting the Azerbaijan-troop-movement story, and running information operations through Telegram channels that frame the fall of Iran as the next step in a Western campaign that will eventually reach Moscow. However, for states considering security partnerships with Russia, the lesson of Iran is unambiguous: Russian weapons and Russian assurances do not survive contact with American air power.

Beijing’s response has been rhetorically forceful and operationally inert. Spokesperson Mao Ning called Khamenei’s killing a grave violation of sovereignty. Wang Yi called it unacceptable. China and Russia have pushed for a UNSC emergency session. No military assistance was provided, no sanctions threats were issued, and no material support was extended. China-Iran relations have always been more lopsided than commonly assumed. Tehran pursued strategic autarky as a matter of revolutionary principle when it could not remotely afford to do so, limiting the depth of Chinese economic engagement and frustrating Beijing’s preference for stable, transactional partnerships. Investment fell dramatically short of headline agreements, and military ties remained limited. Crucially, China’s actual trade and investment with Gulf states vastly exceeds its engagement with Iran. Thus, their strategic position on the Middle East can be summarised as, “As long as the oil flows.”

The strategic dividend of American overextension in the Middle East accrues to Beijing without any Chinese expenditure, a fact explicitly noted at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. The US is reportedly considering relocating THAAD and Patriot systems from South Korea to the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln was redeployed from the South China Sea. South Korea’s KOSPI crashed 12% in a single session on precisely this fear. Every interceptor expended over Tehran is an interceptor unavailable for Taiwan. Every carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf is a carrier strike group absent from the Western Pacific. China’s rare earth export restrictions for military use are simultaneously complicating American weapons replenishment. A weakened Iran, regardless of its political outcome, becomes more dependent on Chinese economic lifelines. Beijing wins whether Iran survives as a client or collapses as a cautionary tale. The shrewd play, in a world of centrifugal destruction, is to be the last centripetal power standing. China appears to understand this.

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The Endgame for the Middle East

Two visions for the region are now in open competition.

The first is Israel’s: a ring of fire consisting of the permanent fragmentation of rivals, no peer competitor permitted to consolidate, and the systematic application of centrifugal force against any state or coalition that could challenge Israeli military primacy. This vision has achieved remarkable tactical success. Hamas is destroyed as a military force. Hezbollah is decapitated. The Houthis are degraded. Iran’s Supreme Leader is dead, its air defences collapsed, its navy annihilated. The proxy architecture that Tehran spent four decades building has been dismantled in fewer than three years. While the tactical achievement is extraordinary, the strategic question is whether a regional order built on the permanent weakness of everyone else is sustainable, or whether it generates the very instability, radicalisation, and arms races that ultimately consume its architect. Every historical precedent suggests the latter. The destruction of Iraq produced ISIS. The destruction of Libya produced a failed state. The destruction of Syria produced the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. Iran, with a population larger than all three combined, would produce consequences on a scale that no regional or global architecture is prepared to absorb.

However, Israel is not marching on the region unopposed. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria did not produce the centrifugal conclusion Israel sought. The country is reconsolidating under the government of Ahmad Al-Sharaa in Damascus, who has sought deep ties with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, the two pillars of Syrian stability. The second vision is one that Vizier and others have been articulating: the integration corridor connecting Türkiye, the Levant, and the Gulf, led principally by Ankara and Riyadh, with Damascus as the geographic linchpin. The US-backed alternative, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced at the 2023 G20 summit, is now functionally dead, with its route through the UAE and Israel under missile fire, and its political prerequisite, Saudi normalisation with Israel, has been rendered unthinkable by this war. The corridor thesis rests on a different logic: that regional security is best achieved through economic interdependence, military-industrial sovereignty, and institutional coordination among states that share demographic, cultural, and strategic interests. The Iraq Development Road, the revival of the Hejaz Railway, the Türkiye-Saudi economic-industrial partnership, the consolidation of Syria’s political settlement under Ahmed al-Sharaa, the $28 billion in investment commitments to Syrian reconstruction: these are the early building blocks of a regional order built on production rather than destruction, on centripetal consolidation rather than centrifugal fragmentation.

The war has sharpened the tension between these visions. It validates the corridor thesis intellectually: the past six days have demonstrated beyond reasonable dispute that the US-Israel security architecture does not serve Gulf interests, that American guarantees are transactional instruments that can be redirected at will, and that dependence on Washington for interceptor resupply and defence coordination leaves states vulnerable to the very wars Washington initiates. The case for military-industrial sovereignty, regional alliances built outside American orbit, and economic integration that creates mutual stakes in stability has never been stronger. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Syria, Qatar, and the broader constellation of states that see their future in production and development rather than in permanent conflict now have the most compelling argument they have ever possessed for accelerating their project.

But the war threatens the corridor materially. Gulf infrastructure is facing a sustained aerial campaign by Iran. Qatar’s LNG production is halted. Jebel Ali port is damaged. Investment is frozen. Attention has been redirected from development to defence. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Syria, the corridor’s linchpin, lies directly between Türkiye and an Israel that considers it the new frontline. The reconstruction timeline that seemed plausible in January has been disrupted by events that no one in Damascus, Ankara, or Riyadh can control. You cannot build railways while the region burns.

The institutional architecture that was supposed to prevent precisely this kind of war has collapsed alongside Iran’s air defences. The US Senate voted down a war powers resolution, effectively granting the executive branch unlimited authority to continue strikes without congressional approval. The UN Security Council is paralysed by vetoes. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which was conducting verification activities inside Iran at the moment of the strikes, now reports “localised radioactive release” at facilities it was supposed to be monitoring under international agreements that both sides have spent years negotiating. The “rules-based international order,” so frequently invoked by Western governments, has in this crisis revealed itself to be exactly what its critics have always claimed: a set of norms that apply to the weak and are discarded by the strong. For states across the Global South watching these events, the conclusion is straightforward and will permanently reshape their strategic calculations.

Europe, the world’s wealthiest bloc and the self-proclaimed guardian of rules-based order, has demonstrated complete strategic irrelevance in this crisis. European natural gas prices nearly doubled as Qatar’s LNG supply vanished. The UK’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus was struck by Iranian missiles. The European Council on Foreign Relations called the operation an illegal war of choice. And yet no European government has taken any meaningful action to restrain the conflict, mediate a ceasefire, or protect its own energy security. The gap between Europe’s rhetorical commitment to international law and its practical inability to enforce it, even when its own bases are being struck, and its energy supply is being severed, is now visible to every government on earth. For the corridor states like Türkiye and Saudi Arabia in particular, the lesson is the same one the Gulf monarchies are learning about the American security umbrella: European institutions offer words, not protection, and strategic autonomy cannot be outsourced to actors whose own sovereignty is contingent on American permission.

There is no clear path to war termination. Trump has suggested the campaign could last four to five weeks or longer. The US appears to lack a concrete political endgame beyond the destruction of Iranian military capacity; Israel’s endgame, as outlined above, is state collapse, for which there is no off-ramp by design. Iran’s leadership, insofar as it still functions, has indicated it seeks a credible ceasefire and a return to negotiations, but the systematic sabotage of every prior diplomatic effort makes Tehran deeply unlikely to trust any renewed offer. The IRGC’s shift from religious legitimacy to survivalist nationalism further narrows the space for compromise, because a military establishment fighting for the country’s existence operates under different constraints than a clerical establishment managing political survival. The situation is genuinely unprecedented: a war between a superpower and a major regional state, with no declared objectives that could serve as the basis for a ceasefire, no mediator with credibility on both sides, and no institutional framework capable of imposing restraint.

The coming weeks and months will determine which of the forces described in this report prevails. The chaos that has defined the Middle East from the Gulf War of 1991 through the Arab Spring of 2011 and its bloody aftermath may prove to have been merely the prelude to greater upheaval, as the largest state in the region is subjected to the same centrifugal treatment that destroyed its smaller neighbours. Or the consolidation of a new axis between Türkiye, the Levant, and the Gulf, built on sovereign military capacity, industrial production, and institutional coordination, may survive the fire being set around it and emerge as the durable alternative to permanent war. We do not know which of these futures will materialise. The situation as it stands on March 5, 2026, is too volatile, too dependent on decisions yet to be made by actors in Tehran, Jerusalem, Washington, Ankara, and Riyadh, for any honest analyst to claim certainty about what comes next.

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The Logic of Central Authority

Damascus is close to achieving complete sovereignty over Syria for the first time since 2011. On 13th February 2026, SDF representatives Ilham Ahmed and Mazlum Abdi participated in the Munich Conference as guests under the auspices of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Asad Al-Shaibani.

Six weeks earlier, none of this was thinkable. The SDF controlled roughly a quarter of Syrian territory, including 90% of the country’s oil production, all major border crossings in Hasaka province with Iraq, and the camps and prisons holding tens of thousands of ISIS detainees. By early February, Damascus had exercised, or was in the process of assuming, authority over virtually all of it.

The al-Hol camp (transferred 20th January), the al-Aqtan prison in Raqqa (22nd January), the Al-Yarubiya crossing with Iraq, the oil fields of Deir ez-Zor and Hasaka, and the provincial capitals of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor themselves. The Shammar tribal militia, the Sanadid Force, defected from the SDF en masse. Arab tribal leaders across the Euphrates valley, who had waited a year to see which way the wind would blow, made their calculations and aligned with Damascus.

On 3rd February 2026, approximately 120 of Syria’s Ministry of Interior (”MOI”) personnel entered Qamishli, the de facto capital of the PKK-aligned Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (”AANES”, with their military wing known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or “SDF”), and established a position at the city’s former Ba’ath Party headquarters. Three days later, a senior Defence Ministry delegation led by the commander of Military Security, Ali Al-Hassan, and Army Chief of Staff Major General Hamza Al-Hamidi travelled to Hasaka city for face-to-face meetings with SDF leaders. The Ministry described the talks as “positive” and announced that “specific timeframes” had been agreed for SDF withdrawal from civilian areas, joint coordination on removing barricades, and accelerating the military, security, and civilian integration process.

On 9th February, government officials visited the Rumaylan oil field (Syria’s largest) to discuss its handover to the Syrian Petroleum Company, with the Deputy CEO Walid al-Yousef confirming that oil field employees would have their salaries increased and none would be dismissed. That same day, the MOI’s Internal Security commander for Aleppo, Colonel Mohammed Abdulghani, convened a joint meeting of MOI and “Asayish” security officials in ‘Ayn Al-Arab (”Kobani”) to begin “unifying security structures and strengthening the pillars of stability in the region.”

What had taken the SDF years to accumulate in terms of territory, resources, and institutional infrastructure (not to mention the extensive tunnel systems they had built) collapsed in days when the accumulated failures of the SDF to build a social contract with the majority Arab population of the northeast proved weaker than the pull of the central state in Damascus.

In January, Damascus combined military pressure with political inducements such as Presidential Decree No. 13 on 16th January which granted citizenship to Kurds who had been left stateless by Ba’ath-era “reforms”, recognised Kurdish as a “national language,” and designated the Kurdish holiday, Nowruz, as a national holiday – eroding the SDF’s claim to legitimacy as the sole protector of the Kurds in Syria. US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack, who visited Damascus on 10th and 18th January, facilitated the ceasefire and integration framework, with the recalcitrant leader of the SDF, Mazlum Abdi, practically compelled to comply.

On 9th February, when Foreign Minister Asad Al-Shaibani and General Intelligence Service (”GIS”) chief Hussein Al-Salama represented Syria at the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS conference in Riyadh, the Coalition’s joint statement welcomed “the Government of Syria’s stated intention to assume national leadership of counter-ISIS efforts” and admitted Syria as the Coalition’s 90th member. The SDF’s external raison d’être was as Washington’s indispensable partner against ISIS, and that has now been formally transferred to Damascus.

The insistence on central authority is the organising principle of everything Damascus has done since December 2024. Syria’s reconstruction costs and the need for a broad regional investment plan for Syria have been discussed in our previous report. None of this is achievable without a consolidated state that serves as a single legal authority across all Syrian territory, guaranteeing enforceable contracts, transparent dispute resolution, and certainty of property rights, among other prerequisites for FDI. Perhaps Gulf sovereign wealth funds can absorb political risk that private institutional investors cannot, but even sovereign capital requires confidence that the counterparty will exist in a recognisable form over the long term. A Syria with contested internal borders, competing armed factions controlling oil fields, and parallel administrative structures governing a quarter of the population cannot offer that confidence.

Central authority, however, need not mean centralised governance in all domains. The 18th January integration agreement with the SDF stipulated that government forces would not enter Kurdish-majority areas, leaving local police-type forces in command of security. SDF leader Mazlum Abdi was offered the right to submit candidates for deputy Defence Minister, Governor of Hasaka, parliamentary members, and senior civil servants. On 9th February, Abdi stated publicly that all “AANES” civilian employees would remain in their positions as part of the integration process, and that staff at the Semalka crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan would stay in their roles while government entities oversaw passport inspections, customs duties, and related sovereign functions.

The integration of northeast Syria under the control of Damascus is the most successful step that the central government has achieved thus far in building the scaffolding of a political settlement: a political bargain broad enough to generate domestic stability and international legitimacy, yet coherent enough to pursue the state-building that Syria’s reconstruction demands. This report examines how that settlement is being constructed, who sits at its core, how the coalition is expanding outward, and whether it can evolve from a stabilisation pact into a developmental coalition capable of rebuilding Syria.

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The Core: Who Governs Syria

At the centre of Syria’s political settlement sits a small group that has expanded from the “council of five” at the heart of the Syrian government that Vizier analysed early last year. President Ahmad Al-Sharaa remains the centre of this order. The Constitutional Declaration signed on 13th March 2025 formalised executive supremacy (at least for the transitional period, though it is likely to continue beyond that): the president appoints all ministers, one-third of parliament, and all Constitutional Court members; no impeachment mechanism exists; legislative override requires a two-thirds majority that the president’s appointees can block.

Critical portfolios remain in trusted hands. Ali Keda, Deputy Secretary-General for Cabinet Affairs, was most recently observed hosting the Catholic Church’s leadership in Syria at the General Secretariat on 4th February 2026 to discuss the status of Catholic schooling. FM Al-Shaibani continues to lead Syria’s diplomatic rehabilitation, which has seen numerous successes over the past year: the lifting of the former HTS‘ leadership’s UN terrorist designation, the permanent repeal of the Caesar sanctions by the US Congress, and recently the EU’s €620 million pledge for redevelopment across 2026-2027, announced during European Commission President von der Leyen’s visit last month to Damascus.

Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra continues to lead the military integration process, absorbing former rivals into a force targeting 200,000 personnel. Interior Minister Anas Khattab is overseeing the reconstituted security apparatus, having dissolved Assad’s four intelligence branches and replaced them with a unified structure under his ministry. The General Intelligence Directorate is headed by Hussein Al-Salama, who reports directly to the presidency, and recently represented Syria alongside FM Al-Shaibani at the D-ISIS Coalition in Riyadh on 9th February.

Two additions to the inner circle deserve attention. Maher Al-Sharaa, the president’s eldest brother, serves as Secretary-General of the Presidency, a role without cabinet rank but with substantial informal authority as gatekeeper and enforcer. Hazem Al-Sharaa, also the president’s older brother, leads the economic committee overseeing asset transfers from co-opted business elites and a sovereign wealth fund announced in July 2025.

Beyond the inner circle, the 23-member cabinet sworn in on 29th March 2025 comprises core loyalists, technocratic outsiders, and minority representatives. Finance Minister Muhammad Yasser Barniyeh spent 15 years at the Arab Monetary Fund and has been in constant motion, meeting the IMF’s Middle East director, Jihad Azour, in Dubai on 3rd February, as well as the IFC and the French Development Agency in the same week. Economy Minister Muhammad Nidal Al-Shaar, a former professor at George Washington University, participated in the Fifth International Conference of the Saudi Centre for Commercial Arbitration on 4 February.

The concentration of power described above invites an obvious question for many observers: Is Syria building a dictatorship? The answer is more complex than the question implies.

The settlement retains features of authoritarian governance. Executive power is constitutionally unchecked during the transitional period. The security apparatus draws heavily from HTS’s Idlib infrastructure. The president’s family holds economic and gatekeeping roles. The People’s Assembly, elected in October 2025, comprises two-thirds of its members elected through electoral colleges and one-third appointed by the president, providing a forum for representation without threatening executive primacy. On 10th February, the Supreme Committee for People’s Council Elections held a meeting with the Governor of Raqqa to discuss preparations for holding elections in the governorate, which had recently come under government control.

But the coalition is structurally broader than a dictatorship. Minorities hold cabinet positions with operational responsibilities – not just cosmetic appointments. Tribal leaders have been steadily integrated and now have genuine stakes in the settlement. Business elites are being restructured. External patrons and powers, such as Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the EU, and the US, are imposing constraints on the government’s behaviour through conditionality frameworks in exchange for sanctions relief and investment. The northeast integration framework accommodates Kurdish identity within a unitary state framework.

Thus, what is emerging is neither a democracy nor a conventional authoritarian state, but a hybrid form of governance constructing a power structure that concentrates strategic authority while distributing participation broadly enough to sustain stability in a country as diverse as Syria.

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Expanding the Political Settlement

A political settlement held together only by the inner circle’s patronage is no more than a junta that replicates the worst aspects of Syria’s pre-war political economy. What distinguishes the Syrian project is its systematic outward expansion: it incorporates tribes, co-opts business elites, engages minorities, demands local autonomy, integrates rival factions such as the SDF, and secures regional patrons such as Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.

Tribal incorporation has been consequential for Damascus’ efforts to consolidate control over northeastern Syria. The government established a dedicated Office of Tribes and Clans, with Abu Ahmed Zakour serving as the presidency’s tribal advisor. Sheikh Nawaf Al-Bashir’s realignment in December 2025 brought the largest tribal confederation in the Euphrates valley, the Baggara, into the government’s orbit. The ‘Uqaydat and Bu Sha’aban confederations are embedded in military and administrative structures in Deir ez-Zor. The Shammar’s Sanadid Force defected from the SDF during the January offensive. These relationships proved decisive when tribal defections delivered the bulk of SDF-held Arab territory within 48 hours after the offensive commenced.

Business elites have been restructured through negotiated surrenders that break the Assad-era pattern of autonomous crony fiefdoms. Controversially, Mohammad Hamsho announced on 6th January 2026 that he had signed a “comprehensive” agreement with the government, transferring approximately 80% of his commercial holdings (estimated at $800 million or more). Rami Makhlouf, who once controlled an estimated 60% of Syria’s economy, fled to Moscow and has been excluded. At least in this case, Damascus has consciously chosen to pursue the path of least resistance in recouping much of Syria’s looted wealth, with the trade-off being that fully pursuing transitional justice would be unlikely to yield either the trial (and imprisonment) of Assad-era crony businessmen or the smooth seizure of much of their capital.

The treatment of minorities is where the settlement’s inclusionary claims face the most scrutiny. The Kurdish question is being addressed through the integration framework described above, guaranteeing citizenship, linguistic recognition, cultural rights, and administrative accommodation at the local level. On 4th February, the Deputy Governor of Aleppo, Ali Hanura, hosted Arab and Kurdish civil society figures from ‘Ayn Al-Arab to discuss service priorities; on 9 February, senior Kurdish National Council (”KNC”) official Bashar Amin described a meeting with Al-Sharaa as “positive,” adding that the president had “affirmed that the rights of the Kurds are protected and will be enshrined in the country’s constitution.” It is entirely possible that any post-SDF Kurdish political faction that emerges will be co-opted by Al-Sharaa as a key ally of Damascus. Al-Sharaa seeks a broad enough tent to counter-balance any other faction from achieving too much dominance as part of the president’s objective of state-building.

Suwayda remains the outlier, the only province in Syria outside Damascus's control. The Druze-majority governorate has maintained de facto autonomy under Hikmat Al-Hijri’s unified National Guard, disproportionately composed of Assad-era militiamen and officers. Damascus’s approach has been patient containment rather than military imposition, as Suwayda accounts for 3% of Syria’s population within a geographically confined area. Economic pressure will continue to accumulate on Al-Hijri, whose integration of Assad-era militiamen and officers into his forces has turned the province into the last holdout of Assad-era smuggling and corruption. Additionally, Damascus is cultivating ties with prominent figures of the Druze community as a counterweight to Al-Hijri’s dominance, and time will tell if the same settlement reached in the northeast can be reached in Suwayda.

These are crucial developments in Damascus’ drive towards a political settlement in Syria. However, while a political settlement can stabilise a country, it does not necessarily translate into development. This distinction is consequential for understanding the long-term trajectory of Syria’s redevelopment and is largely absent from analyses of the country's emerging power landscape. While institutions are necessary for development, they are not sufficient; what matters is the political coalition that underwrites national stability and unites around the objective of development, thereby building and sustaining those institutions. Development takes off only when a poor country’s elites back it, shifting from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future. A political settlement in which too many actors extract rents from the bargain can produce stability without prosperity. Thus, a developmental coalition is a specific form of elite bargain in which growth becomes the shared project.

From Settlement to Developmental Coalition

A political settlement can hold a country together; only a developmental coalition can rebuild one. The distinction matters because Syria’s trajectory over the next decade depends on which of these Damascus actually constructs. A settlement distributes enough power, revenue, and recognition across key actors to prevent any of them from defecting. It is, at its core, a stability pact. A developmental coalition is something more demanding: an elite bargain in which the major stakeholders collectively wager on growth rather than extraction, accepting short-term constraints on their own rent-seeking in exchange for a share of a larger future economy. The history of post-war reconstruction is littered with settlements that stabilised countries without developing them. In neighbouring Lebanon, after the Ta’if Agreement, confessional elites carved the state into extractive fiefdoms that have produced four decades of stagnation punctuated by collapse.

The cases where devastated countries achieved transformative growth share a common architecture. In post-war Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party fused landed conservatives, industrialists, and the state bureaucracy into a coalition whose internal competition was channelled through the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) into export-oriented industrial policy; factional rivalry persisted, but the factions competed over who could deliver faster growth in their constituencies rather than over who could extract more from a stagnant pie.

In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party subordinated every domestic interest, including labour, Chinese business clans, the Malay minority, and the civil service, to a growth strategy administered through the Economic Development Board, making national development the sole basis of regime legitimacy. In both cases, concentrated executive authority was the instrument, not the objective; what distinguished these developmental states from mere autocracies was that elite cohesion was organised around productive investment rather than patronage distribution.

Syria’s economic institutional scaffolding is taking shape, with the Syrian Investment Authority under Talal Al-Hilali and the Development Fund under Safwat Raslan, and shows some strategic direction, as evidenced by the structured Chevron MOU and the Tartus transactions, and by the Finance Ministry’s engagement with the IMF. The restructuring of Assad-era business elites through negotiated asset surrenders, rather than either wholesale expropriation or co-optation into new crony networks, suggests Damascus understands that a developmental coalition requires disciplined capital allocation, not the redistribution of spoils.

But intent is not outcome. Whether Syria builds a developmental coalition depends on whether the elites at its core, such as the military, tribal, commercial, and bureaucratic interests, are gambling on Syria’s future rather than extracting from its present. Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who has staked everything on reconstruction, appears to grasp this. The question is whether enough of the coalition around him does as well.

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On 29th January 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for a Middle Eastern security architecture built on regional solidarity rather than external hegemony. “No domination – no Turkish domination, no Arab domination, no Farsi domination,” he declared on Al Jazeera, proposing instead “a regional solidarity platform” where states cease outsourcing their security to outside powers. Drawing an explicit parallel with European integration, Fidan asked: “Look at how the European Union has managed to form itself from scratch to today. Why not us?”

One year after the fall of the Assad regime opened Syria to its neighbours, and six months after the full cessation of Western sanctions, the contours of a new regional order are becoming visible: a corridor of trade, capital, and collective security stretching from the Bosphorus through Damascus to the Gulf.

Fidan’s vision echoes a statement made by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman at the 2018 Future Investment Initiative, when he declared that “the new Europe is the Middle East” and predicted a regional renaissance within 30 years. That prophecy seemed distant at the time; Syria was a warzone, Turkish-Saudi relations were frozen over the Khashoggi affair, and Iran’s “axis of resistance” bisected the region. Today, the structural conditions have inverted. Iran has lost its Syrian foothold and faces domestic upheaval; Turkish-Saudi bilateral trade has reached record highs; and Syria, under President Ahmad al-Sharaa, has attracted $28 billion in investment commitments from Gulf and Turkish sources over the past year.

The Middle East contains approximately $4 trillion in sovereign wealth fund assets – more than any other region – and the states driving corridor integration control the lion’s share. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund alone deployed $36.2 billion in 2025, an 81% increase year-on-year, while Abu Dhabi’s funds collectively invested over $30 billion. This capital is seeking deployment, and the corridor’s infrastructure deficit represents a multi-hundred-billion-dollar opportunity: Syrian reconstruction alone is estimated at over $200 billion over 15-20 years. For project developers, infrastructure funds, and corporates with risk appetite, the corridor presents one of the largest emerging-market investment frontiers of the decade.

Yet the opportunity remains largely illegible to regional outsiders. Syria lacks a sovereign credit rating, bilateral investment treaties, and a transparent commercial legal framework. There are prospects of bilateral (or wider) defence pacts binding the corridor’s anchor states. Trade data is fragmentary, project-finance terms are undisclosed, and the institutional scaffolding required to underwrite large-scale capital deployment is incomplete. The question facing investors and policymakers is whether political alignment will translate into the legal and regulatory architecture that makes capital commitments bankable.

This report revisits and expands the “Sunni Corridor” thesis first published on Vizier one year ago. It is not a normative or sectarian designation: Türkiye, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and their immediate partners are majority-Sunni Muslim states, distinguishing them demographically from non-Muslim Israel and Shiite-majority Iran, the two other principal axes in regional politics. The corridor encompasses Arabs, Turks, and Kurds; its logic is geographic and strategic rather than confessional.

What follows examines how regional relations have evolved since the original article, marshals evidence that further integration is probable, and identifies the risks, data gaps, and institutional deficits that could yet derail the project. The house view in Vizier is that structural incentives favour continued integration, but that the corridor’s investment thesis depends on institutional reforms that have not yet occurred.

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The Landscape in 2026

The corridor’s emergence rests on three structural shifts that occurred in rapid succession between late 2024 and mid-2025.

The first shift was the fall of Bashar al-Assad on 8th December 2024, which ended Iran’s four-decade foothold in Damascus and severed the land bridge connecting Tehran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran had invested an estimated $30-50 billion sustaining the Assad regime between 2011 and 2020; that investment was written off in 12 days. The new Syrian government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa immediately pivoted toward Ankara and Riyadh; his first foreign visits as president were to Saudi Arabia (2nd February 2025) and Türkiye (4th February 2025), signalling where Damascus would seek its security guarantees and reconstruction capital.

Turkish exports to Syria surged 54% year-on-year to approximately $3 billion in 2025, making Syria one of Türkiye‘s fastest-growing export markets. The Türkiye-Syria Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) was established in August 2025, and negotiations are underway for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Energy links are deepening. The Kilis-Aleppo natural gas pipeline began operations in August 2025, channelling Azerbaijani gas into Syria to alleviate energy shortages. Türkiye is committed to supplying 900 megawatts of electricity to Syria by the first quarter of 2026, with grid interconnection work already underway. A $7 billion energy consortium comprising Qatar’s UCC Holding, Turkish firms Kalyon and Cengiz, and US-based Power International, signed in May 2025 to construct 4,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation plus 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity in Homs, Hama, and Deir ez-Zor. These projects aim to address Syria’s acute power deficit (estimated at 5,000 megawatts) while creating long-term dependencies on Turkish and Gulf partners.

Where Turkiye’s contribution to Syria’s post-war reconstruction has largely depended on its industrial capacity to underwrite technical projects, Saudi Arabia has to date led the way as the largest source of foreign direct investment into Syria. Indeed, Syria's position at the intersection of Turkish, Gulf, and Levantine vectors makes it indispensable. President al-Sharaa has deliberately pursued this logic, positioning Damascus not as a supplicant but as a partner whose geographic centrality commands premium terms. At the October 2025 Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, he declared: "We chose the path of reconstruction through investment; we did not choose the path of rebuilding Syria through aid and assistance. We do not want Syria to be a burden on anyone."

Gulf capital has responded. The Syrian-Saudi Investment Forum in July 2025 resulted in 47 agreements totalling $6.4 billion across real estate, infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy. Saudi oil company ADES Holding signed agreements to develop five gas fields. Two Saudi banks began operations in Syria, with more preparing to enter; Syria’s finance minister indicated that Saudi financial institutions would soon have a significant presence. Qatar has been equally active: a $4 billion consortium will rebuild Damascus International Airport, while Qatari investment in Syria’s power grid addresses the country’s most acute infrastructure deficit. Saudi Arabia and Qatar jointly settled Syria’s $15.5 million World Bank arrears in April 2025, clearing the path for Damascus to access international financial institutions for the first time in over two decades.

On 3rd February 2026, the head of the Syrian Investment Authority, Talal al-Hilali, announced that Saudi Arabia is to provide a multi-billion-dollar investment package for Syria, including projects in tourism, telecommunications infrastructure, a new private Syrian airline, the rehabilitation of Aleppo airport, and a water desalination plant. Additionally, the Saudi Arabian government is to provide insurance coverage for investments to encourage Saudi companies to enter the Syrian market.

Infrastructure investments physically bind Syria to its neighbours. Border crossings with Türkiye now operate 24 hours daily, with throughput increasing from approximately 3,000 to 20,000 daily crossings. A bilateral transit agreement signed in November 2025 eliminated the requirement to unload and reload cargo at the Syrian border, thereby significantly reducing friction for Turkish exports to Gulf markets via Syrian territory. Türkiye, Syria, and Jordan signed a draft memorandum of understanding in September 2025 to revive the historic Hejaz Railway – the 1,750-kilometre Ottoman-era line from Istanbul to Medina – with Türkiye committing to complete 30 kilometres of missing Syrian track.

The second shift was the full cessation of Western sanctions on Syria. Following months of incremental European relaxations and temporary waivers by the US government, President Trump announced on 10th May 2025 in Riyadh that the United States would lift all Syria-related sanctions, explicitly crediting Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and President Erdoğan for lobbying the decision. The EU followed within days. On 18th December 2025, the US Congress voted to permanently repeal the Assad-era sanctions. Sanctions relief has unlocked Syria’s access to the global financial system, enabled major infrastructure contracts, and removed the legal barriers that had deterred institutional investors. However, the finer details of reconnecting Syria’s financial and economic institutions to the international system will require more time.

The third shift is the Turkish-Saudi rapprochement, a process that began tentatively after the Khashoggi crisis, when Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia fell to just $265,000 in 2021. The relationship has since seen a surge in trade to $8 billion in 2024, with both governments targeting $10 billion for 2025 and $30 billion over the long term. The composition of trade reveals complementary economic structures: Turkish exports of approximately $4 billion comprise manufactured goods including grains, textiles ($156 million in carpets alone), furniture (Türkiye now ranks as Saudi Arabia’s third-largest supplier behind China and Italy), machinery, and construction materials; Saudi exports of $3 billion concentrate in crude oil and petrochemicals, yielding a Turkish trade surplus of approximately $930 million — a significant shift representing Ankara’s pivot toward value-added manufacturing.

Construction has emerged as the most visible dimension of economic integration. Turkish contractors secured $2.3 billion in Saudi projects in the first nine months of 2024 alone, with Saudi Arabia now representing Türkiye’s largest construction market and $28.2 billion in cumulative projects completed since 1972.³ IC Ictas has commenced construction of a $107 million terminal at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, and in 2024 won the Wadi Laban Cable-Stayed Bridge (Saudi Arabia’s largest bridge project) valued at around $1 billion. Tekfen Construction maintains deep Saudi Aramco partnerships, including the $590 million Haradh Gas Increment Program and the $235 million Ma’aden Phosphate 3 project.

Investment flows complement trade in both directions. Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power (44% owned by the Public Investment Fund) ins talks for investment up to $5 billion in Turkish renewables, with two 1,000-megawatt solar plants in Sivas and Karaman provinces finalising agreements and an additional three gigawatts under negotiation. Saudi National Bank owns 64% of Türkiye Finans Katılım Bankası, one of Türkiye’s six Islamic participation banks, providing institutional depth to the financial relationship. More than 1,400 Saudi companies now operate in Türkiye, with combined capital exceeding $11 billion across agriculture, real estate, energy, and services.

Türkiye and the Gulf Cooperation Council launched formal negotiations for a free trade agreement in March 2024, with the first round held in Ankara that July. A successful conclusion would establish a $2.4 trillion free-trade area, building on Türkiye’s existing bilateral FTAs with the UAE and Qatar.⁷ The November 2024 Saudi-Turkish Business Forum produced ten cooperation agreements spanning agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, healthcare, and digital transformation, signed by over 450 companies.

Defence cooperation is shifting from disparate procurement deals to sustained integration: joint military committee meetings, naval consultations, technology-transfer agreements for armoured vehicles and drones, and now rumours of a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement modelled on the one signed between Riyadh and Islamabad in September 2025. A high-ranking Saudi official has rejected expanding the bilateral agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to include Turkiye; however, this does not preclude bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, or trilateral integration among all three states in other areas, such as trade and defence procurement.

At IDEF 2025 (“International Defence Industry Fair”, Türkiye’s premier defence fair) in Istanbul, Saudi Arabian Military Industries signed technology-transfer agreements with Nurol Makina, FNSS, and ASELSAN for tactical vehicles, armoured platforms, and combat turrets, respectively. Saudi Arabia will receive Turkish Bayraktar Akıncı combat drones, with up to 70% of production to be manufactured locally by 2026, and 300 Saudi employees already training at Baykar facilities. Türkiye and Saudi Arabia held their first-ever naval consultation in Ankara in January 2026.

These developments are mutually reinforcing. Syrian stabilisation serves Turkish security interests (PKK containment and refugee return), and Saudi strategic interests (Iranian rollback and northern border security). Turkish industrial capacity complements Gulf capital, and Syria’s reconstruction creates a gravitational pull that deepens interdependence among the three.

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Tensions & Limitations Along the Corridor

Vizier’s corridor thesis does not predict inevitable integration. We argue that structural incentives, such as complementary factor endowments, shared threat perceptions, and geographic logic, favour continued alignment, and that the principal obstacles are institutional rather than political. If Damascus enacts commercial law reform, the defence integration expands, and infrastructure projects reach financial close and commence construction, the corridor will transition from aspiration to reality.

Thus, the corridor thesis rests on assumptions that may not hold. Three deserve particular scrutiny.

The first is the durability of the Turkish-Saudi rapprochement. A decade ago, Ankara and Riyadh were at loggerheads: Türkiye backed the Muslim Brotherhood across the region while Saudi Arabia designated it a terrorist organisation; the Khashoggi affair in 2018 brought relations to a nadir. The rapprochement since has been rapid but shallow in institutional terms. No treaty binds the two states, the proposed defence pact remains a rumour, and their alignment is largely a function of converging threat perceptions regarding Iran and Israel. Should their pressure subside, the strategic rationale for Turkish-Saudi cooperation weakens. Economic ties, while growing, are not yet dense enough to lock in alignment absent shared security concerns.

The second tension concerns spoiler capacity. Israel and Iran both have incentives to prevent corridor consolidation. Israel has demonstrated willingness to use force against Syrian territory, including strikes on the presidential palace grounds in Damascus, and its occupation of the Quneitra buffer zone and parts of southern Syria creates a permanent flashpoint. Iran, though diminished, retains the capability to fund insurgencies, assassinations, and sabotage operations — tools it deployed effectively during the March 2025 Assadist uprising on the Syrian coast. The corridor’s viability depends on containing these spoilers, yet neither Türkiye nor Saudi Arabia has articulated a credible deterrence strategy beyond implicit reliance on American power projection.

The third tension is institutional. The investment thesis outlined in this report requires legal and regulatory infrastructure that Syria does not yet possess: enforceable contracts, transparent dispute resolution, property rights certainty, and capital account convertibility. Turkish and Gulf investors have thus far committed capital on the basis of political relationships and implicit sovereign guarantees rather than institutional safeguards. This works for state-backed megaprojects; it does not scale to the broad-based private investment required for sustainable reconstruction. The gap between announced commitments and disbursed capital (unknown, but certainly far lower) likely reflects this institutional deficit. Until Damascus enacts commercial law reform, negotiates bilateral investment treaties, and accedes to international arbitration frameworks, the corridor’s economic promise will remain partially unrealised.

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Making the Corridor Legible

The corridor thesis is not merely an argument about geopolitics; it is an investment thesis about the next frontier market boom, and a proposition about how regional peace might actually be achieved. The structural parallels with previous emerging market transformations are suggestive: ASEAN between 1985 and 1997, when political stabilisation and infrastructure investment created outsized returns for investors willing to tolerate opacity; the Gulf between 2002 and 2008, when petrodollar recycling and institutional upgrading opened markets that had been effectively closed to foreign capital; and now the Turkish-Saudi-Syrian corridor, which sits at a similar inflection point – immense potential matched by limited institutional infrastructure, a window that will not remain open indefinitely, and a scarcity of rigorous analysis to guide capital allocation.

Yet something larger than investment returns is at stake, however substantial. The corridor represents one of the few plausible pathways to durable regional peace that does not require the surrender of sovereignty to external guarantors or the perpetuation of great-power competition on Middle Eastern soil. The European model, binding former adversaries through economic interdependence until war becomes not merely undesirable but structurally unthinkable, is being attempted in compressed form. If Turkish industrial capacity, Gulf capital, and Syrian geography can be woven together tightly enough, the result would be a region where stability is generated endogenously rather than imposed exogenously, and the costs of conflict become prohibitive because the benefits of cooperation have become too valuable to forfeit. This is not inevitable; the tensions outlined above are real. But it is possible, and making it legible to investors, policymakers, and the publics whose futures depend on getting this right, is the work that Vizier exists to do.

What, then, should observers track to assess whether the corridor is consolidating or fragmenting? The indicators fall into five broad categories.

The first concerns the capacity of corridor states to coordinate cross-border initiatives and sustain policy implementation across political transitions – what might be called institutional coordination capacity. The critical near-term markers here are whether the Türkiye-Syria Joint Economic and Trade Committee established in August 2025 evolves into a genuine coordinating body or remains a ceremonial shell; whether defence integration moves from procurement and technology-transfer to pacts, and if so, whether its text is published and its collective-defence triggers specified; and whether Syria develops the ministerial and regulatory architecture to absorb and direct the capital being committed to it.

The second category concerns financial infrastructure – the payment systems, correspondent banking relationships, and capital-market plumbing that determine whether commercial relationships can actually clear. Syria’s reintegration into SWIFT was a necessary first step, but the deeper questions are whether regional payment platforms like the Arab Regional Payment System (BUNA) can reduce dollar dependence for corridor trade, whether Syrian banks can establish correspondent relationships with Turkish and Gulf institutions sufficient to finance reconstruction at scale, and whether political risk insurance becomes available from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the US Development Finance Corporation, or commercial providers. Without bankable project-finance structures, the gap between announced investment commitments and disbursed capital will remain wide.

The third category is regulatory alignment: the bilateral investment treaties, commercial law harmonisation, and dispute-resolution frameworks that determine whether contracts are enforceable across borders. For instance, Syria’s lack of ICSID accession, updated commercial code, and bilateral investment treaties with its principal partners constitutes the binding constraint on institutional investment; Gulf sovereign wealth funds can absorb political risk that pension funds and infrastructure investors cannot. The indicators to watch are whether Türkiye-Syria cooperation agreements conclude successfully, whether Damascus finalises bilateral investment treaty negotiations with Riyadh and Ankara, and whether Syrian commercial law modernisation proceeds on a timeline consistent with reconstruction needs.

The fourth category concerns market complementarity and physical connectivity. The Hejaz Railway memorandum signed in September 2025 is symbolic, but the real tests are whether Türkiye completes the 30 kilometres of missing Syrian track, and whether Syria-Türkiye border throughput (now approximately 20,000 daily crossings) continues to grow. Energy interconnection is equally critical: the Kilis-Aleppo gas pipeline represents the first step, but the Qatari-led $7 billion power consortium’s progress from announcement to financial close to construction will reveal whether corridor infrastructure can move from memoranda to megawatts.

The fifth category is network density: the diaspora flows, business relationships, and human capital movements that constitute the soft infrastructure of economic integration. Syrian returnee flows — whether skilled professionals in the diaspora choose to return, invest, or remain abroad — will shape reconstruction capacity more than any single policy decision. Turkish construction firms’ presence in Syria, Gulf investors' appetite for Syrian assets, and the density of business-council activity across corridor borders all serve as leading indicators of private-sector confidence that precede and often predict official policy.

These five categories — institutional coordination, financial infrastructure, regulatory alignment, market complementarity, and network density — constitute the analytical framework through which Vizier will assess corridor consolidation over the year ahead. We will track the indicators that matter, flag the developments that shift probabilities, and report what the data reveal about whether the corridor thesis is transitioning from aspiration to fact. The trajectory today is positive, but the destination remains uncertain. The work of making it legible continues.

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Selçuk Bayraktar has become the public face of Türkiye’s meteoric rise as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) power, joining the ranks of only a handful of nations like the US, China, Israel, and Ukraine in pioneering military drone technology. This leapfrogging strategy has enabled Türkiye to make a breakthrough in its long-held aspirations to develop a sovereign and largely autarkic military-industrial complex.

Over the past two decades, the country has gone from buyer to supplier: defence exports have skyrocketed from $2.3 billion in 2020 to more than $7.1 billion in 2024, and are on track to beat that number in 2025. Türkiye has now become the 11th largest defence industry exporter in the world. Critically, the Turkish defence industry has achieved localisation of production rates upwards of 70%, making Türkiye the least reliant it has ever been on external markets.

A significant portion of Turkish defence exports are UAVs manufactured by Baykar, the Bayraktar family company. Baykar (a portmanteau of Bayraktar Kardeşler – Bayraktar Brothers) now employs more than two thousand people in sprawling technology campuses located next to Turkish Army bases, the largest user and main client for Baykar UAVs.

Baykar’s Bayraktar TB2 UAV has become the flagship of the Turkish defence industry and has played a pivotal role on battlefields from Ukraine to Karabakh, Libya, Syria, and beyond. TB2s have also been exported to over 34 countries, including Morocco, Ethiopia, Qatar, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. In 2024, Baykar reported $1.8 billion in exports, with 90% of revenues coming from international sales. This represents around a quarter of Türkiye’s total defence exports.

The Bayraktar name has become synonymous with UAVs, although the TB2 is just one of many products, with more planned: combat jets like the Kızılelma (red apple), high-altitude UAVs like the Akıncı (pronounced akinji, lit. “raider”), and the upcoming TB3 – a more advanced model than the TB2 predecessor.

This success is not owed to one man alone. While Selçuk is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and public face of Baykar, the Bayraktar family, including Selçuk’s father and brothers, has played a crucial role in the success of their family company. Raised on the workshop floor with a missionary belief in the importance of Turkish sovereignty (backed by military power and industry), and the role that Türkiye has to play in its local region and the wider Muslim world, the Bayraktars represent the realisation of the ideals of a particular Anatolian Muslim milieu.

It is to that end that the Bayraktar family’s initiatives are now transcending UAVs. Buoyed by their success, national fame, the support of Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and billions of dollars in revenues, the Bayraktar family is building an ecosystem of institutions in Türkiye that could loosely be called The Bayraktar Complex.

Where Baykar engineers drones, the Bayraktar Complex aims to engineer a new culture of innovation in Türkiye, in which faith, technology, and political sovereignty are intertwined. However, the roots of Baykar’s success and the mission of the Bayraktar Complex can only really be understood through the upbringing and cultural milieu of the Bayraktar family.

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A Family Enterprise

Baykar Makina (Baykar Machines) was founded in 1984 in Istanbul by family patriarch Özdemir Bayraktar (1949-2021) as a subcontractor supplier of CNC machines to manufacture and sell automobile parts such as engines, pumps, and spare parts. The son of a fisherman from Trabzon, he graduated from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) with a degree in engineering.

The family matriarch, Canan, is an economist and computer programmer. She graduated from Istanbul University (IU) with a degree in business in 1971 and began her career at the Industrial Development Bank of Türkiye. Canan holds the distinction of being one of the first female computer programmers in Türkiye.

Özdemir and Canan married in 1977, and together they had three sons: Haluk Bayraktar (born in 1978), Selçuk Bayraktar (1979), and Ahmet Bayraktar (1983). The parents’ academic and professional backgrounds would deeply influence their sons, who were exposed to machine tools and software programming from a young age. As Özdemir was also an amateur pilot, they would also develop an interest in aeronautics. However, it was Selçuk, the middle child, who would turn out to be the technical prodigy.

In the 1990s, Selçuk attended the elite Robert College for high school, an American-founded institution that accepts only the highest-ranking students in Türkiye’s national examinations. Although most graduates of Robert College go on to study at American universities, Selçuk remained in Türkiye to pursue a degree in electronics and communications engineering at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 1997, the oldest and most prestigious institution for technical education in the country. It was only after he graduated from ITU that Selçuk would go on to study in America.

Throughout his youth, Selçuk had been an amateur tinkerer with an interest in remotely-controlled aircraft that would burgeon into an obsession with emerging UAV technologies, perfectly aligning his father’s background in machine tooling, his mother’s background in software, and geopolitical currents in Türkiye and the wider world. He acted on this interest with his work at ITU, impressing academic researchers and earned him a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.

In the 1990s, Baykar had pivoted from auto parts to partnering with the Turkish military to produce defence products. By the early 2000s, Selçuk and Özdemir had developed a mutual interest in aeronautics and decided to refocus Baykar on UAV technologies. Selçuk would also go on to acquire a master’s degree in unmanned aircraft systems at Pennsylvania in 2004, where he flew two drones in formation at the Fort Benning Army base in Georgia, and would acquire another master’s degree at MIT, where he landed a radio-controlled helicopter on a wall. His advisor, Eric Feron, recalls Selçuk as “a dedicated craftsman and an observant Muslim.”

