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The meteoric downfall of the Alawite regime in Syria is symptomatic of the systemic changes taking place throughout the Middle Eastern geopolitical spectrum and its overall reverberations. However inchoate, the ongoing military and political dynamics are substantively overhauling the regional landscape. The inevitable demise of Iranian influence, the equivocations of the Turkish role, the ambivalent return of Sunni jihadism, and the steady decline of the Christian communities in the Near East are ushering in new geopolitical and geostrategic dynamics and initiating paradigmatic shifts. The Israeli counteroffensive lies at the roots of the substantive geostrategic transformations that unveiled the rickety foundations of the Iranian power politics, the flimsiness of their projections, and the resurgence of Sunni militance and its attempt at repositioning itself as an accommodating political actor with no further evidence so far.

The whole strategic plot featured by the Iranian Islamic dictatorship is systematically unraveling and retreating from the external operational theaters. Defeated in Gaza and Lebanon and badly battered in Syria, the Iranian vagrant militancy is retreating beneath its shaky inner defenses. The Iranian regime’s strategy based on the outlying strategic defenses is not only challenged but ultimately made irrelevant. Its regional defenses are subsiding by the day while losing their operational platforms, political allies, and coming to terms with its elusive strategic alliances. However controversial the emerging actors might be, the erstwhile configuration of power is eroding without yielding the terrain to concrete and conclusive political alternatives; we are in a flux, and the dynamics are ongoing.

The political purview of the incoming Islamic militancy is yet to be defined, and its strategic configuration is not set. The brunt of the Syrian cascading civil wars has not come to an end and needs to be closely monitored, and observers have to wait before engaging in hazardous conjectures. The downfall of the Assad regime is sealed off, and the big question mark is whether it is able to safeguard its traditional strongholds in Northern Syria after losing what was deemed to be useful Syria, which overlaps Central Syria and its outlying regions. None of these questions is answerable before the ongoing battles come to an end.

The downfall of the Alawite dictatorship, aside from questioning the viability of Iranian power politics in the region, raises the more critical issue of the existing Near Eastern geopolitics, their future coordinates, political actors, and incoming geostrategic conflicts. None of these questions is predefined, and there are no standard scripts that apply to a fleeting reality. The actual state of ethnopolitical splintering and putative Islamic political dominions are still moot and subject to the pull and sway of hardwired political convulsions.

The ongoing unraveling revealed the elusive foundations of the projected Iranian power politics, the shortsightedness of Western political quiescence, self-defeating political and military inhibitions, and pliability to the induced political migrations and their instrumentalization by Islamic power politics. Rather than engaging the conflict dynamics, the choice of political and strategic aloofness has paved the way to the destructive Russian, Turkish, and Iranian power politics and nurtured their embedded illusions. Now that the whole political tapestry has unraveled, it’s about time to finish off with the Iranian imperial inroads, reckon with the limitations of Russian power projections, and engage Turkish power politics and their jihadi cohorts for the better or for the worse.

The containment of Iranian nuclear militarization, let alone its destruction, is left to warfare diplomacy and its strictly defined thresholds. The meticulous screening of the ongoing dynamics impels major geostrategic realignments and the immediate tackling of the expanding wastelands. The debunking of the Islamic political myths and their conventional scripts, and the magnitude of the political, strategic, and humanitarian challenges at hand, are important levers to be instrumented in future diplomatic undertakings. Nonetheless, the Israeli counteroffensive has proven the ultimate importance of power politics and military sway if we were to move towards working solutions and consistent diplomacy.

A cursory review of the political landscape helps identify the prior assignments in the various political landscapes. The outcome of the ongoing battles in Syria is essential to define the political configuration and its wherewithals. The defeat of Hezbollah is a prelude to any constructive political conversation and the finalization of transition politics in both Lebanon and Syria. The defeat of Hamas is a preliminary stage that should pave the way for inter-Palestinian reconciliation and the resumption of negotiations with the Israelis.

The ultimate containment or destruction of the Iranian Islamic regime is mandatory if we were to oversee a deconfliction process in the greater Middle East. Otherwise, the chances for a graduated normalization depend largely on Islamic de-radicalization and the reengagement of Western democracies on the basis of democratic and liberal political agendas and a more pluralistic worldview. The major strategic turnaround initiated by the Israeli strategic counteroffensive is a good omen and might usher in a new era.