53 Iranian retaliation for its military defeat, the Houthis’ outrageous misconduct, or the bloody instability in Syria. The United States, Israel and like-minded regional and global forces should use a less official framework of cooperation based more on MoUs than on agreements. It seems that this kind of conduct already manifested itself during the Iran war, when defensive efforts against Iranian aggression were conducted using bilateral mechanisms and need-to-know multinational efforts. b. An infrastructure and economic network. The best way to create longstanding relations is to establish irrevocable mutual reliance. This is the way to outmaneuver unstable sentiment. Middle East countries should be interconnected by a network of indispensable energy, water, transportation and communication channels. This network can be based on the US’s India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) initiative. This infrastructure and economic network should be built as an alternative route to the unstable Red Sea. Because the projects involved will be longterm efforts, they must start now. c. A civilian and economic vision rather than a security one. The new regional vision should depart from security concerns and focus on a civilian and economic approach, led by the civil sector and, as much as possible, the non-political social layers. There are non-security challenges facing the region, including environmental change, that are substantial enough to guide technological transformation. d. Accountability, but not through elections. Democracy is not a binding condition for a thriving pragmatic region. Accountability should be established based on mutual agreement on common basic principles of conduct that can advance human well-being and constructive cooperation. These principles should be expressed in mutual statements by regional and global likeminded players at both the state and non-state level. e. Hybrid state sovereignty: The Middle East’s problems cannot be solved based on the acceptable sovereignty principles. This is relevant not only to the complex Palestinian problem but also to other regional significant open issues like Kurdish autonomy, Druze coexistence, and the freedom and safety of the Christianminorities. The international and regional communities should accept other forms of existence by separating different layers of statehood (people, territory, government, recognition) and creating new hybrid models. The real challenge is how to make the post-Iran war moment a Sadat-Begin one and not a Khomeini-Bin Laden-Hamas one f. Marginalization of radicals (not deradicalization). Radicals should be enveloped and isolated. By depriving them of their ability to cause harm, the major incentives to support them will evaporate, and their grassroots supporters may start to come to their senses and abandon them. g. Semi-Self Governance (SSG). I wrote about this principle in BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,326, January 26, 2025. SSG allows local forces to take accountability and improve the lives of their civilian populations while allowing for external intervention when problems arise. This principle has already been seen in action in the US intervention against the Houthis, the Iran war (focused on the WMD threat, not regime change) and Israel’s intervention to prevent a Druze genocide in Syria. ISRAEL’S OWN STRATEGIC SHIFT There is a new role for Israel in the new regional geo-strategy and implementation of new paradigms. Israel has become a regional security power. This is a very different position from the country’s original national security strategy, which was based on a working assumption of inherent inferiority to the Arab countries’ coalition. In becoming a regional power, Israel can wisely balance between a deterrence posture that is not based on the use of force, reserving a more strategically nuanced and sensitive but vigilant use of force for those occasions when it is needed. Israel should establish a Smart Partnerships Strategy that looks at all state and non-state actors to build bilateral and multilateral cooperation that is flexible to its own and its partners’ different needs. It should start byutilizing theunprecedented and possibly unrepeatable opportunity it has with the Trump administration to cement a regional cooperation network.
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