As a young student in the USA, 9/11 and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’ were a defining moment for the young Selçuk. He watched as American ‘predator drones’ were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, often causing great civilian casualties. Selçuk engaged in anti-war social activism on campus with other graduate students. However, unlike them, Selçuk was not content to be a mere activist. In the predator drones, he saw the challenge that American air power posed to Muslim countries, but also an opportunity. While still enrolled at MIT, he began building prototype drones on the Baykar factory floor in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, Özdemir sought to lobby the Turkish government to support Baykar’s efforts in developing UAV technologies. Here, the Bayraktar’s cultural milieu would be essential. Özdemir hailed from the Millî Görüş (National View) movement of Turkish-Islamic nationalism, pioneered by Necmettin Erbakan, a professor of mechanical engineering and Prime Minister of Türkiye in the 1990s. Erbakan emphasised the need for an ‘Islamic industrialism,’ promoting industrial production and military self-sufficiency to protect Turkish sovereignty. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and subsequent Western sanctions on military exports to Türkiye, critically exposed the country’s dependence on the West for its defence industry.

In 1996, Erbakan was elected Türkiye’s Prime Minister, but he was pressured to resign by the Turkish military in what was called the “first postmodern coup”, and subsequently banned from politics on the charge of threatening to violate Türkiye’s constitutional separation of religion and the state. One of his protégés, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would learn lessons from the coup against Erbakan and go on to win the next election in 2002.

Özdemir had close relations with both Erbakan and Erdoğan (to whom Özdemir was an advisor when he was mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998) and was able to secure government support for Selçuk’s drones. By the mid-2000s, Selçuk was splitting time between his studies in the USA (where he began to pursue a PhD at MIT) and embedding himself in the Turkish military, where he personally oversaw the development and test deployments of the hand-launched Bayraktar TB1 mini-UAV, amid the sub-zero temperatures and harsh mountain terrains of southeastern Anatolia.

In 2007, Selçuk dropped out of his PhD program at MIT and returned to Türkiye permanently to serve as Baykar’s CTO. Brothers Haluk and Ahmet joined as the general manager and financial manager, respectively. Patriarch Özdemir would lead design efforts.

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The Sky’s the Limit

Until the 2000s, Türkiye had relied on Israel for drones and was the primary customer for their Heron UAV. Dependent on Israel and barred from acquiring US-made Predator drones, Baykar would have the full backing of the government and military to pioneer a domestic UAV industry.

The TB1 gave the Turkish military and intelligence a tactical edge in their counterinsurgency operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist organisation by Türkiye, the EU, the USA, among other countries. For decades, the PKK led an insurgency in Türkiye’s southeastern regions, where the Turkish military struggled to operate owing to the rugged terrain. This favoured the PKK’s asymmetrical warfare tactics. The TB1 led to better intelligence-gathering capabilities, but it was not enough.

The TB2’s development began in 2009 with financing from the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries. By 2015, the TB2 was capable of flying for 24 hours, providing live battlefield intelligence, and carrying laser-guided munitions. By 2016, the TB2 was ready for live combat and deployed in operations that successfully targeted and eliminated dozens of figures within the PKK leadership. The TB2 all but eliminated the PKK’s advantages and enabled the military to drive the PKK out of southeastern Türkiye throughout the 2010s and into Northern Syria and Iraq.

Baykar’s military success propelled the Bayraktar family to national fame and into the ranks of Türkiye’s elites. In 2016, Selçuk married Sümeyye Erdoğan, daughter of President Erdoğan. However, attributing the Bayraktar family’s success solely to this union would be reductive. Rather, Erdoğan has arguably derived greater benefit from the partnership, given his broader struggles to identify competent successors and allies (e.g., the waning influence of his other son-in-law, Berat Albayrak and the limited political engagement of Bilal Erdoğan). The Bayraktars, through their technological and strategic contributions, have emerged as instrumental figures in sustaining Erdoğan’s political legacy.

The TB2 has become a crucial and in some cases decisive weapon of war on several battlefields. Since 2016, the Turkish military has launched several operations across northern Syria and Iraq, aimed at further degrading and destroying the PKK’s leadership and operational capacity. UAVs have been essential to the Turkish military’s ability to fight in the extremely rugged and mountainous terrain in which the PKK has built its bases.

In 2020, Turkish UAVs played a decisive role in Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia, in which the Azerbaijanis were victorious. Both Selcuk and Haluk would receive the ‘Karabakh Order’ award from Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in recognition of their services.

In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine created another opportunity for Turkiye to export UAVs and increase its brand value. Baykar even built a joint Turkish-Ukrainian UAV factory near Kyiv. Russia’s advanced military capabilities mean that Turkish UAVs like the TB2 have not had a decisive effect as it has in other battlefields, highlighting the limits of the technology. Nonetheless, it has been a boon for Turkiye’s cultivation of soft power, such as through a more positive image in Europe.

As the Turkish military footprint expands, so does its influence through what has been called ‘drone diplomacy’. However, while the Turkish state prefers to adopt a balancing strategy between nations to maintain the primacy of its interests and avoid entanglements, Baykar has developed a diplomatic portfolio of its own. Haluk, the eldest of the three Bayraktar brothers and the CEO and businessman in the company is primarily responsible for developing close relationships with UAV clients. In particular, Bayraktar has become a household name in Ukraine, where Baykar has unabashedly sided with the Ukrainians against Russia. This gives the Turkish state an added layer of plausible deniability when it chooses to use UAV exports – as a carrot or a stick.

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The Bayraktar Complex

The Bayraktar family background and upbringing, Türkiye’s domestic political scene, geopolitical struggles, and the War on Terror have all shaped Baykar’s success. Crucially, this has also driven Selçuk’s quest to socially engineer a culture of industry and technological innovation in Türkiye. Profits from the success of Baykar have been ploughed into a range of strategic initiatives and foundations controlled by the Bayraktar family: The Bayraktar Complex.

The Complex consists of several programs, primarily organised through the Türkiye Technology Team (T3) Foundation. T3 runs the Teknofest program and the Takeoff startup summit, the largest in the Middle East. While T3 is Selçuk’s project, Haluk runs the defence industry organisation, SAHA. These efforts aim to actualise the Milli Teknoloji Hamlesi (National Technology Initiative), a doctrine formally adopted and promoted by Türkiye’s Ministry of Industry and Technology. Its foundational principles trace their intellectual lineage to Necmettin Erbakan. Central to this doctrine is the conviction that Türkiye must achieve full technological independence, prioritise high-value-added production to secure sustained prosperity, and cultivate a workforce defined by diligence and patriotism. This vision is encapsulated in its motto: A local and national, fully independent, prosperous Türkiye.

Teknofest (a portmanteau of technology and festival) is the flagship programme of the T3 foundation and hosts large-scale technology competitions. Initially launched in Türkiye’s major metropolitan centres, the event has since expanded to provincial cities and internationally, with editions held in Azerbaijan and Cyprus, and further global expansion planned. Teknofest operates year-long competitions across 58 primary and 138 secondary categories, spanning aviation, space technologies, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence. These contests aim to equip younger generations with advanced technical skills while fostering a culture of innovation. Conducted in collaboration with Türkiye’s leading technology firms, they facilitate knowledge transfer between industry leaders and emerging talent.

Beyond competitive events, Teknofest functions as a public exhibition, incorporating air shows, concerts, and educational programmes. It serves as a unique convergence point for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the broader public, blending technological diplomacy with civilian engagement. Although primarily an entertainment-driven platform, it also showcases Türkiye’s military and industrial capabilities, reinforcing a sense of national technological prowess.

As articulated by Selçuk, Teknofest represents the nucleus of what he terms the "Deep Wave", a movement to cultivate a new generation of Turkish technology entrepreneurs. Initiatives such as One Child Touches an Aircraft introduce young children to foundational concepts of technology, while older participants engage in advanced projects, from rocketry to unmanned systems. Prior to Teknofest, public awareness of fields such as model rocketry was negligible, and civilian participation was virtually non-existent. The festival has not only popularised these disciplines but also normalised the aspiration for high-tech production among the youth.

For Teknofest competitors and university teams to translate their projects into commercial ventures, structured support mechanisms are essential. The start-up ecosystem, championed by the T3 foundation, plays a pivotal role. Under the leadership of İrem Bayraktar Aksakal, Vice President and Entrepreneurship Coordinator, the foundation has established accelerators, prototyping facilities, and funding programmes. The T3 Foundation Entrepreneurship Centre, alongside the Özdemir Bayraktar Prototyping Centre at Istanbul Technical University, provides incubation support for start-ups in hard-tech sectors such as space, maritime, and AI technologies.

Complementing these efforts is Take Off, the Middle East’s premier start-up summit, held annually in Istanbul. Unlike Teknofest’s broad public appeal, Take Off targets a professional audience, connecting entrepreneurs with investors and multinational firms.

The T3 Foundation’s educational initiatives extend to younger demographics through DENEYAP (Try&Make) and Bilim (Science) Workshops, which admit students via competitive examinations. These programmes, operational across Türkiye and in select international regions (including Africa, Central Asia, and the Balkans), emphasise hands-on learning in aviation, AI, and core sciences. The DENEYAP Card, a maker-space tool, further fosters a domestically rooted hacker culture among the youth.

A critical industrial pillar is SAHA (Savunma, Havacılık ve Uzay Kümelenmesi Derneği - Defence, Aviation, and Space Cluster), directed by Haluk. Functioning as a developmental body for Türkiye’s defence subcontractors, SAHA Istanbul addresses sectoral challenges through specialised training, executive education (including a tailored MBA programme), and networking platforms. The flagship SAHA Expo, held biennially under presidential patronage, ranks among Türkiye’s largest defence exhibitions.

The Bayraktars are not only interested in engineering. Their scope encompasses social sciences and the arts, as evidenced by the founding of institutions like the Culture and Civilisation Foundation (KÜME) and the Cansağlığı Foundation (focused on health sciences). Notably, the ecosystem thrives on volunteerism, with students and professionals contributing through both paid roles and unpaid participation.

All together, these initiatives are the trappings of a comprehensive ecosystem to socially engineer a culture of technological innovation, funded and coordinated by the Bayraktar Complex.

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Building an Industrial Society

The Bayraktar Complex is an incubator using the Bayraktar family’s upbringing, cultural milieu, and technological success as a blueprint for social engineering in Türkiye. But to what end?

Only the creation of an industrialised society can achieve the mission laid out in the National Technology Initiative: to achieve full technological independence, prioritise high-value-added production to secure sustained prosperity, and cultivate a workforce defined by diligence and patriotism.

Industrialisation is not a half-hearted affair. All successful examples of industrialisation have been the transformation of social and political structures, laws, and norms to create a society capable of undertaking the rigours of industrial organisation. Industrial production is merely the end result of this process. Meiji Japan was the first non-Western power to successfully undergo the process of creating an industrial society. Arguably, that other East Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China could also industrialise is because Japan went through it first, indigenising and proliferating industrial knowledge, organisation, and production as an East Asian society.

On the other hand, all failed attempts at industrialisation have been to reduce this process to mere industrial policy. Industrialisation is not an economic process to be grafted onto existing socio-political structures. It is, instead, the wholesale transformation of these structures, right down to their very foundations, to create an industrial society. Türkiye and the wider region lack such an ‘anchor state’ for this process, much like the role Japan played for East Asia. Ideologues like Erbakan envisioned Türkiye to play this role for the region and the wider Muslim world.

Türkiye itself has made several failed attempts at industrialisation in the century since the Republic’s founding, largely because the process was adopted in a half-hearted manner: serious about production, but unwilling to commit to the fundamental transformation of Turkish society. Figures like Türkiye’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the industrialist Nuri Demirağ, Prime Minister (and later President) Turgut Özal, and Necmettin Erbakan all attempted – and failed – to industrialise Türkiye. Nonetheless, their efforts have left a legacy that has brought Türkiye closer than ever before.

The Bayraktar Complex indicates that some notion of this problem exists in the minds of its founders. Raised in the cultural milieu of Türkiye’s ‘Islamic industrialist’ current pioneered by former leaders like Necmettin Erbakan, and given a tinkerer’s education in the Baykar workshops of the Bayraktar patriarch, Özdemir, Selçuk, and his brothers have a remarkably practical approach. This has been aided by the full support given to the Bayraktars by President Erdoğan, who has aspired to finally fulfil the vision of an industrialised and fully sovereign Türkiye first set out by his predecessors.

However, a rapid cultural shift carries latent risks, including the potential for politicisation or misappropriation by actors seeking legitimacy rather than genuine advancement. Rentierism is another endemic problem, whereby parasitic elites encourage economic activity insofar as it reaches a level where they can reliably extract wealth. This then prevents the reinvestment of profit back into industry to climb the value chain. Demographic pressure, with a rapidly collapsing fertility rate and an ageing population, also poses long-term existential challenges, as the process of industrialisation depends on a large and youthful labour population. Technology and youth workshops alone cannot solve any of these problems.

Whether or not the Bayraktar Complex succeeds in its mission to reshape Türkiye’s culture, and downstream the economy itself, depends on how seriously the Bayraktar family and their network take the process of creating an industrial society. In that, they have plenty of supporters – and even more enemies.

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Events in the southern Syrian province of Suwayda over the past week have become the most serious challenge to Syria’s nascent state-building effort since the fall of the Assad regime.

A local tribal conflict in Suwayda between the Druze (an ethno-religious minority group) and the Bedouin (who are predominantly Sunni Arabs) transformed into a full-scale conflict between the Syrian government and Arab tribes against Druze militias and the Israeli air force.

However, this conflict is not at its source a sectarian issue, even as it quickly took on sectarian tones. It is a political conflict between the new government in Damascus seeking to impose its sovereign authority, and the aspirations of the Druze spiritual leader, Hikmat Al-Hijri, and his intransigent refusal to negotiate anything less than complete control of Suwayda’s affairs.

Israel has sought to (successfully) exploit this delicate issue and transform it into an existential crisis that compels both Damascus and Suwayda into a spiralling, zero-sum conflict. But this crisis requires an understanding of the regional context in the years leading up to the fall of the Assad regime, and how Israel has quietly cultivated the ground in south Syria to impose a new political reality — on its own terms, and at the expense of everyone else.

Israel’s Shifting Security Paradigm

The siege of revolutionary-held east Aleppo in late 2016 marked a grim turning point in the fortunes of the revolution. Assad’s forces, backed by Iranian-controlled Shi’a militias, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, relentlessly bombarded the city into submission, and expelled thousands of fighters and civilians to Idlib and the Turkish border for refugee camps beyond.

Following Aleppo’s fall, the regime shifted focus to recapturing southern Syria, particularly Daraa province and eastern Ghouta. Israel, however, viewed Iran’s deployment of Shi’a militias near the occupied Golan Heights as an existential threat. This prompted Russian mediation, culminating in Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s 2018 visit to Tel Aviv, where he personally guaranteed Netanyahu that Shi’a militias would withdraw from southern Syria once Assad secured control.

By mid-2018, Russian-brokered deals had dismantled the revolutionary presence in Daraa through mass expulsions or forced integration of rebels into regime militias. Yet Iran reneged on the agreement: Hezbollah and allied militias entrenched themselves along the Golan border. When Israel protested, Lavrov feigned helplessness, claiming Moscow could not compel Tehran. Iran’s "axis of resistance" now encircled Israel to the north from Lebanon and Syria.

Israel’s strategic opening emerged after the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas. Seeking to redeem his security failure, Netanyahu launched aggressive campaigns in Gaza while preparing for wider regional conflict. In coordinated strikes across Syria and Lebanon, Israel decimated Iranian assets, including Revolutionary Guard commanders and Hezbollah leadership, further weakening Assad’s primary sponsors.

Spying an opportunity to escape Iran’s increasingly degraded sphere of influence and desperate for international legitimacy, Assad attempted via Emirati channels to negotiate a Gulf-led process of international normalisation in exchange for the gradual expulsion of Iranian influence from Syria. However, with Russia distracted in Ukraine and Iran’s influence waning, his gambit collapsed.

Exploiting this moment of vulnerability, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmad Al-Shara’ (then known as Abu Muhammad Al-Jolani) launched a lightning offensive from Idlib. In just 11 days, his forces seized Damascus, toppling Assad on 8 December 2024.

Israel was once again caught off guard in Syria, but saw an opportunity to seize an advantage. One day before the fall of the regime on 8 December 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a security council to put into motion Israel’s strategy for a post-Assad Syria. The result was Operation Arrow of Bashan, the largest aerial campaign in Israeli history. Around 320 locations across Syria were struck, destroying nearly the entire regime’s arsenal: barracks, ports, batteries, arsenals, military airports and equipment; whatever government inherited post-Assad Syria would be left with no military capacity beyond light weaponry.

Israel unilaterally abrogated the 1974 disengagement agreement that had kept peace between Israel and Assad’s Syria for 50 years, moving troops into the demilitarised zone of Quneitra up to Mount Hermon, just 20 kilometres from Damascus. Tel Aviv argued that as the new government in Damascus were unknown, Israel required an additional buffer zone.

Israel was leaving nothing to chance, and began preparing its next card: Hikmat Al-Hijri and the Druze of Suwayda.

The Druze Gambit

Hikmat Al-Hijri is the spiritual leader of the Druze in Syria and the primary antagonist behind the events in Suwayda over the past week.

Al-Hijri had maintained a pro-regime stance throughout the Syrian revolution. This only began to change after 2020, when the Druze in Suwayda started protesting against the regime due to rampant corruption and the deteriorating economic situation, exacerbated by the U.S.’s implementation of the Caesar Sanctions and the regime’s cuts to fuel subsidies. Gradually, the revolutionary three-starred flag replaced the regime’s two-starred flag in Suwayda’s streets.

Initially, Al-Hijri was hesitant to voice serious opposition to the regime itself, let alone lend his support to the protests. The Druze militias in Suwayda were ill-prepared for a direct military confrontation with the Assad regime. However, it was Mowafaq al-Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel, who brokered a relationship between Israel and Al-Hijri, convincing him of the viability of an autonomous Druze province as part of a broader Israeli buffer zone across southern Syria. This zone would remain nominally under Damascus’s authority but effectively under Israeli patronage.

By 2023, Al-Hijri had not only become increasingly vocal against the regime but had also thrown his weight behind the protests in Suwayda. The regime, recognising that Israel was cultivating Suwayda into a protectorate and seeking a pretext to strike regime forces entering the province, largely withdrew, content for the time being to allow Suwayda its autonomy.

After the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, Al-Hijri established the ‘Suwayda Military Council’ (SMC) to bolster his military capabilities. Modelled after the ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’, which was run by the PKK in northeastern Syria, the SMC’s founding coincided with Netanyahu’s call for the demilitarisation of southern Syria. This suggests that Al-Hijri was preparing the military means to enforce his repeated demands for Druze autonomy over all of Suwayda.

This development had repercussions for the new government in Damascus, which sought to establish ties with older and friendlier Druze militias, such as Layth al-Balaous’s Shaykh al-Karama. Layth’s father, Wahid al-Balaous, had been a soft opponent of the Assad regime until his assassination in 2015 by a car bomb, an operation widely attributed to the regime. Video evidence indicates that Al-Hijri and other prominent Druze spiritual leaders had supported this operation.

Layth intensified his father’s stance, adopting a firmer anti-Assad and anti-Russia position, even as other Druze elders, particularly Al-Hijri, maintained warm relations with the regime. Unlike al-Hijri, Layth was one of the few prominent figures with influence among the younger Druze generation, and he cautiously sought collaboration with the new Damascus government. With his militia, he possessed sufficient clout to negotiate and partner with Damascus in trust-building measures, such as peacekeeping deployments in Druze-populated suburbs of the capital during sectarian tensions.

Today, Layth has largely been abandoned by his own men and exiled from Suwayda due to his soft pro-government stance and opposition to al-Hijri’s monopolisation of decision-making in the region.

Timeline of Events in Suwayda

The Kindling

Tensions between Damascus and the Druze community, primarily the Al-Hijri faction, have persisted for months. Sectarian tensions in Jaramana, a religiously mixed Damascus suburb with a significant Druze presence, between late April and early May 2025 were the first serious test of Damascus-Druze relations. These tensions were smoothed over after Damascus worked with Layth and his militia to enter the suburb and re-establish security, taking over the local police station, arresting agitators to the local peace, and seizing arms.

At the same time, Druze gunmen said to be affiliated with Al-Hijri and the SMC abducted Mustafa Bakour, Damascus’ civilian representative to Suwayda province. Though later released, his kidnapping marked a nadir in negotiations over Suwayda’s relationship with Damascus.

Crucially, Jaramana also established Israel’s willingness to intervene with airstrikes on government targets under the pretext of protecting the Druze. Tel Aviv has repeatedly demanded a "demilitarised zone" in southern Syria, effectively challenging Damascus’ sovereignty by prohibiting government troop deployments near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Since May, there has been a lull in tensions as figures from the government and the Druze factions and parties sought to reduce tensions, primarily by continuing negotiations. However, after events over the preceding week, it is now unlikely that these negotiations will continue earnestly any time soon.

The immediate trigger to events in Suwayda occurred on 11 July, when Bedouins reportedly extorted a Druze vegetable merchant at a checkpoint on the Damascus-Suwayda highway, beating him and stealing his produce.

In retaliation, Druze gunmen abducted eight Bedouins from Al-Maqous, Suwayda’s predominantly Bedouin neighbourhood, with reports indicating a child was killed during the incident. This ignited a cycle of retaliatory kidnappings, assaults, and killings between Bedouin and Druze militias, prompting tribes across southern Syria to mobilise.

Initially, Damascus refrained from military intervention, opting for mediation as the government was wary of tribal complexities and Israel’s looming threat to exploit any pretext for military action.

By 13 July, however, mediation had failed and large-scale tribal conflict erupted across Suwayda’s countryside and provincial capital, claiming dozens of lives and injuring over a hundred within a single day. Reciprocal shelling and sieges of Druze and Bedouin villages triggered mass displacement, predominantly affecting Bedouin communities.

Following failed local negotiations and escalating violence, Damascus deployed army units and interior ministry police to Suwayda on 14 July to mediate and enforce a ceasefire. This intervention became the catalyst for rapid escalation.

Damascus’ Intervention Goes Awry

To understand why Damascus launched a security operation in Suwayda, we must examine the geopolitical and diplomatic context preceding the decision.

Suwayda poses several problems for Damascus. Firstly, it has become a haven for Assadist officers and other remnants who are fleeing capture, and many of them have been recruited by Al-Hijri into his militia.

Secondly, Suwayda is now the main narcotics smuggling route between Syria and the wider Middle East, a source of regional concern as regional capitals struggle to stem the flow of drugs like captagon flooding the streets.

Thirdly, Suwayda’s push for autonomy comes simultaneously with the PKK’s demands for autonomy across northeastern Syria. If Damascus grants autonomy to one faction, it will likely trigger a cascade of demands until Syria has become a federation of cantons.

Most pressing were Israel’s threats to Damascus over the status of south Syria, and, in particular, Suwayda and the Druze minority — issues that Damascus has felt are its sovereign matters to attend to.

For months, Syrian and Israeli officials had engaged in discreet backchannel talks, facilitated by Turkey, Jordan, the UAE, and the U.S., aimed at achieving détente. After the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, Israel immediately and unilaterally revoked the 1974 agreement that had established a demilitarised zone between the occupied Golan Heights (annexed by Israel in 1967) and Syria proper. Damascus sought a return to this arrangement, or a similar framework, as it lacks both the desire and capacity for direct conflict with Israel.

Damascus’ decision to intervene in Suwayda likely stemmed from two factors. Firstly, a misreading of diplomatic signals during recent Syrian-Israeli talks in Baku (mediated by Turkey and Azerbaijan). Secondly, overestimating U.S. support for Syrian territorial integrity, particularly after statements by U.S. Envoy Thomas Barrack emphasising the need for a unified Syrian state.

While Washington endorsed Syria’s sovereignty in principle, Damascus read too much into U.S. support and Israeli signals. Bolstered by international rhetoric favouring centralised governance, and under the mistaken belief that Israel would not react, President Ahmad al-Shara and his ministers deemed mid-July the optimal moment to reassert state control over Suwayda and quell the Bedouin-Druze conflict.

On 14 July, Damascus notified Layth al-Balaous, their highest-ranking contact among the Druze factional leaders, of the government’s military deployment into Suwayda to halt Bedouin-Druze conflict. However, as convoys entered the province, Druze militias, likely under Al-Hijri’s command, ambushed a government convoy. Footage circulated by the attackers showed at least 10 soldiers stripped, humiliated, and executed. Eight others were taken hostage, forcibly marched to a Druze village, and killed.

The ambush marked a turning point. Previously positioning itself as a mediator, Damascus now faced open rebellion. Government forces escalated operations, but individual soldiers engaged in reprisals: videos emerged of soldiers shaving Druze men’s moustaches and summarily executing captured militiamen.

The violence reached a nadir at Suwayda’s main hospital, where Syrian troops attempting to evacuate Bedouin civilians were both besieged by Al-Hijri’s militias and subsequently slaughtered. Syrian legal expert Manhal Al-Alou reported that victims were “killed using knives, scalpels, gunfire, strangulation, injections, and by cutting off oxygen supplies.” Misinformation compounded the chaos. Claims that it was government forces that had massacred Druze civilians at the hospital circulated widely, though open-source investigations reveal that this is false.

A local conflict had become a national issue. But this was not the end of the spiral.

Israel Adds Gas to the Fire

Israel’s intervention on 14 July came under the pretext of responding to demands from the country’s Druze community, spearheaded by their spiritual leader Mowafaq Al-Tarif. For days prior, Israeli Druze had been protesting along the border fence in the occupied Golan Heights, some tearing through barriers in desperate attempts to cross into Syria, while Druze soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces made public declarations of their willingness to deploy into Suwayda.

Beyond its longstanding strategic interest in creating a buffer zone in southern Syria, Israel’s decision to intervene at this precise moment reflected Netanyahu’s precarious domestic position. Increasingly isolated politically, Netanyahu had come to depend on the support of fringe elements like the far-right West Bank settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Yet with his coalition balancing on a knife-edge, he also saw an opportunity to court the traditionally Labor -aligned Druze vote, whose historically low voter turnout and fragmented political loyalties made them a potential kingmaker in future elections, with the right incentives. A strong showing of support for Syrian Druze could translate into a reciprocal Druze turnout at election time.

The Israeli campaign began with drone strikes targeting Syrian military and police convoys advancing towards Suwayda city, conducted in apparent coordination with Druze militia operations on the ground. Dozens of government troops were killed in these attacks as they pushed forward, eventually reaching the city centre by 15 July.

That same day saw the announcement of a fragile ceasefire negotiated between Damascus and an assembly of Druze, Christian and civil society leaders in Suwayda – a brief respite shattered within hours when al-Hijri’s faction rejected the agreement and launched simultaneous ambushes against government forces across a dozen locations in the city, timed perfectly with renewed Israeli airstrikes.

American attempts at mediation failed to slow the escalation, and by 16 July, Israeli warplanes were striking central Damascus itself, reducing a portion of the Ministry of Defence to rubble and damaging a section of the Presidential Palace grounds. Though Israel relayed advance warning to Damascus through Turkiye to allow for evacuations, the bombardment killed three civilians and 34 others were injured from shrapnel and blast effects.

In a video address to Israeli Druze that same day, Netanyahu, the architect of the 2018 nation-state law that formalised all non-Jews as second-class citizens (including the Druze), announced, “My brothers, the Druze citizens of Israel, the situation in Suweyda in southwestern Syria is very serious. We are acting to save our Druze brothers and to eliminate the gangs of the regime,” referring to the Syrian government.

Netanyahu was joined in his inflammatory speech by two members of his cabinet, Ben-Gvir and Amichai Chikli, who both called for Syria’s President, Al-Shara, to be assassinated.

Meanwhile, a second ceasefire announcement collapsed immediately when Al-Hijri again refused to comply, despite public condemnations from fellow Druze leaders Yusuf al-Jarbou and Laith al-Balaous, who implicitly accused him of illegitimately monopolising community leadership and endangering Suwayda through his intransigence.

When a third ceasefire backed by U.S. mediation finally mandated the withdrawal of Syrian military forces from the province while allowing interior ministry police to remain, Al-Hijri’s rejection came again, but it mattered little against Damascus’s rapidly diminishing options in the face of Israel’s escalating air campaign.

The sudden Syrian withdrawal created a security vacuum that Al-Hijri’s militias quickly exploited, hunting down the remaining interior ministry officers and unleashing a wave of violence against Bedouin civilians that crossed into outright ethnic cleansing. Graphic footage emerged of entire Bedouin families, women and children among them, gunned down in the open desert, alongside a mass exodus of thousands fleeing towards Daraa province.

The chaos engulfed even humanitarian workers, with the White Helmets’ (civil defence) leader in the province, Hamza Al-Amareen, being kidnapped by militias after he went to Suwayda city to try and escort a UN delegation to safety. His captors, current whereabouts or status (alive or dead) are all unknown.

Full Tribal Mobilisation

The massacres of Bedouin civilians triggered an extraordinary response on 18 July: a full military mobilisation of Arab tribes across Syria. Tribal leaders declared they were "putting aside differences" and "refusing to drink coffee" until Suwayda was restored to state authority. Thousands of armed tribesmen from Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Daraa began converging on the province, revealing the depth of President al-Shara's previously underestimated tribal networks.

The tribal factor is one of the least understood and least reported on dynamics of Syrian society. If Israel sought to transform a localised conflict in Suwayda into a nationally existential issue for Syria, then Damascus responded by turning Suwayda into a regional concern.

The tribal mobilisation laid bare one of Syria's most opaque but powerful social dynamics. Bound by kinship ties stretching across Iraq, Jordan and the Gulf, these networks carried implicit political weight. While state concerns take precedence over tribal concerns, the latter cannot be ignored at the cultural and familial levels, as they can subtly inform political orientations between states.

As government forces withdrew, tribal militias engaged Druze fighters in chaotic clashes across northern and western Suwayda. The conflict descended into gruesome ritual violence: social media circulated images of Druze militiamen posing with beheaded Bedouin corpses strung from bridges, while tribal forces retaliated with summary executions of prisoners.

Israel's continued airstrikes against tribal convoys failed to stem the tide until 18 July, when international pressure forced a shift. Facing condemnation from mediating powers, including the US, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, Washington's envoy Barrack announced an Israeli-Syrian ceasefire. Having escalated the violence to near-uncontrollable levels, Israel now permitted Damascus to redeploy forces to Suwayda.

Yet Al-Hijri rejected the terms of this ceasefire, marking the fourth ceasefire rejection in five days, and maintained his absolutist stance: no government presence, civilian or military, would be tolerated in what he now considered his personal fiefdom.

By 20 July, tribal forces complied with Damascus' withdrawal orders while government troops re-entered to establish fragile buffer zones between warring factions. These deployments have created precarious humanitarian corridors, though the underlying tensions remain unresolved. The tribal mobilisation had achieved its immediate objective of stabilising the lines of conflict and forcing the Druze militias to facilitate the release of Bedouin civilians held hostage, albeit at great cost.

The Aftermath

On 20 July, Damascus attempted to dispatch a convoy of interior ministry police, civilian ministers including Social Affairs Minister Hind Qabawat and Health Minister Musab al-Ali, alongside vital medical and humanitarian supplies. Al-Hijri again demonstrated his stranglehold over the province, blocking all government-affiliated entry while permitting only international aid organisations access. Faced with Suwayda's deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe, Damascus recalled its convoy to avoid obstructing relief efforts.

The following day, over 1,500 Bedouin civilians, many of whom were women and children held hostage by Druze militias for days as bargaining chips, were finally evacuated from Suwayda to Daraa and Damascus. This marked the culmination of a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing that had rendered Suwayda city and much of its hinterland entirely devoid of Bedouin inhabitants.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) documented at least 558 casualties between 13-21 July, including 11 children and 17 women, with 783 wounded. These figures exclude combat fatalities but include extrajudicial executions of captured fighters.

Daraa's health ministry reports over 1,700 casualties across all categories, though the actual total death toll, particularly among government troops, tribal fighters and Druze militiamen, likely far exceeds current estimates.

Al-Hijri's intransigence has defied all mediation attempts, including American pressure, as he continues imposing unilateral terms. His stance has inflamed Syria's Sunni majority and drawn regional Arab condemnation over the transparent ethnic cleansing campaign. With Israeli military backing ensuring his militias' dominance, the stalemate appears unbreakable while Al-Hijri maintains his monopoly on Druze leadership.

Damascus’ Strategic Miscalculations

The crisis in Suwayda represents the most severe strategic, diplomatic, and operational failure for Damascus since the fall of the Assad regime. At its core lies a triad of strategic miscalculations: an overestimation of their military cohesion, a flawed intelligence assessment of Druze politics, and a dangerous misreading of international signals.

Firstly, seven months after the regime’s collapse, the reconstituted Syrian army remains a patchwork of poorly trained, undisciplined factions. The Suwayda operation laid bare these deficiencies, with viral videos showing soldiers forcibly shaving Druze men’s moustaches and making sectarian statements. Though some perpetrators were arrested, the damage was irreversible. These actions validated Al-Hijri’s narrative of Damascus as a "sectarian jihadist" force, eroding any remaining Druze trust. The subsequent massacres of government troops and the chaotic withdrawal, which enabled Druze militias to ethnically cleanse Bedouin communities, have sparked nationwide outrage, particularly among Syria’s Sunni majority.

Secondly, Damascus’ strategy hinged on exploiting Druze factionalism, notably through Layth al-Balaous, leader of the ostensibly pro-government Rijal al-Karama. Yet when violence erupted, al-Balaous was abandoned by his own fighters, some of his closest friends and advisors were killed, and his organisation defected to Al-Hijri. Other former intermediaries, like Suleyman Abdul Baqi of Tajamu’ Ahrar Jabal and Abu Yahya Hassan Al-Atrash of the Kata’ib Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash, also joined with Al-Hijri. This divide-and-rule tactic to isolate Al-Hijri failed; instead, rival Druze factions quickly closed ranks, leaving Damascus without a single credible partner in Suwayda.

Thirdly, rhetorical Western support for Syrian unity, particularly from US Envoy Thomas Barrack, lulled Al-Shara and his government into a false sense of security, believing that there would be US support for the operation in Suwayda. The misreading of Israeli demands over the demilitarisation of southern Syria compounded this crisis. The Suwayda offensive played directly into Israel’s hands, cornering Damascus between impossible options: abandon Suwayda and show weakness, or pursue sunken costs and face a devastating war by Israel, at which point Israel could formally establish its buffer zone in south Syria, a plan it had been cultivating since 2018 and had been sought with greater urgency after the 10/7 attacks.

Israel Against Regional Stability

Far from unintended collateral damage, Israel has executed a deliberate strategy to destabilise Syria. Israel transformed a local dispute into a national crisis, then intervened under the guise of protecting minorities.

The international reaction to these events has been blanket condemnation of Israel’s actions. In a joint statement by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Turkiye, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Egypt, they affirmed “Syria’s security, unity, stability and sovereignty” and rejected “all foreign interference in its (Syria's) affairs.”

In a UN Security Council session on 17th July, every member state condemned Israel’s actions in Syria, including the US, in a rare show of disapproval against Israel. The US State Department also released a statement saying that it (i.e. the Trump administration) did not support Israel’s airstrikes on Syria. There is growing concern in the White House over Netanyahu’s willingness to act unilaterally, even against US interests. A senior US official reportedly told an Israeli counterpart, "You can’t embark on a new war every few days. We’re trying to lower the flames and reduce the number of wars and fronts, and you are doing the opposite." However, it is unclear how or if the US will impose red lines on Israel, as it has thus far shown an unwillingness to do so.

To attribute this crisis to Israeli miscalculation would be dangerously naive. No nation possesses more intimate knowledge of Syria’s sectarian fault lines than Israel, which has spent decades studying and manipulating them. It would be extraordinary if Israel did not know or seek to unleash a spiral of sectarian violence far beyond the capacity of Damascus to manage it.

For regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, there is a growing consensus on the ‘Israel Problem,’ as Tel Aviv has proven unwilling to become a partner for stability in the region. In fact, doing the opposite at every given opportunity. From the Gaza genocide, to the pre-emptive bombing of Iran’s nuclear plants and decapitating much of its leadership, to the attacks in southern Syria; Israel’s unilateral regional strategy, enabled by a blank cheque from the U.S., is setting the stage for a long-term realignment of regional interests.

Like the two-state solution, a dead horse beaten repeatedly for decades as Israel expanded settlements and tightened the noose on Palestinians in the West Bank, it has become increasingly clear that Israel is no longer interested in the Abraham Accords as a unified diplomatic opening with the Arab and Muslim world. Israel continues to pursue piecemeal normalisation where it can get it, but has eliminated any possibility of a two-state solution – a red line for Saudi Arabia’s terms of normalisation.

Turkiye has avoided confrontation with Israel and instead sought to engage diplomatically, but has found itself outmanoeuvred in Syria. Ankara’s proposed defence pact with Damascus remains stalled, caught between Arab suspicions of Turkish ambitions in the Arab world, and Israel’s demonstrated willingness to sabotage any arrangement that might strengthen Syrian sovereignty or bolster Turkiye’s regional reach.

As early as January, we reported on Damascus’ pursuit of peace with Israel. It seems that Israel is more interested in keeping Syria on its knees as part of its post-October 2023 strategic pivot towards “regional chaos for peace at home.” Nor does Damascus have much room for manoeuvre. Domestic sentiment has shifted from a desire for an end to war so that Syria can rebuild to public outrage against Israel. If Al-Sharaa were to pursue some sort of normalisation deal for peace with Israel, it may now be political suicide.

The message to regional powers seems to be increasingly that American guarantees have become worthless, and Israel will punish any attempt to build alternatives to its dominance. In this zero-sum calculus, Israel’s intervention in Syria serves multiple purposes: to keep Damascus weak, and to make of them an example to others against challenging Israel’s regional primacy.

Sentiments on the Sunni Street

There is intense anger against Damascus from its supporters among the Sunni Arab majority. Tribal mobilisation has partially delegitimised the state to some degree, demonstrating how non-state actors fill the vacuum when state action fails. There is a rising clamour of existential dread among many Sunnis, fearing that the state cannot protect them from a return to the Assad era of brutality and that they may have to mobilise on their own terms.

This poses a fundamental problem to Damascus’ state-and-nation-building project in Syria. If Damascus loses legitimacy in the eyes of the international community or minority sects, this threatens Syria’s redevelopment. However, if the Sunni majority sees Damascus as illegitimate, an Iraq-style collapse is on the horizon.

It is in the interests of Damascus that Sunni majoritarianism is not stoked to a maximal degree, because that fire will overthrow even the government itself in pursuit of safety. But this issue cannot be controlled if foreign actors turn minority sects into fronts for division, and further provoke the extreme, existential trauma of the Sunni majority.

This is precisely what Israel has gambled on: to delegitimise Syria’s nascent state-building process in everyone’s eyes, Sunni, Druze and otherwise, and encourage escalating tribal and sectarian division. Al-Hijri and the Druze militias have played a key role in catalysing a potential path to national fragmentation, and has forced the entire Druze community into a bargain with Israel that not only alienates them from their neighbours in Syria and the wider region, but it is not clear that Israel is even willing to commit to protecting the Druze from the repercussions of its involvement.

What Al-Hijri has done to the Druze image goes beyond Syria. Arab social media, particularly in Jordan and the Arab Gulf (especially Saudi Arabia), has been in uproar over the total Bedouin displacement in Suwayda. On social media platforms like X, Saudi citizens were discussing how to fire Druze employees and boycott Druze businesses.

What Comes Next

The international reaction, particularly Western policymaking circles, may now reconsider the lifting of sanctions on Syria. But economic misery and a lack of sustained redevelopment owing to crippling sanctions largely remaining in effect is precisely one of the key driving forces of tensions in the country, and the inability of the government to develop the bureaucratic capacity to provide solutions to various problems.

If Brussels and Washington walk back their decision to lift sanctions on Syria in light of events in Suwayda, they will embolden foreign actors like Israel and Iran to instigate further chaos in the country, primarily by catalysing further sectarian tensions to permanently cripple Damascus and all but ensure the permanent fragmentation of Syria.

Accountability for the events in Suwayda is necessary and must be universal. After seven months, there have been no public trials for Assad regime members who have been accused of crimes against the Syrian people. Now, Damascus’ problem of transitional justice and accountability is compounded by the need for arrests and trials against those who committed violations in Suwayda as the smallest, first step towards building any semblance of trust in Syrian society.

However, the most glaring issue remains the presence of Al-Hijri. The presence of Assadist officers in his military council, his emboldened position through Israeli support, and his absolute intransigence with Damascus, all suggest that a détente along current lines is the best that can be hoped for in south Syria.

It is unclear how the situation in Suwayda can be resolved until moderate Druze factions from within its well-established civil society are willing to bypass their religious leadership, i.e. Al-Hijri, and begin a process with Damascus under international mediation to restore civilian order, guarantee the rights of both Bedouin and Druze inhabitants in Suwayda, and contend with the rampant smuggling networks and Assadists who have sought haven in the province since 8 December.

Anything else is just kicking the can down the road – and leaking gasoline all the way.

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For decades, Italy was regarded as the “sick man of Europe”, plagued by recurring economic crises, chronic political instability, and major migratory challenges. However, in recent years, the tide appears to have turned. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Italy is now seeking to position itself as a central player on the European stage, even as a strategic leader within the European Union (EU).

This ambitious repositioning comes with a clear objective: to assert its influence in what Rome now refers to as its “enlarged Mediterranean” – a region extending not only across the traditional Mediterranean basin, but stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf. Italy aims to safeguard its economic, energy, and geopolitical interests in the region while playing an active role in managing migration flows, security crises, and economic partnerships.

The Mattei Plan

During her inaugural speech in October 2022, Giorgia Meloni surprised many observers by announcing the implementation of a “Mattei Plan”, named after Enrico Mattei, the founder of Italy’s national oil company, ENI. This choice was far from trivial: it signalled a powerful ideological foundation underpinning the new Italian Prime Minister’s vision of foreign policy, particularly concerning the MENA region, as well as her conception of national economic and energy sovereignty. This return to the legacy of Mattei reflects a desire to reposition Italy as an active and indispensable Mediterranean power.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italy was in ruins. Its economy relied heavily on imported coal and oil, burdening its trade balance and hampering industrial reconstruction. In 1945, the National Liberation Committee tasked Enrico Mattei, a prominent figure within the Christian Democracy (DC) party, with the liquidation of AGIP, the state-owned oil company. Unexpectedly, Mattei refused to dismantle the company. Instead, he viewed it as a strategic lever essential to restoring the country’s energy sovereignty and reviving its industrial base.

Defying the instructions he had received, Mattei restructured AGIP and launched exploration campaigns across the Italian territory. He discovered significant natural gas reserves in the Po Valley near Milan. This gas would go on to heat Italian homes and power the northern industrial economy, at costs well below those of imported fuels. Buoyed by this success, Mattei convinced the government to establish ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) in 1952 – a public company to which he granted a monopoly over national energy policy.

But Mattei’s ambitions extended well beyond Italy’s borders. He understood that national energy independence could not be secured through domestic resources alone. ENI was soon engaged in an ambitious strategy to penetrate foreign oil markets. Very quickly, Mattei came into conflict with the interests of the major Anglo-American oil conglomerates – Exxon, Shell, BP, and others – collectively known as the “Seven Sisters”, a term Mattei himself popularised to highlight their quasi-cartel-like dominance.

To challenge them, he proposed a radically new partnership model to oil-producing countries. Rather than the traditional, exploitative rent system, Mattei offered a fair revenue-sharing arrangement: 75% for the producing state, 25% for ENI, with all exploration costs borne by the Italian company. This model, combining economic pragmatism with recognition of the sovereignty of southern nations, marked a historic break with prevailing norms.

Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, was the first to accept the offer, followed by the Shah’s Iran after the ousting of Prime Minister Mossadegh. ENI subsequently established operations in Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, and Jordan. Mattei’s engagement went far beyond extraction contracts: he proposed gradual transfers of technology and know-how, aiming to support the industrial development of partner countries.

It was in Algeria, however, that Mattei and ENI would play a decisive role. During the height of their war of independence against France, Mattei openly supported the Algerian resistance, the FLN (National Liberation Front). Mattei provided strategic backing to the Algerian independence movement and helped the FLN negotiate internationally, offered logistical and legal support, and shared intelligence on Algeria’s hydrocarbon resources. ENI also trained future executives of Sonatrach, the national oil company created after independence.

This assertive support for decolonisation was rooted in a vision shared by a strand of Christian Democracy: that of a third-worldist neo-Atlanticism. According to this doctrine, Italy, by virtue of its geography, history, and cultural ties, has a particular vocation to act as a bridge with the Global South, especially the Arab world, while remaining a loyal member of the Western bloc. The ultimate goal was to make Rome a strategic intermediary between Europe and the Arab world, thereby making Italy indispensable and able to influence both the EU and NATO.

Italy’s Lost Decades

In the 1990s, Italy experienced an economic crisis marked by public debt reaching 110% of GDP, a prolonged economic slowdown, and a growing loss of public trust in institutions. The Christian Democracy party, the cornerstone of Italian politics since the post-war period, was swept away by a massive corruption scandal (the "Mani Pulite" operation), which led to its dissolution, as well as that of the entire parliament. This political earthquake brought an end to the First Republic and ushered in a prolonged era of instability.

Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate, emerged as a dominant figure on the political scene, governing as Prime Minister between 1994-1995, 2001-2006, then 2008-2011, alternating in power with Romano Prodi. Both pursued austerity policies to meet the Maastricht criteria and facilitate Italy’s entry into the eurozone. Euro adoption became the overriding goal of successive governments, even at the expense of social and industrial policy.

In 2001, Berlusconi returned to power for a second term with a more assertive agenda. He broke with Italy’s long-standing pro-Arab tradition, historically supported by the Vatican and certain Christian Democratic circles, and instead adopted a neo-conservative, pro-American, and pro-Israeli stance. He aligned Italy with NATO’s military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, signalling a major strategic shift. On the European stage, Rome struggled to assert itself against the Franco-German tandem. Berlusconi attempted to chart an alternative course by strengthening ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose bid to join the EU he supported.

He also pursued a pragmatic foreign policy towards Libya. During a historic visit to Rome by Muammar Gaddafi in 2008, Berlusconi signed an agreement offering symbolic reparations for Italy’s colonial past in exchange for significant Libyan investments in Italy. He also lobbied the Bush administration for the lifting of sanctions against Tripoli. In so doing, Berlusconi aimed to reposition Italy as a strategic bridge between Europe and the Arab world.

However, the 2008 financial crisis exposed the structural weaknesses of the Italian economy. Reluctant to launch large-scale interventions for fear of worsening the national debt, Berlusconi allowed the economy to stagnate. By 2011, at the height of the sovereign debt crisis, the situation became untenable. Under intense pressure from financial markets and European partners, he was forced to resign. A technocratic government led by Mario Monti took over and implemented harsh austerity measures, which stifled any prospect of economic recovery.

During this period, Italy’s influence in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) receded somewhat. This decline can be attributed to several factors, including growing competition from other European powers, such as France and Germany, and the increasing involvement of non-European actors like China, Russia and Turkey – all of which reshaped regional geopolitical dynamics. Nevertheless, Italy maintained significant diplomatic and economic ties with key regional players.

Prior to the imposition of international sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, Italy had been the Islamic Republic’s leading European trading partner. Bilateral trade between the two countries totalled around €7 billion per year, largely concentrated in energy, industrial machinery, and infrastructure, sectors in which Italian firms possessed internationally recognised expertise.

At the same time, Italy remained Egypt’s foremost European partner, sustaining robust economic links in the areas of natural gas, oil, industrial equipment, and construction. The presence of major Italian companies such as ENI bolstered this strategic cooperation. Italy maintained a close political dialogue with Cairo, particularly on issues of security, counterterrorism, and migration management.

In 2018, a populist shift occurred: the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (left-wing populist) formed a coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right League. Giuseppe Conte became Prime Minister. His government adopted a foreign policy that leaned towards Russia and China while displaying open hostility towards the EU. One symbolic move was Italy’s accession to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, making it the first G7 country to do so (Italy would later pull out in 2023). Anti-EU and anti-migrant rhetoric became central to government discourse. Weakened by years of cuts to public services, particularly in healthcare, Italy was one of the hardest-hit countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 1994, successive austerity policies, combined with a steady decline in public investment in research and development, have hindered innovation and the modernisation of Italy’s productive sector. Berlusconi’s economic strategy, focused on cost competitiveness rather than quality or added value, exacerbated this lag. While Germany and France poured investment into R&D and high-tech industries, Italy saw its productivity stagnate.

With the adoption of the euro, the country lost the ability to devalue its currency to restore price competitiveness, a tool it had historically relied on. As a result, Italian products, particularly in the manufacturing sector, became too expensive compared to those from emerging economies with weaker currencies and lower labour costs. This imbalance weakened Italy’s exports and widened the gap between itself and its European peers.

However, a turning point began to take shape in the 2010s. In 2016, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched the "Industria 4.0" plan, a strategic initiative aimed at modernising the industrial sector through digitalisation and automation. With generous tax credits and investment incentives, the plan enabled many Italian businesses, including SMEs, to invest in new technologies, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

This shift yielded tangible results: Italy is now one of the European countries with the highest number of industrial robots installed, second only to Germany. This positive momentum reflects a paradigm shift: the state has begun to support the transition towards an economic model based on innovation, high value-added production, and industrial specialisation.

Mario Draghi: The Architect of a New Italy

In 2021, the coalition government led by Giuseppe Conte collapsed under the weight of internal tensions between the Five Star Movement, Matteo Salvini’s League, and the Democratic Party. To break the deadlock, President Sergio Mattarella turned to Mario Draghi, former Governor of the European Central Bank and a figure of international repute. Tasked with forming a government of national unity, Draghi succeeded in assembling a broad parliamentary majority, spanning from the moderate left to the right, with the notable exception of Fratelli d’Italia, Meloni’s party.

His appointment marked a decisive break with the political drift and chronic instability that had plagued Italy over the preceding three decades. Draghi embodied a return to a structured, technocratic foreign policy firmly anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions. From the outset, he expressed a clear intention to restore Italy’s central role within both European and Mediterranean affairs, while also reinforcing its commitment to NATO. This orientation followed the tradition of post-war Italian neo-Atlanticism: a pragmatic diplomacy rooted in strategic interests, particularly in the Mediterranean basin.

A powerful symbol of this shift came with his first official visit abroad to Libya in March 2021, only weeks after taking office. In Tripoli, he declared his desire to "rebuild an old friendship" and to reactivate bilateral cooperation in the areas of security, energy, and migration management. The visit confirmed his ambition to make the "wider Mediterranean", stretching from Gibraltar to the Gulf, a strategic priority for Italy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 further consolidated this orientation. Draghi quickly positioned himself among the most resolute European leaders in response to Moscow. He gave unreserved support to economic sanctions against Russian assets in Europe and provided both military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Aware of Italy’s energy dependence on Russian gas, Draghi swiftly launched a diversification strategy. Within months, Algeria overtook Russia as Italy’s primary gas supplier. This energy realignment was accompanied by a strengthening of bilateral ties with Algiers, in the framework of a strategic partnership.

On the diplomatic front, Draghi broke with the unbalanced bilateralism of the Conte era, especially regarding China and Russia, in favour of a more openly multilateral approach, firmly rooted in the values of the EU and NATO.

The Draghi government restored Italy’s central role in regional geopolitical dynamics, particularly in the Mediterranean, while reaffirming its European and Atlantic commitments during a time of overlapping crises.

Appointed President of the Council of Ministers in February 2021, Draghi assumed leadership at a critical juncture. Italy, hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, was facing a prolonged economic slowdown, worsened by decades of political instability, stagnant productivity, and chronic underinvestment. Against this backdrop, the EU allocated Italy an unprecedented €209 billion through the Next Generation EU recovery plan – a mix of grants and loans spread over six years. Italy was the plan’s largest beneficiary, underlining the country’s strategic importance for the eurozone’s stability.

Draghi viewed this financial windfall not as a mere safety net but as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for structural transformation. He deliberately broke with the austerity-driven policies that had dominated Italian governance since the 1990s, under governments such as those of Prodi, Berlusconi, and Monti. Instead, he adopted a neo-Keynesian approach focused on reviving public investment and activating sustainable growth levers.

His plan was built upon several core pillars: energy transition, technological innovation, digitalisation of the public administration, and human capital development. A significant portion of the funds was allocated to renewable energy, the modernisation of railway infrastructure, the construction of smart networks, and improved energy efficiency in both public and private buildings. Draghi’s ambition was not only to accelerate the decarbonisation of the economy, but also to position Italy as a key player in Europe’s ecological transition.

In the realm of innovation, grants were introduced to stimulate private sector investment in research and development (R&D), a field neglected for decades.

Draghi also initiated reform of the public administration, aiming to make it more efficient, digital, and accessible. This endeavour sought to reduce the bureaucratic red tape that hinders investment and burdens businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, efforts were made to improve access to education, vocational training, and youth employment.

Mindful of the Italian economy’s over-reliance on a limited number of European trade partners, Draghi also sought to diversify export markets by strengthening economic ties with North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. His goal was to build a more resilient, outward-facing economy, less vulnerable to external shocks.

Thanks to this ambitious recovery strategy, Draghi gave Italy a renewed long-term vision focused on innovation, sustainability, and strategic integration into major global dynamics.

Meloni Expands the Mattei Plan

Following deep divisions within his governing coalition, Draghi tendered his resignation in July 2022, after just a year and a half at the helm of the Italian government. Yet, his term was widely praised, both within Italy and abroad. His technocratic style, economic rigour, and international stature helped restore Italy’s credibility on the European and global stage. Despite his enduring popularity and a widely recognised positive legacy, Draghi chose to step down in the face of ongoing political instability.

The snap elections that followed resulted in the victory of Giorgia Meloni and her party Fratelli d’Italia, leading a right-wing coalition that also included Matteo Salvini’s League and Forza Italia, the political heir to Berlusconism. Her rise to power sparked serious concern across European and international circles, due to her nationalist, conservative, and at times eurosceptic rhetoric. However, Meloni swiftly defied the most alarmist predictions.

From the early days of her premiership, she adopted a pragmatic tone, distancing herself from stereotypes of an Italy at odds with Brussels or NATO. Her first official visit was telling: she travelled to Brussels to meet Ursula von der Leyen, thereby signalling her commitment to European institutions. Far from overturning Mario Draghi’s legacy, she embraced his main economic, diplomatic, and strategic priorities.

Draghi, in fact, remained an unofficial adviser, and several of his close collaborators stayed in office, chief among them Giancarlo Giorgetti, who was retained as Minister of the Economy. A moderate respected by the markets, Giorgetti was named Finance Minister of the Year in 2025. Under their guidance, Italy maintained a stable economic policy blending fiscal discipline, investment-led recovery, and innovation.

This pragmatism bore fruit: between 2022 and 2023, Italy recorded one of the highest growth rates at 5% among G7 nations. It made full use of the EU’s Next Generation EU recovery fund, from which Draghi had secured a record €209 billion. These funds were heavily invested in green infrastructure, research, the energy transition, and administrative reform. Breaking decisively with decades of austerity, Italy emerged as one of Europe’s leading advocates of productive public investment.

This momentum also enabled a rapid industrial transformation. As a result, Italy became the world’s fourth-largest exporter, surpassing South Korea and the United Kingdom, and asserted leadership in key sectors such as precision engineering, intermediate goods, pharmaceuticals, agri-food, and luxury goods.

Politically, since Angela Merkel’s departure, Meloni’s Italy has managed to assert itself as a leading power within the EU. While Germany has struggled to define a coherent new direction under Olaf Scholz, and France has faced growing diplomatic isolation, Rome has become a central voice in major debates, from migration and energy to defence and EU enlargement. Meloni combines close ties with Washington with a capacity for autonomous initiative, allowing her to be heard in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris alike.

On the international stage, Meloni extended Italy’s projection strategy in the wider Mediterranean. This became the heart of the Mattei Plan, an ambitious programme of economic, energy, and migration cooperation with Africa. Initially launched with nine African countries, the plan expanded to fourteen, most of them French-speaking, where ENI, Italy’s energy giant, already had a strong presence.

Taking advantage of diplomatic tensions with Paris, Italy stepped up its investments and became Algeria’s top gas client, securing its energy supply while expanding its political influence. In Tunisia, Italy forged a strategic partnership with President Kais Saied, combining investment and infrastructure projects (such as the Elmed power cable and fibre-optic networks), IMF-backed assistance, and migration cooperation. Italy is now Tunisia’s largest foreign investor, having created over 80,000 direct jobs.

In Libya, Italy plays the role of mediator between the eastern authorities (led by General Khalifa Haftar, centred in Benghazi) and the Tripoli government (the Grand National Assembly – or GNA), while maintaining a limited military presence to help stabilise the region and safeguard the Greenstream gas pipeline.

Economic and strategic ties with Turkey have deepened. Bilateral trade has reached €30 billion, with a target of €40 billion in the short term. A joint venture between Leonardo and Baykar in drone technology highlights this growing military cooperation, and Baykar also acquired Piaggio Aerospace.

Italy has also made inroads into the Gulf. With the United Arab Emirates, Rome has signed agreements worth €40 billion, including a joint venture between Fincantieri and EDGE, data centre projects with ENI and Khazna, and cybersecurity cooperation. With Saudi Arabia, €10 billion in agreements are under negotiation, covering shipbuilding (Fincantieri) and aerospace (Leonardo), while Riyadh has joined the GCAP programme – the sixth-generation fighter jet project led by Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

Rome also hosted the fifth round of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme between the United States and Iran, moving beyond bilateral economic relations into hot diplomacy.

Italy as a Middle Power

After decades of diplomatic drift, Rome is attempting a strategic repositioning to reshape both Italy’s internal balance and its international stature. This shift began under Mario Draghi, whose European prestige and market credibility as the former President of the European Central Bank restored Italy’s voice on the international stage. He deliberately broke with the legacy of thirty years of tactical retreat, embedding Italy in a new diplomatic framework that aligned with Western priorities while asserting national interests, particularly in the Mediterranean.

Despite emerging from a radical right once marked by Euroscepticism, Giorgia Meloni has faithfully continued along this path. More than mere pragmatic convenience, her decision to uphold Draghi’s diplomatic and economic framework reflects a new strategic awareness: that Italy can only wield influence in the world by acting as a bridge between Europe and the East, between North and South, between Brussels, Washington, and the capitals of Africa and the Middle East. The continuity between Draghi and Meloni is not paradoxical, but a demonstration of the Italian state’s longer-term interests prevailing over technocratic or culture-war political divides.

This neo-Atlanticist pivot has earned Italy renewed credibility within the EU and has enabled Rome to reposition itself as a central player in European energy policy in the wake of its decoupling from Moscow. Italy has strengthened industrial alliances, particularly in defence and high-tech sectors. And above all, it returned Italy to the heart of European affairs, at a time when Germany’s post-Merkel leadership remains undefined, and France grows increasingly isolated on Mediterranean issues.

Italian neo-Atlanticism is a reinvention of Rome’s role as a pivotal power, connecting continents, blocs, and spheres of influence. In a Europe still searching for direction, Italy, against all odds, has forged its own compass.

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Across the MENA region, nations are increasingly turning to space technologies as a strategic lever for economic transformation and technological advancement. This shift forms part of broader efforts to transition towards post-hydrocarbon economies while simultaneously serving national development goals and military modernisation. For many Gulf monarchies in particular, space programs have become powerful symbols of national aspiration and state-building, projecting an image of technological sophistication and future-oriented governance.

This space race embodies a classic "leapfrog" strategy, with MENA nations capitalising on the "New Space" paradigm characterised by commercial launch services, miniaturised satellites, and disruptive technologies like AI. The approach mirrors China's successful adoption of electric vehicle technology, bypassing traditional development stages by embracing emerging innovations. Dramatically reduced launch costs, pioneered by companies like SpaceX, are democratising space access much as drone technology has transformed modern warfare. Regional examples abound, from Bahrain's Al Munther and Kuwait's KuwaitSat-1 to Morocco's UM5 nanosatellite family, demonstrating rapid adoption of microsatellite technologies.

The regional landscape reveals a diverse strategic mosaic rather than a unified approach. The UAE pursues ambitious deep-space exploration, while Saudi Arabia focuses on human spaceflight achievements. Egypt cultivates leadership in African space cooperation, and Oman positions itself as a commercial launch hub - each nation's strategy carefully tailored to its unique economic objectives, geopolitical considerations and technological baselines.

This diversity, however, constrains meaningful regional collaboration. Unlike Europe's coordinated approach through the European Space Agency, MENA lacks a unifying space authority. Most national programs operate at scales that struggle to justify standalone viability, let alone compete with major space powers or add significant value to partnerships with space superpowers like China and the US. While Gulf states, in particular, view space programs as tools of nation-building, this individualistic approach comes at the cost of missing the opportunity to develop a truly integrated, sustainable regional space economy capable of competing on the global stage.

The following is a primer on some of the MENA countries with national space programs, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Türkiye, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. Future reports will cover specific programs of promise in more detail.

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National Space Programs

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

The UAE is the current leader in the MENA space industry, with ambitious deep-space exploration and human spaceflight programs. A milestone achievement was made on 20 July 2020 with the launch of the Emirates Mars Mission (called the “Hope Probe”). The Hope Probe successfully entered Mars orbit on 9 February 2021, making the UAE the first Arab nation and fifth globally to send a probe to Mars. The mission provides a global map of Mars and close-up images of its moon Deimos, with data being shared with over 200 institutions worldwide. This mission was also strategically timed to arrive before the UAE's 50th independence anniversary, highlighting its symbolic importance for national pride and inspiration in the UAE

In human spaceflight, the UAE sent its first astronaut, Hazzaa Al-Mansoori, to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019. More recently, Sultan Al Neyadi spent six months on the ISS, conducting 200 scientific experiments in microgravity. The UAE also made its first foray into lunar exploration with the Rashid Rover, launched aboard Japan’s Hakuto-R Mission in 2022. Although the mission faced a landing failure, it marked the nation's entry into Moon exploration and provided experience for future lunar projects. Looking ahead, the UAE has ambitious plans for an unmanned lunar exploration and a long-term aspiration for a human settlement on Mars by 2117. A mission to the Asteroid Belt is also underway.

The institutional backbone for these projects comprises the UAE Space Agency (UAESA), established in 2014, and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), established in 2006. These entities have developed a robust ecosystem through initiatives like the National Space Academy, National Space Fund, and Space Economic Zones, which collectively advance space research, technology, and commercial activities. Furthermore, the EDGE Group's Fada focuses on advanced satellite technologies for domestic research and development.

The UAE has also forged extensive international partnerships, signing several Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with China, France, Russia, the UK, India, and Japan, and a significant "Agreement to Collaborate" with NASA. It was an early signatory of the Artemis Accords in 2020. While the UAE initially planned to take part in the Chang'e-7 lunar initiative with China, it was forced to drop out owing to U.S. export laws regarding sensitive technology transfers to China, highlighting the complexities of international collaboration in a geopolitically sensitive domain for a country aiming to stay neutral and benefit from both sides. However, compliant collaboration with China has continued.

Orbitworks, a joint venture with an American firm, became the Middle East's first commercial satellite integrator. The UAE also emphasises STEM education and international collaboration, with partnerships including NASA and JAXA, and explores feasibility studies for launching commercial spaceports in Abu Dhabi. Complementing its space ambitions, the UAE invests heavily in AI and space-data analytics companies such as Bayanat, hoping to build a more comprehensive ecosystem.

Saudi Arabia (KSA)

KSA’s space program is intricately linked to its ambitious Vision 2030, serving as a key pillar for the country’s economic and social transformation. The Saudi Space Agency (SSA) was founded in 2018, with strategic oversight provided by the Supreme Space Council, established in November 2022 and chaired by the Crown Prince, MBS. Saudi Arabia. Notably, the Kingdom withdrew from the 1984 Moon Agreement in January 2023, indicating a selective approach to international frameworks that best serve its evolving national interests.

The kingdom's space economy was valued at $8.7 billion in 2024, with projections of up to $31.6 billion by 2035. This growth is fueled by significant public and private investments. KSA’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), launched the Neo Space Group in 2024, a global space services company, marking a major venture into the satellite and space industries aimed at developing domestic capabilities and the transfer of technology.

A landmark achievement was the Human Space Flight Program (SSA-HSF1), launched on May 21 2023. This historic mission sent two Saudi astronauts, Rayyanah Barnawi (the first Saudi woman in space) and Ali Alqarni, to the ISS for a 10-day mission. During their stay, they conducted 11 microgravity research experiments and 3 educational outreach experiments, engaging 12,000 students across 47 locations in Saudi Arabia. The program aims to prepare future Saudi astronauts for future missions, focusing on areas like human health, cell science, and Earth science.

On 14 May 2025, the Saudi Space Agency (SSA) signed an executive agreement with NASA to launch the first Saudi satellite dedicated to studying space climate as a part of the Artemis II mission. KSA previously joined the Artemis Accords in 2022. Earlier launches include Earth observation and technology demonstration satellites (SaudiSat-5A and -5B in 2018) and the Saudi Geo Satellite 1/Hellas-Sat-4 (2019).

KSA is also pursuing space tourism, partnering with HALO Space for near-space tourism test flights. Unmanned tests were conducted in 2024, with manned flights planned for 2025 and commercial operations by 2026. The goal is to host at least 100 balloon-powered flights annually from 2026, positioning the kingdom as a regional hub for space tourism.

Qatar

Qatar's space projects are marked by strategic international collaborations. In a significant security partnership, the U.S. Space Force – Central Command (USSPACECENT) has opened a campus at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base in January 2025, enhancing space operations and capabilities in the Middle East. A space situational awareness data sharing agreement was also signed with the Qatar Armed Forces in October 2023.

In satellite communications, Es'hailSat 1 and 2 provide communications services, in particular, direct-to-home television services, across the MENA region. Es'hailSat's state-of-the-art ground station in Doha, launched in 2019, manages these satellite operations. The company is evaluating new geostationary (GEO) satellites and is open to partnering with non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations for future applications like in-flight connectivity (IFC), which could provide a significant edge for Qatar Airways.

Qatar has also engaged in significant scientific research and education initiatives. It launched the Qatar Exoplanet Survey in 2010, contributing to exoplanet discoveries. A joint effort with NASA and the Qatar Foundation (the OASIS project) aims to design a satellite mission to find buried freshwater aquifers in deserts using radar technology, addressing critical water scarcity issues in the region.

Oman

Oman is strategically positioning itself as a regional launch hub as its strategic equatorial location on the western edge of the Arabian Sea makes it an ideal site for satellite launches. The sultanate’s Etlaq Spaceport, the first commercial spaceport in the MENA region, announced plans for five test launches in 2025 as part of its ‘Genesis Program’, aiming to establish Oman as a key player in the global launch industry by 2027.

Etlaq is also collaborating with international launch partners from the UK, New Zealand, and Kuwait for its test missions and has signed an agreement with Spanish launch service provider PLD Space to facilitate the launch of MIURA 5 from Oman.

To foster Oman’s local ecosystem, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) introduced the 'Oman Space Accelerators' program, set to launch in late 2025, in collaboration with Ankaa Space and Technologies. This program aims to support and empower ten Omani startups in space technologies, stimulating the national space ecosystem and attracting investment.

The space sector is a strategic priority under Oman's National Program for the Digital Economy. Over the next decade, Oman aims to develop ground-based space applications, encourage private sector involvement, and attract international investment. Plans also include building a space research centre for simulation missions and science experiments.

Bahrain

Bahrain is the smallest Gulf state, but it is also positioning itself as a player in the regional space race. Through the National Space Science Agency (NSSA), Bahrain has made advancements in developing its satellite capabilities. Its first satellite was Light 1, a joint UAE-Bahraini project, and was launched in December 2021. On 15 March 2025, Bahrain successfully launched into operation its first homegrown satellite, “Al Munther”, using a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket. This satellite is equipped with artificial intelligence for real-time image analysis.

The Bahrain Space Agency (BSA), established in 2014, focuses on building expertise in satellite manufacturing, tracking, control, and Earth observation data processing. BSA has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the UAE Space Agency, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), the Egyptian Space Agency, and Oman's MTCIT. BSA also partnered with Egypt to develop a hyperspectral imaging camera for China's Chang'e 7 lunar mission and is a signatory of the Artemis Accords.

Kuwait

Kuwait marked its entry into the space sector with the successful deployment of KuwaitSat-1, a student-developed nanosatellite equipped with an Earth observation camera, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 3 January 2023. This pioneering initiative supports scientific research through imagery of Kuwait's territory. Building on this achievement, the Kuwait Space Commission is currently developing a National Space Strategy to coordinate public and private sector efforts, with projections of creating 8,000 direct and 6,000 indirect jobs in the growing space industry.

Kuwait has demonstrated notable international collaboration in space science, remaining the only Arab nation to participate in NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission between 2013-2018. Working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Kuwaiti scientists contributed to calibrating and validating satellite data measuring global surface soil moisture - a critical parameter for environmental and climate studies.

The country is now expanding its space infrastructure through the Kuwait Space Company (KSC), which focuses on securing future telecommunications capabilities. KSC's roadmap includes deploying a geostationary satellite (GEO) and constructing an advanced ground station. Kuwait further maintains strategic involvement in regional space cooperation as a 14.6% shareholder in Arabsat, the Arab world's premier satellite communications organisation.

Egypt

Egypt is developing indigenous capabilities for both civilian and military applications. The Egyptian Space Agency (EgSA) was established in August 2019 with a vision to carry out national development and security missions and become an active member in global space initiatives. Its mission includes creating, transferring, and localising space technology, with the ultimate goal of building and launching satellites from Egyptian territory.

EgSA has achieved success with experimental satellites like NExSat-1, launched on 3 February 2024, using China's Jielong-3 launch vehicle. NExSat-1, a remote sensing satellite, was assembled and tested at EgSA's qualified facility, demonstrating a significant local integration rate of about 45%. This follows the December 2023 deployment of MisrSat-2, an Earth observation satellite provided by China. Egypt's previous remote sensing satellite, EgyptSat 2, was launched in 2014 by Russia but lost contact in 2015.

Future initiatives for EgSA include developing a satellite to measure plasma characteristics in the ionosphere and the African Development Satellite, a nanosatellite for climate change monitoring in collaboration with several African countries.

Egypt also hosts the HQ for the African Space Program, highlighting the use of space for diplomacy by the country. Egypt is solidifying its leading role in the African space sector by hosting the New Space Africa 2025 conference and has trained 71 engineers from 34 African countries since 2021.

A key initiative is the development of an Egyptian microsatellite platform by 2026 to boost local manufacturing capabilities. Collaborations extend to a partnership with Bahrain for a hyperspectral imaging camera for China's Chang'e 7 lunar mission and an agreement to participate in China's International Lunar Research Station mission. EgSA also has agreements with the Greek and Kenyan space agencies.

Iran

Despite international sanctions, Iran has developed a robust and self-reliant space program, achieving significant milestones in satellite and launch vehicle technology. It serves dual civilian-military purposes, directly supporting its ballistic missile development. With declared ambitions for crewed spaceflight, the program remains central to Tehran’s strategic objectives despite ongoing geopolitical constraints.

The country marked its first foray beyond Earth's atmosphere with the Kavoshgar test rocket in February 2008, followed by the landmark deployment of its first operational satellite, Omid (Hope), in February 2009. This achievement made Iran the ninth nation capable of independent satellite launches, a feat accomplished using indigenous infrastructure.

Iran’s technological progression is evident in its development of five distinct carrier rockets, including the Simorgh series, which predominantly utilise solid-fuel propulsion systems: technology sharing clear synergies with ballistic missile development. Beyond Omid, the nation has successfully orbited Earth observation satellites like Rasad-1 and Navid, while demonstrating military applications with the Noor reconnaissance satellite’s 2020 launch.

A notable advancement came in July 2022 with the Khayyam satellite, launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, which enhances border security, agricultural monitoring and disaster response. Iran’s biological space experiments have also broken barriers, including the 2010 mission carrying rodents, turtles and worms, and the successful 2013 launch and return of rhesus macaques (Pishgam and Fargam).

Morocco

Morocco has strategically enhanced its Earth observation capabilities through phased technological investments, beginning with the twin Mohammed VI-A (2017) and Mohammed VI-B (2018) satellites, as part of a €500 million joint project with Airbus and Thales that provides sub-metre resolution imagery. This capability was further upgraded through a 2023 partnership with Israel’s IAI, acquiring two ”spy satellites” in a deal worth $1 billion, positioning Morocco among Africa’s most advanced observation systems.

The satellites serve dual civilian-military functions. While reportedly pivotal for intelligence gathering in the Western Sahara conflict, they have equally transformed disaster response and resource management. During the September 2023 Al Haouz earthquake, the constellation enabled rapid damage assessment and relief coordination, while ongoing agricultural monitoring helps optimise water usage in drought-prone regions, a critical capability given Morocco’s shrinking water resources.

Parallel to government efforts, Moroccan private firms are advancing a pan-African satellite constellation initiative, showcased during French President Macron’s 2024 state visit, where Thales signed agreements to support the project. Academic institutions complement these ambitions, with Mohammed V University launching two pioneering nanosatellites in August 2024: UM5-EOSat for Earth observation and UM5-Ribat for telecommunications testing, developed entirely by Moroccan engineers and students.

Türkiye

In January 2024, Alper Gezeravcı became Türkiye’s first astronaut, conducting 13 scientific experiments on the International Space Station, a pivotal moment in Türkiye’s long-term space strategy.

Türkiye’s space program, driven by its National Space Program launched in 2021, has ambitious goals, including a Moon landing by 2026, independent satellite production, and spaceport construction. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye’s Space Technologies Research Institute (TÜBİTAK UZAY) is the nation’s key space R&D institute, playing a central role in these endeavours.

Türkiye has developed significant dual-use Earth observation capabilities with satellites like Göktürk-1 (launched in 2016), which offers sub-metre imagery, and Göktürk-2. The İMECE satellite, launched in April 2023, represents Türkiye’s first indigenously developed Earth observation satellite, marking a major step towards self-reliance. Its 10-Year National Space Program (2021) also outlines plans for an astronaut program, space weather R&D, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) development.

To further its launch capabilities, Türkiye is currently building a spaceport structure for both civilian and military applications in Somalia, leveraging the strategic geographical proximity to the equator for optimal launch trajectories.

Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

The MENA region's space sector shows considerable promise yet faces significant strategic challenges that must be addressed to realise its full potential.

The most pressing obstacle remains the absence of a unified regional space program, which has led to duplicated efforts, inefficient budget allocation, and missed opportunities for synergy. While the Arab Space Coordination Group (ASCG), established in 2019 by the UAE and joined by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Kuwait and Morocco, represents a step toward cooperation, its impact has been limited. Designed to harmonise regulatory practices and coordinate positions in international forums, the ASCG currently functions more as a symbolic entity than an effective collaborative framework.

A fundamental constraint across most MENA nations (with the notable exceptions of Israel and Iran) is their continued reliance on foreign launch providers like SpaceX's Falcon 9, Russia's Soyuz, or India's PSLV, coupled with dependence on sophisticated satellite platforms from established space powers. This technological dependence not only limits true self-reliance but also exposes national programs to geopolitical vulnerabilities, including international sanctions and export controls. The UAE's experience with US export restrictions following its cooperation with China serves as a cautionary example of these risks. Compounding these challenges is the absence of comprehensive national space laws and robust export control frameworks in many countries, which discourages private sector investment and complicates international partnerships.

Structural inefficiencies further hinder progress. Within individual nations, weak coordination between defence, civilian and academic space actors leads to fragmented resource allocation and conflicting strategic priorities. The lack of standardised data formats, ground station access protocols, and system interoperability presents additional barriers to effective regional collaboration. These institutional shortcomings are exacerbated by the region's persistent "brain drain", as highly skilled engineers and scientists frequently seek opportunities in Europe, North America or more established Gulf space programs, drawn by stronger career prospects and more stable funding environments.

Programs heavily reliant on government funding remain vulnerable to political cycles and fluctuating state revenues, particularly in oil-dependent economies. This financial uncertainty frequently manifests in abrupt project cancellations and disrupted long-term planning. Bureaucratic inefficiencies and a lack of transparency compound these challenges, with many programs operating under military or royal patronage systems that, while ensuring strategic control, often stifle innovation by limiting academic participation and private sector involvement.

Despite these challenges, the MENA region possesses significant opportunities for growth and cooperation. Strengthening initiatives like the ASCG could yield substantial benefits, enabling cost-sharing through joint procurement, collaborative infrastructure development, and the creation of regional Earth observation constellations tailored to address shared challenges like water management and climate monitoring. The potential exists for MENA countries to develop joint projects similar to Türkiye's domestic GPS navigation system, which would enhance regional sovereignty while fostering technological development.

Regional cooperation could extend to establishing shared data platforms that pool high-resolution satellite imagery from multiple national systems, creating commercial opportunities to serve African and Global South markets. Collaborative approaches to human spaceflight, including shared astronaut training programs leveraging existing facilities in the UAE or Türkiye, could make this expensive endeavour more accessible across the region. Engaging with the extensive diaspora of MENA space professionals working at organisations like NASA or ESA could provide invaluable expertise through consulting arrangements, training programs or targeted repatriation incentives.

The region's strategic geographical advantages, particularly its proximity to the equator and potential future launch sites in cooperation with African partners like Somalia, position it well to become a global hub for satellite launches serving the Global South. By cultivating partnerships with other emerging space nations such as India, South Korea and Brazil, MENA countries could diversify their technological partnerships beyond traditional Western collaborators while accelerating knowledge transfer.

Ultimately, while the space race is seen as individual, nation-building opportunities without true regional collaboration, it is unlikely to be sustained or even greater scientific and technological achievements made in this area.

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A Turkish Century?

On 28th October, 2022, Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the beginning of a ‘Turkish Century’ at the unveiling ceremony of the Century of Türkiye program in Ankara. Auspiciously timed for the centenary anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Turkish Century is an ambitious vision to transform Türkiye into a ‘G10 power’, with a policy framework focused on economic development, technological innovation, culture and education, and foreign policy objectives, among other things necessary for great power status.

Even before the Turkish Century vision, an increasingly assertive Türkiye under Erdoğan’s leadership has led to accusations of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’: a quest to re-imagine the Turkish Republic as a true successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which necessarily means re-exerting Turkish influence over former imperial provinces.

However, the lazy label of "Neo-Ottomanism" fundamentally misrepresents Türkiye's contemporary ambitions. The Ottoman Empire, in its classical imperial sensibility, sought direct territorial control and hierarchical suzerainty over its territories. The goals of the Turkish Century are not territorial aggrandisement against its neighbours. Instead, there is a clear theme emerging in Turkish foreign policy: the creation of a stable, interconnected periphery where aligned states benefit from Turkish investment, security cooperation, and political support, thereby enhancing Türkiye's own security and economic reach. This strategy aims to foster interdependence with Türkiye, not dependence on Türkiye.

To what end? In the increasingly multipolar geopolitical landscape, Türkiye is priming itself to become a middle power and regional hegemon. To achieve this, the country’s leadership is pursuing a dynamic but paradoxical strategy of complex interdependence in which Türkiye acquires greater room for manoeuvre. If it can achieve this, the country gains strategic autonomy, a necessary prerequisite on the path to becoming a true middle power without peers.

This is not a monolithic doctrine dictated from Ankara. It has emerged through the trials and tribulations of geopolitics: chaos in the Middle East, war in Eastern Europe, and a drive for sovereignty viewed with hostility by Western powers. Through hot and cold cycles with the European Union, to the highs and lows of the Arab Spring, and war and chaos in the Middle East, Türkiye under Erdoğan has consistently recalibrated its strategy. Yet its vision has remained the same: true sovereignty.

This strategy rests upon three pillars: leveraging geography into geoeconomic power; cultivating a ‘league of aligned states’ into an interdependent regional order; and forging an indigenous military-industrial complex that could turn Türkiye into an undisputed military power in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The ultimate objective is to position Türkiye as a sovereign arbiter capable of navigating between competing power blocs while fostering a sphere of stability and co-prosperity. If superpowers like China or America have interests in the aforementioned regions, then Türkiye aims to be the chief mediator through which political influence and economic interests run.

Türkiye's path is fraught with internal contradictions and formidable economic challenges. The Middle East is filled with peer competitors such as Iran, Israel, Egypt, and the Gulf states, all equally vying for the same level of power that Türkiye covets for itself. The EU maintains significant economic leverage even as its security relationship becomes more dependent on Türkiye. Russia, long the main antagonist to Turkish aspirations, has demonstrated its willingness to militarily assert its interests in the war in Ukraine.

Türkiye needs to sustain military capacity and deter threats to its own sovereignty, recognised through its growing military-industrial complex, and forward deployments to Libya, Syria, and Azerbaijan, among other countries. Simultaneously, Türkiye does not want to go down Iran’s path of becoming an international pariah, facing isolation and sanctions. Half of its GDP is derived from international trade, and deepening interdependence is more conducive to the developmental aspirations laid out in The Turkish Century. This has set Türkiye on its paradoxical path, at the end of which remains a vague set of goals.

This is the first report in a longer-running series exploring Türkiye’s geostrategy, domestic political economy, and burgeoning industrial-military complex. Later reports will focus on concrete case studies that provide empirical analysis to support the theory laid out in this report.

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Türkiye and the West

The EU

Perhaps no relationship better encapsulates the contradictions at the heart of Türkiye’s grand strategy than its turbulent engagement with the European Union. This dynamic is characterised by cyclical rapprochement and estrangement, embodying the core tension in Ankara’s foreign policy: the pursuit of selective integration to enhance economic and security capabilities, while fiercely guarding strategic autonomy.

The early years of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) era witnessed unprecedented alignment between then-Prime Minister Erdoğan’s new government and its emphasis on liberal reforms with European expectations. Driven by Erdoğan’s legislative overhaul, Ankara curbed military influence, expanded minority rights, and harmonised laws with the *acquis communautaire*. The Customs Union, established in 1995, became the bedrock of economic integration, anchoring Türkiye to European supply chains and making the EU its largest trading partner, accounting for 41% of Turkish exports while attracting the majority of foreign direct investment. By 2007, this alignment reached its zenith, with Türkiye supporting 97% of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy decisions while accession negotiations advanced across fifteen policy chapters. Economically, this liberalisation fuelled annual growth rates of 5-7%, lifting per capita income to $10,800 by 2013 and casting Türkiye as Europe’s great hope for a "Muslim democracy" success story.

This convergence proved fleeting when the Gezi Park protests of 2013 exposed fundamental fault lines. Ankara’s security response drew sharp condemnation from Brussels over human rights violations, signalling the beginning of a protracted period of troubled relations. The rupture deepened dramatically following the 2016 Gülenist coup attempt, which triggered mass purges of over 50,000 officials, journalists, and academics, largely associated with the Gülenist movement. The European Parliament responded by suspending accession talks in 2019, citing "continuing backsliding in democratic reforms," while policy alignment plummeted to a mere 10% by 2023.

Yet pragmatic cooperation endured in key areas like migration management, trade, and security. The 2016 EU-Türkiye migration agreement became the most emblematic example, outsourcing border control to Ankara through a €6 billion package to host 3.7 million refugees. Economically, bilateral trade surged to €230 billion annually and cemented Türkiye’s position as the EU’s fifth-largest trading partner, with European capital sustaining critical sectors from automotive manufacturing to textiles.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered a recalibration, demonstrating how security imperatives override values-based objections. Facing energy shocks and defence gaps, the EU abruptly rediscovered Türkiye’s strategic importance. Ankara’s provision of Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine, its invocation of the Montreux Convention to blockade Russian warships, and its brokerage of the Black Sea Grain Initiative earned explicit praise from Brussels.

As Europe scrambled to replace Russian gas, Türkiye leveraged its Trans-Anatolian Pipeline and expanded LNG terminals to supply Balkan nations, prompting the EU to commit €10 billion to Ankara’s Middle Corridor Initiative as Europe’s preferred China trade alternative, bypassing Russia. This security-driven thaw remained strictly compartmentalised, however, with the 2023 Borell Report advocating for modernised customs arrangements and visa liberalisation while explicitly linking progress to Türkiye’s Cyprus policy and judicial reforms – conditions reiterated in the European Parliament’s 2025 assessment that accession remains frozen "under current circumstances" despite deepening security cooperation.

The Türkiye-EU relationship is perhaps the most paradoxical in Türkiye’s foreign policy. Brussels depends on Ankara for containing migration flows, diversifying energy supplies, and maintaining NATO’s second-largest army, even as it condemns Türkiye’s democratic erosion. Türkiye, for its part, deepens energy and trade enmeshment with Europe while expanding military cooperation with Russia through S-400 missile acquisitions and the Akkuyu nuclear plant – a perfect manifestation of its "360-degree" arbitrage strategy.

In this, the EU faces a dilemma: deepening defence ties offers immediate security benefits, but has opened itself up to criticism that it is legitimising democratic backsliding and encouraging Türkiye’s ‘Neo-Ottomanist’ ambitions. This uneasy bargain nonetheless has allowed Türkiye to leverage interdependence into strategic autonomy. For Brussels and Ankara alike, the partnership persists not despite its paradoxes, but precisely because of them.

NATO

The 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague marked a watershed in the Alliance’s post-Cold War trajectory and Türkiye’s thawing relations with Western powers. Against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, NATO allies unanimously committed to a defence spending target of 5% of GDP by 2035, a 150% increase from the previous 2% benchmark established in 2014.

This unprecedented pledge is a recalibration of the Euro-Atlantic security posture. Under the agreement, member states will allocate 3.5% of GDP to core defence expenditures, encompassing personnel, equipment, and operational readiness, while dedicating up to 1.5% to security-related investments, including critical infrastructure protection, cyber defences, civilian resilience programmes, and defence industrial base strengthening.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte hailed the commitment as enabling a "quantum leap" in collective defence, projecting enhanced security while generating high-value industrial employment across member economies.

The Summit’s outcomes reflect Türkiye’s distinctive influence within NATO dynamics, despite its complex positioning between Western institutions and its autonomous strategic ambitions. Ankara successfully advocated for language explicitly addressing the “removal of barriers to defence trade among allies”, a longstanding Turkish priority given recurring embargoes affecting its military modernisation.

Though the final text stopped short of mandating concrete timelines for an action plan, it marked NATO’s first unambiguous recognition that intra-bloc export restrictions undermine collective readiness. Similarly, provisions urging members to "leverage partnerships to promote defence industry cooperation" aligned with Türkiye’s campaign for deeper integration of non-EU defence industrial bases, particularly its own burgeoning aerospace and drone sectors.

Rutte has underscored this point, stressing the need to ensure the "Turkish defence industrial base is as closely linked as possible with UK, Norway and EU" supply chains, an acknowledgement of Ankara’s growing industrial advantage.

There have been further breakthroughs in Türkiye’s defence procurement landscape. US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack recently commented on the possibility of the US Congress reversing Türkiye’s expulsion from the F-35 programme over its acquisition of Russian S-400 missile systems “by the end of the year”. Simultaneously, Germany recently broke years of political deadlock and finally approved the sale of 40 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Ankara, circumventing political objections from some EU members through NATO’s new defence trade flexibility provisions.

Recent developments demonstrate how Türkiye is using interdependence to advance its own interests. Turkish defence giant Baykar's acquisition of Italian aerospace firm Piaggio Aero in December 2024 aims to circumvent Western technology embargoes, while the June 2025 joint venture deal to form "LBA Systems" with another Italian company, Leonardo, signals Türkiye's intent to embed itself deeper into NATO's industrial base.

Türkiye’s parallel development of the indigenous KAAN stealth fighter and deepening defence ties with non-NATO partners such as Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Indonesia show that Türkiye is not seeking to re-orient itself to the West, but rather develop a 360-degree vantage point with Ankara at the centre. As Rutte acknowledged, the Alliance’s southern flank hinges on Turkish cooperation for migration containment, energy corridor security, and regional stabilisation, granting Ankara unique leverage to reshape alliance mechanics from within.

This, ultimately, is what is meant by strategic autonomy: options and leverage. Should commitments (in word or on paper) fail, as they have many times before, then Türkiye has alternative alliances of convenience to lean on – if not its own hard power in the form of a powerful defence industry to act as the backstop for deterrence.

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Türkiye and the Rest

Türkiye’s statecraft across the ‘Middle Belt’ reflects a deliberate strategy to build a resilient periphery through flexible partnerships rather than rigid alliances or proxy networks. This approach is distinct from NATO’s collective defence or Iran’s militia-centric model and focuses on mutual interests, capacity building, and conflict mediation to foster a ring of stable, cooperative states aligned with Ankara’s security and economic objectives.

In Libya, Türkiye’s intervention decisively tilted the civil war in favour of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Beyond deploying troops and Bayraktar drones to counter Khalifa Haftar’s offensive in 2019, Ankara secured a lasting strategic foothold through the 2019 maritime boundary agreement to strengthen Türkiye’s energy exploration efforts and hydrocarbon claims in the Eastern Mediterranean against rivals like Greece and Egypt. In a sign of Türkiye’s growing regional clout and pragmatic politics, Ankara has successfully made overtures to the Benghazi-based government in eastern Libya under Haftar for the ratification of the maritime border agreement between Libya and Türkiye.

Further east, Türkiye’s growing relationship with Somalia is a mix of humanitarian aid, military training, and economic investment. Following President Erdoğan’s landmark 2011 famine visit, Turkish-Somali relations have accelerated. Ankara built Camp TURKSOM in 2017, its largest overseas base, where it trains Somali armed forces, and seeks to project power into East Africa and the Indian Ocean. This security partnership has also expanded into resource access: a 2024 agreement granted Türkiye rights to explore untapped offshore oil and gas reserves, as well as up to 30% of revenues from “oil and gas extracted in Somali waters in proportion to the projects it contributes to”. Türkiye’s branding of hospitals, schools, and even garbage collection services as "Turkish" has made "Istanbul" a popular Somali girl’s name, embedding soft power deeper than Western aid projects. Turkiye has even made space exploration a pillar of this relationship, having commenced work on a spaceport in Somalia projected to cost up to $350 million, from where civilian-use satellites can be launched, and military-use rockets can be tested.

The Azerbaijan partnership remains Türkiye’s most consequential, pithily summarised by the statement, “two states, one nation”. Ankara’s military support, including drone technology and Syrian mercenaries, proved decisive in Baku’s 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh victory. This has accelerated Turkiye’s quest for energy interdependence, predominantly via the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP). Ankara capitalised on Azerbaijan’s 2020 victory to push Yerevan towards a broader agreement on normalisation of ties with both Türkiye and Azerbaijan, seeking not a war of conquest but the creation of a new regional order focused on trade and regional integration. Armenia’s Prime Minister Pashinyan’s June 2025 "working visit" to Istanbul, the first by an Armenian leader, signalled Armenia’s acceptance of Türkiye’s regional ascendancy and desires for guarantees against any future conflict.

