The Iranians have significant influence in Iraq and Syria, but they lack the strength to impose their will or the appetite for a larger commitment. The Israelis see the Jordan River as the limit of their power and confine themselves to supporting the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan (as artificial a state as any) as their buffer. As for the Saudis, they also try to shape events, but given internal economic problems and vulnerability to the Islamic State, there is little that they can do.
But the center of the Middle East can’t hold. External powers created an arbitrary framework, one that is fragile at best. The American invasion in 2003 dissolved the glue that bound Iraq together. But a state that required a dictator like Saddam Hussein to hold it together would have failed with or without invasion, as we have seen in Syria.
Given economic conditions, the alternative to dictatorship is clan-based relations, which constantly fragment the Arab heart of the Middle East and can occasionally create an explosive situation.
The non-Arab countries that surround this region meddle in the situation but are not willing to mount a massive intervention. In some instances, distant powers like Britain, France, and the US have been more interested in the stabilization of the region than its neighbors were. Or to be more exact, the neighbors had more at stake than the distant powers, which could cut their losses and leave when the need arose.
In this context, the rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East’s Arab heartland was unexceptional—as was the emergence of a new invented state. Nothing new here, as almost all the states in this region were invented. IS is reshaping a shapeless area, and no one from outside will directly engage them. But IS is also limited by geography, by economics, and by the inherent weakness of its territory. It doesn’t grow stronger, and its enemies don’t either.
The regional strategies boil down to the three non-Arab powers trying to avoid excessive involvement in the Arab region and Saudi Arabia trying to avoid being drawn into conflicts that are beyond its capability to manage. As for the current great global power, the United States, it at least recognizes that trying to craft nations and states out of this region is not going to work.
George Friedman is editor of Mauldin Economics' This Week In Geopolitics.