CCHP Speaker Series: "The New Old Middle East"

Wars usually leave the regions in which they occur substantially changed.  That is not the case with the American-Israeli war against Iran and the regional conflict around Gaza that preceded it.  While the war has unintentionally strengthened the Iranian regime, it has not substantially changed the geopolitics of the Middle East.  The conflict axes that dominated the region before the war — US-Iran, Israel-Iran, Israel-Palestine — remain the drivers of regional politics.  The domestically weak Arab states that are the arenas of the region's contests for influence — Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen — remain dominated by non-state actors allied to Iran.  The hopes in Washington and Jerusalem for a changed Middle East that accompanied the beginning of their attack on Iran in February 2026 have not been realized.

F. Gregory Gause III is a Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. and Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, from which he retired in January 2025. From fall 2014 through summer 2022 he served as Head of the School’s Department of International Affairs. He is the author of three books, including his most recent book, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (2010). He has written numerous articles on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

The CCHP is generously sponsored and funded by the Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

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For more information, please contact Professor Krister Knapp via email at kknapp@wustl.edu, or via phone at 314-935-6838.