Azerbaijan’s geography is crucial for Türkiye as it lacks a land or sea border with the wider Turkic world. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan form a critical economic hinterland with an economic and demographic boom, and increasing importance at the crossroads of Eurasian trade, turning the region from a backwater into a new crossroads. Through the Organisation of Turkic States, Turkiye aims to facilitate trade corridors bypassing Russia and Iran. The Middle Corridor Initiative, vital for China-Europe freight, relies on rail networks through Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

In post-Assad Syria, Ankara has quickly become one of Damascus’ closest partners across a range of fields, including defence, diplomacy, energy, transport and communications infrastructure, and general issues related to the economy and post-war reconstruction. Contrary to popular perceptions, Türkiye has not sought hegemonic control over Syria, in a bid to avoid overreach and the reaction of other regional powers. Previous Vizier reports have explored this relationship.

Further afield, Erdoğan conducted a three-day South Asia trip in February, visiting Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan, respectively, in a bid to bolster ties across the Middle Belt, with a particular emphasis on defence cooperation. Pakistan and Turkiye are set to establish a joint factory for the production of KAAN stealth fighter jets. In June, Indonesia signed a 10-year deal with Turkiye to acquire 48 KAAN jets, at a price tag of $10 billion, representing both Türkiye’s first export commitment and Indonesia’s largest ever defence purchase. Some level of technology-sharing is expected in these deals and relationships as Erdogan hopes to build a league of aligned Muslim powers across the Middle Belt, with the primary incentive being joint-defence development projects. Türkiye also hopes that closer relationships with Malaysia and Indonesia, in particular, will deliver relationships with ASEAN at large and gain more access and influence within the Southeast Asian trading bloc.

There are limits to Türkiye’s influence and power projection. The Middle East is particularly tumultuous, with several peer competitors vying for their own spheres of dominance. The primary competition for political influence has come from the Gulf states, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who have vied with Ankara for political influence across the Arab world, most successfully in the counterrevolutions that took place in the Arab Spring.

The competition for military dominance has come from Iran and Israel. However, the ‘12-Day War’ in June has shown Israel’s decisive edge over Iran. Erdoğan’s statements against Israel over the Gaza genocide, and threats being made by Israeli analysts, pundits, and politicians about the need to “neuter” Türkiye next to secure Israel’s regional hegemony, suggest that Türkiye is going to face even more intense competition in the near future. Signs show that Ankara has acknowledged this reality and is now working on accelerating its timelines for ‘The Turkish Century’.

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Is There a Grand Strategy?

Türkiye under Erdoğan has crafted a strategy that defies easy categorisation, going beyond Neo-Ottoman imperialism or Kemalist isolationism. It is the pursuit of strategic autonomy through interdependence, a paradoxical endeavour that requires embedding Türkiye deeply within global and regional networks (economic, security, diplomatic) precisely to maximise its freedom of manoeuvre. This "third way" leverages geography to become an indispensable corridor, cultivates a league of aligned states to secure its periphery and extend influence, and builds a formidable indigenous defence industry to reduce dependence and to project power.

However, this strategy is fraught with significant internal contradictions: deepening economic interdependence (especially with the EU) while asserting political independence; seeking regional leadership amidst fiercely independent peer competitors; and centralising domestic power to enable decisive foreign policy while grappling with factionalism and unresolved succession. Most critically, the unsolved political economy, dominated by the cycles of inflation, external deficits, and reliance on volatile capital inflows, threatens to undermine the entire edifice.

Far from being a monolithic front, Türkiye’s political landscape is an ever-shifting battleground of competing and often violently confrontational factional agendas. Erdoğan’s chief political skill is his ability to play to any of these factions at a given time, in pursuit of vague ambitions for Turkish glory, power, and sovereignty. Yet questions of succession now loom with Erdoğan visibly frailer with every passing year, and election margins getting tighter. Whether Türkiye can maintain the vision of the Turkish Century through political succession and institutional resilience remains the defining question of its future.

In the end, the idea of a ‘grand strategy’ is a bit of a misnomer. The actual vision remains vague, but progress on the path to sovereignty will reveal new opportunities – and challenges – that will bring Türkiye’s destiny into relief. Perhaps the grand strategy may be the friends (and enemies) Türkiye makes along the way.

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The first Middle Eastern rail transport was initiated under the Ottoman Empire with landmark projects like the Yafa-Jerusalem line in 1892, followed by the Hejaz Railway and the Berlin-Baghdad line. At the heart of these imperial arteries was Syria. However, a century of political fragmentation following WWI, conflict, and neglect led to the near-total collapse of this network, severing vital links across the region.

While post-independence Syria made significant domestic expansions in rail capacity throughout the 20th century, the post-2011 Revolution and war devastated its infrastructure. Syria's liberation from the Assad regime in December 2024 and its collaboration with Türkiye to restore and upgrade its railways offer a transformative opportunity to establish a high-capacity ‘Middle East Railroad’ (MER) that connects the entire Sunni Corridor running through Türkiye, Syria, Jordan, and the GCC.

This rail bridge promises substantial economic revitalisation for Syria (especially Aleppo and eastern regions), geopolitical gains for Türkiye and GCC states, and enhanced regional integration, while threatening Suez Canal revenues for Egypt and challenging Israel's security strategy; however, its realisation hinges on overcoming significant financing, electricity, security, and coordination challenges.

The History of Levantine Rail

The opening of the Yafa to Jerusalem railway in 1892 marked the beginning of rail transport in the Levant, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Until 1892, the Ottomans had already laid over 2,900 km of track in Anatolia, and over 2000 km in their Balkan territories. Over the subsequent two decades, rail construction in the Levant boomed. In 1895, a French company completed work on a Beirut-Damascus-Daraa line, designed to export agricultural produce from the Hauran region to Europe. By 1902, the Beirut-Damascus line had been connected with a north-south line running from Hama, through Homs and Baalbek. In 1906, the Damascus-Hama line was extended to Aleppo, and in 1911, French engineers completed a line from Homs to Tripoli, connecting the agricultural regions of west-central Syria to the Mediterranean. Western Syria’s main urban centres were now connected by rail, and Damascus and Homs enjoyed direct rail access to their ‘natural’ ports, Beirut and Tripoli, respectively.

In March 1900, Sultan Abdulhamid II ordered the construction of the Hijaz Railway from Damascus to the holy cities of Mecca and Madina. This route was not only intended to reduce travel times for Muslim pilgrims but also to reinforce Ottoman control over the Arabian Peninsula. As the first railway project funded and managed principally by the Ottoman Empire, it also served as a showcase of Ottoman state capacity and as a potent symbol of the sultan-caliph’s religious legitimacy. By the time WWI brought a halt to construction, the tracks had reached Madina, and a branch to Palestine had been added, reducing what had once been a perilous 40-day journey from Damascus to Madina by camel to a five-day trip in the relative comfort and safety of a train carriage. Syria had become a crucial trans-regional transport hub in the empire.

If the Hejaz Railway displayed Syria’s centrality in North-South transport, the Berlin-Baghdad Railway brought out the centrality of Syria – particularly Aleppo, the preeminent commercial hub of the Levant, and the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) – in East-West connections. Despite its name, the Berlin-Baghdad railway was intended to connect Hamburg, on the Baltic Sea, with Basra via Istanbul, Aleppo, and Baghdad. The German Kaiser’s ambitious project aimed to facilitate his empire’s access to Iraq’s vast, untapped oil reserves and to create a route to the Indian Ocean that bypassed the British-controlled Suez Canal. While this ambition was never realised due to WWI, British colonial administrators in Iraq and, subsequently, an independent Iraqi state continued work on the line. In 1940, trains were running from Baghdad to Istanbul via Aleppo. Eventually, in 1968, the line was extended to Basra.

Nonetheless, after promising beginnings, the century since the end of WWI has been marked by the decline of international rail connectivity in the Middle East due to war, political fracturing, and negligence. During WWI, the southern portion of the Hejaz Railway was taken permanently out of operation due to extensive sabotage by the anti-Ottoman rebels of Sharif Hussein. The Saudi state that later emerged in the Arabian Peninsula did not restore the line as its oil-based economy had little use for trains. As a result, the Jordanian line south of Amman became redundant and slowly disappeared into the desert.

Subsequently, the creation of Israel in 1948 severed Egypt and Palestine from rail connections to the rest of the Arab world, while the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) brought an end to Syrian-Lebanese rail connections. In Syria and Iraq, the mutual hostility of Baathist rivals Hafez Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein brought an end to regular passenger rail between Iraq and Syria. Rail freight was later disrupted by the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the rise of ISIS. Cool relations between Jordan and Syria in the Hafez Al-Assad era, combined with a lack of economic incentives, resulted in the decline of the Damascus-Amman portion of the Hejaz Railway. The only interstate rail connection that persisted after WWI was that between Syria and Türkiye, principally for freight transport. However, services have been suspended since 2011 with the start of the Syrian Revolution.

Before then, Syria made substantial progress in domestic rail following independence from France in 1946. In 1968, a railway line was opened between Tartus and the Lebanese border to facilitate trade with Tripoli and Beirut. In 1973, work was completed on the railway connecting Aleppo to Deir Al-Zour via Tabqa and Raqqa. Three years later, Deir Al-Zour was connected by rail to Qamishli, which sat on the old Berlin-Baghdad route. 1975 heralded arguably the most significant development in Syrian rail, when the Aleppo-Latakia line was completed, re-establishing the old commercial hub’s direct link to the Mediterranean. In 1980, a freight railway was built between Palmyra and Homs to facilitate the shipment of phosphates to Tartus. Finally, in 1992, a coastal railway linking Tartus and Latakia was opened. By 2011, Syria’s total rail network length stood at 2,552 km, roughly 200 km longer than that of its larger neighbour, Iraq. After the fall of the Assad regime, over 80% of Syria’s rail network is currently out of service, having been heavily degraded by acts of sabotage and theft since 2011.

Reviving Regional Rail Interconnectivity

The ESCWA Plan

At the dawn of the 21st century, there had been renewed interest in improving domestic and interstate rail infrastructure. In April 2003, within the framework of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), the Middle Eastern Arab states drafted an ambitious plan to massively expand inter-state freight railway networks along 16 lines spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and the GCC states. The plan aimed to boost economic growth by transforming these states into a new overland route for trade between Europe and East Asia. Sea trade would disembark in Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and be ferried by rail to Syria’s Mediterranean ports of Latakia and Tartus, to embark on its final destination to Europe, and vice versa. This would be considerably faster than traversing the Suez Canal, through which a standard cargo container takes between 28 days (COSCO) and 35 days (Maersk) to get from Shanghai to the Greek port of Piraeus. Through the ESCWA plan, the same container would arrive in Latakia in under 20 days: 17 days by ship to Dubai, then two to three days by rail to Latakia. War and political instability in the Middle East brought an end to the ESCWA plan’s vision: the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Syrian Revolution in 2011, Yemen’s civil war after 2014, and the anti-Qatar blockade between 2017 and 2021 by the UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, all hindering regional interconnectivity.

Domestic Rail Infrastructure Development

While the full vision of ESCWA has not materialised, since the early 2010s, some of the signatory nations have been pursuing substantial development of their domestic rail infrastructure.

Türkiye was a first mover in the region, with the Republic continuing the work of the Ottoman state and extending the country’s rail network to over 7,600 km, with lines reaching as far as Kars in the Caucasus. This was followed by a decline in rail development for most of the second half of the 20^th century, with governments favouring highway expansion. Since the early 2000s, successive AKP governments have refocused on rail, extending the network by 4,000 km, of which 1,200 km delivers High-Speed Rail (HSR) services.

In 2011, the Saudi state-owned Saudi Arabia Railway Company (SAR) began operating the first section of the North-South Railway, built to transport phosphates from mines in the Kingdom’s north to the east coast. The line has since been expanded and currently measures 2,750 km. In 2017, SAR opened a 1250 km passenger railway line from Riyadh to Qurayyat, near the Haditha border crossing with Jordan. In 2018, the Haramain High Speed Rail service was opened, connecting Jeddah, Madina, and Mecca with trains running at speeds up to 300 km/h. This year, construction is set to start on a 1,500 km east-west railway, connecting Jeddah to Dammam and Jubail via Riyadh. Named the Saudi Landbridge, the railway is a joint venture between SAR and a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation.

In 2009, the UAE government established Etihad Rail to build the country’s first railway network. The first stage was completed in 2023, connecting Ghweifat on the Saudi border to Fujairah on the eastern coast near Oman, with a branch to Abu Dhabi’s southern gas fields. This line is currently operational only for freight, although a test journey for the high-speed passenger service was conducted in 2024. Etihad Rail plans to expand the network soon to the currently unconnected northern emirates of Al-Ain, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain and Ras Al-Khaimah. Etihad Rail is also in the process of connecting its rail network to neighbouring Oman. Once complete, the ‘Hafeet Rail’ network will link the Omani port city of Sohar and the capital, Muscat, with freight and high-speed passenger rail services to and from Abu Dhabi via Al-Ain.

Hafeet Rail would be the first concrete realisation of a long-discussed GCC plan for a pan-GCC railway network running the length of the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. First mooted in 2009, progress on the Gulf Railway project has been slow, partly due to the deterioration of relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the UAE. However, the recent warming of intra-GCC ties shows movement toward realising the Gulf Railway plan. Notably, in January 2025, Kuwait awarded a contract for the study and detailed design for the first phase of the 111-km Kuwait-Saudi railway to Turkish engineering company Proyapi.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative

There has also been interest in Middle Eastern interconnectivity from the outside. In 2013, the Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, launched China’s plan to transform Eurasian transport, energy and digital logistics: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China aims to further their strategic autonomy by reducing dependence on the South China Sea-Indian Ocean-Red Sea trade route, expanding Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean, and countering the US naval presence in all these seas. The overland ‘Belt’ portion of the BRI – comprising the Southern Corridor, connecting China to Europe by rail via Central Asia, Iran, and Türkiye, and the Northern Corridor, connecting China to Europe by rail via Kazakhstan and Russia – seeks to reduce dependence on the Red Sea. Due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Northern Corridor currently terminates in Russia. The Southern Corridor does not appear to have progressed past Iran.

India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)

To counter Chinese ambitions, the US began promoting the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). The IMEC aimed to compete with the BRI by opening up a sea and overland corridor through India, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Cyprus to reach European ports in Greece and Italy. Since the signing of a multilateral MoU in September 2023, progress on the IMEC has stalled owing to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has indefinitely suspended its efforts at regional normalisation, primarily with Saudi Arabia, a pivotal state in the IMEC corridor.

The Iraq Development Road (IDR)

In May 2023, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced an alternative to the IMEC: the Iraq Development Road (IDR), which aimed to connect Türkiye to Basra, on the Persian Gulf, via a redeveloped Iraqi road and rail network. Erdogan’s proposal aimed to counter IMEC’s exclusion of Türkiye, which undermines the country’s long-term strategic objective of being a peerless hub for trans-Eurasian transport and energy links, and did so to the benefit of its main rivals in the East Mediterranean, Greece and Israel.

Syria Changes the Equation

The liberation of Syria from the Assad regime in December 2024, and the swift political progress the new government has made since, could revolutionise Middle Eastern transport logistics and provide a more elegant solution to Indian Ocean-Mediterranean connectivity than either IMEC or IDR. Previously published on Vizier, the emergence of a Sunni Corridor through Türkiye, Syria, Jordan, and the GCC is reshaping the regional balance of power, as well as supply chains. Rail interconnectivity forms a crucial part of this emerging order.

Over the last six months, the Syrian and Turkish ministers of transport have made several detailed public statements outlining plans to restore and upgrade Syria’s domestic rail network, reconnect the Syrian rail network to those of Türkiye and Jordan, and extend this network to the shores the Persian Gulf by way of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. By extension, this would result in linking Istanbul to the Persian Gulf by rail, fulfilling what the Syrian Transport Minister, Yarub Badr, has described as his country’s ambition to become a “regional transportation bridge”. Badr has expressed his cautious ambition that the Middle East Railroad (MER) would not simply comprise freight lines, but would include high-speed passenger services. Speaking to an interviewer from Al-Ikhbariya, Badr said, “We are talking about 250 km/h between Damascus and the Jordanian border.”

The MER would substantially reshape the flow of goods between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the only ways to move goods in significant volumes between Europe (and North Africa) and Asia are either via the Suez Canal or the longer sea route around the Cape of Good Hope. A fully integrated, technologically upgraded railway from Türkiye via Syria to the Jebel Ali Port in Dubai would allow goods traversing the Red Sea to arrive on the shores of the Mediterranean, and vice versa, substantially faster than via the Red Sea – a route that has become increasingly costly and dangerous to traverse in recent years due to the reach of Houthi drones and missiles.

The efficiency advantages of this rail corridor over the Red Sea maritime route would result in a considerable volume of goods traffic being diverted away from the Suez Canal toward the Arabian Peninsula. As the BRI progresses, a purely overland route for East-West freight will likely be opened up via Iran and Türkiye, and Türkiye itself may add a second route – the “Middle Corridor” across the Caucasus and Caspian. Nevertheless, no one East-West corridor will ever be sufficient on its own; the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea will always be indispensable global maritime freight highways. If completed, the MER would become the most sought-after means to move that freight from one sea to another.

Beyond the economic benefits that would inevitably accrue to their respective rail logistics sectors from handling this increased flow of international freight, there are a wide variety of more specific economic, geopolitical, and social benefits that could accrue to Türkiye, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Syria

Syria would experience a massive expansion of its domestic industry. Freight rail is substantially cheaper than road freight. The tonne per mile cost on U.S. Class I Railroads (which are slower than European or Chinese counterparts) is 4 cents/tonne-mile compared to lorries at 18 cents, meaning rail substantially reduces input costs for businesses and the costs of getting goods to market, thereby boosting profitability. Being connected to an international, integrated freight rail network will be a boon for Syrian industries, which already enjoy a ready pool of cheap domestic labour and look set to attract an influx of investment. The sheer volume of goods that could be transported along the MER would also facilitate economies of scale and allow for significant scaling-up in Syrian industries. This not only benefits existing businesses but also incentivises the growth of new businesses and industries attracted by the prospect of tapping into all the advantages of locating along a key international trade artery. This would result in the development of economies of agglomeration, the cost reductions and productivity gains that firms and workers experience from locating near each other, leading to a concentration of economic activity in specific areas.

High-speed passenger rail could play a significant role in boosting Syria’s industry. As recent research has shown, better domestic HSR connectivity results in substantial productivity gains, as reduced travel time leads to increased internal labour mobility, which leads to firm clustering and increased knowledge sharing around HSR hubs, resulting in agglomeration economies. While the benefits to the domestic economy of knowledge sharing are well-known, one recent research paper has found that the benefits of geographic integration and knowledge spillovers accrue primarily to exporters.

A strategically located city such as Aleppo could easily reap the benefits of the new rail corridor. With its manufacturing heritage, large merchant community, and rail connections north to Türkiye, west to Latakia, east to Syria’s agricultural heartland, and south to the ports of the UAE, Aleppo would regain its historic place as an axial commercial city in the region. Notably, the revival of seamless high-volume trade between Aleppo and south-eastern Türkiye, especially Gaziantep, would go a long way to reconnecting Aleppo to its traditional hinterland, from which it was severed with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Further east, the historically neglected provinces of Raqqa, Deir Al-Zour, and Hasakah would also benefit. In these mostly agricultural regions, instead of sending agricultural products in raw form to the country’s big cities to be processed there, entrepreneurs may be tempted to establish food processing plants on site, near the farms. Of course, the development of industry in Syria’s eastern regions depends on the national rail plan investing substantially in those regions and expanding its rail connections, and not falling into old habits of neglecting the east.

Syria’s two main ports, Tartus and Latakia, stand to benefit enormously from increased trade volume along the MER. Having recently received substantial investment from CMA-CGM and DP World, respectively, these two historically minor East Mediterranean ports could witness substantial growth in the coming years, potentially overshadowing the port of Haifa, or even rivalling Mersin in Türkiye.

Alongside the economic and geopolitical advantages of restoring rail in Syria, the social benefits must also be highlighted. The past 15 years of destructive violence have badly damaged the social fabric of Syria and exacerbated long-standing social tensions and divides, such as urban-rural, big city-small town, and east-west. Reconnecting and expanding Syria’s passenger rail network could play an important role in reuniting the nation.

Crucially, the rail corridor would cement Syria’s place as an indispensable member of the emerging Sunni Corridor, earning the country more influence at the regional level. Moreover, as a key link in a crucial global trade artery, Syria’s importance and influence on the world stage would increase.

Several challenges face Syria’s aspiration to become a regional hub for rail interconnectivity. Firstly, the Syrian government lacks the substantial cash needed to resuscitate Syria’s badly damaged rail network. While Transport Minister Badr cites investor interest (mentioning the Emirati logistics and shipping giant DP World’s explicit interest), securing commitments will be crucial. Secondly, modern freight and passenger railways require a consistent supply of electricity, something Syria currently lacks. While a recent $7 billion Qatari investment in Syria’s power grid is an excellent start, it may be several years before Syria achieves a reliable 24-hour electricity supply. Thirdly, while the security situation in Syria is improving, there is still the ever-present threat of sabotage attacks from Assadist remnants, pro-Iran elements, and small ISIS cells. Criminal gangs stealing rail track, copper wire, and electrical cables are also a problem.

Türkiye

Türkiye is, after Syria, the biggest winner from increased regional rail interconnectivity. The realisation of a railway network from Türkiye to the Persian Gulf via Syria would definitively bury the IMEC project, delivering Erdogan a geopolitical victory over his East Mediterranean rivals, Greece, and Israel. This would also cement Türkiye’s long-term strategic objective to establish Türkiye as the indispensable state in East-West logistics, whether that be for the movement of manufactured goods, commodities and natural resources, energy, or even people (as evidenced by Istanbul International Airport and Turkish Airways).

Türkiye would also be able to deepen its influence in Syria, driven by the simple fact that the country with which Türkiye shares a vast border is hugely important for Türkiye’s economic, political, and security interests. At the same time, this would reduce Türkiye’s reliance on Iran (especially for access to East Asian markets), which, while having stable relations with each other, remain regional rivals. For this reason, Türkiye is pursuing the Middle Corridor, which bypasses Iran via the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. The MER would act as a complement, opening up new options for Türkiye to access East Asia.

Jordan

Jordan benefits in three ways from the MER. Firstly, it provides direct port access to the Mediterranean. Jordan is currently looking to grow its economy by investing heavily in its phosphate industry. While Jordan can export phosphates via the port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, the ability to access the Syrian Mediterranean coast and the Persian Gulf by rail could supercharge the Jordanian phosphate industry.

Secondly, tourism is a key sector for the Jordanian economy, providing the country with $10.2 billion in foreign exchange last year. A HSR service connecting Jordan to Syria to the north and the wealthy GCC states to the south could provide an important boost to the tourism sector if international HSR services can be provided at a lower cost than plane tickets.

Thirdly, the US, EU, UK and the GCC have propped up the Jordanian economy and maintained the political status quo in the country in the name of regional stability. If Jordan can develop into an important node on the Mediterranean-Indian Ocean rail corridor, it might be able to diversify the sources of its geopolitical importance beyond mere regional stability.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE

For Saudi Arabia, the benefits of the MER are less pronounced than for its northern neighbour, but significant. The principal economic benefits would be an expansion of Saudi mining exports north toward the Mediterranean, as well as a general growth in the country’s transport logistics industry, furthering the Vision 2030 goal of establishing Saudi Arabia as a key global logistics hub. Politically, the main benefit to Saudi Arabia would be its ability to leverage its control over the southern portion of the railway corridor to expand its influence over Syria.

As it is already an international logistics behemoth, the economic benefits to the UAE would be fairly marginal. Nevertheless, an increase in traffic to the UAE’s ports would invariably strengthen the nation’s influence in the Indian Ocean, cementing the UAE as the premier Indian Ocean transhipment hub. In a similar way to Saudi Arabia, the UAE could also leverage its control of the terminus of the MER to cultivate greater influence over Damascus.

Regional integration

While competition for influence over Damascus may flare up, the MER would likely ultimately strengthen interstate relationships. This would not be due to the new economic ties (even hostile states can put aside their differences when it comes to trade), but due to the process of building the rail corridor. The corridor, if it is to be built and run successfully, would require the involved states to work together closely and build joint institutions and shared legal and regulatory frameworks to facilitate the efficient construction and operation of the railway. That process of sustained cooperation and the institutions that would be generated from that process could play an important role in reducing the historic tendency among Arab states to mutual antagonism and political fracturing and, instead, further the cause of regional integration. This will be a significant challenge demanding unprecedented cooperation and robust joint institutions among states with a limited history of large-scale, shared infrastructure projects.

While there would be many gains to be had for the states involved in the MER, at least two states stand to lose out: Egypt and Israel.

Egypt

The Suez Canal has long been an important source of foreign exchange rents for the Egyptian state, generating 15% of the country’s foreign exchange income in 2022/23. The emergence of new, more efficient overland routes for transporting goods between the Mediterranean and East Asia would invariably hurt the Egyptian national coffers. The emergence of this new order in the Middle East also further isolates Egypt. As the most populous Arab state, with a huge military and a long border with Israel, Egypt can never be a marginal player in Middle Eastern politics. Nevertheless, the MER and its potential role in boosting the regional influence of Türkiye and Saudi Arabia and forging closer ties among the Sunni Corridor nations threaten to isolate Egypt on the regional political plane. This process is already underway, as evidenced by Sisi’s recent overtures to Iran, which in October 2024, resulted in the first visit by an Iranian foreign minister to Egyptian soil in 11 years.

Israel

With the MER, IMEC is permanently removed from play. This not only denies the Israeli port of Haifa new traffic from the Gulf, but with a large volume of East-West trade diverted via Syria away from the Suez Canal, the port of Haifa could quickly lose substantial business to Latakia and/or Tartus, either of which could eventually overtake Haifa’s role in transhipment in the East Mediterranean. It also undermines Israel’s attempts to integrate more deeply in the region by strengthening economic ties with the Gulf states. Trade with the UAE is active and flourishing, principally in the realm of software and security and defence technology, but the death of the IMEC would foreclose on the possibility of a booming trade in goods between Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. The MER could also foster greater economic prosperity, political cooperation, and geopolitical integration among the Sunni Arab states and Türkiye. Weakening its regional neighbours economically and politically has been a cornerstone of Israeli national security policy, and any strengthening of the Sunni Corridor is regarded as a security threat by the Israeli state. The proximity of a Damascus-Daraa railway to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights makes it especially vulnerable to sabotage via proxies (e.g. Suweyda-based Druze militias) or a direct attack.

No Pie in the Sky

Even with substantial challenges, a vision for Middle Eastern Rail is not a pipe dream. First, much of the infrastructure is already there. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have extensive rail networks that are set to grow. Only a relatively short stretch of track is required to connect the Emirati network to the Saudi network. Türkiye possesses an advanced rail network, which is connected to Syria’s, though the Syrian network needs extensive repairs. The main track construction work required is between Damascus and the Saudi-Jordanian border. As of yet, there exists no rail link from Amman or Zarqa to the terminus of Saudi Arabia’s northern railway line, and the Damascus-Amman line is not only damaged but also severely outdated, using Ottoman-era narrow-gauge tracks. Nevertheless, most of the skeleton of the Türkiye to Gulf railway network is in place.

In an interview with Türkiye’s Daily Sabah, Yarub Badr noted that Syria has not withdrawn from regional frameworks and mechanisms that facilitate freight transport and that his ministry is working to reactivate them. Speaking to Al-Ikhbariyya in May, Badr highlighted some of the other practical steps that he and his team are taking to advance Syria’s rail ambitions. The Syrian MoT has recently met with business delegations from Jordan in order to discuss the reopening of the old Hejaz Railway line from Damascus to Amman. Despite its ancient narrow gauge, it is still suitable for transporting freight at moderate speeds and could be repaired very quickly at a cost of only $4 million. Within the MoT, training is high up the agenda. Badr mentioned that MoT staff are currently undertaking a training programme to learn international best practices and develop key software skills to facilitate the ministry’s digitalisation drive.

Alongside improving the MoT’s internal capacities, Badr’s priority at the moment appears to be legal and regulatory reform of the rail sector to create a regulatory framework that is both manageable for the MoT and attractive for investors. To this end, the ministry has enlisted help from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation who, in Badr’s words, “can offer technical support, support in planning and preparation that can bolster the [state’s] capacity to launch big investment projects in Syria within a competitive, transparent and just environment.”

Yarub Badr’s Turkish counterpart, Abdulkadır Uraloğlu, has also been busily pushing forward with resuscitating Syria’s railway network and its connections to Türkiye. On March 22^nd of this year, Uraloğlu announced that Türkiye was preparing an on-site training programme relating to rail (and road) for the Syrian MoT, and that he had assigned Turkish consultants and technical support staff to the Syrian MoT to assist with the preparation of a Transport Master Plan, as well as transport strategy and project planning. Uraloğlu has also sent a team of engineers to assist with repairing and restoring the western portions of Syria’s rail network, which connect to the Turkish rail network via the Al-Rai/Çobanbey and Maydan Akbis/Meydan-ı Ekbez border crossings. The former connects Gaziantep to Damascus via Aleppo, while the latter connects Damascus to Adana via Aleppo.

In Uraloğlu’s words, “At the moment, it is essential to reach Damascus."

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The New (and Old) Indian Ocean Economy

On 31st October 2023, the Houthis, an Iranian-backed militia controlling most of north and west Yemen, including the coastline, launched a ballistic missile toward Israel in response to the commencement of its military operations in Gaza. This attack made history as the first “space conflict”: the missile was intercepted above the Kármán line—the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

On the ground, the Houthis further imposed a naval blockade on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that guards the Red Sea, one of the world’s critical shipping chokepoints. The Strait handles 12% of world trade, 30% of containerised goods, and 8.6 million barrels of oil on a daily basis. The Houthi blockade has specifically targeted Western and Israeli vessels, resulting in increased associated insurance costs twentyfold. Major shipping firms, such as Maersk and MSC, have rerouted their routes via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding up to 10–14 days to transit times and increasing costs by 40%. The disruption exacerbated inflation for Western consumers by severely impacting trade between East Asia and the West.

The Houthi blockade has exposed the fragility of shipping routes that the global economy relies on. The US, despite claiming the role of global maritime policeman and possessing naval supremacy (for now), has failed to neutralise the Houthi threat or secure the route, with Operation Prosperity Guardian, a US-led coalition to ensure Red Sea trade freedom, expending vast quantities of missiles, drones, and equipment that the US cannot easily replenish owing to its depleted industrial base. Concerns are now mounting within the US Navy regarding insufficient missile production capacity, highlighting a growing vulnerability for modern naval powers: even advanced fleets struggle against asymmetric land-based threats.

Events in the Red Sea have highlighted the increasingly consequential role that the Indian Ocean (of which the Red Sea functions almost like a tributary) plays in the global economy, and how threats to its trade routes reverberate around the world. Even before the Houthis seized power in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, launched ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, or established a blockade on the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, numerous countries have quietly been ramping up their footprint in the Indian Ocean.

The Indian Ocean is a millennia-old interface between diverse groups and cultures, and a pivotal trade nexus that predates European colonialism. Through Egypt and the Red Sea, Roman merchants traded with India and the Far East. In later centuries, Muslim traders would traverse the “spice routes” on a greater scale. From the 1st century CE, goods such as pepper and cinnamon began to be traded from Asia to Mediterranean markets. The Swahili Coast (Kilwa, Mombasa, and Zanzibar) thrived as a hub for inter-African, Arab, and Indian exchange, facilitating commerce and cultural diffusion. The Omani Empire dominated 18th-century trade, controlling Zanzibar and Gwadar until Britain suppressed the slave trade and annexed key ports. European powers captured trading routes across the Indian Ocean in the Age of Discovery, with Portuguese, Dutch, and English companies and naval powers successively creating zones of influence and integrating the Indian Ocean into a new global economy.

Today, the Indian Ocean is home to more than 2 billion people in the states bordering the ocean, and represents 20% of the world’s water surface. It is fast becoming the centre of the global economy as the bulk of trade volume migrates eastward from the Atlantic, and its fragility is being exploited by various actors, including the US, China, and France, as well as smaller nations such as the UAE and Iran. Small regional states like Djibouti and Somalia are capitalising on their geostrategic position at the mouth of the Red Sea and the eastern gateway to the Indian Ocean on the African continent.

As regional instability mounts (with the Houthi blockade being one of many security issues that the region faces, such as Somali piracy), global and regional powers are competing to carve out zones of interest and develop alternative trade routes around the Red Sea, such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), thereby redrawing the power landscape in the Indian Ocean.

Understanding the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean is crucial to understanding how the next battleground for global influence, trade, and power competition will affect the region itself and the world at large.

This article serves as a basic guide to the present powers, projects, and security challenges in the Indian Ocean, each of which Vizier will explore in detail through future case studies.

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The Major Players and Their Interests in the Indian Ocean

The United Arab Emirates

Foremost among these actors is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has steadily expanded its influence through an assertive maritime strategy that blends economic expansion with military presence. By developing an extensive port network through companies like DP World (a titan in maritime logistics that Vizier will explore in depth in a later report) and maintaining military bases across the region, the UAE exercises strategic control over critical nodes. These include Berbera Port in Somaliland, de facto authority over Socotra Island since 2014, and military installations in the Maldives and Seychelles.

Having participated actively in the Yemen coalition, the UAE continues to bolster proxies such as Hemedti's Rapid Support Forces (“RSF”) in Sudan and Khalifa Haftar in Libya. Through its partnership with India, the UAE cements its dominance across the western Indian Ocean. In 2022, both countries signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, aiming to increase bilateral trade to $100 billion annually by 2027. Both countries also enjoy close military and intelligence ties.

Iran

Iran plays a pivotal role in the energy geopolitics of the Indian Ocean. The long-delayed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline remains stalled due to US sanctions, forcing Pakistan to rely on costlier Qatari LNG, which exacerbates the country's already existing energy crisis. Iran supplies 40% of Iraq’s gas and electricity while selling oil to China at steep discounts. The country hosts Chabahar Port, co-financed by India, which serves as a hub connecting the Indian Ocean to Central Asia and the Middle East.

Nevertheless, US sanctions have severely constrained its economic development. To counterbalance this, Iran has emphasised military power projection as a shield, cultivating influence across the Middle East through proxies and sub-state actors. Iran also possesses significant asymmetrical naval capabilities, augmented by assets such as the repurposed oil tanker Makran, which has been converted into a drone and helicopter carrier, complemented by a formidable ballistic missile arsenal. Iran has been supplying anti-ship ballistic missiles and underwater drones, such as the Ghadir missile class and the Al-Qariaa family of drones, to the Houthis, who became the first group to use these weapons on a battlefield effectively.

Economically, Iran retains significant latent potential, as evidenced during the brief thaw under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), when French firms such as Renault and Total pursued opportunities to expand into the Iranian market. Following the US withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, however, European investments evaporated, allowing China to secure a deal with Iran, known as the Iran–China 25-year Cooperation Program, signed in 2022. This deal permits China to invest up to $400 billion in Iran for preferential access and a quasi-monopoly in specific sectors in Iran’s domestic market (notably, in telecommunications and railways), and to receive a discount on oil purchases.

Pakistan

Neighbouring Pakistan has failed to realise its latent potential when it comes to exploiting geopolitical possibilities in the Indian Ocean. The China-backed Gwadar Port, developed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), was conceived to rival Iran’s Chabahar while serving as the maritime terminus for routes linking western China to the Indian Ocean. A Chronic insurgency in Balochistan and general economic mismanagement have hampered this vision. Though positioned as an equal partnership, Pakistan functions in reality as China’s junior partner due to persistent internal instability. The recent Pakistan-India shooting war saw Pakistani pilots flying Chinese JF-17’s outperform their Indian rivals, bringing down at least two Indian jets, with more unconfirmed. As Pakistan pivots closer to China, Pakistan risks further subordination to Chinese strategic interests, even if it gains security guarantees against India.

China

China itself deploys a multifaceted strategy, recognising the ocean’s critical importance to global trade. Its "String of Pearls" initiative has sought to systematically develop a network of strategic ports stretching from the South China Sea to Africa, with facilities in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota and Djibouti providing logistical and military support for vital sea lanes. China merges military presence with substantial economic investments, particularly in East Africa, where partnerships with Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Mozambique focus on energy infrastructure and logistical hubs. Diverging from traditional powers, China secures influence through targeted capital investment rather than overt military occupation. However, with regional instability and growing economic interests, China’s military projection may be compelled to follow suit. China’s PLA Navy is the second-largest in the world, and is significantly larger than its Indian rival. India is therefore careful not to provoke a potential naval race with China.

India

India, as China’s primary regional rival, employs a more nuanced approach. It seeks to counterbalance Chinese expansion through diplomatic engagement and multilateral frameworks, such as the Quad alliance among the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. Despite these ambitions, India’s naval capabilities remain constrained, operating only one aircraft carrier with limited power projection beyond its Exclusive Economic Zone. It compensates through strategic partnerships, such as its relations with the UAE through the I2U2 Initiative (which also includes Israel and the US), and leverages the sheer size of the Indian landmass and its central position in the Indian Ocean, connecting all major trade routes.

The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom’s presence now operates mainly in the symbolic shadow of its imperial past. Post-Brexit, Britain lacks the economic heft to counter China’s expanding footprint. Still, it sustains its relevance through intelligence networks, such as the Five Eyes alliance, particularly by leveraging partnerships with Australia and the United States for maritime domain awareness. However, the puzzling transfer of the Chagos Islands, the kingdom’s main base in the region, to Mauritius has further degraded its power projection.

France

France aspires to lead a collective "maritime NATO," utilising bases in the French island territories of Réunion and Mayotte, as well as a partnership with Djibouti to patrol vast exclusive economic zones and conduct anti-piracy operations. France is doubling down on this strategy through defence pacts with India and the UAE, including joint exercises that solidify what has become one of the region’s most consequential security partnerships.

The United States

The US maintains military primacy via strategic hubs in Diego Garcia, Bahrain, and Guam, securing vital chokepoints. Economically, however, it trails China’s Belt and Road Initiative across Africa and South Asia. The Quad alliance—uniting the US, India, Japan, and Australia—boasts naval coordination but lacks cohesive economic countermeasures to Beijing’s influence, a vulnerability underscored by Australia’s continued dependence on Chinese energy imports.

African States

In the western Indian Ocean, East Africa has emerged as a strategic battleground, with its resource wealth attracting foreign powers that have long been deterred by instability. Somalia’s fragmentation has enabled external actors to back rival factions: Turkiye has become a crucial partner to Mogadishu, the seat of the Somali federal government, training government forces, gaining access to exclusive offshore energy exploration rights, and now intends to build a ‘space port’. Conversely, the UAE champions the increasingly autonomous state of Somaliland that seeks distance from Mogadishu. Sudan, meanwhile, has entertained Russian naval ambitions, though plans for a Red Sea base remain stalled.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation and landlocked since 1998, has secured port access deals with Somaliland and Djibouti. However, these come with geopolitical compromises: Berbera Port is backed by the UAE, while Djibouti leans heavily on Chinese influence.

Small states like Djibouti have become critical linchpins for the regional security strategies of several major military powers, hosting no less than seven foreign bases—including those of the US, China, France, and Japan—to essentially extract rents from their position at the entrance to the Red Sea. Somaliland appears to emulate this model, trading political concessions to the UAE for international recognition. Recent rumours regarding the potential displacement of Gaza’s population to Somaliland, despite US and Israeli objections to these claims, show the relationships bartering influence for power.

South Africa, once a regional leader, has diminished into geopolitical obscurity. However, its position at the Cape of Good Hope enables it to benefit from instability in the Red Sea, as shipping redirects south around the African continent instead.

Oceania

Further east, the Strait of Malacca retains its status as the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint, surpassing even that of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which handles nearly 30% of global trade. Singapore dominates this artery as both a logistics hub and host of a US naval base. Through special economic zones in Johor, Malaysia seeks to capitalise on Singapore’s efficiency constraints via collaborative industrial projects. Its northern neighbour, Thailand, is undertaking a proposed Kra Canal project that offers a potential alternative route.

Australia, frequently overlooked, functions as a latent force in the region. Despite its vast maritime territory, significant power projection capabilities remain underdeveloped. However, the AUKUS agreement, which will furnish nuclear-powered submarines, albeit at considerable cost, coupled with its role in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, suggests potential as a southern anchor for US-led containment strategies in the Indo-Pacific.

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Strategic Projects in the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean, to date, lacks a truly integrated economic architecture that could transform the region and its nations into the new global centre of the world economy. Competition has primarily been restricted to cultivating political influence or military projection, rather than economic integration. That is beginning to change as a raft of strategic projects is being put into motion to capitalise on the Indian Ocean’s growing position as a key driver of the global economy.

At the Bab al-Mandeb Strait—the Red Sea’s narrow southern gateway—Houthi militant attacks have severely disrupted maritime activity. In response, regional powers are advancing land-based alternatives, such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), designed to connect Haifa Port in Israel with India via Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This corridor serves as a contingency against maritime disruption and aligns with Saudi Vision 2030 and India’s resilient trade objectives. Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM project further adds impetus for the IMEC project.

Deep-sea mining looms as a critical frontier. The Indian Ocean seabed holds polymetallic nodules rich in cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements—vital for green energy transitions. China leads exploration in international waters with robots capable of mining at depths of 4,000 metres, while India and France focus on securing resources within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).

Digitally, the Indian Ocean has become an invisible battleground. With 95% of global data traffic traversing undersea cables, digital connectivity holds strategic paramountcy. China’s "Digital Silk Road" is expanding its cable networks to Pakistan, Kenya, and France, while the US, India, and Japan are collaborating on secure cable projects to counter Chinese surveillance risks, primarily to safeguard their interests.

The Indian Ocean also lies at the epicentre of an intensifying scramble for natural resources. Mozambique has attracted over $60 billion in LNG investments from firms like TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, yet jihadist insurgencies jeopardise these operations. Somalia sits atop estimated oil reserves of 30 billion barrels but remains paralysed by political chaos, deterring foreign investment. South Sudan, meanwhile, is progressing with a Chinese-backed pipeline to Kenya’s Lamu Port, bypassing instability in Sudan.

Despite controlling the Suez Canal, Egypt lacks a major Red Sea port or special economic zone comparable to Tanger Med on the Mediterranean. This gap has spurred the urgent development of Ain Sokhna Port. However, Egypt remains vulnerable to security issues, such as the Houthi blockade, which prevents it from having direct access to the Indian Ocean.

For landlocked Central Asian states, access to the Indian Ocean remains imperative. China’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor aims to connect its western provinces to Gwadar Port, yet Baloch insurgencies and political volatility in Pakistan hinder progress. Meanwhile, Iran’s Chabahar Port—backed by India and Russia—offers an alternative route, though US sanctions persistently delay its development. Russia concurrently recalibrates its southern strategy, eyeing Afghanistan’s $1–3 trillion mineral wealth as feedstock for Chinese industry and exploring naval facilities in Sudan and Mozambique, despite uncertain prospects.

Mediterranean developments increasingly shape the Indian Ocean’s geostrategic calculus. Turkiye’s "Blue Homeland" doctrine drives naval expansion into Libya and Somalia, countering Egyptian and Greek interests, while its 2024 pursuit of rocket-testing facilities signals ambitions in aerospace dominance. Synergies between Mediterranean and Indian Ocean ports also emerge: Morocco’s Tangier Med—already linked to East Asia—plans new routes to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Australia, potentially rerouting 15% of Suez-bound traffic through collaborative ventures, such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

Africa plays a critical role in this contest. China’s quiet economic conquest continues in mineral-rich Central Africa, where it dominates cobalt extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo and finances trans-African railways to bypass US-aligned South Africa. These railways aim to unlock Congolese resources and create supply chains that are sanctioned-proof, illustrating how infrastructure becomes the backbone of twenty-first-century influence. As these vectors converge, the Indian Ocean’s status as a contested nexus of power, where naval might, resource control, and digital frontiers collide, only intensifies.

These projects, rivalries, and security challenges demonstrate the Indian Ocean’s increasing centrality to global trade, security, and technological infrastructure as state and non-state actors vie for dominance.

A Great Game

A new "Great Game" is indeed underway, marked by China’s deliberate, quiet expansion via its String of Pearls strategy. This approach sidesteps traditional conquest, leveraging ports, pipelines, and debt to entrench influence. In response, the United States and India have formed counter-alliances, such as the Quad and AUKUS, aimed at containing Beijing’s ambitions. Yet this rivalry risks fragmenting trade routes along political lines, imperilling the global economy.

Simultaneously, assertive middle powers intensify the contest: the UAE establishes a commercial port empire, Turkiye expands its influence across the Horn of Africa, and Iran employs asymmetric tactics to maintain regional relevance. These actors show that power is no longer monopolised by superpowers alone. Even small states in East Africa, such as Djibouti, leverage their geography to extract concessions from rival powers, including the US, China, and the UAE. Non-state actors further exploit vacuums; the Houthis’ disruption of Bab al-Mandeb exemplifies how land-based militancy can militarise once-secure sea lanes, exposing the limits of naval supremacy.

The scramble for resources is intensifying: African LNG reserves and deep-sea mining for critical minerals are becoming flashpoints in the race for energy security and dominance in green technology. Digital infrastructure is forming another frontier in this contest. Subsea cables—carrying 95% of global data—and rival satellite systems (India’s NAVIC, China’s BeiDou) enable both connectivity and surveillance, transforming the ocean floor into an invisible arena of influence.

While trade networks promise prosperity, they remain threatened by strategic rivalries. The US commands the waves militarily, yet China’s infrastructural foothold may yield more enduring leverage. Ports like Berbera or Gwadar symbolise globalisation’s paradox: hubs of commerce encircled by piracy, insurgency, or extremism.

