HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025021.jpg

25

some reports, this has led to Iranian anger and a cessation of the flow
of funds to the Hamas enclave in Gaza.
These setbacks do not mean the end of Iran and its allies as a regional
power bloc. Assad has not yet fallen. The Iranian nuclear programme
is proceeding apace. Tehran's Hezbollah client is in effective control
of Lebanon. But it does mean that in future the Iranian appeal is
likely to be more decisively limited to areas of Shia population.
The less good news, from Israel's point of view, is that the new forces
on the rise in the region consist largely of one or another variant of
Sunni Islamism. AKP-led Turkey has emerged as a key facilitator of
the Syrian opposition, in which Sunni Islamist elements play a
prominent role. Turkey appears to be in the process of making a bid
for the regional leadership also sought by Iran. In Egypt, too, the
Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces look set to reap an
electoral dividend in November. The Sinai area has already become a
zone of activity for Islamist terror directed against Israel, because of
the breakdown in law and order in recent months. The attacks on the
pipeline bringing Egyptian gas to Israel, and the recent terror attack
in Eilat, are testimony to this. So while the "Shia crescent" may have
suffered a strategic setback as a result of the upheavals in the Arab
world, the space left by the fall of regional leaders looks to be filled
largely by new, Sunni Islamist forces. Israel remains capable of
defending itself against a strategic threat posed by any constellation
of these elements. But the current flux in the region is likely to
produce a more volatile, complex Middle East, consisting of an Iran-
led camp and perhaps a number of Sunni competitors, rather than the
two-bloc contest of pro-US and pro-Iranian elements which preceded
2011.

Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in
International Affairs Center.

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025021