BICOM

To accompany BICOM’s forecast of the year ahead, The Middle East in 2018, BICOM asked six renowned Middle East experts for their three predictions for 2018.

1. The crisis in Syria will continue to be a microcosm of the problems and challenges facing the Middle East as well as an indicator of the direction which this region will follow. Fighting there will subside, even if it doesn’t die out altogether. Assad will manage to impose his rule on most parts of the country. Israel will continue to take military action in order to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria, even if those very actions – which are intended to avoid deterioration – ultimately lead to war.

2. The American initiative to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not yield any results. What this will mean is that the status quo on the West Bank and the Gaza strip will continue, accompanied by ongoing tension and even outbursts of violence between Israel and Hamas.

3. Iran, alongside Russia, will continue to expand the circuit of their influence in the region while taking advantage of the United States’ lack of interest and perhaps also of ability to play a leading role in the Middle East. The Arab states, as well as Turkey, cannot at the moment serve as a counterweight to the Russian-Iranian alliance which is increasingly considered worldwide as a regional stabilizer rather, as Israel and Arab states consider it to be, a threat to regional security.

Professor Eyal Zisser is Vice Rector at Tel Aviv University