Whoever masters these contradictions will not only dominate the Indian Ocean but may well shape the future of the global economy.

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Humble Origins

Qatar, a nation of just 2.8 million inhabitants, of which 350,000 are citizens, has leveraged its vast natural gas reserves to ascend from regional obscurity to global relevance. With one of the world’s highest GDPs per capita exceeding $80,000 in 2024, its trajectory has been defined by strategic resource exploitation, audacious diplomacy, and soft power investments. Qatar has become a global brand, buying European palaces, luxury hotels, football teams and hosting the World Cup. Its diplomatic network thrives, and it is a preferred mediator in political conflicts from Gaza and Israel to US negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan and with Iran, and mediating internal conflicts in Sudan and Syria, among others. The emirate has transformed itself from a mere Saudi-aligned protectorate to a sovereign state with its own regional influence while adapting through periods of revolution, regional rivalries, dynastic successions, and attempted coups.

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Qatar’s path to global eminence began in February 1995, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani orchestrated a bloodless coup against his father, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani, who was on an official visit abroad. Sheikh Khalifa had prioritised preserving Qatar’s traditions and “national identity”, and was reluctant to commit the country to an ambitious and necessary modernisation. His son and the new emir, Hamad, recognised that Qatar’s survival hinged on leveraging its hydrocarbon wealth to secure domestic prosperity and international relevance. The alternative was to become a mere puppet state of its larger neighbour, Saudi Arabia.

Emir Hamad’s desire to transform Qatar from a peripheral Gulf state to a global power would depend on systematically exploiting its North Field gas reserves. This reservoir, shared with Iran and holding over 900 trillion cubic metres of natural gas (approximately 20% of global reserves), became the cornerstone of the nation’s economic and strategic ambitions. Aware of the economic potential of the massive North Field, Emir Hamad commenced the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan in 1997, Qatar’s inaugural client and Asia’s largest LNG importer at the time. Since then, Qatar’s revenues from LNG exports surged rapidly, reaching $26 billion annually by 2010.

These revenues have been assiduously invested into infrastructure development: modern transport infrastructure such as airports, railways, and roads; hospitals; a European-style social safety net for Qatari citizens, and even the construction of Education City, under the Qatar Foundation, hosting satellite campuses for seven elite American universities, including Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, and Northwestern. Thanks to these investments, the local population, barely 100,000 native citizens in 1990 and now around 380,000, enjoys a standard of living higher than that of the wealthiest Western nations.

Regional Arab powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt opposed the new Qatari emir Hamad’s desire for independence, exemplified by his decision to export LNG. On 14 February 1996, supporters of the former emir launched a counter-coup against Hamad, backed by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Qatar’s intelligence services narrowly thwarted this coup plot. The region was seemingly too small for Emir Hamad’s ambitions for Qatar. To secure his country’s future and assert its independence against its neighbours, he launched an ambitious strategy that, alongside LNG exports, sought to cultivate Qatar’s soft power and secure the country through a military alliance with the world’s pre-eminent power, the United States.

Emir Hamad launched Al Jazeera on November 1, 1996. Inspired by the CNN model, Al Jazeera was the first 24-hour news television network in the Arab world, creating an unprecedented space for freedom of expression and opinion in the region. The network also became Qatar’s preferred tool for projecting its voice and shaping its image on the global stage. Al Jazeera would later become a megaphone for the Arab Spring, becoming synonymous with the aspirations of the Arab street and revolutionary fervour against Arab regimes.

Qatar’s previous emir, Khalifa, had signed the 1992 Defence Cooperation Agreement with the United States, which included constructing Al Udeid Air Base near Doha. Eventually built by Emir Hamad in 1996, the base gradually expanded to become the largest US base in the Middle East, hosting one of the region's largest contingents of the US Air Force. Under this imperial security umbrella, Qatar sought to consolidate internal stability, diversify its regional partnerships, and arbitrage American protection to execute its strategic agenda.

Alongside Emir Hamad, his cousin, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani (“HBJ”), played a fundamental role in shaping Qatar’s soft power strategy. HBJ was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1992 and became Prime Minister in 2007, holding two of the highest offices in the Qatari state. Qatar became an increasingly proactive diplomatic player during HBJ’s tenure, positioning itself as “a dialogue partner to all sides” and an impartial mediator in regional conflicts.

In 2008, HBJ brokered a narrow escape for Lebanon from a new civil war by bringing together Lebanese leaders and factions, including Hezbollah, Sa’ad Hariri, and Walid Jumblatt, leading to the signing of the Doha Agreement. In the Horn of Africa, Qatar was decisive in mediating tensions between Eritrea and Djibouti after the 2008 border conflict, sending envoys and supporting peace negotiations. In Sudan, Qatar facilitated dialogue between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels, hosting talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, and helping secure temporary ceasefires.

In the early 2000s, Qatar established unofficial, and later formal, commercial relations with Israel by opening reciprocal trade offices, well before the signing of the Abraham Accords. Qatar’s pragmatic statecraft was embedded in its DNA, as the emirate cultivated relations not only with the US, Israel, and Europe but also with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, turning Doha into a regional hub for negotiation between friends, enemies, and everyone in between.

The Qatar Investment Authority Turns Energy into Soft Power

In 2005, Qatar created its first sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), led by HBJ. With an initial capitalisation of $25 billion, pursuing financial returns was not strictly their mandate. QIA had a dual objective: to prepare Qatar’s economy for the post-hydrocarbon era, and to strengthen the country’s cultural influence through strategic soft power investments. To achieve this, capital allocation was split between investing in companies for their brand image and acquiring iconic assets in Western capitals.

QIA’s most significant opportunity would come following the 2008 financial crisis, when European governments raced to attract QIA’s investments to revive their recession-hit economies. Then-president Nicolas Sarkozy of France went as far as introducing a capital gains tax exemption on real estate investments by Qatar and its nationals, effectively transforming the country into a fiscal haven for Qatari investments.

QIA made several high-profile acquisitions, such as in Paris, where they acquired the Peninsula hotel ($750 million), the Le Royal Monceau palace ($250 million), and the iconic Printemps department stores ($1.6 billion). QIA also made several investments across the channel. In 2010, they bought the Harrods department store in London ($1.6 billion), a symbol of British luxury consumption, and in 2012, invested $1.5 billion in The Shard skyscraper.

Beyond real estate, QIA made significant investments in major European companies, such as Volkswagen and Porsche ($7 billion), LVMH ($600 million), Total ($2 billion), EADS, Barclays ($4 billion), and the Accor hotel group. This diversified QIA’s portfolio and embedded the Qatar national brand into some of Europe’s, and by extension the world’s, most prestigious companies, brands, and cities.

QIA also invested significantly in developing its national airline, Qatar Airways, to position Doha as a strategic transport hub between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thanks to its modern fleet and outstanding service, the airline has become a major player in international air transport, further enhancing Qatar’s global visibility and influence. In 2024 alone, Qatar Airways generated $25.5 billion in revenue, operating a fleet of over 290 aircraft and transporting over 43 million passengers. The company was recently ranked the world’s best airline for the eighth time.

With the advice of ex-French president Sarkozy, QIA, through its subsidiary Qatar Sports Investment (QSI), acquired the French football club Paris Saint-Germain for $40 million in 2012. It is now valued at $4 billion and is a successful flagship European football club. Franco-Qatari deals have gone further: in return for arms purchases, particularly for the purchase of the French defence company Dassault’s Rafale fighter jets, Sarkozy actively championed Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, personally lobbying Michel Platini, then president of UEFA. Qatar was granted the bid in November 2010.

Qatar has made education and culture central pillars of its soft power through the Qatar Foundation, with a hefty $17 billion endowment. Founded and led by Sheikha Moza, Emir Hamad’s wife (and mother of the current emir, Tamim), the foundation’s $1.5 billion investment in Education City attracted several prestigious American universities. Qatar has also promoted art, becoming a central player in the art market with high-profile acquisitions such as Mark Rothko’s “White Center” ($72.8 million), Paul Cézanne’s “The Card Players” ($250 million), and constructing museums such as the Museum of Islamic Art and the National Museum of Qatar.

Under the leadership of Emir Hamad and HBJ, Qatar had been transformed into an increasingly consequential diplomatic mediator, with its influence visible on European skylines and on televisions across the Arab and Muslim world through Al Jazeera. Perhaps then, they felt secure enough to leverage Qatar’s wealth and status on the next great gamble: The Arab Spring.

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The Megaphone of the Arab Street

The early 2010s marked Qatar’s most audacious, but ultimately overextended, phase of geopolitical adventurism. Buoyed by recent international successes and emboldened by its maturing soft power infrastructure, the emirate, under Emir Hamad and HBJ, sought to exploit the Arab Spring uprisings to redraw the Middle East’s political map.

From the outbreak of protests in 2011, Qatar adopted an unambiguous stance: supporting the forces of change, particularly movements affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, while deploying aggressive media strategies through Al Jazeera and unprecedented financial interventions. This ideological and strategic choice reflected Doha’s ambitious vision of cultivating a new generation of Arab governments aligned with its interests.

Qatar emerged as the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal patron in Egypt, providing Mohamed Morsi’s government with $3 billion in bonds to stabilise the faltering pound. Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel amplified this support, dedicating much of its Egypt coverage to pro-Brotherhood narratives during this period.

Qatar’s interventions assumed military dimensions in Libya and Syria. During NATO’s 2011 Libya campaign, the Qatari armed forces deployed Mirage fighter jets to support sorties against Gaddafi’s troops. It also sent officers to train Libyan fighters and funnelled $400 million to militias such as the Libya Shield Force. In Syria, Qatar coordinated arms shipments to several groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Al Jazeera played a central role as Qatar’s ideological conduit. The channel granted platforms to opposition figures and shaped revolutionary narratives across the region, transforming Qatar into the Arab Spring’s symbolic patron within months of the uprisings. This positioned the emirate in direct opposition to historical regional powers such as Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, who viewed the protests as existential threats to their stability. Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood extended beyond the Arab world, cultivating ties to Brotherhood-affiliated European organisations, notably in the United Kingdom and France. This interventionist foreign policy aimed to position Qatar not only as a regional power but as a global patron of political Islam, blending ideological alignment with soft power projection.

While the initial phase of Qatar’s strategy bore fruit, with electoral successes for Brotherhood-affiliated parties like Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda in Tunisia, Muhammad Morsi’s Freedom and Justice in Egypt, and Justice and Development in Morocco, the structural weaknesses of these movements, often ill-prepared for governance, quickly became apparent. Their lack of experience, internal divisions, and tensions with other political forces undermined their legitimacy.

At the same time, regional rivals like Saudi Arabia and the UAE were preparing a counter-revolution through a diplomatic, financial, and media offensive that would stem and eventually reverse the tide of the Arab Spring and Qatar’s regional ambitions.

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The Counterrevolution Strikes Back

Aware that the tides were shifting and eager to preserve the achievements of his rule since 1995, Emir Hamad made a strategic decision: in June 2013, he abdicated in favour of his 33-year-old son, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. This transition marked a turning point in Qatari policy. HBJ, regarded as the principal architect of the previous years’ diplomatic activism, was sidelined by Emir Tamim and forced to resign as prime minister. However, he retained control of QIA until 2017.

Emir Tamim’s inaugural speech in June 2013 emphasised “stability through balanced relations”. This new policy prioritised domestic security and economic resilience over ideological adventurism, signalling a decisive break from his father’s alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood. The appointment of Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani as Prime Minister, concurrently holding the interior ministry portfolio, underscored this inward focus, reflecting a recalibrated statecraft centred on insulating Qatar from regional turbulence. Tamim’s rhetoric struck a deliberate tone of neutrality: “We respect all influential and active political trends in the region, but we do not belong to one current against another. We are Muslims and Arabs who respect the diversity of currents and religions at home and abroad. [...] We are a coherent state, not a political party. That is why we seek to maintain relations with all governments and states.”

Qatar’s recalibration faced immediate tests. Mere weeks after Tamim’s ascension, Saudi Arabia and the UAE intensified their counter-revolutionary campaigns. In July 2013, Abu Dhabi signed a $4.9 billion aid package to Egypt’s military, directly facilitating President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster by General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. By 2014, Tunisia’s Ennahda, a key Qatari ally, succumbed to pressure to relinquish power, while in 2015, Russia’s military intervention in Syria turned the tide against Syrian opposition groups.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia orchestrated a GCC-wide designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in March 2014, diplomatically isolating Qatar within the Gulf Cooperation Council. These cascading setbacks forced Tamim’s government to distance itself further from political Islam. By December 2014, several Brotherhood figures were quietly expelled from Doha. Al Jazeera cancelled programmes like “Sharia and Life” and reduced Brotherhood-affiliated airtime to a bare minimum. Qatar pivoted towards discreet mediation, positioning itself as a neutral intermediary in talks between the Taliban and the United States, Israel and Hamas, and the US and Iran. However, regional rivals dismissed this shift as cosmetic.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain, emboldened by US President Donald Trump’s tacit support, imposed a comprehensive land, air, and sea blockade on Qatar, which they accused of maintaining ties with Iran, sponsoring terrorism, and propagating subversion through Al Jazeera.

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Qatar’s Strategic Pivot

The blockade was a revelatory moment for Qatar, revealing the limitations of its reliance on financial might and media influence. Despite colossal financial capital and investments, possessing the world’s highest GDP per capita, an extensive diplomatic network, solid military partnerships (particularly with the United States through Al-Udeid), and a powerful media empire embodied by Al Jazeera, the emirate remained fragile when faced with coordinated pressure.

The blockade, which lasted four years and ended in 2021, provoked an antifragile response, demonstrating Emir Tamim’s retention of the same adaptive capacity that has defined the emirate’s leadership since his father, the former Emir Hamad, took power in 1995. Qatar diversified its security dependencies, accelerating security cooperation with Turkiye, which deployed 5,000 Turkish troops to Al-Udeid Air Base. Qatari companies like the conglomerate-owned Baladna helped the emirate achieve food self-sufficiency. Two years after the blockade was imposed, Qatar produced 95% of its dairy needs by 2019. Qatar has also developed alternative transport routes, such as redirecting air flights through Iran.

Qatar has not entirely abandoned its regional ambitions. Instead, it adopted a more circumspect diplomacy, marking a definitive departure from the flamboyant "chequebook diplomacy" and ideological alignments of the HBJ era to a quieter, more systematic approach where discretion, deeper bilateral relations, and methodical lobbying in global centres of power, particularly in Washington, D.C., take precedence. This shift has seen Qatar re-emerge after 2021 as a pivotal mediator in conflicts from US-Taliban talks to Gaza ceasefire negotiations, even as it navigates the enduring tensions of Gulf and Arab rivalries.

Since 2017, Qatar has reportedly spent nearly $225 million with 18 lobbying and public relations firms in the United States, more than triple what Israel invested in the same domain over the same period. This strategy primarily aims to counter the effects of Israeli lobbying and anti-Qatar groups in Washington, while strengthening strategic ties with American political elites. Between 2019 and 2023, Qatar provided at least $9 million in funding to several prominent Washington-based think tanks, including $6 million to the Brookings Institution, $2.3 million to the Stimson Centre, $300,000 to RAND, and $380,000 to the Middle East Institute.

Qatar has established relationships with key figures in the American administration, targeting a list of 250 people close to President Trump. These figures have included, for example, Pam Bondi, who served as Florida’s Attorney General before joining Donald Trump’s circle; Susan Wiles, who became the president's Chief of Staff; and Kash Patel, a Trump ally who briefly led the staff at the Department of Defence. In 2017, the emirate hired Stonington Strategies, led by Nicolas Muzin, a former advisor to Republican Senator Ted Cruz known for his pro-Israel stance. Muzin then organised visits by influential figures from the American Jewish community to Qatar, including Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organisation of America, who until then had been critical of the Qatari regime.

Qatar also briefly collaborated with Lexington Strategies, led by Joey Allaham, a Syrian-American businessman well-connected in pro-Israel circles. Allaham facilitated strategic meetings with the American Jewish community and pro-Israel Republican figures, and helped soften Qatar’s image in American political and religious spheres, particularly around the organisation of the 2022 World Cup. Under the Biden administration, Qatari influence reached a new high by being granted Major Non-NATO Ally status.

But to truly access the inner circle of power, the emirate realised it also had to speak the language of business. A notable episode occurred in 2017, just before the blockade began: Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner (advisor and son-in-law to Donald Trump), sought Qatari funding to bail out a troubled New York property at 666 Fifth Avenue. The Qatari finance minister, Ali Sharif Al Emadi, declined the offer. A few weeks later, Jared Kushner leveraged his influence in the Trump administration to back the Arab blockade on Qatar. Qatar learned from this episode: transactions were the game, and Qatar was well-placed to play.

In 2018, a $1 billion offer was made for a 99-year lease on the same building, through Brookfield Properties, of which QIA owns a 9% stake. Since then, strategic investments in entities linked to Trump have multiplied: $1.5 billion injected into Jared Kushner’s private equity fund and, more recently, in 2023, the $623 million purchase of the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan from Steve Witkoff, a long-time Trump friend. Meanwhile, real estate projects involving the Trump sons, such as a potential luxury golf project in Qatar, are under consideration.

This diplomacy of influence is not limited to the United States. Qatar is also active in Israel, where several close associates of Benjamin Netanyahu have been mandated to improve the emirate’s image within circles of power. More broadly, Qatar is investing in structuring a network of economic and political elites through the organisation of the Qatar Economic Forum, launched in 2021 in partnership with Bloomberg. Inspired by the Davos Forum and the Saudi FII initiative, this annual event aims to position Qatar as an essential platform for discussion on global economic issues.

Since 2021, Qatar, in strategic partnership with Bloomberg, has also launched the Qatar Economic Forum, which brings together more than 1,000 political leaders, business executives, and investors each year to discuss major economic trends, geopolitical challenges, and technological innovations. The collaboration with Bloomberg has given Qatar a competitive edge in creating both distribution and exclusivity.

Finally, this strategic refocusing is reflected in QIA’s mandate, whose investment policy has become more sober and targeted. Gone are the flashy acquisitions; instead, the focus is on long-term investments in strategic sectors such as technology, energy, and infrastructure. This transformation is also evident in the policy of Paris Saint-Germain, Qatar’s property: no more spectacular signings of ageing stars, the club has refocused on building a more coherent and ambitious team, on the verge of winning its first Champions League, with the final scheduled for 31st May 2025.

The organisation of the 2022 World Cup marked a significant step in this rehabilitation: praised for its organisational quality, festive atmosphere, and impeccable security for visitors, it established itself as one of the most successful editions in the tournament’s history, setting a historic attendance record.

Instead of fighting the tide, Emir Tamim has charted a new course for the Qatari state and reconsolidated its position in the region. In Syria, the emirate has played a central role in helping the new Syrian government get on its feet, such as by financing Syrian government employee salaries. Emir Tamim was also the first head of state to visit Damascus and meet with Syria’s new president, Ahmad Al-Shara. Qatar, alongside Turkiye and Saudi Arabia, has successfully lobbied for the lifting of Western sanctions on Syria. A friendly government in Damascus now delicately balancing an alignment of interests between the West, Turkiye, and the Gulf in support of Syria’s stability and reconstruction, offers Qatar another opening for Qatar to deploy its pragmatic diplomacy and drive the new regional balance of power further in its favour.

In Gaza, Qatar has been the primary mediator in the complex talks between Hamas and Israel, making it one of the few actors that can claim to dialogue simultaneously with Western powers, Palestinian groups, and major Arab capitals. On the bilateral level, relations with Egypt, once icy, have significantly warmed. Qatar has announced an ambitious $7 billion investment plan in the Egyptian economy. In return, Egypt has turned to Qatar to secure its natural gas supply, reducing its energy dependence on Israel. After periods of tension with the Tunisian state following Ennahda’s removal from the political scene, Qatar is mending ties and is now the country’s second-largest outside investor in Tunisia after France.

A New Era or a Temporary Lull?

Qatar’s gas-powered trajectory from Gulf protectorate to a linchpin of global diplomacy has not been smooth. Still, the emirate is now reaping the rewards of its patience and adaptability. Emir Hamad’s systematic exploitation of the North Field and subsequent investments in Al Jazeera, QIA’s global asset portfolio, and a wide-reaching diplomatic network enabled its audacious leap onto the world stage. The Arab Spring’s collapse exposed the fragility of Qatar’s influence and ideological patronage. The subsequent blockade prompted the new Emir Tamim’s pivot from flamboyant chequebook diplomacy to networked realpolitik: forging security ties with Turkiye, mastering transactional lobbying in Washington, and prioritising mediation over factional alignments.

Just five years ago, Qatar was under siege by its neighbours and facing a real prospect of political instability. This month, US President Trump made a joint tour of Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, suggesting a detente between these regional rivals. This shift indicates that Qatar can adapt to changes in the political environment, and it is expected that the emirate continues to play a crucial and growing role in global diplomacy. Qatar's next great test will be whether it can direct its agile statecraft to create a post-hydrocarbon economy or amicably resolve latent Gulf rivalries.

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The Sunni Corridor

US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement in Riyadh on the full cessation of sanctions on Syria has finally upended months of dithering in the western halls of power. These sanctions, imposed in various tranches against the Assad regime over the past 54 years, remained in place after the fall of said regime and have crippled Syria’s nascent state-building and economic reconstruction efforts. Following in Trump’s steps, the EU, having also dithered for months while waiting for the US, has now announced the full lifting of sanctions.

The very next day, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Shara, who until December last year had a $10 million US bounty on his head, flew to Riyadh and met with Trump and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, thanking the former for his cessation of sanctions. “Young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter,” Trump later remarked to the media, describing Al-Shara.

In Syria, this news has been met with elation. Crowds formed in Syrian cities throughout the evening after Trump’s announcement, and Syria’s minister of economy was interviewed on television with tears in his eyes. These sanctions mired a majority of the Syrian people in absolute poverty, and their removal has lifted a psychological and material weight off their shoulders as they feel hope for the first time.

While these announcements formally commence the process for lifting sanctions on Syria, there are multiple, overlapping sets of sanctions imposed by various countries and international agencies, including the US, EU, and the UN Security Council. The most severe sanctions are expected to be repealed within weeks via executive decrees, which would allow for mostly normal diplomatic and trade relations between Syria and other states. There will be ongoing efforts meanwhile to remove older and more complex sanctions, which could take several months or years in some cases. The removal of sanctions should be welcomed, although it is evident that western powers will maintain the threat of their reimposition as leverage against the new government in Damascus.

Decision-makers in Washington, D.C. and Brussels did not decide on a full cessation of sanctions of their own accord. In his Riyadh speech, Trump verbally credited both Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Türkiye for this major policy shift, signalling a remarkable alignment of interests between these erstwhile regional peer competitors.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Qatar have found themselves waging an intense joint lobbying effort over the past six months for the cessation of western sanctions on Syria. While their interests have varied in the region, and even in Syria until the fall of the Assad regime, the new Syrian government’s foreign policy blitz has positioned the desire for stability and recovery in Syria as a new incentive for regional alignment.

For the first time in half a century, a ‘Sunni Corridor’ has emerged in the Middle East, aligning regional capitals through Ankara, Damascus, Riyadh, and Doha, and creating a new axis of trade, diplomacy, and influence. Syria’s liberation from the Assad regime makes it the linchpin of this emerging regional alignment, and cultivating it into an enduring balance of power will be a key pillar of Syria’s statecraft.

For decades, the Assad regime’s strategy had been peace through fear at home and security through chaos abroad. Syria was a regional antagonist and sabotaged its neighbours to its gain. It launched a brutal occupation of Lebanon between 1976 and 2005, harboured the PKK in northern Syria as a bargaining chip against Türkiye, and had hostile relations with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to which, after the American invasion in 2003, the Syrian government facilitated the transport of fighters. This strategy transformed Syria’s geostrategic position as a Middle Eastern crossroads into an isolated fortress of fear, torture, and hostility–all to ensure that Syria remained “Assad’s farm.”

The new Syrian government’s strategy completely inverts the Assad regime’s hostility and forced isolation of the Syrian people, instead positioning Syria to become a regional hub for trade and diplomacy. In this strategy, balancing Turkish and Saudi interests will be crucial to maintaining the delicate balance of power along this Sunni Corridor.

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The Syrian Linchpin

Syria’s emergence as the linchpin of the Sunni Corridor is the product of a calculated diplomatic opening by the new government in Damascus, which is leveraging its geographic and strategic centrality to bind regional powers into a network of mutual dependency that supports Syrian stability and development. Positioned at the crossroads of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean, Syria is no longer the isolated fortress of the Assad era. Instead, it is reimagining itself as a regional hub for trade and diplomacy.

The lifting of sanctions has unleashed a flurry of activity. Even as Trump announced the cessation of sanctions against Syria, Damascus was already negotiating and securing agreements with global logistics giants like CMA-CGM and DP World to modernise and manage ports in Latakia and Tartus. These projects, critical to reviving Syria’s maritime gateways, signal the government’s urgency to reintegrate into global supply chains. Parallel efforts, such as the “Silk Link” fibre-optic initiative recently announced by the Minister of Communications, aim to position Syria as a digital corridor linking Europe and Asia.

Decades of sanctions and war have left Syria’s economy starved of capital, which will compel the government to pursue creative financial solutions. Syria’s ongoing re-integration into the SWIFT banking network offers a lifeline, easing transactions, allowing for remittances, and attracting foreign investment. But true recovery hinges on Syria’s ability to scale its bureaucratic capacity, transforming its institutions into facilitators of regional commerce.

Central to this vision is Syria’s role as a nexus of overlapping regional drivers. To the north, Türkiye’s industrial prowess and ambitions to project influence into the Arab world align with Gulf capital seeking strategic depth against Iran. They bring with them extended trade links through the Turkic world and the Indian Ocean to India, China, and beyond. These parallel trade routes can finally meet in Syria.

Wedged between the Euphrates and Tigris is Upper Mesopotamia, known locally as the Jazira, which has long been maligned as a region of war and poverty. This natural basin was split into three pieces after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, with Iraq, Syria, and Türkiye sharing roughly 1/3rd of the region, respectively. In all three countries, the Jazira is a breadbasket and a source of energy. In Syria, roughly half of its food and energy comes from the Jazira. In Türkiye, Gaziantep, one of the region’s largest cities, is also a manufacturing hub.

The Jazira has significant and uncultivated manufacturing, energy, and agricultural potential owing to decades of hostility and border disputes between the Assad regime and Türkiye. The new Syrian government could seek to unleash Mesopotamia’s true potential through deeper economic integration with Türkiye. Through regional cooperation on shared frameworks for security and trade, which leads to the creation of new markets and incentives, the Jazira could become a young (quite literally, as most of its population is under 30 years of age) and vital participant in regional markets and supply chains. This cooperation could also be extended to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, which is on friendly terms with the Turkish government, and will be a crucial partner for Syria.

Alongside the Jazira, inter-Levantine trade is another regional driver that has significant untapped potential. Both Jordan and Lebanon are small and fragile economies with limited trade routes and industries. If the Syrian government overturns decades of hostile and antagonistic policies implemented by the Assad regime against its Levantine neighbours, and instead emphasises win-win trade and shared markets, the rising tide will lift all boats and give a new lease of life to the region. Jordan and Syria are already closely cooperating on matters related to trade and security, having just established a supreme coordination council across all sectors and issues, and boosting exports.

But they should go a step further: taking inspiration from the Malaysian-Singaporean Johor free trade zone, the current free trade zone on the Syrian-Jordanian border should be re-imagined as a sandbox in which to design new frameworks for economic integration that could be scaled at a later point, or even joint investment into new industries and companies that benefit both countries. For example, Jordan’s facilities for phosphate extraction and production would benefit from Syria’s phosphate production, which will also benefit from Jordan’s well-established phosphate industries and international trade routes through the Aqaba port. Joint research institutes could be set up that partner Syrian and Jordanian engineers and researchers to work on a range of scientific research, such as agriscience, materials science, and pharmaceuticals.

Syria’s diplomatic offensive extends eastward, too. Delegations from China, Japan, and South Korea have descended on Damascus, drawn by the potential of a rehabilitated transit hub connecting Asia to Europe. Syria should economically orient itself to the manufacturing centre of the world in East Asia, benefiting from these nations’ expertise and potential investment opportunities. While these engagements remain nascent, they underscore Syria’s potential to diversify its partnerships and reduce reliance on any single regional power, especially as western powers retain the threat of sanctions to curb Damascus’s autonomy.

Meanwhile, Syria’s capacity to bridge the parallel Turkic, Indian Ocean, and Gulf trade routes between Asia and Europe further isolates Iran. The government recognises that Syria’s development lies in arbitrating these competing interests, and transforming dormant regional markets such as the Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Türkiye-Gulf corridor into active arenas for trade, and bridging parallel global trade routes– all into a unified economic engine with Damascus at its core.

This delicate balancing act requires unprecedented economic statecraft. Syria’s reconstruction demands a bureaucratic overhaul to manage competing projects and prevent corruption from stifling growth. And with no Marshall Plan in sight, Syria must broker a novel alignment: marrying Turkish industrial capacity with Gulf financing to fuel its reconstruction. Riyadh and Ankara, once regional rivals, now share a vested interest in stabilising Syria—the former to counter Iranian influence, the latter to secure a prosperous hinterland for its “zone of peace and trade.” For Damascus, this alignment is both an opportunity and a potential point of dispute. Türkiye’s ambitions could clash with Saudi priorities, particularly as Ankara seeks to extend its influence into the Arab world. If it positions itself as a mediator, Syria can ensure a balance of interests through the proper incentives and concessions to maintain a broader regional alignment between Türkiye and Saudi Arabia. If both countries have a significant stake in Syria, they are less likely to endanger those stakes. Early signs of success are visible. Turkish firms are already eyeing Syrian supply chains, while Gulf states are about to storm the gates with huge pools of capital ready for investment into tourism and energy projects.

By weaving together Turkish industrial capacity, Gulf capital, and unlocking regional drivers like the wider Jazira and Levantine markets, Damascus aims to resurrect its historic role as the Middle East’s crossroads. Success would not only secure Syria’s revival but redefine regional power dynamics, marginalising Iran, sidelining Israel, and cementing the Sunni Corridor as the Middle East’s new axis of influence.

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Potential Spoilers

Iran and Israel are the two regional powers that risk being sidelined by the emergence of the Sunni Corridor, as regional integration between these powers leaves them completely sidelined, both within and beyond the Middle East. To that end, they have attempted to destabilise Syria through insurgencies, aerial bombings, and territorial occupation.

Iran has the most to lose from the rise of the Sunni Corridor. For decades, they cultivated a network of proxy state militias across the Middle East, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon, moving into the vacuum in Iraq after 2003, and finally securing the crown jewel of its burgeoning regional empire, Syria, after 2011, and becoming the main pillar of support to the Assad regime. This ‘Shi’ite Crescent’ punched a hole through the Middle East in the form of a land-and-air bridge maintained by a network of Shi’ite militias from Tehran to Beirut on the Mediterranean. Yet it collapsed in 12 days with the overthrow of the Assad regime, expelling Iranian influence from Damascus, and fatally weakening it in Beirut.

Iran is now on the back foot and seeks to further destabilise Syria through its routine strategy of deploying militias, assassinations, and bombings to cause violence and instability. Iran is funding and arming Assadist remnants predominantly embedded in Alawite communities in western Syria, and IRGC-affiliated tribes in Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria, to accomplish this. The most serious attempt came in March with an attempted Assadist insurgency on the coast, with significant evidence for Iran’s complicity in funding, arming, and coordinating with these insurgents.

Syria’s success outside of Iran’s orbit also poses another threat: Iran’s hostility towards its neighbours and the global system has compelled the Gulf and Turkic states to route trade and energy routes around Iran, and connect Europe and Asia for trade, energy, and capital. Until Syria’s liberation, those routes ran parallel to each other. Syria can now connect these two routes as a bridge between the northern Turkic route and the southern Gulf-Indian Ocean route, further isolating Iran as a geopolitical power.

Israel finds itself in surprising alignment with Iran in their position towards the new government in Syria. Iran’s influence in the wider Levant is diminishing, and as Iran’s threat to Israel recedes, the rise of the Sunni Corridor bypasses both Iran and Israel, with the latter’s genocide in Gaza having ended hopes for Israel’s ‘integration’ into the region through normalisation via the Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia, which is now the Arab world’s premier political power, is instead seeking to leverage the fall of the Assad regime in Syria to form its own corridor of power that bypasses both Iran and Israel.

Maintaining leverage is therefore crucial for Israel to avoid strategic isolation, leading to the current Israeli invasion that has resulted in both territorial occupation in south Syria and numerous aerial bombing campaigns, the latest of which targeted the grounds of the presidential palace in Damascus as a threat to Syria’s government. Israel has also sought to use the ‘alliance of minorities’ rhetoric to divide Syria, threatening Damascus over issues with the Druze community in Suweyda, aiming to extend Israel’s influence from the occupied Golan Heights across Daraa to join up with Suweyda, thus ensuring southern Syria is under Israel’s de facto control. Daraa is the narrow artery through which the Sunni Corridor passes to Jordan and beyond, the Gulf states.

Israel has long maintained a strategy of ensuring permanent division in the region, such as with the strategic occupation of the Negev desert that divides Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous (and formerly premier) state, from the Middle East. Daraa in South Syria is another regional chokepoint, wedged between Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights and the majority Druze province of Suweyda, with whom Israel hopes to form an alliance and therefore leverage control over Daraa. Thus, Israel poses the biggest threat to the emerging Sunni Corridor in the region that bypasses and minimises both Israeli and Iranian influence.

The fate of Daraa is also the fate of the Syrian government’s strategy to become the linchpin of the Sunni Corridor. Whether it is deeper economic integration among the three Levantine states: Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria; in Mesopotamia to unlock its latent energy, agricultural, and manufacturing potential; connecting the Turkish and Gulf markets; and connecting the hitherto parallel trade routes running through the Turkic world and the Indian Ocean between Europe and Asia, Syria could drive its economic development by becoming the region’s premier trade hub.

This will depend on whether states like Türkiye and Saudi Arabia can sustain their new alignment through supporting Syria’s stability and reconstruction, and if states like Israel and Iran can be prevented from destabilising Syria and hindering regional integration. Ultimately, Syria’s government must also create the proper state capacity in the form of a competent economic and diplomatic cadre that acts on and combines these regional drivers into one engine: Damascus. If so, Syria becomes the heart of a new Middle East, and a crucial node in global supply chains stretching between Europe and Asia.

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In early April 2025, Syria’s foreign minister, Asad Al-Shaibani, met with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Tae-yul, in Damascus. It was a historic visit during which South Korea and Syria formally established diplomatic relations following decades of Syria’s former Baathist government allying with North Korea. In the meeting, Al-Shaibani expressed enthusiasm for learning from the South Korean experience of development, and Minister Cho reciprocated by conveying his nation’s willingness to share its knowledge and expertise.

South Korea is one of a small group of nations outside of Europe and North America that have successfully climbed to the summit of the development ladder. The other members of this elite group are Japan, Taiwan, and China. While differing in many respects, what we will call the ‘East Asian Four’ have been united in their adherence to a distinctive form of political economy defined by the pragmatic fusion of strong state capacity with the cut-and-thrust of free enterprise – ‘state capitalism’ – deployed to support a manufacturing and export-led development model.

One of the key elements of the East Asian experience that deserves closer examination is agricultural policy. While the success of their respective industrial policies is well known, it is often forgotten that the governments of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and (post-1978) China underwrote their drive to industrialisation with complementary agricultural policies. In the process, they created a level of rural wealth and food abundance hitherto unprecedented in East Asia. They shunned the ‘urban bias’ that has so often undermined other nations’ development bids, realising that a flourishing countryside was a necessary prerequisite for any successful and sustainable industrial development.

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Land Reform in East Asia

The main policy tool that Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and (post-1978) China utilised to cultivate such a flourishing countryside was simple: progressive land reform. All four governments enacted laws that placed the majority of agricultural land directly into the hands of those who farmed it. In Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, the post-WWII land reforms mostly brought an end to centuries of tenant farming and absentee landlordism. In China, where private land ownership did not exist, the 1978 reforms brought an end to the country’s catastrophic 20-year experiment with collective farming. (However, in China private land ownership was not reinstated; rather, households acquired renewable long-term contracts granting them “use rights”).

The great innovation of the East Asian land reforms was not the redistribution of land per se, but the equality of the distribution. Tens of thousands of Japanese, Taiwanese, and South Korean farming households received plots of roughly equal size, ranging between 1 and 3 hectares (with size differences accounting for variance in land quality). In China, the average farm size following the land reforms was less than a hectare. For context, the size of the average professional football field is approximately 0.75 hectares, and the average size of contemporary American farms is 187 hectares. The type of farming that emerged on the post-reform East Asian farms was highly labour-intensive and household-based. It has been described as a kind of ‘large-scale gardening’.

The logic of land reform

In all four East Asian states, the motivation behind land reform was not ideological. It was a move designed to achieve two goals that are vitally important for countries in the early stages of economic development: 1) overcoming the problem or rural rentierism to maximise agricultural productivity (measured in terms of crop yield per hectare), while 2) making the best possible use of a mostly rural labour force.

The problem of rural rentierism

Typically, the spectre of rural rentierism has hung over agriculture in countries at an earlier stage of economic development due to the prevalence of a combination of demographic pressure and unequal landholding patterns. For most of the modern era, developing countries have had growing populations and rising birth rates. The majority (or at least a large portion) of those populations have earned their living in farming. Except for the communist states, the owners of rural land have typically been far fewer in number than tenant farmers and landless labourers.

Such conditions prevailed in Japan, Taiwan, China and South Korea in the immediate aftermath of WWII. In Taiwan and South Korea, roughly three-quarters of the population earned a living in agriculture, while in Japan (which was more industrialised), just under half of the population were farmers. The populations of all three countries were set to grow rapidly, and landholding patterns were unequal. South Korea was the most unequal. In 1928, less than 4% of households owned 55% of farmland, while over 250,000 families were landless squatters. In Japan, by contrast, while smallholding predominated, the majority of the farming population were nevertheless tenants.

In such demographic conditions, agricultural outputs typically fall or stagnate as landlords favour rent extraction over increasing agricultural yields as a means of generating more revenue. The reason for this is a function of supply and demand. As the population grows, demand for cultivable land increases. However, the supply of farmland is fixed and bringing new land into cultivation requires substantial investment. Therefore, demand for farmland outstrips supply, driving up its price. In this situation, landlords realise it is far easier to increase their revenues by simply extracting higher rents from tenants rather than making investments in improving productivity. Even smallholders cease farming all or part of their plots and, instead, lease out their land to the growing landless population. Tenants become perpetually financially squeezed by high rents and have little incentive to invest any meagre post-tax profits in improving their productivity, since most of the financial benefits would accrue to their landlord.

Land reform in East Asia aimed to neuter the impulse toward rural rentierism by restructuring rural landholding patterns to remove the core incentive mechanism for rent-seeking. In its place, they created a new type of rural agricultural market that incentivised farming households to increase their income by producing more food rather than resorting to land accumulation and rent-seeking. Owning their own land, all farmers were now able to reap the full profits of any investments that they made in improving the land. Plot size limits meant that those profits could not be used to buy more land to rent out, thereby incentivising ploughing the profits back into increasing crop yields. And on a small farm of no more than 3 hectares, increasing crop yields is the only viable way to make more profit, since reducing labour costs substantially is not possible given the unsuitability of heavy mechanisation on such small plots. So, the land-owning farming household has only one option: grow as much food as physically possible on the available land.

The importance of maximising agricultural yields

Maximising agricultural yields is crucial for developing food self-sufficiency and avoiding the danger of ever-increasing dependency on food imports generated by stagnating or declining domestic food production. Food imports increase due to the growing gap between the overall domestic supply of food and the overall demand generated by population increase, which often follows an exponential pattern. Further down the line, when nations start to become richer and a sizeable middle class develops, the gap between domestic supply and demand for food typically widens as wealthier citizens demand greater quantities and a wider variety of food.

For developing countries, ever-increasing dependency on food imports undermines development efforts in several ways. First, importing food consumes a large amount of foreign currency that could have been used for importing higher-value goods of greater long-term importance for economic development. Instead, a substantial portion of foreign currency earned from exports is wasted on importing foodstuffs that could have been grown domestically. This could eventually lead to debt repayment problems if external debt is high, as occurred in Brazil in the 1980s. Secondly, poorer countries that are dependent on food imports are highly vulnerable to shocks in the global supply chain. For example, Egypt imported 60% of the wheat its citizens consumed in 2021. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, Egypt has suffered severe food price inflation due to a restriction in the supply of Ukrainian grain. Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea, in their early development, managed to successfully avoid the problems arising from dependency on food imports.

Best use of labour at the early stages of development

Alongside incentivising the maximisation of food production, small-scale household farming makes the best use of labour in an economy where the majority (or a plurality) of the population works in farming. This might sound counterintuitive within the paradigm of orthodox neoclassical economics – surely small-scale, low-tech, labour-intensive farming is an inefficient use of resources? However, it makes perfect sense within the particular conditions that have typically prevailed in countries at the earlier stages of economic development, when labour is cheap, plentiful and mostly rurally-based, and higher value-added jobs are few and do not exceed the rate of population growth. East Asian agricultural policy was designed to make the most of early-development labour conditions by developing a rural economic model that was highly labour-intensive but ensured that every unit of rural labour went into productive activities.

In the long run, as economies develop and move further up the value chain of goods and services, the proportion of the labour force employed in agriculture should reduce to single figures. For example, in the US, only 1.2% of the labour force is employed in farmwork. However, at earlier stages of development, where most of the pre-existing labour force is employed in agriculture and there is little work outside the sector, the best thing an economy can do is to make that agricultural labour force as productive as possible – which is precisely what the East Asian Four did.

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Implementation

In all four East Asian countries, land reform occurred with remarkably little violence or social unrest. As the economist Joe Studwell argues in his 2014 work on East Asian economic development, How Asia Works, the key mechanism for ensuring the smooth implementation of the land reform legislation was popular participation via local land committees charged with overseeing the redistribution process. The Japanese were the first to introduce land committees in 1946. Comprising landlords, tenant farmers and smallholders, the local committees were granted legal powers to review land transfers and adjudicate disputes. Crucially, the committees were designed such that tenants and smallholders outnumbered landlords. As a result, almost all attempts to violate the land reform laws were quashed. In the longer term, there was no return to tenancy in Japan (or in Taiwan, which copied the Japanese model).

The importance of broad farmer participation in the land reform process is highlighted by South Korea. In South Korea, where there was little farmer participation and the government followed a much more centrally managed process, landlords managed to sell land outside the official channels, often to relatives or proxies. Furthermore, by the 1970s, tenancy had returned on a significant scale, affecting roughly a quarter of farmland. Nevertheless, South Korean land reform was ultimately an overall success, with farm ownership increasing from 10% of farm households in 1945 to 70% in 1964.

Results

As Studwell has shown, the transition to household agriculture in Japan, Taiwan, China, and South Korea resulted in highly productive farms, measured in terms of crop yield per hectare. In Japan, overall agricultural yields grew an impressive 3% every year from 1955 to 1970, leading to food self-sufficiency. In South Korea, after the government of General Park Chung Hee began giving more support to farmers from 1961, yields from rice paddies rose from an average of 3 tonnes per hectare in the 1950s to 5.3 tonnes per hectare by the 1970s, which was 50-100% more than in contemporary South-East Asia.

After switching to household farming, Chinese agriculture went from strength to strength. For example, overall yearly grain production rose from 305 million tonnes in 1978 to over 500 million tonnes by the late 1990s. At present, grain yields on small Chinese farms are 50% higher on average than the yields on large-scale American farms. Similarly, Chinese household farming has delivered huge gains in cash crops. For example, from 1978 to 1985, total sugar yields increased by 250%. In the 2010s, Chinese average yearly sugar yields were 75 tonnes per hectare, 40-50% higher than in the large plantations of the Philippines, where the soil and climatic conditions are more favourable.

Taiwan witnessed arguably the most dramatic results from household farming. Throughout the 1950s, yields of traditional crops such as sugar and rice increased by over 50%, while yields of specialist fruits and vegetables, such as mushrooms, bananas, and asparagus, doubled. Since the 1950s, small Taiwanese household farms have consistently produced on average 50% more sugar than large-scale plantations in the Philippines and Indonesia.

State Support for Farmers

While land reform provided the necessary structure to facilitate the flourishing of agriculture, the land reforms would not have been such a success – and could have failed –if the governments of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China had not paired their land reforms with a suite of supporting policies designed to fully actualise the latent benefits of land reform. These policies included:

• Infrastructure investment – The East Asian Four all invested heavily in improving rural infrastructure, both general civil infrastructure – such as roads, bridges, the electricity grid and so on – and in developing agriculture-specific infrastructure, such as irrigation systems.

• Rural credit – Governments established financial institutions to provide low-interest credit facilities and other financial products tailored to farming customers.

• Research and training – The four East Asian governments made huge investments in agricultural research institutions and the provision of ‘extension’ workers, whose job it was to educate farmers on best practices and train them in the use of the latest technologies, techniques and seed varieties. Taiwan led in this regard, with 79 agricultural researchers per 100,000 individuals employed in agriculture.

• Storage and marketing services – The governments made substantial investments in storage and transport facilities, agencies to help connect farmers to buyers, branding and promotion support, and the provision of high-quality market information.

• Tariffs – While tariff policies varied in their magnitude and scope, all four of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China used tariffs to protect the domestic farming industry. However, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (although not China) later made the mistake of continuing – and indeed increasing – subsidies and protections for their agricultural sectors due to political pressures long after those policies had maximised their economic usefulness.

