The Next Strategic Shift in the Middle East

How Iran's weakness is creating Turkey's opportunity

While much of the world awaits the outcome of the Iran-US negotiations, a quieter strategic shift is already underway across the Middle East. History teaches a simple lesson: wars do not merely eliminate threats. They rearrange the balance of power. When one force weakens, another moves to fill the space.

The sustained pressure on the Iranian axis has produced a meaningful geopolitical outcome. Iran is constrained. Hezbollah has suffered severe operational damage. Syria’s Assad regime has fallen after more than a decade of war.

Yet power vacuums in the Middle East rarely remain empty. Today, the regional actor best positioned to expand its influence is already making moves.

A Partnership Built on Strategic Logic

In 2005, during my service as military secretary to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I participated in high-level meetings with Turkey’s leadership. At the time, Turkey was viewed as a strategic partner of Israel, a rising power within NATO, and a state that aspired to join the European Union. The relationship reflected a broader framework first articulated by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, who believed that Israel should build alliances with strong non-Arab states on the region’s periphery.

Photo: GPO – Government Press Office

This was known as the periphery doctrine. From the late 1950s, it guided Israel’s most important regional relationships. Ben-Gurion recognized that Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab states, needed partners who shared common adversaries but had no direct conflict with the Jewish state. Turkey, pre-revolutionary Iran, and Ethiopia became the pillars of this strategy. The logic was straightforward: these non-Arab nations feared the rise of Arab nationalism as much as Israel did, and cooperation served all parties.

For decades, the framework worked, though at relatively low intensity. Israel maintained close intelligence and military ties with Ankara and Tehran. Turkey viewed the relationship as a hedge against pressure from radical Arab regimes. Iran under the Shah saw Israel as a natural counterweight to Iraqi and Egyptian ambitions. Peace with Egypt in 1979, the first recognition of Israel by an Arab state, anchored the broader regional architecture from a different direction entirely.

But the periphery doctrine was always understood as temporary. It was designed to sustain Israel until peace with its Arab neighbors became possible, not to replace that goal. And its foundations were fragile. The Iranian revolution of 1979 destroyed one pillar overnight. Ethiopia’s military coup of 1974, which overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, had already removed another. Turkey’s partnership survived longer, but the political trajectory of the last two decades gradually turned Ankara from Israel’s closest Muslim ally into one of its most vocal critics.

What we are witnessing today is the final chapter of the periphery doctrine’s collapse. Turkey is no longer a partner on the periphery. It is positioning itself as a central power, one that views the weakening of Iran not as a shared strategic gain but as an opportunity to expand its own influence.

The Vacuum Iran Is Leaving Behind

Iran sought regional dominance through proxies, missiles, and nuclear ambition. It exported instability while avoiding direct confrontation whenever possible. Israel’s campaign against Iranian-backed forces significantly disrupted that architecture. As Iran weakens, space opens, and Turkey has already moved into it.

This is most visible in Syria. During my tenure as minister of defense, I observed firsthand how shifting battlefield realities created conditions for deeper Turkish penetration. Since the fall of Assad’s regime, Turkey’s presence has intensified dramatically. Ankara now provides critical backing to Syria’s transitional government and is positioning itself as the country’s primary external power broker. Its forces control territory in northern Syria and its influence extends into the Damascus area, just tens of kilometers from Israel’s border. Its proxies have expanded their reach. Its intelligence and air defense assets are being deployed to create strategic depth.

But this extends well beyond Syria. Turkey’s influence stretches across North Africa and East Africa. It has sought to increase its influence in Jerusalem, particularly around the holy sites. It is seeking to expand its regional presence on Israel’s border through the international stabilization and peace force in Gaza. At the NATO summit it hosts in Ankara on July 7, Turkey is expected to sign a multi-billion dollar energy deal with the United States that could reopen the path to F-35 fighter jets. Its defense industry exported over ten billion dollars in products last year alone.

This is not improvisation. It reflects long-term strategic ambition. Turkey and Iran are, alongside Egypt, two of the most central states in the region, sharing a border and competing for influence in overlapping spheres, including friction in the Caucasus. They differ in religious orientation, one predominantly Sunni, the other Shiite. Yet they share several defining characteristics. Both are heirs to imperial traditions. Neither is Arab. Both view themselves as natural leaders of the region. Where Iran operated through violence and terror, Turkey projects influence through state power. That distinction matters.

Inside the System, Not Outside It

Iran was dangerous but relatively isolated. Turkey presents a more complicated challenge precisely because it is part of the Western system. Ankara confronts Israel rhetorically, yet trades with Europe. It competes with regional actors while remaining inside NATO, where it maintains the alliance’s second-largest standing military force. It fields advanced military capabilities while maintaining diplomatic legitimacy.

The Sunni-Shiite Divide as a Driving Force

Decades of operational experience have taught me that ideological rivalries inside the Muslim world are not theoretical. They drive strategy, alliances, and conflict. Iran invested heavily in the Palestinian arena not only to challenge Israel but also to redirect Arab energies away from confronting Tehran itself. The Sunni-Shiite divide remains one of the region’s most powerful organizing forces. If the Shiite axis continues to weaken, Sunni actors will compete to shape what comes next. Among them, Turkey possesses unmatched scale, capability, and ambition.

Strength and Balance Are Not Contradictions

None of this suggests that Turkish influence must become destabilizing. History offers more hopeful precedents. There was a period when Israel maintained constructive relations with Turkey, peace with Egypt, and indirect equilibrium with Iran prior to the revolution. The ties between Israelis and Turks ran deep, and not only between governments. Tens of thousands of Israeli tourists visited Turkey every year. Turkish companies built Tel Aviv’s skyline. Israeli businesses imported Turkish goods across every sector. Those bonds were real, and political hostility has never fully severed them. Despite the rivalry that had developed in recent decades, when a devastating earthquake struck Turkey in February 2023, I ordered the IDF to deploy a rescue and relief mission immediately. It was the second largest and most effective international delegation in extracting survivors, after Azerbaijan’s.

Regional balance is not unattainable. But balance does not sustain itself. It requires clear strategy and sober recognition of emerging realities. Israel should actively pursue the repair of this relationship. The foundation is there, and the strategic logic has never been stronger.

But engagement must be paired with clarity. Where Turkey’s ambitions remain distant from Israel’s borders, they are Turkey’s sovereign affair. Where Turkish-backed forces operate on Israel’s frontier, the calculus changes. Israel will protect its national security interests without ambiguity.

The Board Has Changed. The Next Move Matters.

During the current war, I believed from the first hours that Israel would prevail because I knew the determination of our soldiers and the strength of the systems supporting them. Military success, however, must always be followed by strategic foresight. Winning one contest does not end the game. It changes the board.

The weakening of Iran is a significant achievement. But the structure replacing it will define the next generation of regional order. Turkey is already positioning itself at the center of that structure, with the military capacity, the institutional reach, and the ambition to shape what comes next.

Two distinct challenges require two distinct responses. Toward Iran, the free world must act decisively and without delay to eliminate its remaining nuclear and missile capabilities while the window is open. Toward Turkey, the task is different: to channel its growing activism into directions that are productive for the Middle East, rather than allowing it to harden into a new source of friction. The choices made in the coming weeks will determine whether the post-Iran Middle East is more stable or simply differently dangerous. Those who wait for the new order to harden before responding will find they are no longer shaping it. They are living inside it.