Historians are not in the business of making predictions. But if you are a celebrity historian like Simon Sebag Montefiore, you may just take that gamble.In The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East, Montefiore makes a series of predictions, one of which has already come true.The author delves into the 20th-century history of what is popularly called the ‘Middle East’, but ultimately challenges that label. Interestingly, he finishes with the ongoing US-Israel war against Iran, arguing, in a way, that the history of the region has come full circle.But to the predictions first. Montefiore says that in the wake of Hamas’s Oct 7 attack and the Iran wars – the current one and last year’s 12-day war – the Gulf Arab monarchies will never again be peaceful islands of luxury. That means fewer art galleries and more Iron Domes. They will fear and loathe Iran, and try to deal with it through a combination of accommodation and military preparedness.Second, both South Asian nuclear powers India and Pakistan, and Slavic heavyweights Russia and Ukraine, will play a larger role in the ‘Middle East’. This is already in the works: India’s growing relationship with Israel, Pakistan’s stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, Russia’s old bases in the region, and Ukraine sending military advisers and drone experts to the Gulf.Third, the author predicts that US will still remain the biggest power in the region. After all, a superpower is one that can absorb defeats in more than one theatre and yet retain its power. But few regional players will trust US now. Instead, they will increasingly turn to China, which in turn will use this opportunity to emerge as a planetary hegemon. Beijing, however, will spread out its bets, and not just back Iran.
Has the medium made us cruel, stupid, indifferent?
Fourth, and this is where Montefiore has got it spot on, a new Sunni bloc featuring Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt will come into being. That’s exactly what has happened with the recent Mecca Pact minus Egypt. The author also predicts another potential bloc with India, Israel, Kazakhstan (a recent signatory to Abraham Accords), Greece, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Bahrain, Morocco and UAE.Fifth, Israel could be wrecked by civil war, as its far-right seeks to take over state institutions and launch regular pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank, to definitively finish off the possibility of a Palestinian state.Sixth, Türkiye under Erdogan will seek to recreate the glory of the Ottoman Empire, but this will make the Arab states extremely wary.And seventh, Iran, after the war, will see its radical, ruling kernel composed of Ayatollahs and IRGC conclude that only nuclear power can safeguard the regime. In a way, Iran will shrink as the regime looks inward and brutally puts down inevitable protests from the people. This then opens the possibility of another Iranian revolution.In the final analysis, the Cold War, Western characterisation of the ‘Middle East’ is no longer valid, as the geopolitical region expands to bring in players from South Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. But, in history, this was always the case – the Ottoman sultans inducted Slavic slaves and concubines into elite families, many Gulf Arab emirates had stronger connections with India under the British, and the Arabs were long present in Africa. History repeats itself.