Valdai Club

The year 2025 was quite a strange period for the Middle East. Depending on who undertakes to describe it, it can be called the year of shuttered hopes or new aspirations, appeasement or wars, triumph and defeat. It was also a year when everything changed, just as it can be argued that nothing changed in 2025.

For nearly a decade and a half now, the word “transformation” has arguably been the most popular term to describe the Middle Eastern developments, including transformation of societies and economies, political systems and institutions, foreign policies and international alliances, strategies pursued by non-state and state actors, and regional and global powers.


Many developments that significantly impacted the destinies of the regional players, non-regional actors, and many people around the world have unfolded during the year that followed the publication of our paper titled “The Middle East and the Future of a Polycentric World” (February 2023).

The third decade of the 21st century started out with extremely dramatic events. The COVID-19 pandemic, the armed conflict in Ukraine, the exacerbating Russia-West confrontation, the rapid strengthening of the global role of the global majority countries (countries outside the Western alliance), the global food crisis and aggravated environmental threats taken together have spurred the long process of collapse of the international political system, leaving out of sight what may come to replace it.

The year 2020 was probably the strangest year of the 21st century so far. It also concluded one of its most eventful decades. For the Middle East, it began with the Arab Spring, which was the culmination of a long period of worsening political crises and increasing social tensions.

The Middle East broke all records for surprise events in 2019. The unexpected changes of government in Algeria and Sudan, mass protests in Lebanon and Iraq, the sensational election outcome in Tunisia, the never-ending election process in Israel, a new escalation of US–Iran tensions, zigzagging developments in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and many more – the list may be continued.

Algeria’s octogenarian President Bouteflika has resigned after just shy of two decades in office. On the one hand, he was compelled to leave by unruly street demonstrations, and on the other, he was being pressured by his nation’s army, says Valdai Club expert Vasily Kuznetsov, head of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

On 18 April 2019, presidential elections were to be held in Algeria, which would have led to the inevitable victory of President Bouteflika, who has ruled the country since 1999 and was ready to run for a fifth term in office. His candidacy caused a wave of protests, and the president seemed to backtrack.

The Middle East is increasingly important in the fabric of international relations. Developments there have greater consequences for the rest of the world than in the Cold War era. This is not primarily due to the destabilizing impulses that keep the region on centre stage in world politics, for the Middle East has long known turbulence and conflict and the security  challenges it posed in the past were hardly less significant than today, especially given the emergence of nuclear weapons in the region.

The year 2017 was a turning point in the transformation that began in the Middle East six years ago. Although none of the bloody conflicts is over and some are escalating instead of abating, fears that all states in the region were doomed have proved alarmist. Positive change is gaining momentum, albeit slowly: local players are looking for political solutions to conflicts, and the demand for economic and political reform is growing in the region’s weakened and vulnerable countries.