The Iran War and the End of the “Middle East”

Photograph by Joe Raedle / Getty Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story. A few weeks before the horrific events of October 7, 2023, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, went to the United Nations General Assembly and heralded a new age. He brought a prop to the dais, as he often does—this time, a series of maps of Israel and the surrounding region, one of which highlighted a number of Arab countries in green. These included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, which already had normalized ties with Israel, and other nations which, at the time, seemed close to a diplomatic opening with the Jewish state, such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan. The Abraham Accords—the normalization pacts with a handful of Arab states which President Donald Trump had helped broker during his first term—were “a pivot in history,” Netanyahu said. His map was titled “The New Middle East.”

Netanyahu spoke breezily of bringing “prosperity and peace to this entire region” through trade corridors and security partnerships with Arab neighbors. Then he picked up a red marker. “A few years ago, I stood here with a red marker to show the curse, a great curse, the curse of a nuclear Iran,” Netanyahu said, referring to an earlier episode at the U.N., when he had drawn a line atop a cartoon image of a bomb to illustrate the supposed threat posed by Tehran’s enrichment activities. “But today, I bring this marker to show a great blessing, the blessing of a new Middle East, between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and our other neighbors.” He then drew a diagonal line from “Asia” through the U.A.E. to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and a greater Israel—Palestinian territories didn’t exist on the map—toward the Mediterranean ports of southern Europe.

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