Benefits of rural prosperity

Through their agricultural policies, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China were able to do something unprecedented in East Asia: generate widespread rural prosperity. Household farms in the four East Asian countries were highly productive and consistently profitable, both through selling to protected domestic markets and exporting their surpluses. This rural wealth played a crucial role in the industrial development of the East Asian Four:

• Rural household savings – In developing countries, capital markets tend to be underdeveloped, so savings form an important source of investment funds. The case was no different in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, where the savings of millions of farming households financed early domestic investments in factories.

• Early source of foreign exchange – Notably, in Taiwan, agricultural productive capacity quickly outpaced domestic demand, and Taiwanese farmers began exporting their produce at scale. These food exports were a reliable source of foreign exchange at the beginning of the nation’s industrialisation journey.

• Rural consumption – A substantial portion of the profits generated from the large crop yields of household farms led to the development of new demand in the countryside for manufactured goods, providing a large and ready market for emerging domestic manufacturers.

• Rural entrepreneurship – Now that farmers were able to make consistent profits from farming, many chose to invest in establishing new businesses, mostly factories. Indeed, in Taiwan, it was the countryside that led the country’s early manufacturing drive. Between 1956 and 1966, manufacturing employment in rural Taiwan increased at a rate of 7.2% per year, substantially faster than the rate of increase in urban areas.

• Social mobility – The emergence of a degree of rural prosperity allowed for the children of farming families to pursue careers that had hitherto been the preserve of a narrow group of urban elites, including key statesmen and industrialists who came from farming family backgrounds: In South Korea, President Park Chung Hee, who guided the country’s early industrialisation, and Chung Ju Yung, the founder of Hyundai; in Taiwan, Wang Yung-ching, the founder of Formosa Plastics Group, one of Taiwan’s largest and most valuable companies; In Japan, the founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda, and the founder of the antecedent to Toyota Industries, Sakichi Toyoda; in China: Lui Yonghao, the founder of New Hope Group, the biggest agribusiness company in China; Cao Dewang, the chairman of Fuyao Glass Industry Group, one of the world’s largest auto glass producers; and Li Hejun, the founder of Hanergy Group, a giant in the global thin-film solar technology sector.

• Lack of forced rural to urban migration – The fact that the majority of rural people could now make a healthy living in agriculture meant that they were not compelled to leave the land and move to cities due to poverty. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, therefore, largely avoided the emergence of the large urban slums filled with impoverished ex-farmers that are ubiquitous across the developing world.

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Land Reform in Syria’s Context

By now, the numerous benefits of adopting the East Asian agricultural model should be clear. But, to recapitulate, these benefits include: the quashing of rural rent-seeking, the attainment of food self-sufficiency alongside surpluses for export, the utilisation of available labour in the most valuable way at the early stages of development, and the creation of widespread rural prosperity. Moreover, the fact that the East Asian agricultural model was adopted by only four non-Western nations to ever climb to the summit of the industrial development ladder should, on its own, be enough to convince any nation seeking development and industrialisation of the merits of adopting the East Asian approach.

Nevertheless, a sceptic may question whether the East Asian model, despite its many merits, is suitable for contemporary Syria. Syria in 2025 is not Japan or Taiwan or South Korea or China in the middle third of the 20^th century. Syria has its unique conditions and challenges, including the devastation caused by 14 years of war, and it is not possible to copy, play-for-play, the approach of any of the East Asian Four.

While that is true, what Syria can and should do is to take the blueprint, the model, the core principles, the fundamentals of East Asian agricultural policy – equitable land redistribution and state support for agriculture – and apply them to the Syrian context, with all its idiosyncrasies and distinctive challenges. That is precisely what the government of Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek did when it looked to Japan for inspiration, and what successive South Korea governments did when they studied Japan and Taiwan, and what the government of Deng Xiaoping did when it sought to learn from the successes of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

The East Asian Four started in very different economic, social and political positions. Japan in 1946 was a (recently militarily defeated) East Asian superpower fairly far along the path of industrial development. Despite having a large rural population, the majority of its people lived in towns and cities. The country had already experimented with land reform, which was reflected in the preponderance of small and medium-sized landlordism. South Korea, a former Japanese colony, was a desperately poor, highly unequal, and overwhelmingly agrarian society with little industry to speak of. Taiwan, another poor former Japanese colony, was also subject to the exceptional demographic pressures of absorbing one million Chinese Nationalist exiles from the mainland in the late 1940s. China, also poor and agrarian, was subject to radically different political and economic conditions. It was a one-party communist state with a centrally planned economy, where private land ownership did not exist and huge-scale, collective farming predominated.

Nevertheless, despite differences in pre-existing conditions, the governments of all four East Asian states aspired to the same goal: rapid industrial development. And they faced similar core challenges: the spectre of rural rent-seeking and food shortages, rapidly growing populations, and the bulk of their labour force working in agriculture. As such, all four governments had the foresight to equally distribute farmland, knowing that the agricultural productivity gains and labour force optimisation that would accrue from such a redistribution were the sine qua non of industrialisation.

There are few structural reasons why Syria cannot or should not follow in their footsteps. To start, poverty is rife in the Syrian countryside, as it was in East Asia. Rural poverty has only been exacerbated by war. As in East Asia, Syria has a growing population and will witness a substantial post-war population bounce. While land reforms before the 2000s resulted in lowering the proportion of tenant farmers, various types of non-owner-operated farms remain widespread, and there is a substantial disparity in farm sizes. According to data from 2001, the average size of irrigated holdings varied greatly from region to region, from 10.5 hectares in Hassakeh and 8.9 hectares in Raqqa to only 0.8 hectares and 0.9 hectares in Suweida and Tartus, respectively.

The main structural difference between Syria and the East Asian Four at the start of their agricultural reforms is the composition of the labour force. Accurate and up-to-date statistics are hard to come by, but one recent study places the proportion of the Syrian workforce employed in agriculture at over 20%. While this figure likely excludes male informal labourers, women, and minors, it is substantially lower than that of Japan, where roughly 47% of the workforce was employed in agriculture in 1946. As such, Syria does find itself in a trickier position than the East Asian states concerning labour. At least a plurality of the country’s cheap and under-utilised labour do not work on farms, but find themselves in semi-employment in various low-value services industries in the cities.

Challenges to Land Reform in Syria

The Syrian countryside has been ravaged by war, and much agricultural infrastructure has either been destroyed, damaged, or has fallen into disrepair. But the destruction of rural Syria is all the more reason to invest generously in reviving the countryside and the rural economy. It is important to remember that South Korea initiated its programme of agricultural reforms in 1953, just after the end of the Korean War, which killed and wounded millions and inflicted immense infrastructure damage. Similarly, Japan initiated its agricultural reforms one year after its defeat in WWII. Furthermore, there is a body of research to show that smallholders and family farms play a key role in post-war rural economic recovery, far more than large farms. This should incentivise any government to support progressive land reform and household farming in the aftermath of war.

Unlike the East Asian states, Syria faces acute problems of water scarcity, which will require substantial investment in new water-saving technologies. But this should not be a barrier to following East Asian-style land reform. Investment in advanced irrigation and water conservation technologies (as well as a movement away from thirsty crops, such as cotton) is necessary for Syria, regardless of whether land reform is enacted or not. Moreover, there is plenty of research to show that small farms are more water-efficient than large farms. And it is certainly more effective to apply new technologies in a context in which all farmers are owner-farmers, incentivised to use the technology as efficiently as possible, rather than in one where rent-seeking landlordism is prevalent.

For Syria, the most daunting challenge to the successful implementation of land reform will be land disputes. Much land has been stolen over the past 14 years by militia members and criminal gangs, some of whom are the leaders of powerful tribes. The illegal seizure of land has compounded rural Syria’s longstanding problem with the prevalence of informal and/or insecure landholding and tenancy contracts. In these conditions, attempts at land reform would almost certainly be met with opposition, and disputes would likely erupt as rival groups stake their claims. At present, the Syrian government does not have the capacity to review and rationalise all landholding and tenancy contracts, or to successfully mediate rural land disputes directly or through the land tenancy committee model used by the East Asian Four. Indeed, the government does not currently control large swathes of Syrian territory. As such, comprehensive land reform may not be possible in the near future.

Nevertheless, the current lack of state capacity should not be a barrier to pursuing East Asian-style agricultural policies once the state has the ability to do so. A flourishing countryside is imperative for Syria’s economic prosperity - and the only tried and tested route to that flourishing in the post-war period is the one laid out by Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China.

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Between 2003 and 2025, Morocco created a domestic automotive industry from scratch, becoming one of the rare industrial success stories outside of East Asia. In doing so, Morocco has joined a league of nations seeking to arbitrage the bifurcation in global supply chains between the United States and China, such as Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, and Turkiye. Morocco possesses several competitive advantages over these countries: a unique geographical position, infrastructure investment, and industrial policy, all making it a prime contender to take advantage of the U.S.-China rivalry and the European Union’s (EU) uncertainty to become a key node in trade relations between all three of the world’s largest markets.

Morocco’s industrial policy in recent decades has been developed and driven by its King, Muhammad VI (MVI), under whom the Moroccan government has implemented a combination of policies focused on industrial development, attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), utilising exclusive free trade agreements, and investing in infrastructure development, to transform the kingdom into a key automotive manufacturing and export hub in the global supply chain. Bucking regional trends in state capacity, the government has been proactive in not just creating industries but also adapting to change in them, such as with the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), and by ensuring agreements on knowledge and technology transfer in partnership with foreign companies to foster local firm development.

These policies are now paying off. In 2023, Morocco’s automotive exports to the EU reached $14 billion in value on 536,000 cars, comprising 20% of Morocco’s total export value. This places Morocco above China to become the EU's leading automotive exporter in market value, although China remains the EU’s largest in absolute volume, with 782,000 vehicles exported in 2023. In 2024, Morocco achieved another milestone as it displaced South Africa to become the African continent’s largest automotive manufacturer, producing about 614,000 cars, 90% of which were destined for export. The Moroccan government has declared its objective to manufacture one million vehicles by 2030, which would see Morocco jump from the 24th largest automotive manufacturer to the 20th largest automotive manufacturer by volume, in the same league as countries like Russia, Britain, and France, although Morocco has a substantially smaller population.

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The Birth of Morocco’s Automotive Industry

Morocco’s automotive industry, though rooted in post-independence ambitions, only began its journey into a globally competitive industry through strategic reforms and partnerships initiated in the 2000s. Before 2007, the kingdom’s automotive footprint was limited to a single small-scale assembly plant. As of 2025, Morocco hosts three major automotive hubs in Tangier, Kenitra, and Casablanca, supported by a sprawling network of suppliers, positioning the nation as a pivotal node in global automotive supply chains.

The origins of Morocco’s automotive sector trace back to 1959, when the state-owned Société Marocaine de Construction Automobile (Somaca) was established in Casablanca through a partnership with Ford. Initially assembling Fiat models, Somaca later diversified with licenses from Renault (1966), Austin (1969), and Opel (1970), peaking at 30,000 vehicles annually by 1975. Yet this early phase prioritised import substitution over exports, with production aimed almost exclusively at domestic consumption. Limited technology transfer and value-added manufacturing, coupled with macroeconomic challenges including Western Sahara tensions, droughts in the 1980s, and a regional wave of privatisation, stalled progress. While Somaca remained state-owned as a symbol of national pride, Morocco’s market liberalisation exposed its fragile industry to foreign competition, particularly used-car imports, leading to a sharp decline in domestic production.

A turning point emerged in the early 2000s under King MVI's economic modernisation agenda. In 2002, Morocco sold its stake in Somaca to Renault, which acquired Ford’s remaining shares to become the majority owner by 2003. Renault’s then-CEO Carlos Ghosn recognised Morocco’s strategic potential as a low-cost, export-oriented manufacturing base, leveraging its proximity to Europe and existing infrastructure. This vision aligned with the ambitions of Driss Jettou, Morocco’s Prime Minister from 2002 to 2007, whose career in trade and finance ministries under the previous King Hassan II had primed him to pursue industrial transformation. Jettou’s pivotal 2004 U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) and his collaboration with Ghosn laid the groundwork for Morocco’s automotive resurgence.

The Renault partnership accelerated in 2007. Ghosn was exploring Romania as a possible location for expanding Renault manufacturing when he was approached by Jettou while in Paris. Jettou convinced Ghosn to instead pursue this strategy in Morocco, arguing that the Moroccan government would do everything possible to smooth the path and become a true strategic partner to Renault. Jettou and Ghosn finalised plans for a $1.4 billion factory in Tangier within just five months of negotiations. Part of this deal would be the development of the Tanger Med port, which will be discussed later.

Operational by 2012, the Tangier plant became Renault’s largest global site, producing nearly all components for key models like the Dacia Logan locally. This vertically integrated facility exemplified Morocco’s shift from basic assembly to high-value manufacturing, with 90% of output exported. By 2019, Stellantis replicated this model in Kenitra, producing Citroën, Opel, and Fiat vehicles, while Chinese automakers like BYD explored investments to capitalise on Morocco’s trade access to Europe and the U.S. Though BYD ultimately prioritised Hungary and Türkiye, East Asian interest has persisted: in 2024, Morocco’s Minister for Industry, Mohcine Jazouli, toured Japan and South Korea to court investments in automotive and naval sectors, reflecting Morocco’s strategy to diversify industrial partnerships beyond Europe and automotive manufacturing.

Through the ‘special relationship’ between Ghosn and Jettou, and King MVI’s interest in anchoring Moroccan ambitions in global rather than local demand, Morocco has achieved escape velocity from the limitations of its early import-substitution era and is emerging as a linchpin in global supply chains. It now seeks to replicate that relationship into sustainable policy for further industrial endeavours.

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Strategic Partners Make Good (Industrial) Policy

The Moroccan government has distinguished itself through a proactive governance model when it comes to its industrial policy, acting as a true strategic partner with foreign businesses, instead of a suspicious, if not hostile, actor. This model involves a willingness to steamroll bureaucratic barriers and streamline processes such as expediting land acquisition, investing in necessary infrastructure, bespoke logistical and workforce training programs, and a general emphasis on accelerating industrial project development. This approach, epitomised by Renault’s rapid establishment of its Tangier plant, contrasts with the bureaucratic inertia plaguing regional peers, where corruption and red tape stifle industrial ambitions.

It is important to note that Morocco’s leeway with large, international businesses is not necessarily replicated for domestic business ventures and investment, or general administration, where bureaucratic obstacles and corruption remain stumbling blocks to growth.

In any case, the political stability afforded by Morocco’s monarchy amplifies the kingdom’s appeal as an investment destination. The country has avoided major upheaval amid regional turbulence and offers investors long-term certainty. Morocco’s monetary policy reinforces this stability: the Moroccan dirham’s peg to a euro-dollar basket minimises currency risk, a critical consideration for export-oriented industries.

This efficiency extends beyond automotive manufacturing. Morocco’s collaboration with French firms SNCF and Alstom on Africa’s first high-speed rail line came after the failure of the French firms’ negotiations with California's government to develop the California High-Speed Rail project. Overcoming land acquisition hurdles and cost overruns that derailed the U.S. project, Morocco successfully operationalised the rail link between Tangier and Casablanca in 2018, with further plans to extend it 800 kilometres south to Agadir. Alstom’s subsequent decision to localise locomotive production in Fez mirrors Renault’s strategy, signalling Morocco’s intent and capacity to compound its automotive success in adjacent heavy industries. Businesses further afield have seen the signal: the South Korean industrial giant, Hyundai, won a $1.54 billion contract in February 2025 to produce double-decker trains in Morocco, with the contract emphasising transfer of technology, further boosting Morocco’s efforts to indigenise prduction.

Complementing infrastructure investments, Morocco has prioritised workforce development through German and Swiss-inspired vocational training programs. Tailored in partnership with automakers, these initiatives aim to ensure a national pipeline of skilled labour, critical for sustaining industrial growth.

Central to Morocco’s strategy are its Special Economic Zones (SEZs), such as Tangier Automotive City and Kenitra Free Zone, which offer tax incentives, world-class infrastructure, and integrated supplier networks. While these zones have driven the automotive sector’s 60% local integration rate, with a target of 80% by 2030, they have also drawn EU scrutiny over perceived unfair subsidies, landing Morocco on the bloc’s financial grey list. This signals the efficacy of Morocco’s SEZ strategy. Undeterred, the government is expanding SEZs near new megaprojects like Nador West Med and Dakhla Atlantic Port, aiming to attract automotive, aerospace, and naval industries. The rise of these SEZs and their strategic role in building Moroccan influence and supply chains through West Africa has been previously discussed on Vizier.

Thanks to the kingdom’s competitive advantages, Renault has been at the forefront of foreign business expansion into Morocco, establishing its Tangier plant as the company's largest production site outside Europe. Today, Renault is Morocco's largest private employer, surpassing even the state-owned, phosphate industry giant OCP. Other major players, such as Stellantis (Peugeot-Citroën), have also established a presence in Morocco, particularly in the Kénitra region. These factories are fully integrated, producing entire vehicles, including high-value components such as engines. Moreover, automotive firms are increasingly investing in local R&D centres to capitalise on Morocco's growing pool of engineering talent. In 2023, Stellantis announced an expansion plan, aiming to produce 500,000 vehicles annually from its Moroccan plants, further solidifying the country's status as a key manufacturing hub. Even South Korean firms are now willing to sign technology

Industrial clustering has created new opportunities. The domestic Moroccan car brand, Neo Motors, now produces vehicles with 90% local components, a feat unimaginable two decades ago. Such achievements reflect Morocco’s strategic geography, just 14 kilometres from the nearest European country, Spain, and straddling Atlantic and Mediterranean trade routes, coupled with aggressive trade diplomacy. While regional blocs like the Arab Maghreb Union languish, with the Maghreb being the least economically integrated region in the world, Morocco has secured bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with 50+ countries, granting preferential access to two billion consumers. Morocco further has the unique status as being one of only three nations (with Israel and Jordan) holding simultaneous FTAs with both the EU and U.S., providing a decisive edge over automotive manufacturing rivals like Türkiye and Egypt.

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Cars, Ports, and Infrastructure

Morocco’s automotive industry has been buoyed by an infrastructure strategy that is transforming the kingdom into a logistical linchpin between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Central to this transformation is Tanger Med, a port-industrial complex that has transformed Morocco’s formerly isolated geographical location into a new artery for global trade. Tanger Med’s strategic value became evident in 2007, when its proximity to Europe, enabling under 48-hour delivery times to continental markets, helped secure Renault’s landmark investment. Tanger Med offers competitive legal services, high operational efficiency, and cost advantages, outcompeting Spanish ports on the opposite side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Ranked the world’s 17th-largest container port by capacity in 2024, Tanger Med is the largest port in Africa and the busiest in the Mediterranean, serving as a key node for global shipping routes crossing through the Strait of Gibraltar, and functioning as the engine of Morocco’s export-oriented industrialisation. The Strait sees 13% of global shipping traffic flow through it, rivalling chokepoints like Singapore and Panama. As the winds increasingly blow towards Gibraltar, shipping giant Maersk has seen the opportunity and is investing in a terminal expansion, expanding the port to 15-million TEU capacity, positioning the port to overtake Rotterdam as a top-ten global port.

Tanger Med’s ecosystem, spanning 2,000 hectares of tax-advantaged zones for automotive, aerospace, and tech firms, now generates over half of Morocco’s exports. Its competitiveness stems from seamless logistics, enabled by state-of-the-art automation and PortNet, a blockchain-driven platform streamlining customs and cargo tracking. By colocating suppliers, assembly plants, and export terminals, Morocco achieves supply chain efficiencies unmatched in the Mediterranean, with products shippable within hours of production. In 2024, Tanger Med ranked fourth in the World Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) for 2023. Such integration has drawn parallels to Shenzhen’s 1990s ascent as a global electronics hub.

The port’s strategic foresight extends to sustainability: electrified cranes, solar-powered operations, and biofuel bunkering align with Morocco’s renewable energy ambitions, while expansions like the forthcoming dry dock aim to dominate emerging Global South trade corridors. Already, geopolitical disruptions like the 2024 Red Sea blockade saw Tanger Med’s traffic surge by 23% as ships rerouted through the Strait of Gibraltar.

This model is now being replicated nationwide. Megaprojects like Nador West Med and Dakhla Atlantic Port mirror Tanger Med’s blueprint, combining deepwater ports with Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to anchor industries from automotive to aerospace. Adjacent industrial zones, linked by Africa’s first high-speed rail, Al Boraq, allow manufacturers like Stellantis to move components from factory floors in Kenitra to European showrooms within days. Ports and railways are being connected with air cargo through investment into the expansion of Casablanca’s Mohammed V Airport, and the acquisition of an additional 200 aircraft for the Royal Air Maroc fleet.

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EVs, China, and the Future of Morocco’s Automotive Industry

Morocco’s competitive automotive industry faces a new challenge in the form of EVs. While regional competitors like Türkiye (home to EV producer Togg) race to dominate regional markets, Morocco has not been caught by surprise. Morocco’s investment attractiveness is best demonstrated through burgeoning interest from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers.

In 2024, Gotion High-Tech, a global leader in EV battery production, announced plans to invest up to $6 billion in Moroccan lithium battery and cathode facilities, which positions Morocco as a critical node in global EV supply chains. Morocco is also receiving further investment from long-time investors and partners. In 2023, Stellantis commenced EV production at its Kenitra plant, becoming the first in the country to do so.

Morocco is also attempting to capitalise on its untapped iron and lithium reserves, both critical to battery production, to reduce reliance on politically volatile sources like the Democratic Republic of Congo. By developing domestic refining capacity, Morocco aims to offer investors vertically integrated supply chains insulated from global mineral shocks.

Parallel to its EV push, Morocco is diversifying into complementary technologies with startups like NamX, which unveiled a hydrogen-powered SUV prototype under royal patronage in 2023. Meanwhile, Neo Motors, now producing 40,000 vehicles annually for corporate fleets, demonstrates the government’s demand-side interventions to nurture local champions. Though Morocco lacks a dedicated EV brand, its deepening expertise in battery components and partnerships with Chinese firms like BTR New Material Group, who are planning a $300 million cathode plant in the kingdom, suggest latent potential for indigenous EV production, possibly through Neo Motors.

Looking ahead, Morocco’s ability to convert mineral wealth and FDI inflows into a cohesive industrial policy will determine the success of its automotive industry. By anchoring itself as a bridge between Chinese battery giants, European automakers, and African markets, the kingdom aims to replicate its combustion-engine success with EVs. However, challenges persist: EV production’s lower mechanical complexity lowers entry barriers for rivals, while Morocco’s nascent hydrogen ecosystem remains years behind European leaders.

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Going Where the Wind Blows

Morocco has successfully executed a strategic, patient industrial policy to create an automotive manufacturing industry from scratch. By prioritising structural advantages and sound policy like investment into critical infrastructure, the development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), political stability, and investor-friendly reforms, the kingdom is transcending its role as a low-cost labour hub to become a high-value export platform. Anchored by megaprojects like Tanger Med, the Mediterranean and Africa’s largest port, and bolstered by partnerships with firms like Renault and Stellantis, Morocco now rivals emerging manufacturing powerhouses such as Vietnam and Mexico in global supply chain integration.

The government hopes that industrial development can address deep-rooted socio-economic challenges. Youth unemployment, exacerbated by an education system ill-suited for industrial needs, is being tackled through vocational reforms like the Cité des Métiers initiative, which aligns skills with market demands by emphasising a technical education. The growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), supported by programs such as Banque de Projet, is building a complex ecosystem of suppliers aiming to diversify the economy into aerospace and advanced manufacturing. The country is learning the right lessons from development case studies like the East Asian ‘tiger economies’, demonstrating a curious awareness with regards to state capacity’s importance to successful execution, and creating horizontal and vertical integration within the automotive industry’s value chain, and beyond to other industrial sectors like aerospace.

Morocco’s ambitions face numerous challenges in an increasingly uncertain global economic environment. It must also sustain growth by ascending the value chain through further investment into R&D and domestic EV production, while navigating EU’s use of financial tools and sanctions to stymy Morocco’s economic growth, such as their scrutiny over SEZ subsidies.

If Morocco can continue to act as a preferred strategic partner for international business and leverage its geographic location and unique trade access to 2 billion consumers and mineral resources like lithium, Morocco could evolve from an automotive assembler to an innovation hub in its own right, provided it maintains the agility that propelled its rise. In a multipolar era, Morocco’s automotive industry development is a case study for how to leverage geopolitics, infrastructure, and policy foresight to industrialise on a nation’s own terms.

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Sweet Treats, Sour Politics

In late 2024, “Dubai chocolate”, a Middle Eastern chocolate brand founded in Dubai, became a global trend via TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform. Dubai chocolates’ diabetic portion sizes, exotic packaging, and social media campaigns promote the aspiration of abundant consumption that has become a hallmark of the newly-monied but precariously placed middle classes produced by economic globalisation in the “global south”. Yet Dubai chocolate’s popularity was not restricted to Dubai alone, the Arab Gulf, or even the global south; in Europe, queues formed to get a taste of the product, and furore ensued over what has been deemed as a ‘gluttonous assault on the more refined European palate.’

In Switzerland, Dubai chocolate became the subject of national ire. The Swiss chocolate industry, boasting centuries of excellence and iconic companies such as Lindt, Toblerone and Cailler, has long dominated the world market. Provoked by what was viewed as unprecedented competition to what was otherwise a safe Swiss speciality, Switzerland has responded to Dubai chocolate with a degree of protectionism. Swiss distributors have voluntarily restricted access to Dubai chocolate by rationing stocks and creating long queues at points of sale. A scientific study was commissioned, concluding alleged hygiene shortcomings in certain production chains and harmful health effects in the absence of clear standards, leading to supermarket chains like Spar, in Switzerland, withdrawing Dubai chocolate from their shelves. The Swiss press launched a media offensive, describing Dubai chocolate as “stupid” and “in bad taste,” even claiming that consumers of this chocolate had “the palate of a COVID-infected Doberman.” Some Swiss editors went as far as claiming that this was a deliberate soft-power operation by the UAE. Where some saw competition, others saw opportunity. The famed Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt decided to ride the viral coattails of Dubai chocolate and launched a similarly inspired range of products, initially intended for the German market, then quickly extended to Switzerland and the rest of Europe.

What could otherwise be seen as a quirk of the times is merely the latest salvo in an increasingly consequential competition for trade, diplomacy, and cultural soft power between Switzerland and the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar. For decades, Switzerland has leveraged its official stance of political neutrality, privacy laws, and financial acumen to become the preferred global centre for cross-border wealth management and diplomacy.

As the Gulf states reaped the windfall from their newfound energy resources in the 20th century, Switzerland was one of the main beneficiaries, with its private banks and wealth-management activities attracting capital from the Gulf, whose states have long been content as mere clients of Switzerland’s services. However, the rise of a new generation of rulers in the Gulf states, driven by the desire to diversify their economies beyond hydrocarbon rents, have identified and leapt on an opportunity to reverse this relationship.

Buoyed by huge capital war chests from their energy resources, and the reversion to the historical mean of the locus of global trade and geopolitics from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, the Gulf states are displacing Switzerland as a centre for trade and diplomacy. They have created their own financial centres in cities like Dubai, Riyadh, and Bahrain, whose institutions now directly compete with Swiss banks in asset management, the structuring of alternative investments, and the financing of international projects. The Gulf states have done so by building competitive regulatory frameworks and tax regimes for business and investment, are investing in advanced technologies and infrastructure, and are positioning themselves as neutral diplomatic intermediaries in global diplomacy.

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The War for Wealth Management

Switzerland has enjoyed an unrivalled reputation in the world of finance for centuries, with a robust banking sector, favourable taxation and exceptional wealth-management expertise. Swiss cities like Geneva, Zurich and Zug are global centres of finance that symbolise discretion, security and know-how, attracting capital from around the globe. Yet several recent events have undermined this model, opening the door to competition from the Gulf states.

The first blow to Switzerland came with the end of banking secrecy. Under pressure from the United States, which in 2014 enacted FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), and then from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Switzerland was forced to accept the automatic exchange of fiscal information. Swiss banks, traditionally guarantors of their clients’ anonymity, found themselves obliged to disclose the identities of foreign account holders. While this reform was a boon for the fight against tax evasion, it nonetheless eroded one of the pillars of the Swiss financial centre’s appeal: secrecy.

Meanwhile, the Gulf financial centres protected themselves from the same obligations. Through intensive lobbying of American and European authorities in Washington and Brussels, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha secured exemptions that allow them to maintain highly advantageous tax and confidentiality regimes. Dubai, in particular, has established itself as a prime destination for the ultra-wealthy seeking discretion and returns, capturing an ever-larger share of the capital flows long directed to Switzerland.

The Credit Suisse crisis, one of the main pillars of Swiss finance, was a significant shift in the competitive landscape for global finance. Since 2018, the Saudi National Bank (SNB), a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, has held a significant stake in Credit Suisse. When the share price plunged severely in 2023, SNB wanted to increase its holding to 40% to support the bank. Swiss regulators, fearing excessive interference by a foreign actor and keen to preserve national financial sovereignty, vehemently opposed the move, citing regulatory concerns.

The counter-strike was swift. In a sensational statement, SNB’s CEO, Ammar Al-Khudairy, announced that he would not inject further capital nor intervene to bail out Credit Suisse, citing “regulatory reasons.” This announcement triggered market panic: the stock price collapsed, sending investor confidence into a negative spiral. Confronted with the risk of a systemic banking collapse that could have destabilised the entire Swiss financial system, the authorities urgently orchestrated the merger of Credit Suisse with UBS, the other Swiss banking giant. This emergency takeover marked a turning point: to protect its model, Switzerland had to sacrifice a historic institution. In this crisis, Gulf banks like SNB demonstrated their newfound status as formidable challengers capable of imperilling Europe’s century-old institutions of finance.

Gulf cities now boast spectacular expansion rates and incoming capital flows: Dubai has multiplied its assets under management by capitalising on the rise of investments and the relocation of wealthy families. Middle Eastern families will also undergo a generational wealth transfer of approximately $1 trillion by 2030. Aware of this opportunity, private banks have launched the development of innovative fintech platforms: robo-advisors, digital wealth-tracking portals, asset-tokenisation solutions and app-based managed portfolios. This has prompted major Swiss banks like Lombard Odier, Pictet and Julius Baer to strengthen their presence in the region by opening new offices and hiring on-site specialist advisers. While headcount in Switzerland is slowing and undergoing restructuring, its Gulf branches are in the midst of a recruitment drive.

The Gulf states have made fintech a major pillar of their national economic diversification strategy. In the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, governments have enacted laws and set up dedicated regulatory regimes to lure startups, investors and talent. Cities like Dubai aspire to become a premier financial and entrepreneurial hub, rivalling London and New York. It seems to be working. Fintech entrepreneurs and investors, especially in digital assets, like Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, obtained Emirati nationality and moved part of his operations to Dubai to benefit from a favourable legal and fiscal framework. Meanwhile, the founder of Bitcoin Suisse is considering relocating his entire company’s activities to Abu Dhabi to take advantage of the region’s regulatory climate and available capital pool.

The Gulf has transformed from exporters of capital via sovereign wealth funds into investment destinations and now attracts massive flows. Abu Dhabi has become a preferred destination for hedge funds, hosting 140 funds at the Abu Dhabi Global Market and 75 at the Dubai International Financial Centre, whereas Switzerland counted roughly 200 as late as 2016. This month, Goldman Sachs convened an ultra-exclusive gathering of just 100 invitees in Abu Dhabi; among them Ken Griffin of Citadel, Paul Singer of Elliott Management, Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace and former CIA Director General David Petraeus, now a partner at KKR. Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg, “In the case of the UAE, they remain the preferred location for international business to headquarter and the place where people find most attractive to live in the region.”

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The Competition for Commodities and International Trade

The fiercest competition between Switzerland and the Gulf states is playing out in the arena of international trade, where each seeks to become the indispensable hub for commodity flows. Geneva, renowned for centuries as the trading capital, hosts a complete ecosystem: banks specialising in trade finance (UBS, Crédit Suisse, Pictet), leading logistics providers (MSC), a stable regulatory framework and advantageous taxation. Zug has also established itself as a tax haven for hedge funds, offering discretion, flexibility and low tax rates.

Far from the shores of Lake Geneva, the Gulf states have launched a genuine financial offensive as part of their strategy for food and energy sovereignty, and Swiss institutions are a key target. In 2021, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund (ADQ) took a 45% stake in the Dutch–Swiss Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the giants of agricultural trading, injecting several billion dollars to consolidate its position in the global grains and oilseeds markets. Meanwhile, Qatar, through its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), now holds 9% of Glencore, the world leader in the trading of ores, oil and metals. These strategic stakes give the Gulf states direct leverage to influence prices and secure their supplies amid increased volatility.

Among all the Gulf states and cities, Dubai has done the most to capitalise on its geographic position at the nexus of the African, European and Asian continents, to capture capital flows between all three continents. Dubai has also established itself as a stronghold of commodity trading. The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), a free zone launched in 2002, now attracts over 20,000 trading companies, compared to Switzerland, which hosts only 900 companies in this sector. Full exemption from income tax, absence of customs duties and ultra-rapid company-formation procedures explain the massive exodus of traders originally based in London or Geneva. In 2023, during a visit to Switzerland, the President of DMCC announced that over the past two years, Swiss company registrations with DMCC have surged by 30%, bringing the total to 400 Swiss firms operating within Dubai’s free zone.

In the gold market, Switzerland remains the world’s leading refiner: nearly 30% of global production passes through its refineries each year, with historic players such as PAMP, Valcambi and Metalor. But the UAE is no longer content to act merely as an intermediary: they are investing in their own refineries. Kaloti, one of the largest Emirati refiners, exports most of its production to Switzerland. In 2020, a report by the NGO Swissaid denounced the dubious origin of certain gold sources, pointing to gold mined in conflict zones in Sudan. Valcambi, accused of merely relaying these volumes, faced pressure from the Swiss Association of Precious Metals Manufacturers and Traders to suspend all Emirati imports. Rather than comply, the Ticino-based company withdrew from the association in 2023, preferring to defend itself in court. Faced with the controversy, Abu Dhabi authorities ultimately decided to shut several non-compliant refineries and strengthen export controls, hoping to cleanse their image and sustain their strategy of industrialising the gold sector.

The rivalry also extends to the maritime domain. DP World, the Dubai-based maritime logistics company, now operates over 60 ports and terminals worldwide, from Rotterdam to Melbourne. This Emirati giant is a pillar of the global logistics chain, thanks to state-of-the-art terminals and vertical integration of handling services that include end-to-end logistics and supply-chain services like cargo handling, freight-forwarding, contract logistics and port & terminal operations, across its global network. It also provides marine services, economic free-zone management and digital trade-solution platforms to streamline international trade flows

In response, Switzerland has increasingly relied on the world leader in maritime transport, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), owned by the Aponte family and headquartered in Geneva. MSC, while a client and partner of DP World in container shipping, also competes directly via its Terminal Investment Limited (TIL Group) subsidiary, and TIL and DP World are locked in a fierce battle for port and terminal concessions and management, particularly across Africa. In partnership with BlackRock, MSC finalised a $23 billion mega-acquisition of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison’s port assets. Beyond the Panama Canal, MSC will take over the management of more than 40 ports, including twelve in the Middle East: Sohar (Oman), handling 80% of national cargo, Basra (Iraq), Alexandria and El Dekheila (Egypt), Jazan (Saudi Arabia), as well as Ajman and Ras al Khaimah (UAE). This operation aims to redirect one-fifth of global maritime traffic to MSC terminals, depriving DP World of a significant share of its business volume.

The battle for international trade reflects a major geopolitical shift in which the centre of the global economy is gradually moving from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. Long regarded as the “safe place” at the heart of Europe for capital, this shift is displacing Switzerland’s traditional role as it is no longer at the heart of world events. With over 3 billion people living along the Istanbul–Jakarta axis (excluding China), this swathe of Asia represents a rapidly expanding market. It is in this context that Dubai has risen to become the region’s premier financial centre in MEASA region (Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia), thanks to its hub, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

With greater financial firepower and burgeoning influence over trade flows, the Gulf states are also interested in leveraging their geopolitical position and the shifting of the global economy to centre themselves as diplomatic intermediaries.

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Davos Moves to the Desert

Switzerland, long perceived as a neutral state and a leading mediator in diplomatic affairs, also hosts the headquarters of numerous international organisations and enjoys an image as a country that fosters global dialogue. However, in recent years, its role as arbitrator and diplomatic influencer has yielded ground to the Gulf states, which are multiplying mediation initiatives and strengthening their soft power on the international stage.

Where the Gulf states market themselves as neutral diplomatic intermediaries in geopolitics, Switzerland’s status as a neutral nation, one maintained for centuries as a pillar of its statecraft, has become compromised. When Bern imposed, in alignment with the European Union, a series of sanctions on Russia, Dubai saw operators flock to continue trading Russian oil, gas and gold. The city-state quickly became the preferred platform for these transactions, thanks to a flexible interpretation of international regulations and minimal checks on cargo origins. This situation boosted its attractiveness in the hydrocarbon and precious-metals trade, intensifying competition with Western financial centres. Russian businesspeople and high-net-worth individuals have also found an attractive refuge there: a mere real-estate investment now grants permanent residency, making it easier for Russians to navigate global sanctions. The UAE’s proactive policymaking means that, unlike traditional players like Switzerland, it can swiftly adjust its economic levers and engage in geopolitics to capture international capital flows.

In 2023, Switzerland hoped to play a major role in resolving political tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yet it was ultimately China, with discreet support from another Gulf state, the Sultanate of Oman, that reconciled the two rivals. Likewise, in 2022, while the conflict between Ukraine and Russia commanded global attention, Switzerland found itself sidelined: Kyiv and Moscow preferred Turkiye’s mediation, a country seen as more credible intermediaries than the European Union or Switzerland.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has demonstrated active and sometimes surprising diplomacy. In 2024 and 2025, it served as a key interlocutor between the United States and Russia, attempting to defuse tensions over crucial dossiers, and also became involved in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Additionally, Riyadh organised a peace summit for Sudan and is preparing, in June 2025, to host an international conference on peace in Gaza and to build support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. This diplomatic offensive aims to cultivate the image of Saudi Arabia as a power capable of driving concrete solutions–and more importantly, becoming a power broker in their own right.

Oman continues its long-standing mediation efforts, notably on the Iranian nuclear issue, where it acts as a trusted intermediary between Tehran and Washington. Qatar, meanwhile, has established itself as one of the most versatile actors: it facilitated talks between the Taliban and the United States, coordinated meetings between Ukraine and Russia, played a central role in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and even helped ease tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On the front of economic diplomacy, competition is also intensifying. Switzerland hosts the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (more commonly known as the Davos Forum), where each year some 2,000 select decision-makers convene to debate major global issues, forge connections and seal deals. However, since 2017, Saudi Arabia has been organising its own forum in Riyadh called the “Future Investment Initiative” (FII), although more commonly dubbed, and contested by the WEF, “the Davos of the Desert.” The FII brings together over 7,000 participants from East and West and has established itself as an alternative platform for economic diplomacy. To ensure the success of the FII, Saudi Arabia recruited Richard Attias, a Moroccan businessman and former communications and organisation architect for the WEF for 14 years. Under his management, Attias has transformed the FII into the new must-attend event for heads of state, investors, and business leaders.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the only competitor. Since 2021, Qatar, in strategic partnership with Bloomberg, has also launched the Qatar Economic Forum, which brings together each year more than 1,000 political leaders, business executives and investors to discuss major economic trends, geopolitical challenges and technological innovations. The collaboration with Bloomberg has given Qatar a competitive edge in creating both distribution and exclusivity.

Through this approach, the Gulf states intend not only to remodel the architecture of international mediation but also to shift the centre of gravity of economic and diplomatic power away from Western capitals, and particularly away from Switzerland.

From Davos and Dubai: The World Order Shifts

Switzerland is asleep at the helm as it haemorrhages its economic and diplomatic influence, built up over centuries of neutrality, tradecraft, and discretion, to the Gulf states. Cities like Doha, Dubai, and Riyadh are increasingly becoming the go-to destinations for investors, businessmen, and diplomats.

For now, Switzerland remains a premier destination for services like wealth management and commodities trading, and post-war diplomatic and financial institutions maintain a strong presence in cities like Geneva, Zurich, and Bern. However, these cities, once central to the creation and maintenance of the post-war order and its institutions, risk becoming relics of the past.

Switzerland’s success was partly due to its ability to arbitrage Europe’s geopolitical centrality over the past few centuries. Both Europe and Switzerland continue to rest on their laurels as the global economy and geopolitical balance of power shift from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, and are shaped by powers closer to that region.

For the first time in centuries, nations in the Middle East are influencing events in Europe, instead of the other way around. The Gulf states have proven to be strategically agile and have positioned themselves well to take advantage of this shift as havens for finance, facilitators of international trade in commodities, and intermediaries in diplomacy. Unless Switzerland takes emergency measures to reform its laws and institutions to better suit a new age, the trend will continue until countries like the Gulf states firmly claim its legacy.

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Between Washington and Beijing

Ministers, policymakers, and businessmen from around the world have descended on Washington, D.C. for the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) and World Bank’s (WB) annual meetings. In attendance for the first time are ministers from the new Syrian government, who also hope to establish the first high-level contacts with the U.S. government since the fall of the Assad regime.

Foreign Minister Asad Al-Shaybani has headed to New York for meetings with U.S. officials and the United Nations (UN), while Finance Minister Mohammed Yusr Barniyeh and Central Bank Governor Abdul Qader Husriyeh are in Washington, where they hope to build support from international institutions for Syria’s reconstruction. On the Syrian delegation’s agenda are lobbying for the removal of crushing western (primarily U.S.) sanctions on Syria, which will inhibit any serious reconstruction effort, and seeking aid from the UN, IMF, and WB in the form of grants, if not loans of some kind, to finance this reconstruction.

The Syrian government’s position is unenviable, simultaneously having to rebuild the country from scratch and deliver on hopes for freedom, prosperity, and order, and also not being important enough, but just important enough, for the U.S. to take its time–time Syria does not have–to deliberate over the status of crushing sanctions on the country. As far as the U.S. is concerned, they have bigger problems, as President Donald Trump's new trade war with China for global economic hegemony has gone somewhat awry.

Yet with these challenges are also opportunities for Syria to position itself and strategically arbitrage the emerging multipolar system and build its economy anew without compromising the country’s sovereignty. In Syria itself, there are competing visions for how exactly to do this. The Syrian government’s declared openness to integrating into the global economy has caused excitement and consternation. Foreign Minister Al-Shaybani’s interview with Tony Blair at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in late January was the government’s first formal attempt at presenting its vision for Syria’s reintegration into the global economy. Naturally, there are fears that the imposition of a ‘neoliberal prescription’ by western powers and institutions like the IMF and WB could see Syria’s economy (and sovereignty) sold off to foreign investors.

There is also a fear that without integration into global supply chains, Syria may relapse into the hermetic state socialism that has defined the post-war Arab world’s banana republics. Under the fist of the Assad dynasty, Syria was a little less closed off than North Korea. The Assad dynasty turned Syria into a fiefdom for extraction by themselves and a small group of businessmen loyal to them. What was touted as state socialism to develop Syria’s economy instead became one of the world’s most notorious mafia narco-states. Indeed, one of the chief fears for Syria’s economy is the return of the rent-seeking elites that profited immensely under the Assad regime, and are some of the few domestic players with the capital and connections to reap the rewards of economic liberation in Syria.

“The rentier elite can exist as a separate class to the holders of political office or there can be a degree of overlap between the two. In the case of Syria, the overlap has been enormous. The Assad family were chiefs of the country’s rentier elite class. Most famously, when at the height of his powers in the early 2000s, Rami Makhlouf, Bashar’s cousin, was reported to control over 60% of Syria’s economy, functioning effectively as the commercial arm of the regime. After looking out for themselves, the regime dispensed patronage to their loyal clients in the country’s business elites. Ambitious businessmen seeking to transform modest wealth into a substantial fortune, or seeking to preserve and expand their pre-existing fortune, jostled for favours at the court of the Assad family, who held the keys to the nation’s wealth and doled it out to protegees in exchange for political loyalty.”

Sheer practicality demands that Syria pursues any avenue it possibly can to see sanctions removed and money become available to invest in the Syrian economy’s reconstruction. Still, short-term relief like UN grants and IMF loans threatens to barter for Syria’s sovereignty and a truly productive economy in the long term. The biggest threat this poses is that the neoliberal prescription often hollows out state capacity instead of developing it, assuming that state capacity comes at the expense of economic dynamism. This is entirely wrong, as we will see later.

In any case, the Syrian government is not flying blind. There is cognisance of the fact that Syria’s sovereignty depends on its economy, and that Syria’s integration into regional and global supply chains does not mean a fire sale on its national resources and assets. Consider the government’s position on trade talks with Turkiye seeks larger trade and economic integration between the two countries while also ensuring Syria’s remaining industries are not wiped out by Turkish competition. The government has also made recent overtures to the South Korean government, with Foreign Minister Al-Shaybani personally driving the South Korean envoy through the streets of Damascus. Qutaiba Badawi, head of Syria’s General Authority for Land and Maritime Ports, met with the Chinese company AOJ Technology to discuss infrastructure investment and cooperation. Should the government successfully restore stability in Syria, it may not need western capital, but could strategically position the country as a necessary node in China’s Eurasian trade highway.

At the turn of the world order as we have known it in our lifetimes, Syria need not impose on itself a punishing neoliberal prescription that forces a relapse into patrimonialist “market economies” dominated by rent-seeking oligarchs, or the bog-standard hermetic state socialism of the Arab republics. Syria should look east, where successful practices in public administration and economic development have made a handful of countries in East Asia the only development success stories outside of Europe and North America. And they achieved this by eschewing entirely the prescribed models for development made by western institutions like the IMF and WB.

