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. Israel’s military involvement in Syria will increase, and may lead to fighting between Israel and Iranian forces and proxies in Syria. As the Syrian civil war winds down and Russia and Iran cement Bashar al-Assad’s hold on a large portion of the country, Israel’s perceived threat from Iran’s growing and more entrenched military position in Syria will become more acute. This will also increase the chances of war on Israel’s northern front with Hezbollah and other Iranian forces based in Syria and Lebanon.

2. US President Donald Trump will pull out of the JCPOA, creating a crisis between the US and its European allies over Iran. The protests in Iran that ushered in 2018 will only harden Trump’s instincts to challenge the Iranian regime, and the first year of Trump’s presidency has demonstrated that his foreign policy pronouncements and campaign promises can be postponed but are difficult to completely deter. Ditching the JCPOA appears to now be at the top of his list.

3. Israel will see its first new prime minister in nearly a decade. The investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are likely to culminate later this year in a police recommendation to indict him. This will either lead the Likud to force him to step aside in favour of a new party leader, or lead Netanyahu to take the country to elections in an effort to forestall an indictment, which will result in a new coalition headed by Yair Lapid.

Dr Michael Koplow is Policy Director at the Israel Policy Forum