The Beiruter joins Chatham House Middle East briefing

The Middle East enters 2026 amid a rapidly shifting political landscape, with regional powers recalibrating alliances and crises deepening across multiple fronts.

Chatham House’s January panel on the Middle East’s trajectory in 2026 brought together four leading experts from its Middle East and North Africa Programme Dr. Sanam Vakil, Dr. Renaud Mansour, Galip Dalay and Tim Eaton and offered a compelling framework for understanding the political, security and economic forces reshaping the region.

Building on their discussion, which The Beiruter attended virtually, the following key insights are expected to shape the region’s trajectory in 2026.

Iran at a breaking point

No single actor, the panelists argued, is likely to shape the region’s instability in 2026 more than Iran.

Dr. Sanam Vakil, who directs Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme and specializes in Iranian and Gulf politics, argues that mounting internal protests combined with sustained U.S. sanctions and diplomatic isolation have created what she calls a “legitimacy crisis” for the Islamic Republic.

She warned that 2026 may prove to be the regime’s most consequential year, with Tehran increasingly forced toward change whether driven by internal shifts or external pressure.

At the same time, regional perceptions of Iran have shifted. Galip Dalay, Chatham House senior consulting fellow and former senior fellow at Istanbul Policy Center, noted that Iran had for years served as the central “threat perception” that helped bring Gulf states closer together and shaped many regional initiatives.

Since Oct. 7, however, that calculus has changed. With Iran weakened and Israel increasingly expansionist, Dalay argued, the idea of an Iran-centered regional order is being reversed.

Dr. Renad Mansour, Director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, cautioned that while some regional leaders may welcome Iran’s decline as a hegemonic force, they remain wary of any abrupt collapse or power vacuum. Their preference, he said, is for Iran to play a “constrained role,” not to fragment as a functioning state.

Gulf countries that once supported regime change are now urging Washington to pull back. Mansour said the reversal reflects hard-earned lessons: “change does not often lead to a better outcome,” and regime collapse can unleash dangerous instability.

Rather than pursuing transformative shifts, many Arab states, shaped by years of violence and upheaval, have adopted what Mansour described as a politics of “survival” and in 2026, that instinct is likely to translate into pragmatic diplomacy.

Türkiye: Between assertion and restraint

Turning to Türkiye’s evolving role in the region, Dalay argued that Syria has become the clearest lens through which Ankara is positioning itself both domestically and internationally. One of Türkiye’s defining political developments in 2025, he said, was the Kurdish peace process with Syria serving as the “make-and-break point.”

For years, Turkish leaders have insisted that integrating the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the Syrian state is a prerequisite for any diplomatic opening with Damascus. If the SDF becomes a stakeholder in a future settlement rather than returning to insurgency, Dalay said, it could provide Türkiye with long-sought stability along its southern border.

Internationally, Syria has also reshaped Türkiye’s relationship with Washington. What Dalay described as once “the deepest crisis” in Turkish-American ties has become an area of renewed partnership, with the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria now doubling as ambassador to Ankara.

Yet Ankara is proceeding cautiously. Dalay emphasized Türkiye’s determination not to be perceived as Iran was during the Assad era, warning that such a role could provoke “counter-alignments” among Arab states.

Türkiye, he said, will remain involved but more discreetly. The lesson of the past decade is that the Middle East “is not conducive to regional hegemons,” and any appearance of expansionism triggers immediate counter-coalitions.

Gaza: A ceasefire in name only

On Gaza, Vakil rejected the notion that the territory has entered a post-conflict phase.

“We have been seeing confrontation,” she said, “we just have not been calling it confrontation.”

Despite persistent strikes, mounting casualties and escalating violence in the West Bank, Washington and its allies continue to treat the situation as a fragile ceasefire, largely because they cannot afford to declare it broken.

Vakil also warned that Donald Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace,” presented as a mechanism for reconstruction coordination, remains opaque particularly in how it benefits Palestinians, given its detachment from questions of sovereignty and statehood.

Many states, she noted, remain hesitant to join without clarity on what commitments they would be expected to make, or what accountability they may face.

The deeper problem, Vakil argued, is the absence of coordinated diplomacy:

- No substantive peace process exists.

- Western governments increasingly “outsource every file in the region to Donald Trump.”

- Regional actors have failed to mobilize collectively.

Managing Gaza through ad-hoc crisis containment, she said, is neither sustainable nor stabilizing.

Regional alignments: An indispensable and unreliable United States

Dalay framed U.S. involvement in the Middle East as a paradox: “indispensable and unreliable.”

Indispensable, he said, because Washington remains the only actor capable of reshaping regional dynamics at scale, whether pressuring Netanyahu toward restraint or brokering agreements between the SDF and Damascus.

Even when regional actors do not explicitly rely on the United States, Dalay argued, they continue to “double down” on the relationship.

At the same time, American inconsistency is pushing states toward hedging strategies and regional blocs. While these blocs will not replace Washington’s role, they are expanding the strategic landscape. For Tim Eaton, senior research fellow in Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, middle powers are therefore trying to navigate a new global order in the Middle East.

Vakil noted that this emerging multi-alignment engaging China, Russia, the EU and regional partners simultaneously complicates diplomacy.

“The last time we saw a multilateral deal was the Iran nuclear agreement,” she said, “which took ten years to negotiate and three years to fall apart.”

A region defined by pragmatism and uncertainty

While the Middle East may not be spiraling uncontrollably, the panelists agreed it is not stabilizing either.

Instead, 2026 is likely to be shaped by insecurity, pragmatism and shifting threat perceptions:

- Iran is weakened but not collapsed.

- Türkiye is assertive, but constrained.

- Gaza remains unstable despite nominal ceasefires.

- Regional blocs are forming as the U.S. remains essential but inconsistent.

What emerges is a region that will require coordinated diplomacy not episodic crisis response in the year ahead.