Over the past decades, the Middle East[1] has undergone substantial turmoil, crisis and conflict. Among other headline incidents, one can point to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, several Gaza wars, the financial crisis of 2008/09, the 2011 Arab uprisings, further protests in 2019/20, the Syrian war, the meteoric rise and fall of Islamic State (IS) (2014–2017), the nuclear stand-off between Iran and the US, as well as the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 across the region. From an analytical perspective, it is however important to go beyond such crises and examine the Middle East as a region facing three interlocking problems that influence its prospects for a less conflicted and more stable future: a poor socioeconomic situation, the persistence of authoritaritarian political orders and intense geopolitical competition.

The region’s socioeconomic situation is somewhat of a paradox. At first glance, it features relatively high levels of human development and low levels of poverty, but also high levels of inequality, unemployment and corruption. Moreover, there seems to be a stark regional divide in the level of development between the rentier states on the southern littoral of the Persian Gulf and the rest of the region. On top of this, the political order across the region remains solidly authoritarian, not least because Tehran, Ankara and Riyadh have all become significantly more so over the past few years. Whether such regimes are capable – or even inclined – to fundamentally address the socioeconomic challenges their populations face, remains a moot point. Finally, any authoritarian mortgaging of an already dire socioeconomic future is facilitated by intense regional geopolitical competition between Iranian-, Saudi- and Turkish-linked blocs that confront each other based on their ruling elites’ anxieties about survival, loss of power and status. Such perceptions and attitudes lead to securitisation and externalisation, which makes it trickier to address domestic governance problems. Anxious authoritarianism defends itself at home as well as abroad, and usually with negative consequences for human development.

This report outlines prospects for instability and conflict in the Middle East based on an analysis of selected trends in the evolution of socioeconomic development, political order(s) and regional competition, including connections between them, for the period of ca. 2010 until late 2021.[2] It does so with the intention of offering directions for EU and Dutch foreign policy on the understanding that regional problems cannot be resolved through the sum of country-specific approaches. Instead, countries across the Middle East face similar problems (e.g. rising poverty rates), shared problems (e.g. extremism, water scarcity or even the nuclear stand-off) and joint problems (e.g. Kurdish drives for greater autonomy) that must be addressed in a corresponding manner.[3]