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State Capitalism with Syrian Characteristics

At the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1982, then-Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping heralded China’s market reforms as a new era of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’. This phrase seems mutually contradictory, and at the time, was meant to ideologically smooth over potential conflicts between CCP’s political communism and a new era of capitalist enterprise in China. But it seems to have worked. Over the past four decades, China has pioneered a model whereby sandboxed markets have been used as feedback mechanisms for improving state capacity, rather than the state existing for the sake of the market, or the market existing for its own sake entirely. China is now the world’s premier industrial and manufacturing power, something the west, and particularly the U.S., is only just starting to internalise–and react to, quite ineffectively.

Yet Xiaoping did not invent ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ ex nihilo. Instead, he drew on a genealogy of ideas or what we might call a tradition of development called state capitalism from neighbours like Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, who themselves adopted this tradition from the west. Xiaoping crafted this model into one fit for China’s needs and purposes. It is hard to imagine today, but with the possible exception of Britain, the origins of western prosperity lie not in free market paradigms, but in the expansion of state capacity, which could also effectively protect and nurture native strategic industries for global competition. Thinkers and statesmen like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay implemented a state capitalist model of development to nurture strategic industry in the U.S. Germany’s post-war equivalent of state capitalism was Ordoliberalismus, which deserves credit for the Wirtschaftswunder economic miracle. Ordoliberalismus itself was derived from the long German tradition of state capitalism instituted by Otto Von Bismarck, Chancellor and arguably the true founder of the German Empire in 1871.

State capitalism may be erroneously referred to as mere protectionism or reduced to import-substitution, yet the countries that have successfully developed in the industrial age have relied on manufacturing and exports to do so, not merely internal production and consumption. This is the main difference between models of ‘state capitalism’ that have failed and models that have succeeded. Import substitution is not sufficient. A country must learn to sell its goods and services, not just produce them.

Another key difference is that countries with successful models of state capitalism draw a line between ‘strategic capital’ and financial capital. The former emphasises the importance of non-monetary returns on otherwise private economic activity and investment, such as building public goods like public transport infrastructure, telecommunications, or energy plants, i.e. strategic capital. The use of regulations, incentives, and even state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are tools by which the state nudges the market in a given direction towards these higher objectives, and prevents market forces from pursuing profit above all else, i.e. financial capital. Theories like comparative advantage have permanently trapped many countries in low states of development as financial capital dictates where and how wealth is created and consumed, which is nearly always in service of the mere pursuit of profit. The state, as the highest and sovereign public actor, is the only force capable of curtailing market excess and directing its energy towards climbing the value chain.

What further distinguishes productive economies from extractive economies usually dominated by financial capital and oligarchies is the emphasis on cultivating ‘productive powers’, something that Vizier has previously explored in detail with regards to how Syria can build an equitable political economy:

Building an equitable, robust and dynamic Syrian political economy means incentivising productive economic activity. Productive economic activities are those relating to the process of production: marshalling of resources to create more valuable products, at least in exchange terms, than the total value of their inputs. It is the work of everyone from the designer, to the engineer, to the immediate makers of products, and the entire collection of ancillary services around production.

Still, there is a great deal of ambiguity around the slogan of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. But this is intended. It simultaneously means nothing and means what the Chinese state requires of it. As Xiaoping declared in 1962, two decades before his rise to the leadership of China, "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or yellow, as long as it catches mice.”

It is from the East Asian state’s successful and extremely pragmatic practices, combining state capacity and economic development through free enterprise, seemingly contradictory to orthodox economics, that the Syrian government should explore if it wants to build a model of political economy that secures Syria’s sovereignty and prosperity.

We could call it State Capitalism with Syrian Characteristics.

Rather than articulating a complete theory or model for Syria’s political economy, State Capitalism with Syrian Characteristics serves as a prompt to explore alternative models of economic development and resituate the role of the state in the economy away from the failed neoliberal paradigm of the past 50 years, or the prevailing alternative in the Arab world, hermetic state socialism.

However, we should be modest. There is no scenario in which Syria adopts an industrial strategy like that of East Asia, or becomes an industrialised country on its own. Syria’s path to development will rely on its unique geographical position, resources (natural and human), and being at a particular time in the global economy where the ‘pole’ of the global economy is being reweighted all the way east. Turkiye’s industrial and military power is rising (even though this is not reflected in the economy now, it will be in a decade when Turkiye becomes a pre-eminent manufacturer in Europe, contrary to most predictions), and the Gulf Arab States are becoming the global centre for financial flows, shipping, energy, and commodities’ trading.

Syria has natural resources, but too small to matter: oil, gas, agricultural produce, and phosphates. It is geographically two rump territories merged into a single state: a third of Mesopotamia (with the other two thirds in Turkiye and Iraq), and a quarter of the Levant. Syria’s population is also small, numbering some 25-30 million people (the last estimate was made in 2011 at the onset of Syria’s revolution at around 22 million, and aligned with regional growth trends, is likely now nearer to 30 million people).

Syria’s development will thus rely on three things:

1. Economic integration that positions Syria to take advantage of regional and global trends, particularly situating Syria as a key economic node between Turkish industry and Gulf finance and energy.

2. Cultivating Syria’s talent to create a truly entrepreneurial and innovative economic model.

3. A hyper-competent public administration, possibly styled after Singapore’s, is responsible for captaining the ship of state and delivering on the two points above.

State Capitalism with Syrian Characteristics will be what emerges out of this mix.

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Practical Policy Proposals & Future Research for Syria’s Political Economy

At Vizier, we research the political economy of development, focusing on Syria and the MENA region. Below are some policy proposals borrowing from successful state practices from around the world, which will be explored and tailored to Syria’s needs in greater detail in future Vizier reports. These proposals emphasise the importance of building state capacity and directing that capacity to fostering economic development that secures Syria’s sovereignty and prosperity.

1. Land Reform: An absolute prerequisite to economic development, land reform must reduce inequality, more widely distribute land ownership, incentivise against rent-seeking behaviours, and improve productivity.

2. Credit for Production: Nationalise the banking system and establish credit quotas for strategic sectors in Syria, such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and beyond. These quotas must be continually revised to combat corruption and waste, and sectors and companies climbing the value chain are preferred over others.

3. Tariffs for Industrial Development: Protect strategic sectors from imports, while emphasising their internal competitiveness (i.e. mitigating against monopoly via regulation or favouritism), and incrementally reducing tariffs to expose strategic sectors to ‘stress-tests’ with foreign competition.

4. State Investment Funds: The state must become a proactive investor, identifying strategic sectors of the Syrian economy in which investment can create markets, provide jobs, and help Syria’s economy climb the value chain.

5. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): Strategic industries and assets must be owned by SOEs. Energy resources, transport infrastructure, and telecommunications. Diaspora Syrians and friends of Syria who have extensive experience with well-managed SOEs in the Arab Gulf, Singapore, and Norway should be brought in to advise on best practices.

6. Diaspora Participation: Encourage the global diaspora to return, invest, and do business in and with Syria. Additional support should be on the cultivation of productive powers in Syria, such as through knowledge and technology transfer. Additionally, creative financial instruments like ‘Diaspora bonds’ can allow diaspora to go beyond remittances and sporadic aid, to directly invest in the economy alongside the state.

7. National Works Program: A 5-year programme to get Syria working. Establish a central agency under the Ministry of Economy to distribute funding to private employers earmarked for hiring Syrian workers. Employers must work on particular programmes for national rejuvenation as set out by the government, focused on public infrastructure like public buildings (schools, government offices, etc), transport infrastructure (roads, railways, airports, etc), and beyond.

8. Technical Education: Learning from the failures of the mass university education model elsewhere, Syria’s new education system should be a vocational school system focused on technical education. Most students should finish schooling at 15-16 and enter the workforce. The state should further subsidise retraining for workers later on in life to adapt to technological change.

But who in Syria would be responsible for implementing this? Personnel is policy. Whether Syria intends to undertake land reform, financing public infrastructure projects, building SOEs, or creating new markets, all require state capacity. After all, the state is the sovereign ‘centre of command’ that issues directives as “suggestions” to which market forces orient economic activity. The state creates the space for these market forces to exist. The absence of this centre of command in the neoliberal prescription is the absence of sovereignty. And this state capacity comes in the form of an economic bureaucracy.

Syria needs to look at case studies of successful economic bureaucracies in the examples mentioned above to understand the importance of competent state-led development. An economic bureaucracy would strategically identify Syria’s current economic strengths and weaknesses, assess the global economy, and figure out how Syria can integrate into these supply chains. But the work does not stop there. This bureaucracy would then need to determine how to incentivise market forces to climb the value chain. This work is fundamentally about the design of Syria’s future political economy, ensuring a balanced approach to the needs of both capital and labour, and ensuring any trade-offs made from this relationship serve the purpose of national sovereignty and prosperity.

The dangers of Syria failing to implement a program of state capitalism are to either collapse back into hermetic state socialism or become a playground for multinational corporations and capital while the people languish and the youth flee the country, as has happened in other countries.

On Vizier’s agenda for the year ahead is to chart the contours of State Capitalism with Syrian Characteristics by following political and economic developments in Syria, fully fleshing out the policy proposals listed above to imagine a path of alternative development (such as land reform, building economic bureaucracies, successful state investment funds, etc), and analysing how Syria can position itself amid the seismic reconfiguration of global supply chains.

Further Reading

Articles:

• Developmentalisms

• Finance Capitalism vs Industrial Capitalism

• How the World Works

• How State Capacity Drives Industrialization

• Industrial Experiments

• Macro-Control: Making Sense of a Central Concept in Chinese Economic Policy

• The Long Slow Death of Global Development

Books:

• Forging Global Fordism, Stefan J. Link

• Kicking Away the Ladder, Hachoon Jang

• The National System of Political Economy, Friedrich List

• State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick

• The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzucato

• How Asia Works, Joe Studwell

• How to Make an Entrepreneurial State, Rainer Kattel, Wolfgang Drechsler, and Erkki karo

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من واشنطن إلى بكين

شدّ الكثير من الوزراء وصناع القرار ورجال الأعمال رحالهم من بلادهم المختلفة إلى العاصمة الأميركية واشنطن لحضور الاجتماعات السنوية لصندوق النقد الدولي والبنك الدولي. شهد هذا العام حضور وزراء من الحكومة السورية الجديدة، والتي يسعى مسؤولوها لفتح أول خط اتصال مباشر رفيع المستوى مع الحكومة الأميركية منذ سقوط نظام الأسد.

توجه وزير الخارجية أسعد الشيباني إلى نيويورك للالتقاء بمسؤولين في الإدارة الأميركية والأمم المتحدة، في حين توجه كل من وزير المالية محمد يسر البرنية ومحافظ البنك المركزي عبد القادر حصرية إلى واشنطن بحثاً عن دعم تقدّمه المؤسسات الدولية لإعادة إعمار سوريا. على رأس جدول أعمال الوفد السوري رفع العقوبات الغربية المضنية (والأميركية في المقام الأول) المفروضة على سوريا، والتي ستَحُول دون أي إعمار جادّ للبلاد. كما يسعى الوفد لتحصيل مساعدة الأمم المتحدة وصندوق النقد الدولي والبنك الدولي على شكل مِنَح، وإلا فقروض من نوع ما، لتمويل مهمة الإعمار الجسيمة التي تنتظر السوريين.

الحكومة السورية في وضع لا تُحسَد عليه: فهي مُلزَمة بإعادة بناء البلاد من الصفر، وبتحقيق وعود الحرية والازدهار، ناهيك بالأمان والانتظام، وفي غضون ذلك التعاطي مع بطء الولايات المتحدة - التي تأخذ وقتاً لا تمتلكه سوريا ببساطة - في ما يتعلق بالعقوبات المضنية. والواقع أن لدى الولايات المتحدة هموماً أكبر من الجمهورية العربية الصغيرة الخارجة من النزاع، ولا سيما خلال الحرب التجارية المشتعلة التي أطلقها الرئيس ترامب ضد الصين وبدأت نتائجها تنحرف بعيداً عن المخططات.

ورغم ذلك، تقف الحكومة على مفترق طرق يستلزم التأنّي والتمحيص الاستراتيجي. فبينما تبحث عن موقعها من النظام العالمي الجديد المتعدد الأقطاب، عليها أن تفكّر في اقتصادها الناشئ بشكل يحفظ سيادة البلاد على أتم وجه. ثمة رؤى متنافسة في سوريا نفسها حول تثمير الاقتصاد وحماية السيادة في الوقت نفسه. إعلان الحكومة السورية انفتاحها على الاقتصاد العالمي أطلق نوبة ذعر في أوساط كثيرة. كانت المقابلة التي أجراها وزير الخارجية مع طوني بلير في المنتدى الاقتصادي العالمي، أواخر كانون الثاني/يناير، أول مبادرة حكومية رسمية للحديث عن اندماج سوريا في الاقتصاد العالمي. ثمة طبعاً خوف من محاولة القوى والمؤسسات الغربية مثل صندوق النقد الدولي والبنك الدولي فرض «الوصفة النيوليبرالية»، أي بيع الاقتصاد السوري (والتخلي عن سيادته) لمصلحة المستثمرين الأجانب.

وفي المقابل، هناك خوف من عدم الاندماج الاقتصادي، أي البقاء خارج سلاسل التوريد العالمية. قد يعني ذلك انتكاسة البلاد إلى النموذج الاشتراكي المنغلق الذي بنى سلسلة من جمهوريات الموز في العالم العربي بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية. كان حكم آل الأسد قريباً في تشدُّده من الحكم الكوري الشمالي، فقد تحوّلت سوريا إلى مزرعة تُدرّ الربح على العائلة الحاكمة وحفنة من رجال الأعمال الموالين لها. اشتراكية الدولة التي سعت في تنمية الاقتصاد انتهت إلى تأسيس واحدة من أشهر عصابات المخدّرات في العالم. ولعل من أبرز المخاطر التي تكتنف الاقتصاد السوري اليوم عودة النخب الريعية التي استفادت كثيراً من انحطاط نظام الأسد، وهي نخب تمتلك الأموال والعلاقات اللازمة لحصد ثمار أي انفتاح اقتصادي متعجّل في سوريا.

«قد تكون النخبة الريعية طبقة اقتصادية منفصلة عن طبقة أصحاب المناصب السياسية، لكن قد يحدث تداخل بين الطبقتين. في سوريا كان التداخل هائلاً. فآل الأسد كانوا هم أنفسهم نخبة ريعية مستفيدة من القبضة الأمنية الحديدية، وكان أشهر رجالها رامي مخلوف، ابن خال بشار، والذي بلغت إمبراطوريته الاقتصادية ذروتها أوائل العقد الأول من القرن وسيطرت على أكثر من 60 بالمئة من الاقتصاد. كان مخلوف الذراع التجاري للحكم المتوحّش. ثم بعد تأمين مصالح نخبته، كان النظام يوزّع المنافع على محاسيبه المخلصين من النخب التجارية. وكان الكثير من رجال الأعمال الطموحين، الراغبين إما في تعظيم ثرواتهم بطرق غير مشروعة، أو ببساطة ضمان حمايتها وتوسعتها، يتقدّمون إلى بلاط آل الأسد لتقديم الخدمات، وكان البلاط يُمسك بثروة الشعب ويوزّعها على محظيّيه مقابل الولاء السياسي المطلق».

الحاجات العملية الملحّة في سوريا تستلزم البحث عن أي وسيلة لرفع العقوبات وإتاحة تدفّق الأموال لإعادة بناء الاقتصاد. ولكن يبقى أن المعونات قصيرة الأجل، مثل مِنَح الأمم المتحدة أو قروض صندوق النقد الدولي، خطيرة على سيادة سوريا واقتصادها الإنتاجي على المدى الطويل. والخطر الأكبر هو أن الوصفات النيوليبرالية ستفرّغ قدرات الدولة بدل أن تُمتّنها وتَشُدّ عَضُدَها، بل إن هذه الوصفات تفترض أن الدولة القوية تتناقض مع الاقتصاد الحيوي. هذا خطأ فادح، كما سنرى بعد قليل.

وفي كل حال، لا يبدو أن الحكومة السورية تسير على غير هدى. هناك إدراك لدى طاقمها الحاكم بأن السيادة تتطلّب اقتصاداً قوياً، وبأن اندماج سوريا في سلاسل التوريد الإقليمية والعالمية لا يعني بيع مواردها وأصولها الوطنية. نتذكّر هنا موقف دمشق خلال المحادثات التجارية مع تركيا مثلاً، والتي سعت من خلالها لرفع مستوى التكامل التجاري والاقتصادي بين البلدين دون تقويض ما تبقى من الصناعات السورية عبر منافسة غير عادلة مع البضائع التركية. كذلك تواصلت دمشق مع حكومة كوريا الجنوبية، حيث قاد وزير الخارجية سيارته بنفسه ليأخذ الوفد الكوري الجنوبي في جولة في شوارع دمشق. كما التقى قتيبة بدوي، رئيس الهيئة العامة للموانئ البرية والبحرية السورية، بمسؤولين من شركة أ-و-ج تكنولوجي الصينية لبحث آفاق الاستثمار والتعاون في البنية التحتية. وفي حال نجحت الحكومة السورية في تثبيت الاستقرار، فربما لن تحتاج لرأس مال غربي، وعندها قد تنجح في تحويل سوريا إلى محطة ضرورية على خطّ التجارة الأوروبية الآسيوية الذي تبنيه الصين.

في ظل النظام العالمي الذي بتنا نعرفه جيداً، لا تحتاج دمشق أية وصفة نيوليبرالية قاهرة مأخوذة من «عقيدة السوق» الشهيرة، والتي يبثّها كبار المتموّلين الدوليين الباحثين عن ريوع وأرباح مستعجلة. كذلك لا تحتاج إلى اشتراكية منغلقة على طريقة الجمهوريات العربية المتهلهلة. على دمشق أن تُلقي بأنظارها إلى الشرق، وأن تجالس دول شرق آسيا وتأخذ عنهم دروساً في الإدارة العامة والتنمية الاقتصادية، وهي الدول ذات النجاح التنموي المدوّي الوحيد من نوعه خارج أوروبا وأمريكا الشمالية. يمكن ردّ نجاح تلك الدول تحديداً إلى تجنّبها النماذج التنموية التي تعتمدها المؤسسات الغربية مثل صندوق النقد الدولي والبنك الدولي.

نموذج الدولة التاجرة

في المؤتمر الوطني الثاني عشر للحزب الشيوعي الصيني عام 1982، استعمل رئيس الوزراء الصيني آنذاك دنغ شياو بينغ عبارة «الاشتراكية بخصائص صينية» لترويج الإصلاحات الاقتصادية المزمعة. بدت العبارة ملتبسة، لكن الرجل كان يرمي إلى تهدئة الصراعات العقائدية المحتملة بين الشيوعية السياسية التي يتبنّاها الحزب الحاكم والمشاريع الرأسمالية القادمة التي كان يعتزم إطلاقها في البرّ الصيني. ويبدو أن التسوية نجحت. فعلى مدى الأربعين سنة الماضية، قادت الصين نموذجاً فريداً من اقتصاد السوق: عُزلت عدد من الأسواق وتحوّلت إلى مختبرات وأدوات يتعلّم منها الجهاز الحاكم، ما أدى إلى تحسين القدرات الإدارية للدولة، وكان ذلك بديلاً عن تسخير هذه القدرات في خدمة السوق أو بناء سوق كاملة تخدم نفسها بنفسها. أصبحت الصين الآن القوة التقنية والصناعية الأولى على مستوى العالم، وهو أمر بالكاد بدأت الدول الغربية - وخاصة الولايات المتحدة - في استيعابه والتفاعل معه بتخبّط.

لم يختلق شياو بينغ تعبير «الاشتراكية بخصائص صينية» من العدم. فقد كان لجوهر مشروعه آباء مؤسّسون، أو بالأحرى تقليد في التنمية اسمه «رأسمالية الدولة»، أخذته بكين من جيرانها سنغافورة وكوريا الجنوبية واليابان، الذين أخذوه بدورهم من الغرب نفسه. ما فعله شياو بينغ كان إعادة تصميم النموذج بما يناسب احتياجات الصين وغاياتها السياسية. قد تبدو الجمل التالية غريبة لمعظم متابعي الاقتصاد المعاصر، ولكن إذا طرحنا الاستثناء البريطاني جانباً، فإن جذر الازدهار الغربي ليس السوق الحرة، بل الدولة المتينة القادرة على حماية وتغذية الصناعات الاستراتيجية المحلية بما يؤهّلها للمنافسة العالمية. لم يكن فلاسفة ورجال الدولة الأميركية الأولى، مثل ألكسندر هاملتون وهنري كلاي، من دعاة السوق الحرة، بل كانوا رأسماليين دولتيين سعوا في تنمية بلادهم لتحصين صناعاتها الاستراتيجية. ومثلهم فعل «الأوردوليبراليون» الألمان الذين قفزوا ببلادهم وحققوا معجزتها الاقتصادية بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية. وكانت الأوردوليبرالية نفسها مستمدة من تقليد ألماني طويل لعبت فيه الدولة دور التاجر والصناعي الأكبر، وهو التقليد الذي بدأ مع أوتو فون بسمارك، المؤسس الفعلي للإمبراطورية الألمانية الموحّدة عام 1871.

من الشائع فهم رأسمالية الدولة بوصفها نزعة حمائية تعزل الإنتاج المحلي عن المنافسة، أو بوصفها نموذج استبدال الواردات فحسب. ولكن الدول التي تفوّقت في الزمن الصناعي الحالي اعتمدت على الكثير من التصنيع والتصدير، وليس فقط الإنتاج والاستهلاك الداخليَّين. هذا هو الفرق الأبرز بين الدولة التاجرة الناجحة والفاشلة: استبدال الواردات لا يكفي، وعلى الدولة أن تتعلّم كيف تبيع سلعها وخدماتها وليس فقط كيف تُنتجها.

الاختلاف البارز الآخر هو أن الدول التاجرة الناجحة تفرّق بين «رأس المال الاستراتيجي» و«رأس المال المالي». فالأول يعني العوائد غير النقدية على الاستثمار والنشاط الاقتصادي الخاص، ومنها بناء المنافع العمومية مثل البنية التحتية للنقل العام أو الاتصالات السلكية واللاسلكية أو محطات الطاقة: هذا كله رأس مال استراتيجي. وهكذا فإن اللوائح القانونية والحوافز التشغيلية، وحتى الشركات الحكومية، كلها أدوات تستعملها الدولة في السوق لتحقيق أهدافها العليا، وذلك لمنع القوى الفاعلة ضمن السوق من السعي الأعمى وراء الربح، أي: وراء رأس المال المالي. لقد تحوّلت عدة نظريات اقتصادية، مثل نظرية «الأفضلية النسبية»، إلى سجن لدول كثيرة ما تزال بطيئة النمو، وذلك لأن رأس المال المالي فيها هو الذي يحدّد مكان وكيفية إنشاء الثروة واستهلاكها، ورأس المال هذا بطبيعته يسعى وراء الربح. وحدها الدولة، بوصفها القوة العمومية السيادية، تستطيع التحكّم بشطحات السوق وتوجيه كامل طاقته نحو تسلّق السلّم العالمي واعتلاء سلسلة القيمة.

الميزة الأكبر للاقتصاد الإنتاجي التي تفرّقه عن الاقتصاد الاستخراجي - الذي يهيمن عليه رأس المال المالي وكبار الأثرياء - هو أن الأول يركّز على تنمية «القوى الإنتاجية»، وهو أمر تطرّقنا له في نشرة الوزير بالتفصيل لدى حديثنا عن بناء اقتصاد سياسي عادل في سوريا:

إن بناء اقتصاد سياسي سوري عادل وقوي وحيوي يتطلّب تحفيز الأنشطة الاقتصادية المنتجة، أي تلك المتعلقة بعملية الإنتاج: حشد الموارد لإنتاج مخرجات تكون أكثر قيمة - على الأقل من حيث التبادل - من إجمالي قيمة المدخلات. هذا يشمل جميع العاملين، من المصمّم إلى المهندس إلى الصنّاع المباشرين إلى سائر العاملين في الخدمات الإضافية المرافقة أو اللاحقة للإنتاج.

يبقى الالتباس حول شعار «الاشتراكية بخصائص صينية»، وهو التباس مقصود. هو لا يعني شيئاً ثابتاً، ولكنه يعني ما تحتاج الدولة الصينية منه. وكما أعلن شياو بينغ في عام 1962، قبل عقدين من صعوده إلى سدّة القيادة في الصين: «لا يهم إذا كانت القطة سوداء أو صفراء، المهم أنها تصطاد الفئران».

ثمة الكثير من أشكال التدبير السياسي والدهاء الاقتصادي التي مارستها دول شرق آسيا، الجامعة دوماً بين تنمية قدرات الدولة ودعم النهوض الاقتصادي من خلال المشاريع الحرة، وهذا الجمع يبدو متناقضاً مع نظريات الاقتصاد التقليدية. على الحكومة السورية استكشاف أشكال التدبير والدهاء تلك إذا كانت تبحث عن نموذج جديد للاقتصاد السياسي يؤمّن لسوريا السيادة والازدهار.

من هنا نقترح تسمية نموذج الرأسمالية ذات الخصائص السورية: الدولة التاجرة.

ليست غاية نموذج الدولة التاجرة التوصُّل إلى نظرية أو نموذج كامل للاقتصاد السياسي، بل تحفيز البحث عن نماذج بديلة للنهوض الاقتصادي وترسيخ دور الدولة في صنع الثروة الوطنية، وذلك بعيداً عن كل من النموذج النيوليبرالي المتعثّر طوال الخمسين سنة الماضية، والنموذج الاشتراكي المنغلق الذي ساد الدول العربية المتقدمة لعقود سابقة.

ولا بد هنا أن نكون متواضعين. ما من فرصة قريبة لإطلاق استراتيجية صناعية شبيهة بالاستراتيجيات التي رأيناها في شرق آسيا، ولا لتحوُّل سوريا إلى دولة صناعية قائمة بذاتها. سيعتمد مسار سوريا النهضوي على موقعها الجغرافي الخاص ومواردها الطبيعية والبشرية، وكذلك موقعها الزمني إذا صح التعبير: أنها تنطلق في لحظة خاصة في تاريخ الاقتصاد العالمي تنقلب فيها موازين المال وتنتقل مراكز القوة ببطء من قطبها الغربي إلى أقطاب شرقية عدة. ما تزال القوة الصناعية والعسكرية للجمهورية التركية تتنامى (قد لا تعكس مؤشرات الاقتصاد التركي ذلك الآن، لكن يمكن التنبؤ بصعود المارد الصناعي التركي في أوروبا خلال العشر سنوات القادمة، وبما يخالف جميع التوقعات). ومن جنوب سوريا، نجحت دول الخليج في لعب دور المركز العالمي للتدفقات المالية وتقنيات الطاقة والشحن وتجارة التجزئة.

تمتلك سوريا موارد طبيعية حقيقية، لكنها أقل من أن تعني شيئاً مهماً: النفط والغاز والزراعة والفوسفات. والواقع أن سوريا الحالية هي جغرافيتان مندمجتان في دولة واحدة: ربع بلاد الشام وثلث بلاد الرافدين (الثلثان الآخران موزّعان بين تركيا والعراق). كما أن عدد سكانها صغير أيضاً: حوالي 25-30 مليون نسمة (الإحصاء الأخير يعود إلى بداية الثورة السورية في 2011، وكان حوالي 22 مليون نسمة، وبحسب مؤشّرات النمو السكاني في الإقليم فإن الرقم الآن لا يتجاوز 30 مليون).

وباختصار، ستعتمد نهضة سوريا الاقتصادية ستعتمد على ثلاثة أشياء:

1. التكامل الاقتصادي الذي يعظّم استفادة سوريا من التوجّهات الإقليمية والعالمية، ولا سيما تحوّلها إلى عقدة مواصلات اقتصادية بين المصانع التركية والتمويل والطاقة الخليجيَّين.

2. تنمية المواهب السورية لتطوير نموذج اقتصادي ريادي ومبتكر حقاً.

3. الإدارة العامة الشديدة الكفاءة، ربما على غرار سنغافورة، وهي الإدارة التي ستتولى قيادة السفينة والتأكد من تحقّق النقطتين أعلاه.

الدولة التاجرة هي ما سينبثق عن هذا المزيج.

مقترحات سياسية وبحثية لاقتصاد سوريا السياسي

ندرس في نشرة الوزير مسائل الاقتصاد السياسي للتنمية، مركّزين على سوريا ومنطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا. ما يلي مقترحات سياساتية مستقاة من أنجح الممارسات حول العالم، وهي مقترحات سنتوسّع في طرحها وتكييفها مع احتياجات سوريا في تقاريرنا المستقبلية. جميع هذه المقترحات تنطلق من مبدأ بناء قدرات الدولة وتوجيه هذه القدرات لتعزيز النموّ الاقتصادي بما يؤمّن لسوريا السيادة والازدهار:

1. الإصلاح الزراعي: إصلاح الأراضي والتقنيات الزراعية شرط جوهري للتنمية الاقتصادية، ومن مهمات هذا الإصلاح الحد من التفاوت بين السكان، وتوزيع ملكية الأراضي على نطاق أوسع، وتثبيط السلوكيات الريعية الكسولة، ورفع إنتاجية الأرض والعاملين فيها.

2. الائتمان مقابل الإنتاج: تأميم النظام المصرفي وتحديد حصص ائتمانية للقطاعات الاستراتيجية في سوريا، مثل الزراعة والأدوية والإلكترونيات وغيرها. يجب مراجعة هذه الحصص باستمرار لمكافحة الفساد والهدر، مع تفضيل القطاعات والشركات القادرة على اعتلاء سلسلة القيمة.

3. التعرفات الجمركية للنهضة الصناعية: حماية القطاعات الاستراتيجية من الواردات المنافسة، بشرط التأكد من قدرتها التنافسية الداخلية (أي الحدّ من الاحتكار من خلال التشريعات وتفضيل الأنجح)، ثم خفض التعرفات الجمركية بشكل تدريجي لتعريض هذه القطاعات لـ«هزّات محسوبة» تختبر قدرتها على المنافسة الخارجية.

4. صناديق الاستثمار الحكومية: على الدولة أن تتحول إلى مستثمر نشيط، تحدد القطاعات الاستراتيجية التي يمكن للاستثمار أن يخلق فيها أسواقاً ويوفّر فرص عمل ويساعد الاقتصاد السوري على اعتلاء سلسلة القيمة.

5. الشركات المملوكة للدولة: يجب أن تكون الصناعات والأصول الاستراتيجية مملوكة لشركات مملوكة للدولة، بما يشمل موارد الطاقة والبنية التحتية للنقل والاتصالات. ويجب دعوة السوريين المغتربين وأصدقاء الشعب السوري من ذوي الاطلاع العميق على عمل الشركات الناجحة المملوكة لدول الخليج وسنغافورة والنرويج لتقديم المشورة والتوجيه.

6. إشراك أبناء الشتات: تشجيع المغتربين السوريين حول العالم على العودة والاستثمار وإطلاق أعمال تجارية في سوريا ومع السوريين. ينبغي توجيه الدعم لتنمية القوى الإنتاجية في سوريا، ولا سيما عبر نقل المعرفة والتكنولوجيا. كما يمكن للإبداع المصرفي والأدوات المالية المبتكرة، مثل «سندات الشتات»، أن تسمح للمغتربين بتجاوز التحويلات والمساعدات المبعثرة، وبالتالي الاستثمار بشكل مباشر في اقتصاد بلادهم جنباً إلى جنب مع الدولة.

7. برنامج التشغيل الوطني: وهو ورشة أشغال واسعة تستمر 5 سنوات، تشرف عليها وكالة مركزية تابعة لوزارة الاقتصاد وتوزّع الأموال على صنّاع فرص العمل في القطاع الخاص بهدف توظيف العمالة السورية على أكفأ وجه. على صنّاع الفرص أن يعملوا وفق برامج معينة تتعلق بالتجدّد الوطني العام على النحو الذي تحدّده الحكومة، مع التركيز على التشغيل في مجالات البنية التحتية العمومية مثل المباني العامة (المدارس والمكاتب الحكومية وما إلى ذلك) والبنية التحتية للنقل (الطرق والسكك الحديدية والمطارات وما إلى ذلك) وغيرها.

8. التعليم الفني: لا بد من الإفادة من إخفاقات نموذج التعليم الجامعي الجماهيري في أماكن أخرى. على نظام التعليم الجديد في سوريا تفعيل وتجهيز المدارس المهنية التي تركّز على تعليم الطلاب المهارات اللازمة، ثم منح هذه المدارس أولوية قصوى. وعلى معظم الطلاب إنهاء الدراسة في سن 15-16 عاماً من أجل الدخول في سوق العمل. وعلى الدولة دعم تدريب العمال في أوقات لاحقة من حياتهم المهنية لرفع كفاءاتهم وتحضيرهم للتغيرات التكنولوجية المتلاحقة.

لكن من المسؤول عن تنفيذ كل ذلك؟ الموارد البشرية هي منبع السياسات الأول. سواء كان العزم إجراء إصلاح زراعي، أو تمويل مشاريع بنية تحتية عمومية، أو بناء شركات مملوكة للدولة، أو إنشاء أسواق جديدة، كل ذلك يتطلب دولة متينة القدرات. فالدولة في النهاية هي «مركز القيادة» السيادي الذي تصدر عنه التوجيهات العليا بوصفها «اقتراحات» تتوجه نحوها قوى السوق وتُعدّل بموجبها نشاطها الاقتصادي. الدولة هي المساحة التي تسمح بوجود قوى السوق هذه. أما غياب أو تغييب مركز القيادة هذا، كما في الوصفة النيوليبرالية، فهذا سيعني النيل من سيادة الدولة على مواردها. والدولة المتينة القدرات تعني ببساطة وجود بيرقراطية اقتصادية.

من هنا تحتاج سوريا إلى دراسة البيرقراطيات الاقتصادية الناجحة، ولا سيما في الأمثلة المذكورة أعلاه، لفهم أهمية النهوض الاقتصادي التي تشرف عليه الدولة. وظيفة البيرقراطية الاقتصادية تحديد مواطن ضعف وقوة الاقتصاد على مستوى استراتيجي، وتقييم الاقتصاد العالمي، والبحث في سُبُل دمج سوريا في سلاسل التوريد. لكن ليس هذا فحسب: ستحتاج هذه البيرقراطية الاقتصادية أيضاً تحفيز قوى السوق على اعتلاء سلسلة القيمة، وإيجاد أفضل وأنجع الطرق لذلك. سيعتمد ذلك على تصميم الاقتصاد السياسي المستقبلي في سوريا، وعلى التوازن بين احتياجات المال واحتياجات العمالة، وعلى فرض منطق السيادة والازدهار الوطني على أية تسويات ومقايضات تضطر إليها الدولة.

إن عدم اعتماد نموذج الدولة التاجرة في سوريا سيقود إما إلى انتكاسة نحو الاشتراكية المنغلقة، أو إلى فتح السوق الداخلي لأثرياء العالم وأصحاب الشركات العملاقة المتعددة الجنسيات، وفي الحالتين سيتفشّى الفقر وسيفرّ الشباب على النحو المعروف في بلدان أخرى.

ستسعى نشرة الوزير خلال العام الحالي في رسم ملامح الدولة التاجرة، أي الرأسمالية ذات الخصائص السورية، من خلال متابعة التطورات السياسية والاقتصادية الحاصلة، وأخذ مقترحات السياسة المذكورة أعلاه (مثل الإصلاح الزراعي، والبيرقراطية الاقتصادية، وصناديق الاستثمار الحكومية، إلخ) وطرحها بتفصيل كامل وفق تصوُّر نهضوي بديل وشامل، ومناقشة موقع سوريا وفرصها في موضعة نفسها بالشكل الصحيح بينما تشهد سلاسل التوريد العالمية انقلابات من النوع الجيولوجي.

للمزيد (بالإنكليزية)

مقالات:

• تنمويات

• الرأسمالية المالية مقابل الرأسمالية الصناعية

• كيف يعمل العالم

• كيف تقود قدرات الدولة التصنيع

• التجارب الصناعية

• الرقابة الكلية: مفهوم مركزي في السياسة الاقتصادية الصينية

• الموت البطيء الطويل للتنمية الدولية

كتب:

• تزوير الفوردية العالمية، ستيفان جيه لينك

• ركل السلم بعيداً، هاتشون جانغ

• النظام الوطني للاقتصاد السياسي، قائمة فريدريش

• رأسمالية الدولة، جوشوا كورلانتزيك

• الدولة الريادية، ماريانا مازوكاتو

• كيف تعمل آسيا، جو ستودويل

• صنع دولة ريادة الأعمال، راينر كاتيل، وولفغانغ دريشسلر، وإيركي كارو

Paving The Road to Africa

On 19th February 2025, the Moroccan and Mauritanian governments announced an agreement to establish a new border crossing between their respective cities of Smara and Bir Moghrein, creating a strategic land route linking Mauritania’s mineral and hydrocarbon-rich interior to Moroccan ports on the Atlantic coast. The route is expected to improve logistics between the two countries, such as drastically reducing transport times for Mauritania’s iron ore by cutting the journey from a seven-day drive to Nouadhibou’s port down to just three days via the Bir Moghrein-Smara crossing to Morocco’s Laayoune port.

Until recently, Morocco was geographically isolated in northwest Africa, sharing land borders only with Algeria to the east and the vast, mostly ungoverned Sahara to the south. Persistent tensions with Algeria have led to repeated border closures, leaving Morocco with just one overland connection to the rest of Africa: south through the disputed Western Sahara region via Mauritania. Morocco considers Western Sahara an integral part of its territory and has administered most of the region since Spain’s withdrawal from its former colony in 1975.

The Polisario Front, an insurgent group claiming to represent the Sahrawi people native to Western Sahara, have long sought independence, and since 1975, Polisario has waged an intermittent war against Morocco, allegedly with varying degrees of military, financial, and diplomatic support from Algeria, Libya, Cuba, and Iran. International monitors estimate that this multi-decade war has resulted in 10,000-to-20,000 casualties among combatants and civilians.

As part of its counterinsurgency efforts, Morocco has constructed the Berm, a 2,700-kilometre-long "sand wall" manned by 100,000 soldiers stationed in a series of military outposts. This defensive line stretches from the Algerian border to the Atlantic, effectively serving as Morocco’s de facto southern boundary. The Berm creates a slight separation between Mauritania and Western Sahara (and thus Morocco), leaving a stretch of largely uninhabited territory known as No Man’s Land. Due to extensive minefields and the absence of permanent settlements, this area has historically prevented direct border access between Morocco and Mauritania.

This is changing. The Guerguerat border post, once a remote checkpoint between Mauritania and Morocco separated by No Man’s Land, is now being transformed into a fully operational international crossing with the necessary infrastructure. It has become a crucial node in Morocco’s trade network with sub-Saharan Africa, facilitating over $1 billion in annual exports, roughly 2% of Morocco’s total exports, primarily agricultural and industrial goods.

The Guerguerat and Smara-Bir Moghrein crossings represent more than logistical improvements. By establishing direct corridors with Mauritania and its resource-rich interior, abundant in iron, copper, and oil, to Moroccan Atlantic ports like Laayoune, this infrastructure will further integrate Mauritania into Morocco’s export-driven economy and enable access to the rest of Africa to participate in this expanding economic zone. Given Morocco’s industrial ambitions, which demand substantial natural resources, this development marks a new phase in Rabat’s long-term geopolitical strategy to position itself as Africa’s primary economic gateway to the Atlantic, Europe, and beyond.

In doing so, Morocco hopes to establish itself as a regional hegemon that can outmanoeuvre its historical rival, Algeria, and replace waning French influence in West Africa. But Morocco faces stiff competition. As France’s influence wanes amid diplomatic setbacks, and Russia’s engagements in Mali and elsewhere face growing scrutiny over war crimes and other abuses, a power vacuum has emerged across West Africa.

New actors, including Turkiye, Iran, China, and the Gulf Arab States, are vying to fill the void. Even so, Morocco stands out as the most geographically proximate, politically stable, and economically coherent contender, with a thousand-year history of cultural and imperial dominance covering much of the region. Unlike external powers, Morocco is playing a long game, one it has been preparing for over two decades under King Mohammed VI (MVI), who ascended the Moroccan throne in 1999.

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The Makhzen: Morocco’s Tradition of State

Morocco’s ties in the region are rooted in its millennia-old role as a bridge for peoples, goods, and ideas travelling between West Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. For centuries, Berber traders and caravans operated as the lifeblood of trans-Saharan commerce, linking Moroccan cities like Sijilmasa and Marrakesh to West African hubs such as Timbuktu and Gao. Moroccan merchants exchanged textiles, ceramics, and weapons for gold, ivory, and salt, a trade that enriched Moroccan dynasties and financed monumental projects like the grand mosques of Fez and Meknes.

Trade also facilitated cultural and religious exchange. The spread of Islam across North Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries fostered permanent political, cultural, and commercial bonds that laid the groundwork for Morocco’s imperial identity. Scholars from Timbuktu travelled to Moroccan centres of learning like Al-Qarawiyin University in Fez, while Sufi orders such as the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya spread southward, embedding Moroccan interpretations of Islam into West African societies. To this day, Morocco retains cultural and religious soft power in the region, with the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, dominant in Morocco, remaining the primary madhhab across much of West Africa. Morocco also finances the construction and maintenance of mosques in countries like Senegal, Mali, and Niger, while training imams from these nations in Moroccan religious institutions.

All of this was facilitated by political powers centred in modern-day Morocco, which for centuries has been referred to, across various dynasties and forms, as the Makhzen, derived from the Arab word for ‘cabinet’ or ‘storehouse’. Indeed, Morocco is one of the few political entities in North and West Africa with a centuries-old tradition of state. The Idrisi dynasty, founded by Idris I in 757, unified Berber tribes and Arab settlers and institutionalised Morocco’s role as a regional power, a legacy later expanded by the Almoravids (11th–12th centuries), who extended Moroccan influence southward into West Africa and as far as the Ghana Empire. By the 16th century, the Sa’adi dynasty projected Moroccan power even farther, launching a military campaign in 1591 that toppled the Songhai Empire, then the dominant force in West Africa. The Sa’adi conquest of Timbuktu and Gao transformed these cities into Moroccan-administered pashaliks (provinces), securing control over trans-Saharan trade routes.

The current ‘Alawi dynasty, which has ruled Morocco since 1631, inherited this imperial mantle. Under Sultan Moulay Ismail (1672–1727), Morocco’s influence extended deep into the Sahara, with claims reaching as far south as Saint-Louis in present-day Senegal. These historical claims were later revived by Morocco’s nationalist Istiqlal movement in the mid-20th century, which rejected the legitimacy of Mauritania’s borders as a “colonial artifice” designed to fracture Morocco’s natural hinterland. Even after formal recognition of Mauritanian sovereignty in 1973, Morocco’s geopolitical imagination has never fully relinquished its vision of a sphere of influence stretching into West Africa.

Following independence from France in 1956, Morocco’s foreign policy initially pivoted toward pan-Arabism and “subaltern” solidarity, sidelining its historical ties to sub-Saharan Africa. This shift was exacerbated by the Western Sahara conflict, which isolated Morocco diplomatically after much of Africa recognised the Polisario Front’s Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Morocco’s withdrawal from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1984, in protest against the SADR’s admission, marked a low point in its African engagement.

This position changed under King MVI as Morocco repositioned itself as an “inheritor state” of the country’s various imperial dynasties, drawing legitimacy from its deep institutional continuity and historical influence over the Sahara and Sahel regions of West Africa. Morocco returned to the African Union in 2017, and has sought membership in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), lobbied for infrastructure investments like the Casablanca-Dakar highway, and positioned itself as a mediator in regional crises, from the 2012 Mali conflict to migration governance. These efforts reflect a long-term vision to revive Morocco’s historical role as a gateway between Africa and Europe, leveraging its political stability, banking sector, and industrial base to attract West African partners.

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Outsourcing the Françafrique

Morocco’s economic and diplomatic expansion into West Africa is not rivalrous towards France, but instead part of a process of France “outsourcing” the management of its Françafrique sphere of influence to Morocco. France’s attempt to maintain the post-colonial status quo in the region has resulted in diminishing returns over time, and Morocco has positioned itself to take advantage of the moment when France could no longer maintain that status quo and sought new partners to take over this process.

Since ascending to the throne in 1999, MVI has systematically cultivated Morocco’s ties with West African nations through a combination of high-level diplomacy and strategic economic investments that would eventually position Morocco to replace French influence in West Africa. His frequent visits to Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Côte d’Ivoire have yielded numerous cooperation agreements spanning trade, security, and infrastructure development. These partnerships form the backbone of Morocco’s ambitious vision to position itself as the primary economic and logistical conduit between Africa and Europe.

At the heart of this strategy lies the Al Mada investment fund, the royal family’s financial arm that functions as Morocco’s de facto sovereign wealth fund. Through Al Mada, Moroccan businesses have aggressively expanded into West African markets, particularly in banking, insurance, telecommunications, and construction, seeking to replace French influence across the region.

Leading Moroccan financial institutions such as Attijariwafa Bank and BMCE Bank have established a robust presence in West Africa, a trend accelerated by the withdrawal of French institutions like Société Générale. Attijariwafa, Morocco’s largest financial entity, is poised to acquire Société Générale subsidiaries in Mauritania, Togo, and Benin. This expansion not only challenges France’s historical economic dominance but also reflects Morocco’s broader ambition to become the continent’s financial gateway.

Similarly, in telecommunications, Morocco’s Itissalat Al-Maghrib (Maroc Telecom) operates in 11 countries, primarily in West Africa, managing subsidiaries such as Mauritel in Mauritania, Onatel in Burkina Faso, and Sotelma in Mali. Alongside France’s Orange, Morocco’s Maroc Telecom is a rising star that ranks among Africa’s largest telecom operators.

