The Middle East rang in the new year with assassinations and terror attacks. Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy leader of Hamas' political bureau, was assassinated in Beirut last Tuesday. The following day, two bombings in Kirman, Iran (for which Daesh has claimed responsibility) killed 103 people. As those attacks shifted everyone’s attention to Israel, Iran and Hezbollah pledged to exact “revenge and a heavy price.”
Considering the devastating effects of new-generation weapons, global powers cannot launch direct wars against each other. Therefore, they prefer to engage in indirect battles, as the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, did during the Cold War. Their proxies fight each other; they control the tide of the war from behind closed doors by procuring military equipment and by providing economic and financial assistance to wage war.
The wave of democratization, which began with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, took down the authoritarian leaders of Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Whereas the uprising in Bahrain was crushed thanks to Saudi Arabia’s military intervention, Iran and Russia ensured the survival of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.
The PKK/YPG threat in the region is far from over, but the group's nationalist project — the so-called 'cantons' — are now dead in the water
The Middle East has been experiencing turmoil since the Arab Spring uprisings and revolutions. A process of counterrevolution started with the military coup in Egypt in 2013. Much of the regional mayhem stems from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi-led efforts to reverse the democratization process initiated with the Arab uprisings and discourage any popular demands.