The U.S.-Led Middle East Order Is Over. The Mecca Agreement Proves It.

There were moments when it seemed that old, U.S.-led order could be strengthened and developed. The Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE, suggested a way forward. That agreement produced a “minilateral” of the United States, India, Israel, and the UAE that in turn spurred the idea for the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) combined with the (unrealized) Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization. Altogether, this held out the prospect for institutionalizing much of what the United States had been encouraging its regional partners to do over the previous four decades. Hamas’s attack on Israel, Saudi-Emirati tensions over Israel, Sudan, and Yemen, and the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran fractured the region, however.