Morocco is also advancing its technological ambitions through the Panafsat initiative, a satellite constellation project designed to provide internet access to 26 African countries, directly competing with Elon Musk’s Starlink. The country is capitalising on shifting regional dynamics, particularly as French firms reduce their footprint. Moroccan companies like Marsa Maroc, the operator of Tanger-Med (the world’s 17th-largest port), have stepped in to manage logistics infrastructure in Liberia and Benin following Bolloré Logistics’ exit.

Morocco’s southern provinces of Dakhla and Laayoune serve as critical nodes in the kingdom’s regional strategy. Recognising their strategic value, King MVI launched a $7 billion infrastructure initiative in 2014 to transform these territories into logistical hubs for trans-African trade. The recent opening of the Smara-Bir Moghrein border crossing in February 2025 exemplifies this vision, creating a direct route for Mauritanian iron ore to reach Moroccan steel facilities in Laayoune. This development positions Morocco as a regional steel processing hub for the region.

Infrastructure development extends to Morocco’s Atlantic coastline, where the Dakhla Atlantic Port project promises to transform regional trade dynamics. Designed to boost fisheries, enhance trade with Africa and Brazil, and provide advanced maritime logistics, the port forms part of a broader vision for trans-African connectivity. Complementing this maritime expansion, Morocco’s 2023 Atlantic Initiative for the Sahel (AIfS) outlines ambitious plans for railway and highway networks connecting Mauritania to landlocked nations including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.

Energy development forms another pillar of Morocco’s regional strategy of integration and energy self-sufficiency. The government has set an ambitious goal to achieve 52% of domestic electricity generation via renewables by 2030. At the heart of this renewables strategy is the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant at 510 megawatts. Morocco is exploring the potential of uranium deposits in Western Sahara to kickstart a national (and civilian) nuclear energy programme. The kingdom has also joined the West African Power Pool through a 2024 agreement with Mauritania, enabling electricity exports to West African nations. Perhaps most ambitiously, Morocco is collaborating on the Africa-Atlantic Gas Pipeline, a $25 billion project that would transport Nigerian gas through Moroccan territory to European markets.

Cultural and academic ties further underpin Morocco’s strategy. Universities in Morocco host thousands of students from Senegal, Mali, and Côte d'Ivoire, many of whom receive scholarships to study military sciences, agriculture, and engineering. These exchanges foster lasting bilateral relationships and enable Morocco to export its expertise while cultivating long-term partnerships.

Agriculture and food security represent another pillar of Morocco’s regional engagement. The nation exports millions of dollars worth of agricultural products to West Africa, though these are frequently challenged by Mauritania’s taxation of Moroccan trucks. To circumvent this, Morocco has launched new shipping routes to Senegal, securing direct maritime access to West African markets.

Meanwhile, Morocco is bolstering its manufacturing sector with significant investments in automobile manufacturing and a $500 million pharmaceutical plant in Casablanca. This facility aims to position the country as a leading African exporter of vaccines and medications, supported by domestic research and development. Morocco’s emerging automotive industry (to be explored in more depth in a future Vizier report) is being pioneered by national automobile manufacturing startup Neo Motors, which has secured export contracts with West African nations.

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Morocco Faces Stiff Geopolitical Competition

France’s historical influence in West Africa dramatically declined, with a broad military retreat occurring across the region as military juntas take over Sahel nations one by one. This has opened up opportunities for Morocco, once colonised by France along with the rest of Africa, to fill the void. However, Morocco is not the sole actor vying for influence in West Africa. Regional neighbours such as Algeria and international powers, including Russia, Turkiye, China, and the UAE, have similarly intensified their presence, each advancing distinct strategic agendas.

Guided by a decades-old Soviet-era ‘Africa policy’ and President Vladimir Putin’s ambition, Russia has capitalised on rising anti-Western (particularly anti-French) sentiment in West Africa to become the foremost military power in the region. Through support for military juntas, including those of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad (as well as seeking to expand their footprint in eastern Libya and Sudan), and fourth-generation warfare tactics such as disinformation campaigns and propaganda, Russia has significantly eroded French influence. However, Russia too has seen its soft power in the region take significant blows, not least because of the actions of paramilitary organisations like the Wagner Group, which has operated in Mali as an extension of the Kremlin. Under the pretext of security contracts, the group has also engaged in the illegal extraction of gold reserves and stands accused of numerous human rights violations and massacres against civilians.

Algeria, historically aligned with Russia and something of an archnemesis to Morocco, has conducted joint military exercises with the Russians near Morocco’s border. However, since the Ukraine conflict began, Algeria has cautiously distanced itself from Moscow, citing Russia’s diminished arms export capacity and its reluctance to commit to overt military alliances. Nonetheless, both nations continued to support Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria until its collapse in December 2024. Algeria also defied the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) by acquiring Russian-made Su-57 fighter jets, prompting US Senator Marco Rubio to propose sanctions in 2022.

Algeria, for its part, has long relied on proxy warfare to extend its influence, backing separatist movements such as the Polisario Front in Morocco and the Azawad Front in Mali. Leaked diplomatic cables suggest that after the 2012 Tamanrasset terrorist attack, Algerian authorities struck tacit agreements with AQIM, redirecting threats towards Moroccan and French interests in exchange for sparing Algerian assets. This alleged cooperation has reportedly led to the deaths of at least three Moroccan nationals in Mali over the past decade.

Iran’s role in West Africa, though understated, is multifaceted and expanding. Since the 1990s, Tehran has promoted Shia proselytisation in a region historically dominated by Sufi Islam. Nigeria now hosts a larger Shia population than Lebanon, with groups like the Islamic Movement, modelled on Iran’s revolutionary system, advocating for a Shia Islamic republic. Iran and Hezbollah have also allegedly supported the Polisario Front since 2018, supplying training and short-range missiles to fighters in Tindouf. Reports even suggest Polisario troops participated in Syria’s civil war alongside Iranian-backed militias.

China’s involvement, by contrast, is primarily economic. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing focuses on securing raw materials and funding infrastructure, such as Mauritania’s Nouakchott deep-water port and Guinea’s Djibloho Dam, while establishing logistics networks for mineral extraction.

Turkiye has also grown assertive, selling drones to Mali, including the model downed by Algeria, and backing Libya’s Tripoli-based government. Ankara’s plans to open military bases in southern Libya, near Algeria’s border, signal a deepening engagement across Africa.

The UAE has likewise emerged as a pivotal player, cultivating ties with the Sahel military juntas, facilitating Mali’s gold exports, and processing Guinea’s bauxite into aluminium in Emirati facilities. It maintains naval access agreements with Mauritania and robust investment links with Morocco, though relations with Algeria remain strained due to competing regional ambitions.

Morocco enjoys the advantage of an understanding with France to replace its influence in the region, but faces mounting challenges to its drive for regional hegemony. The UAE’s and Turkiye’s expanding military footprints through bases and arms deals risk diluting Morocco’s regional leverage.

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Challenges to Morocco’s Rise

Morocco’s foreign policy in West Africa has been enabled by the vacuum created by France’s retreat from the region, and a tacit agreement between to two states for a ‘transfer’ of power. Under the rule of King MVI, Morocco has assiduously cultivated diplomatic, cultural, and economic influence across Africa for the past few decades. This has laid the foundations of an economic empire that can funnel raw resources from across Africa to Moroccan factories for further value-added production, which can then be exported to nations around the world.

However, Morocco faces numerous challenges in doing so. Terrorism is on the rise across the Sahel as the French military retreat, Russian paramilitary war crimes, and weak state capacity have allowed groups like Al-Qaeda to occupy territory. Powers further afield like Russia, China, Turkiye, the UAE, and Iran are also seeking to take advantage of the state of chaos across Africa.

Perhaps most importantly, ordinary citizens in Morocco are not reaping the rewards as the country suffers from high and persistent unemployment and low wages. The Makzhen, Morocco’s political and economic elite, and particularly the royal family through the Al Mada fund, reap the lion’s share of rewards through the acquisition of French assets and new business links across Africa. As King MVI looks across West Africa and sees an opportunity to restore Morocco’s historical position of primacy in the region, he may yet be forced to contend with issues closer to home, like fixing Morocco’s political economy.

Exploring these issues in detail—and their potential solutions—will be an ongoing theme at Vizier, covering Morocco’s proactive strategy to industrialise at home and develop greater diplomatic and economic influence abroad.

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On July 25th 2021, 10 years after the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the Arab Spring, protests once more broke out across Tunisia. Another wave of COVID-19 was reaching its peak as the country struggled with a high mortality rate and a healthcare system on its knees. The protests demanded the dissolution of Parliament and the resignation of the ruling party, Ennahdha.

That evening, President Kais Saied, elected in 2019, appeared on television in a surprise national address. Invoking Article 80 of the 2014 Constitution—which granted him exceptional powers in the event of a threat to the country’s security and sovereignty—he announced the dissolution of the government, the freezing of Parliament, the lifting of MPs’ immunity, and the initiation of legal proceedings against many of them. Soon after, the army blocked access to Parliament, and Saied launched a massive anti-corruption campaign targeting nearly 500 businessmen.

Tunisia’s return to autocratic rule was met with scenes of jubilation across the country. While the Tunisian opposition and foreign political analysts feared a return to dictatorship and the reversal of the Tunisian revolution’s gains, a segment of the population saw in Saied a restoration of the revolution’s promise of stability and prosperity that had failed to materialise over the previous decade.

Saied’s obscure background, his monotone formal Arabic, lack of a political party, and small media presence to communicate his ideas and interests, have all contributed to a sense of enigma surrounding him. What does Saied want to achieve?

Tunisia’s latest autocrat has quietly embarked on a developmentalist campaign to reform Tunisia’s political economy through a new model of ‘State Capitalism with Tunisian Characteristics’, aimed at rationalising the Tunisian state, breaking Tunisia out of its IMF debt and addiction to neoliberal reforms, and stabilising the country.

The rise of ‘Saiedism’ must be contextualised in the country’s long history of autocratic rule, the economic failure of IMF reforms, and the political failure of the Arab Spring to materialise a stable, democratic, and prosperous Tunisia.

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Seeking Rents: Between State & Patrimonialism

Tunisia has historically enjoyed the image of being the IMF’s model student—a prosperous, stable, and modern(ising) country, exceptional in the region and Arab world. Behind this facade, the country was a laboratory for neoliberalism that ultimately failed to deliver on economic development, let alone a transition to democracy.

After Tunisia’s independence in 1956 and the abolition of the Beylik regime in 1957, Habib Bourguiba sidelined the old beldi elite of Tunis—landowners and wealthy families composed of religious jurists, merchant families, and administrators of Turkish and Mamluk origin—and replaced them with a new ruling class composed of the petite bourgeoisie of the Tunisian Sahel (predominantly from the cities of Monastir, Sousse, and Mahdia).

This new elite, French-speaking, secular, and affiliated with the Neo-Destour party, consolidated power by centralising the state under their control. State centralisation came with state dominance of the economy, which necessitated breaking the economic dominance of the former beldi elite. To accomplish this, Bourguiba collectivised land, shut down the prestigious Zaytuna University, and established state-owned enterprises to monopolise the economy.

The failure of Bourguiba’s collectivist policies in the 1960s led to partial liberalisation in the 1970s, allowing a new bourgeoisie from the upper ranks of the Bourguibist administration to emerge and gradually form marital alliances with the once-wealthy beldi families and form new economic dynasties.1 This began Tunisia’s descent into patrimonialism as the economy came to be dominated by private dynastic family ownership.2

The collectivisation model of the 1960s and partial liberalisation-turned-patrimonialism in the 1970s failed to produce sustainable economic growth. In 1986, with Tunisia still under Bourguiba’s rule, the economy experienced a severe recession, prompting Bourguiba to accept an IMF intervention. The IMF imposed a structural adjustment plan (SAP) in exchange for providing financing to the Tunisian government, intending to make Tunisia a ‘more competitive economy’ through a series of neoliberal reforms: a 20% devaluation of the dinar, privatisation of public enterprises (which largely favoured the circle of power close to Bourguiba), export liberalisation, relaxation of labour laws, a reduction of the budget deficit from 5% to 1%, reduction of import tariffs, and cuts to gas and electricity subsidies which were critical for Tunisia’s poor.3

The IMF’s SAP for Tunisia would lead to an average annual growth rate of 5% GDP. However, unemployment remained high–15% overall and up to 40% among the youth–and deep regional inequalities remained, with most economic development occurring in the northeast regions around the capital, Tunis, leaving the central and southern regions in protracted states of undevelopment owing to lack of investment.4

In 1987, amid the economic crisis and increasing confrontations between the secular Tunisian elite and rising Islamist political sentiment, President Bourguiba was overthrown in a coup by his right-hand man, Zin El Abidine Ben Ali. The former was declared “mentally incapacitated” owing to a series of erratic decisions which many in Tunisia (and foreign powers like Italy) feared could provoke civil strife similar to that brewing in Algeria.

Ben Ali assumed the presidency and promised reforms, but he would instead intensify Tunisia’s patrimonial economy. By the 2000s, the Trabelsi clan, from which hailed Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Ben Ali, had sidelined the old Bourguiba elite and monopolised economic rents to the tune of 21% of all private sector profits flowing back to the Trabelsis and Ben Alis.5

The economy became increasingly closed off to protect their interests, while foreign investment was concentrated in low-value-added sectors like textiles, electrical wiring, and olive oil production, all of which offered few jobs. These companies were attracted to Tunisia’s educated workforce, low wages, and favourable tax conditions, but more than half of Tunisia’s workforce were on a precarious form of contract called ‘subtracting’, earning 25 to 40% less than permanent workers. Subcontracting has been called a “form of disguised slavery.”6

With the Trabelsi clan’s monopolisation of the economy and focus on rent extraction activities, smuggling and the informal economy exploded, accounting for 30% of GDP by 2010.7 This system relied on an authoritarian police state practising mass surveillance and violently repressing opposition.

Matters came to a head on December 17th 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor in the city of Sidi Bouzid had his merchandise confiscated by municipal agents, one of whom (a woman) reportedly slapped him. His pleas for the return of his merchandise fell on deaf ears. Bouazizi then self-immolated in protest, later dying from his injuries. This triggered a wave of protests, empowered by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which first engulfed the marginalised central regions before spreading throughout the country. The slogans echoed: “Bread and water, but no Ben Ali”, “Work, freedom, dignity”, and “The people want the end of the regime.”

Bouazizi’s self-immolation was a symbolic ‘lighting of the spark’ that would see what would later be labelled the ‘Arab Spring’ spreading to nearly all Arab countries. Tunisia was the first domino to fall: despite fierce repression, the uprising reached the capital, Tunis. On January 14th 2011, Ben Ali and his clan fled the country to Saudi Arabia.

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The Rise & Fall of Tunisia’s Democratic Experiment

The fall of Ben Ali’s regime sent Tunisia into a period of political limbo in which a little-known constitutional law professor, Kais Saied, first began making the rounds in the media and on university campuses. He distinguished himself through his speeches in classical Arabic in which he demanded respect for the popular will, the dismantling of the old regime and resignation of the interim government (composed of ministers from the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique, or Democratic Constitutional Rally—Ben Ali’s party), the election of a constituent assembly, and a “decentralised democracy”.

The first election for Tunisia’s constituent assembly was won by the ‘Islamist’ political party Ennahdha with 37% of the popular vote. Led by long-term opposition figure and democratic activist Rached Ghannouchi, Ennahdha was the only truly organised party at the time and sought to ease Tunisia’s transition into democracy by avoiding the monopolisation of decision-making power or imposing an ideological agenda on Tunisia. So, Ennahdha formed and led Tunisia’s first post-revolution government in a coalition with two centre-left parties.

Ghannouchi’s pragmatism was insufficient. The victory of Ennahdha, considered a Muslim Brotherhood-lite party, shocked the secular-liberal segment of Tunisian society predominantly composed of elites. In response, Beji Caid Essebsi, an old guard figure of the Bourguiba regime and head of the outgoing interim government (which governed after Ben Ali had fled the country), founded a secular opposition party called Nidaa Tounes in 2012 with the media and financial support of Nabil Karoui, a media tycoon nicknamed the “Tunisian Berlusconi”. This movement would bring together Tunisia’s secular-liberals in opposition to Ennahdha, polarising political life around questions of identity and the role of religion in state and society.

As Tunisian society became mired in these debates, economic instability and security worsened. Two left-wing MPs who had opposed Ennahdha were assassinated in 2013, sending accusations flying across the political spectrum about complicity.8 At the same time, a bill was proposed to parliament to audit the external debt under Ben Ali. The goal was to classify the external debts contracted by Ben Ali’s regime between 1987 and 2011 as odious debt, which would have allowed for its cancellation or conversion into investment. The initiative was supported by 100 members of the European Parliament, Norway, and the Belgian Senate. Eva Joly, the president of the European Parliament’s development committee, estimated that Tunisia’s debt exceeds 20 billion euros and that its burden is unbearable for the economy, suggesting that the country should follow Iceland's example and refuse to pay those debts, and convert it into aid or investment.9

Ennahda refused to adopt this bill because, according to its Secretary of State for Finance Slim Besbes, there was no urgency to repay the debt, and Tunisia would be able to do so in any case. Ennahdha seemed to believe that by doing so they would earn greater legitimacy with international institutions, primarily by appealing to the global neoliberal consensus.10

The previous year had seen another Islamist party in Egypt, led by then-President Muhammad Morsi, overthrown in a military coup. Under regional pressure and facing an internal political stalemate in Tunisia, Ennahdha sought to assuage concerns held against the party and handed power in January 2014 to a technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa, a senior executive at the French multinational energy company Total’s subsidiary in Tunisia. Jomaa would implement further neoliberal reforms not unlike those that came after the 1986 recession, including an IMF loan of $1.2 billion which resulted in the devaluation of the dinar, a reduction of corporate tax from 30% to 25%, and an increase of 10% in income tax.11

In late 2014, new presidential and legislative elections were held, and Beji Caid Essebsi won the presidency, with his party obtaining a majority. Against popular expectations, Essebsi allied with Ennahda to form a coalition, even though his movement had positioned itself as a bulwark against political Islam. These coalitions were aimed at stabilising Tunisia’s deeply polarised political landscape, but would fail to resolve these issues as the Tunisian economy continued to flounder, a crisis compounded by neoliberal reforms.

Matters were made worse as two terrorist attacks targeting tourists in 2015 deepened Tunisia’s economic woes, and the tourism sector—representing 14% of GDP and a major source of foreign currency—collapsed.12 Between 2016 and 2019, a government led by Prime Minister Youssef Chahed implemented more austerity measures and contracted a new loan of $2.9 billion from the IMF.13 However, this failed to relieve Tunisia’s economic problems like slow growth (1.8% on average), a bloated administration, and public debt rising from 59% to 70% of GDP. The IMF’s reform programme proved difficult to implement due to social conflict and political pressure from the UGTT, the general labour union with deep economic influence in Tunisia.

In further neoliberal reforms, the Tunisian Central Bank became an autonomous and independent institution in 2016, imposing a monetary policy with interest rates decoupled to the economic environment and government policy, worsening the trade deficit and increasing the rentier nature of the banking sector.

With a polarised society, stagnant economy, and ever-weakening state, Tunisia’s democratic experiment began to falter.

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Kais Saied’s Rise to Power

Tunisians grew weary of economic stagnation and political stalemate. In July 2019, President Essebsi died in office and early presidential and legislative elections were called. Kais Saied was among the first candidates to declare his campaign and ran as an independent, claiming that “his party is the people.” He refused all campaign financing and was the only candidate not to solicit campaign subsidies. He announced that he would make no promises but ‘would respond to the aspirations of the revolution’.

Opposed to political parties, the parliamentary system, and endemic corruption, Saied defended his project of “decentralised democracy” in which local councils would elect regional councils, which would then designate a National People’s Assembly. This reform aimed to give more power to marginalised regions and to reinforce the state’s social and sovereign role.

Against all expectations, Saied won the first round, and in the second round, he faced Nabil Karoui, again winning decisively with 72% of the votes.

Saied now faced a problem: he did not have a party in the legislature. Ennahdha was the largest party, followed by Nabil Karoui’s Qalb Tounes party. Ennahdha initially tried to form a coalition which was rejected by parliament. In response, Saied appointed Elyes Fakhfakh to form a government, which tried to include Ennahdha but exclude Qalb Tounes, something that Ennahdha refused. Under threat of dissolution, a new cabinet was eventually formed without Qalb Tounes, and Ennahdha granted its confidence.

Six months later, Fakhfakh tried to dismiss the Ennahdha ministers in government, but they passed a no-confidence motion and forced Fakhfakh’s resignation. Saied then appointed Hichem Mechichi, a senior civil servant and minister of the Interior under Fakhfakh. However, Saied refused the swearing-in of some ministers chosen by Mechichi on suspicion of corruption or ties to the Ben Ali regime.

In this chaos, Ghannouchi—then Parliamentary President—was accused of overstepping his role by engaging in ‘track II diplomacy.’ He met with Turkish President Erdogan and congratulated Fayez Al-Sarraj, head of the Libyan National Government in Tripoli, for his military win against General Heftar’s forces in Benghazi, breaching Tunisia’s policy of neutrality and drawing Saied’s rebuke. Two no-confidence motions against him nearly passed amid heated debates. Public protests against Ennahdha surged, with demonstrators blaming the party for corruption and the country's economic stagnation.

Frustration hit its peak in the summer of 2021 during the COVID-19 crisis when, as hospitals overflowed, Ennahdha’s number two, Abdelkarim Harouni, demanded that Saied pay $900 million to party members victimised by the dictatorship—a demand that further enraged an already exasperated public. Saied, too, had enough.

In the following days, Saied initiated a vast economic and political purge that has all but ended Tunisia’s brief experiment with democracy. Over 500 businessmen were arrested in the following days, including Nabil Karoui and oligarch Marwen Mabrouk, Ben Ali’s former son-in-law and owner of a major industrial group. The charges ranged from corruption to tax evasion and various economic crimes.14 Former ministers and political figures were also detained, notably Rached Ghannouchi and Ali Larayedh of Ennahdha, Abir Moussi of the PDL (pro–Ben Ali party), and former Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. Journalists and members of civil society were arrested on charges related to foreign funding.15

With full powers at his disposal, Saied was now free to implement his project for a complete overhaul of the Tunisian state. In 2022, he submitted a new constitution to a referendum, which passed with 94% of votes. Its legitimacy has been called into question owing to a record-low voter turnout of 30%, triggered by opposition calls to boycott the referendum.

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Saied Reforms Tunisia’s Political Economy

When Said was elected into power in 2019, he faced a country mired in chaos and stagnation. Between 2011 and 2019, Tunisia’s public debt had risen from 40% to 70% of GDP, while external debt reached the same level. Rating agencies repeatedly downgraded the country’s sovereign rating. Inflation stood at 6.5% at the time of Saied’s election.16

Saied’s mandate was marked by a further series of external shocks and structural challenges that worsened the economic crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic, the collapse of tourism, the war in Ukraine (upon which Tunisia heavily depends for its wheat imports), a historic drought that reduced harvests and water resources, a migration crisis, and internal political turmoil. The country’s financial situation worsened with runaway inflation and strained public finances.

In Search of Financial Sovereignty

Facing the imminent risk of default on external debts contracted after 2011, the government turned in 2022 to the IMF for a loan of $1.9 billion. However, the IMF wanted to impose a shock therapy package. Saied rejected this, denouncing the IMF’s neoliberal prescription that had repeatedly failed Tunisia for 40 years, and walked away from the negotiations. This triggered a further downgrade of the country’s credit rating, then classified as ultra-speculative. The IMF closed its office in Tunisia in February 2025.

Contrary to analysts’ predictions, Tunisia avoided default by banking on its financial autonomy. Saied’s government sought local banks’ support and issued Treasury bonds on the domestic market, allowing it to repay several major maturities: the Eurobonds and other loans contracted between 2014 and 2018, as well as the IMF instalments due in February and October 2024. In January 2025, it even managed to honour the country’s largest Eurobond ever (amounting to $1 billion), and only one final eurobond remains to be repaid in July 2026, after which nearly all external debt in financial markets will be settled, with only multilateral external debt remaining.17

Inflation, which had reached 10% in 2023, fell to 5.7% in February 2025. External debt was reduced from 70% of GDP in 2019 to 42% in 2025. Public debt was brought under control and the deficit was reduced from 8.4% to 5.4% in 2024. In response, rating agencies improved their evaluation of the country.

Wishing to reduce its dependence on external borrowing, Saied plans to end the independence of the Central Bank, which he considers disconnected from Tunisia’s economic reality (with its key interest rate at 8% despite falling inflation). He intends to align it with his developmentalist policy, compelling public and private banks to provide more credit to finance productive investments and infrastructure.18

Infrastructure & Industrial Production

Contrary to the IMF’s advice, Saied rejected the privatisation of public enterprises, arguing that they must be reformed and made competitive in the market. He is betting on reviving national production to restore the country’s economy. To contribute to that, Saied has banned the practice of subcontracting in favour of long-term employment contracts for all, with a few exceptions.

“The state must return to steel. We want to build our country with our own resources, through our own choices, on our own, and we will not sell our country to anyone," declared Saied, emphasising the country’s turn to developing its natural resources and industrial production as a path to political sovereignty.19 Saied has also forced the restarting of Tunisia’s phosphate industry—which had been halted for 10 years due to social turmoil and labour strikes—and is on track to produce 5 million tonnes of phosphates by 2025 and 14 million tonnes by 2030.20

Saied has also introduced community enterprises, inspired by Chinese TVEs: rural collective enterprises, which group residents of a given locality or region on a development project, mainly in agriculture and rural industry. To encourage these initiatives, the Tunisian state provides residents with public agricultural land, 10-year tax exemptions, and low-interest loans. This reform aims to stimulate regional development, exploit the state’s arable land to strengthen food sovereignty, foster grassroots industrialisation, and reduce unemployment.21 However, this model has not gained much traction owing to administrative hurdles (some caused by Saied’s own ministers who are not convinced by the project), poor communication about its benefits despite its success in China, and fears of reviving the collectivist policies of the 1960s.22

Faced with an excessive dependence on the European market (75% of Tunisian exports are destined for the EU), Saied has also launched a new commercial strategy by diversifying economic relationships with emerging powers like Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Iran, and strengthening cooperation with China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and the USA.

Energy and environmental projects include the installation of four photovoltaic plants with a total capacity of 500 MW (in collaboration with Japan), as Tunisia seeks to deliver an ambitious 35% of its energy needs through renewables by the end of the decade.23

There are ongoing negotiations to achieve electrical interconnection with Italy, Algeria, and Libya, which would not only stabilise Tunisian citizens’ access to electricity at cheaper rates but also improve Tunisia’s industrial competitiveness as the cost of energy is a key input into industrial production.24

The Tunisian government is also building three desalination plants with four more in the pipeline, totalling 16 operational plants that provide 6% of Tunisia’s potable water. The government has an ambitious goal of seeing 30% of Tunisia’s potable water needs provided through desalination by 2030.25 In further efforts to combat drought and water scarcity in the country, the government is exploring cloud seeding programmes in collaboration with the American University of Wyoming26 and the Indonesian government.27

Historically, the central and southern regions of the country have suffered from underdevelopment and a lack of infrastructure compared to Tunis and the northeastern coastal regions. As part of his project to overhaul the state, Saied has initiated significant infrastructure projects aimed at modernising Tunisia and reducing regional inequalities. Ongoing projects in the transport and mobility sector include the construction of a 10km-long bridge in Bizerte (in collaboration with China)28, the development of the country’s largest highway connecting Tunis and Jelma, and the finalisation of the Gabès–Ras Jedir highway leading to the Libyan border. Additionally, two high-speed railway lines are set to launch in Tunis, the construction of the Sfax metro has begun, and the railway network is undergoing modernisation.

Reforming the State

Parallel to managing the economic crisis, Saied has embarked on a complete overhaul of the Tunisian state. His new constitution established a “decentralised democracy” organised into 279 local councils, 24 regional councils, 5 districts, and a National Council of Regions and Districts. These entities enjoy administrative and financial autonomy, with the power to levy local taxes and responsibility for the economic development of their territories. The National Council of Regions and Districts is expected to finalise a development plan for 2026–2030 to revitalise growth and reduce regional disparities.

Saied is planning sweeping reforms to public administration to make it more efficient by reducing the bureaucratic complexity of existing structures. The eight agencies responsible for investment and exports have been merged into a single entity. Saied has moved to limit the system of authorisations in strategic sectors to facilitate productive business and investment. And, crucially, Saied has implemented ‘fiscal justice’ to reduce rent extraction in the economy by taxing rents and other forms of unproductive wealth with the 2025 Finance Law, which has also reformed personal income and corporate taxes to improve domestic borrowing and reduce external debt.29

Saied has also attempted to accelerate the pace of reforms and their adoption by applying pressure on ministers and civil servants and trying to create a results-and-deadline-oriented culture. However, reforming the culture of lethargy in Tunisia’s public sector may prove the most difficult obstacle to overcome, and directly impacts attempts at formulating and executing policy across the range of issues that Tunisia faces.30

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Gambling on Development

Saied’s gamble is that development comes first, and that if Tunisia’s economy continues to flail from IMF reform programme to IMF reform programme, there is little hope for a stable democratic transition. His abortion of Tunisia’s failed experiment with democracy and concentration of political power in himself as President aims to achieve nothing less than the reformation of Tunisia’s political economy.

Eliminating Tunisia’s external debt, unlocking more credit for agricultural production, and launching infrastructure projects are positive steps being taken to reform the Tunisian economy. Additionally, Saied understands the importance of state capacity and investment to achieve development, rather than gutting public services and investment as the IMF (and other international financial and economic institutions) have recommended to Tunisia and other developing economies—with few successes.

For now, Tunisia’s economy seems to be stabilising, although long-term challenges remain. High youth unemployment and low wages persist. The volatility of the price of raw materials threatens Tunisia’s trade balance, which remains highly vulnerable to external trade shocks. Saied is in a race against time as short-term measures to shore up the Tunisian economy fail to yield long-term economic growth, making the acceleration of expected reforms and the implementation of the 2026–2030 plan essential to avoid another political quagmire.

The popular reception of Saied’s reforms has been mixed. Those advocating for a more politically and economically sovereign Tunisia with a strong welfare state have welcomed them, while others oppose these measures, primarily because of Saied’s autocratic turn. Among his supporters, some see Saied’s autocratic executive style as a welcome turn from the post-2011 parliamentary chaos and paralysis, as well as a departure from the policies of the last 40 years. However, for others, the uncertainty and lack of clarity in Saied's communication have led to a lack of trust in his claims of reform.

Saied faces the daunting challenge of contending with an administration resistant to change, which is slowing down crucial reforms. His political isolation, lacking both a party and an influential network, further complicates his task. Without strong media allies or an extensive network, Saied struggles to control the narrative both domestically and internationally. Meanwhile, public impatience with the slow economic recovery is growing, and many may tire of his anti-corruption and populist rhetoric, especially as the increasingly sensitive migration crisis has added more political pressure on the Tunisian government.

2025 will be a decisive year for Saied: as popular patience wears thin, his gamble to radically reform the state and implement development policy must yield tangible results and lead to an economic recovery. Should he fail, his legacy will be the re-entrenchment of autocracy in Tunisia without economic development.

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What constitutes the wealth of a nation? Under the prevailing economic orthodoxy of our time, wealth creation is considered the product of productive economic activity through free-market systems. But this generalisation has two flaws:

1. Putting the cart before the horse by focusing on market-based mechanisms as the source of wealth, rather than one of the tools that policymakers can use to create wealth.

2. Including rent-seeking as a productive economic activity, even though rent-seeking does not create wealth, but merely shifts the use of resources from productive to unproductive.

Rent, undeniably, is a form of wealth, and those who collect ever larger rents are, undeniably, getting wealthier. Rent-extracting firms and individuals are members of a national economy, so any increase in their wealth must mean an increase in the national wealth. They may employ many people to generate rents and spend them within the national economy, contributing to the wealth of others.

Entire populations have grown incredibly wealthy based on economy-wide rent extraction. The Arab oil economies are a classic example. It is undeniable that, for example, Saudi Arabia, with a GDP per capita (GDPPC) of $32,000 is substantially richer than manufacturing-based China, where GDPPC is roughly $12,500. But is Saudi Arabia a wealthier nation than China?

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The Theory of Productive Powers

If he were still alive today, the 19th-century German political economist, Friedrich List, would have answered that question with a vigorous “no”. List’s seminal work, The National System of Political Economy, has largely been forgotten by economic departments in western academia. But List’s theory of political economy contributed to the blueprint for the remarkable economic development of Prussia (later, the German Empire) in the 19^th century, and Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China in the 20^th century. Little known is the influence that List also had on America’s early economic thought through the American School of Capitalism, pioneered by thinkers and politicians like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay.

List introduced a crucial distinction when it comes to ‘classical’ interpretations of the meaning of wealth, forcing us to think of it as more than mere exchange value. If List’s theory holds, we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that Saudi Arabia’s superior GDPPC to China is a true indicator of greater wealth – or for that matter, power. List would argue that China is far more prosperous than Saudi Arabia because a nation’s prosperity lies in its capacity to produce wealth in the future, rather than the total exchange value it possesses in the present.

List called this capacity to produce wealth the productive powers of a nation. His theory of productive powers is an expansive understanding of national wealth that, while not negating exchange value, nevertheless subsumes it within a more holistic and long-term vision of wealth in which productive powers are the principle and foundation of national wealth.

List contrasts his theory of productive powers with Adam Smith’s narrower, more short-term “theory of [exchange] values.” The thrust of his argument is captured in a hypothetical story of a farmer with five sons.

The farmer and his sons work the land and grow crops, which they sell at the market for a profit. Every year, the farmer takes ‘1000 marks’ (let’s call them dollars) of this profit and deposits it in the bank to earn interest. It is undeniable that year after year, the farmer grows wealthier as the amount of cash in his bank account grows exponentially. The farmer dies a rich man and at his death, his savings and land are divided up among his five sons who now farm their own plots, each one-fifth of the size of their father’s, exactly as they used to do on their father’s land. However, after the initial inheritance windfall that makes the sons briefly rich, each son eventually becomes much poorer than their father as they struggle to eke out any profit from such a small plot of land, using up all their inheritance in the process just to keep their head above water.

List contrasts this scenario with a farmer who uses his profits to invest in the productive capacity of his farm and family. This farmer, instead of annually stashing away 1000 dollars in the bank, spends it on sending three of his sons away to learn trades and professions and educating the remaining two sons in the most cutting-edge agricultural techniques and technology. When he dies, three of his sons are already earning more than they ever would have as farmers, engaged as they are in high-value trades and professions. The other two sons, possessing advanced agricultural knowledge, can earn far more profit per square metre from their 50% smaller farms than their father was ever able to do.

The moral of List’s story is clear: a nation may well regard itself as becoming more prosperous as its companies register larger profits, its workers take home larger wages, the value of its assets increase, and its consumers acquire a greater number and higher value of goods and services – but it is a house of cards if little attention is paid to cultivating the roots and principles of all that wealth, an economy’s productive powers, which are necessary to sustain and grow the nation’s capacity to create wealth far into the future. The truly prosperous nation is not the nation that piles up riches but the nation whose productive powers are constantly expanding.

By productive powers, List was not referring to the means of production themselves. What List meant by productive powers is the entire ecosystem of concrete public infrastructure, intangible institutions, and human skill and expertise upon which the means of production depend for their optimal use in the present and their capacity to be used more effectively in the future. Productive powers are what facilitate an economic developmental path of increasingly expansive and sophisticated production. Developing productive powers means everything from investments in transport infrastructure and technological research and development programmes, the improvement of education and healthcare provision, the development of efficient and competent bureaucratic institutions, the maintenance of law and order, the promulgation of laws and regulations that favour productive activities, the protection of a reliable and trustworthy judicial system, to even the promotion of art and religion, which List saw as vital for maintaining a healthy human spirit capable of creativity and self-discipline.

While List’s discussion of ‘powers of production’ focused on all those more subtle forces that underwrite production (the ‘powers’), those forces had one objective: production. Production is the process by which truly novel value is generated in an economy through the creation of outputs – products – that are more valuable than the sum of their material and immaterial inputs. In other words, production is fundamentally about ‘making things’.

For List, writing at the height of the Industrial Revolution, production was synonymous with industrial manufacturing, but production encompasses both the creation of concrete items and intangible products, such as software. Production explicitly excludes any form of wealth generation through arbitrage, speculation, exploitation of scarcity (rent-seeking), lending at interest, or outright gambling, all of which are non-productive activities. All of these forms of economic activity merely extract and shift wealth around an economy, or from one economy to another, rather than generate truly new wealth through a process of production.

On List’s account of wealth, it is hard to argue that China is less wealthy or prosperous than Saudi Arabia. China is an industrial powerhouse with a diverse and sophisticated manufacturing base, manufacturing everything from steel and microchips to electric car batteries and 5th-generation fighter jets. This manufacturing base is underwritten by a well-run and self-sustaining public administration, including a highly competent economic management bureaucracy, a vast and well-funded research and development base that allows China to produce high-quality indigenous technologies, an increasingly world-class higher education system, and an excellent public transport system.

By contrast, (classically) richer Saudi Arabia is a rentier economy built principally on the exploitation of its natural hydrocarbon gifts. The Kingdom produces very little and cannot produce much in future, owing, in part, to its public administration being hollowed out by foreign management consultants, combined with decades of underinvestment in developing home-grown institutions capable of researching and developing advanced technologies.

While Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 may be attempting to remedy historic dependence on oil, it appears to be doing so by pouring resources into a new type of non-productive economy built around tourism, luxury real estate development, and the expansion of domestic retail consumption – of almost exclusively imported entertainment services and consumer goods.

The comparison of China and Saudi Arabia also highlights the deep symbiosis - possibly even a dialectical relationship - between how an economy generates its income (rent-seeking/other non-productive activity or production) and the productive powers of an economy. China has become the world’s foremost manufacturing power and, as a result, has developed a comprehensive national ecosystem of productive powers geared toward sustaining and expanding its capacity to make and create.

The inverse is equally true: China has developed a comprehensive national ecosystem geared toward sustaining and expanding its capacity to make and create, and as a result, has been successful in realising its ambitions to become the world’s greatest manufacturing hub. It is a chicken and egg scenario and almost impossible to untangle the two.

Saudi Arabia’s rentier hydrocarbon economy and its lack of productive powers are similarly intrinsically intertwined. While it may not be possible to untangle the threads to determine the direction of causation, what we can see is that where there are productive powers there are productive economies; where productive powers are weak, rentierism tends to thrive.

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Productive Powers for Development

List’s theory of productive powers sits within his broader (and more famous) theory of state-directed, manufacturing-based economic development in which the state uses subsidies and protections to, first, develop highly productive agriculture and, subsequently, cultivate select manufacturing-for-export sectors and climb the value chain. List connected the ultimate success and sustainability of such an approach to economic development to the state’s ability to cultivate the nation’s ecosystem of productive powers, within which the actual process of production is nested and from which it draws its vitality and sustainability.

History has proven List largely right. Few countries have climbed to the top of the development ladder, and remained there, without substantial investment in their productive powers. While its fortunes are currently reversing due to rising energy prices, the longevity of German industrial success would not have been possible without the first-rate rail network it began building in the early 19^th century, a feted technical/vocational education system, and a general atmosphere of orderliness, institutional predictability and rule of law.

The US may not be the industrial powerhouse it once was, but its great universities, lavishly supported by institutions such as the federal government’s National Science Foundation and filled with researchers on “genius visas”, have ensured that the US has consistently been a world leader in technological innovation in everything from medicine to AI.

Post-war Japan’s remarkable economic development was undergirded by land reform laws geared toward maximal food productivity, extensive investment in transport infrastructure and technical educational institutions, and the work of the government’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), whose economic management bureaucrats ensured Japanese industry stayed relentlessly focused on the path of technological learning and export dominance. South Korean, Taiwanese, and post-1978 Chinese economic development has been built on the cultivation of similar productive powers to post-war Japan.

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Cultivating Syria’s Productive Powers

Building an equitable, robust and dynamic Syrian political economy means incentivising productive economic activity. Productive economic activities are those relating to the process of production: marshalling of resources to create more valuable products, at least in exchange terms, than the total value of their inputs. It is the work of everyone from the designer, to the engineer, to the immediate makers of products, and the entire collection of ancillary services around production.

By contrast, non-productive activities either shift wealth around to make money out of price differentials, exploit some sort of resource scarcity, or earn money through interest. Non-productive activity includes the generation of revenue through collecting fees for the provision of services, which is to say the services sector. To say these are non-productive means of generating wealth is not to pass a moral judgement on bankers, lawyers, consultants, personal trainers, call centre workers, or tourism operators, but it is simply to say that the sectors in which they work are not related in any direct way to production.

While Syria needs great service providers, Syria must build an economy principally based on productive activities and geared toward a perpetual quantitative and qualitative expansion of that production capacity, i.e. making more and making more valuable. This is the long, grinding but ultimately most rewarding path to economic development.

Taking into account Friedrich List’s theory of productive powers, the Syrian government needs to ask itself how it would promote productive activities by directly supporting certain sectors in the economy rather than others with specific policy interventions, but also how it would indirectly promote production by cultivating a broader governmental, bureaucratic, educational, institutional, legal, regulatory, and concrete infrastructural environment geared toward fostering productive powers and away from rent extraction. In other words, capital needs to find itself in a wider ecosystem that both pushes and pulls it in the direction of growth through productive activities.

Take education, for example. The government should be thinking about how to reform the education system to gear it toward equipping young Syrians with the relevant knowledge and skills to foster a highly productive economy. Before 2011, Syria’s secondary education system was not a disaster. Arabic language and literature were generally taught to a very high standard, as were the natural sciences and mathematics, but the entire secondary education system was highly academic and failed students who may have thrived in vocational training. The university entrance system, and the social attitudes toward higher education, have also long directed an inordinate volume of the county’s brightest minds to Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy. Other streams of technical and vocational higher education have been neglected and undervalued by both government and society.

Syria would do well to emulate Germany’s multi-layered approach to secondary and higher education, where technical and vocational high schools and universities receive just as much government funding – and are just as highly regarded by society and the job market – as more traditional academic intuitions. Moreover Germany, as well as Japan and South Korea, have been incredibly successful in forging an almost symbiotic relationship between higher education and industry. The research and development departments of some of South Korea’s chaebols, for example, operate in many respects as de facto universities.

Or take the tax system. The Syrian government could look at making the tax system contribute to fostering an environment of productivity by reducing taxes on income from productive activities and, instead, taxing rents. One of the biggest drains on the productivity of any economy is ground rent. High ground rents reduce the profitability of any business using physical premises and they suck demand out of the economy by reducing consumers’ disposable income as they are compelled to spend a large chunk of their monthly salary on simply keeping a roof over their head. Rising ground rents are often a result of rising real estate prices, a phenomenon which often encourages speculation and real estate bubbles as the holders of capital seek to make easy money by buying up property in anticipation of its appreciation in value.

A Land Value Tax (LVT), paid on the value of land considered in its unimproved state, could remedy some of these problems by disincentivising holding real estate, thereby driving down its price and, therefore, driving down rents. A well-thought-out LVT could encourage expansion of the housing stock by incentivising land-holders to build as many homes as possible on the plots they own to maximise returns, most likely by ‘building upwards’ rather than outwards, given the unavoidable sunk cost of the LVT. An expansion of the housing stock would likely contribute to reducing rents. Moreover, the state could ringfence a portion of the LVT income for the extensive construction of social housing, possibly along the Singapore model, which would be a further means to keep housing affordable and reduce the economically damaging effects of high rents and property prices.

Alongside high ground rents, food dependency is a potentially crippling drain on the economy’s vitality. Relying on imports to feed a country is a terrible waste of foreign exchange that could be used to import more economically valuable items such as machinery and other technology. Much of the struggle of South American countries to successfully industrialise since the Second World War has been a result of dependence on cheap food imports from the US constantly eating up foreign exchange earned from exporting raw materials. A reliance on imported food also dangerously exposes a country to the unpredictable vicissitudes of the global market. Egypt, for example, has suffered from steep price inflation since the war in Ukraine disrupted global grain supply chains.

Syria needs to think about how to develop greater independence in the production of food staples in order not to fall into the food dependency trap that many developing countries have fallen into. Alongside investment in advanced irrigation technologies, Syria could take inspiration from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and post-’78 China, where land reforms created a system of small-scale family farms that were consistently far more productive per square metre farmed than large farms growing the same crops. These labour-intensive small farms had the added benefit of keeping a large portion of the labour force employed in productive work while manufacturing was being incubated, and they generated rural family wealth that formed a key source of demand for early domestic manufactures.

One could cite many more examples of policies that Syria could adopt to enhance the economy’s productive powers, but those three should suffice for now. The point is that Syria must become a nation of producers. It must place production, not rent-seeking or any other form of non-productive economic activity, front and centre of the national agenda. To develop an economy that thrives due to producing things of value, the government must develop a policy orientation of prioritising and promoting Syria’s powers of production rather than simply generating exchange value regardless of how. This will require creativity, fortitude and grit because it is the long, difficult and unglamorous road to development – but it is the only tried and tested road.

The alternative – an economy built on, for example, tourism, real estate development, services outsourcing, media production, and consumer spending – would be a terrible waste of the ingenuity, skill, knowledge, and spirit that the Syrian people possess in abundance. While Syria is subject to its unique conditions and will not (and cannot) become a new South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan or Vietnam, the country would do well to draw inspiration from the path these countries followed.

Syria must aspire to become a nation “skilled-in-making” rather than “skilled-in-turning a profit”. It is the path of the craftsman rather than the merchant, the engineer rather than the banker, and the designer rather than the lawyer.

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