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.

Valdai Club expert Vitaly Naumkin proposes several scenarios for managing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would be useful for external players to keep in mind, as without their help the conflicting parties are unlikely to be able to find a way out of an acute and dangerous situation for the international community.

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.

Many experts consider the turbulent Middle East events as a clear testimony that a brand new world order is being born. At prestigious Middle East forums, they hold entire panels devoted to this issue. Since any child is born in pains, this circumstance easily explains all the troubles in the region. Is it really so?

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.

By the strikes against Syria, the US and their allies achieved demonstrative effect only partially. It was achieved, because like in the previous illegal bombings of sovereign states (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, etc.), they exhibited their military power, unprecedented arrogance and readiness to completely ignore the international law. It was partial, because the Syrian Air Defense Forces shot down most of the missiles. For Russia, that means a victory. Russian-made weapons have coped very well with the task, writes Vitaly Naumkin, Academic Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, in his comments for valdaiclub.com.