The Middle East Dilemma: A Conflict Between Foreign Hegemony and Ideological Authenticity
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 584 - 28/01/2026
By: Dr. Muhammad Gilani

Since World War I ended, and the Uthmani Khilafah (Ottoman Caliphate) was abolished in 1924, the Middle East has been under the influence of international colonialist powers. The region was shaped in a way that prevents the return of the Khilafah (Caliphate). Its strategic location, along with its natural resources like oil, gas, and waterways, has been used as tools in the global struggle for power. Over the past seven decades, the United States inherited much of the legacy of Britain’s colonialist empire, whether through military coups, devastating wars, military bases, or financial globalization. The U.S. has sought to build a long-lasting model of dominance, using the countries in the region to ensure the stability of its interests through regional tools that reduce the cost of control.

Today, the U.S. strategy works within a framework that divides the burden of control into four regional pillars, according to a detailed report from the Brookings Institute in 2018. The report mentions countries that the U.S. sees as suitable to help secure geopolitical stability in the region: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Jewish entity. The concept of geopolitical security and stability means maintaining the geographic status quo, after reordering its maps, and ensuring the political orders are aligned and submissive to American dominance. The U.S. set three main goals for its control over the region:

1. Ensuring the continuous flow of oil, gas, and Rare Earth Elements (REEs) without any obstacles.

2. Maintaining maritime trade through important sea routes in the region.

3. Preventing the rise of any political order that could challenge American influence in the region or the global order controlled by the U.S., specifically a new Khilafah.

The reason these countries were chosen to play this colonialist role is that Turkey acts as a bridge between NATO and the Muslim World, and it has a historical interest in preventing the return of the Khilafah. Iran, on the other hand, has proven effective in handling difficult issues like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in a way that benefits the American project. From a sectarian perspective, Iran also fears the rise of a true Islamic order in the region because it would expose the hypocrisy of its own regime, which claims to be Islamic. Saudi Arabia has historically served as the guardian of the petrodollar system, which has helped the U.S. maintain global dominance of the dollar since 1974. Additionally, it has promoted an ideology that opposes political Islam and works to legitimize and protect the existing regimes from the Islamic people’s movements. Lastly, the Jewish entity, since its creation through the Balfour Declaration in 1917, has been a military and intelligence outpost to protect Western, particularly British and then American, interests. This role was explicitly clear during the brutal attacks on Gaza since 2023.

The guarantors of these countries’ efforts to achieve absolute hegemony over the Middle East are America and Russia, excluding any Chinese or European competition. We’ve seen how Russia fully played its role in Syria. Once the mission was completed and Syria fell under American dominance, Russia exited the scene as if it had never been there.

However, this American plan runs into a structural problem from within. This problem lies in the nature of the Jewish entity itself, which is the largest source of instability in the region. This appears clearly in its core demands, which often clash with the American vision for the Middle East, or require much more time, effort, and long wars, such as the one we see today in Gaza.
The dilemma of this Jewish entity appears in several issues and demands that it considers strategic and dangerous, including:

Closing the Issue of the Palestinian State

The Jewish entity’s insistence on de facto annexation of land, and continuous expansion of settlements, completely closes the door to any future Palestinian state. This vision puts Turkey and Saudi Arabia in an embarrassing position before their own people, and exposes the failure of the American model. It also eliminates any real solution to the historic Palestinian issue, which is based on the occupation of Palestine, and the displacement of most of its people across the world. This issue alone is enough to prevent political and geographical stability in the region, in accordance with the American vision.

The Doctrine of Displacement and Jewish Sovereignty

The occupying Jewish entity adopts the idea of an ethnic, Jewish-only state and the expansion of its geographical borders. This pushes the region toward new waves of forced displacement, even from within the entity itself. Such policies keep the region on a permanent edge of explosion, directly undermining America’s goal of stability needed to complete its regional project.

Exclusivity and Strategic Superiority

The Jewish entity refuses to participate in any form of regional balance and insists on absolute military and nuclear superiority. This turns the other pillars of the regional model, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, into anxious and subordinate actors. The Jewish entity continues to threaten decisive strikes against Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

This directly contradicts the American principle of regional balance, which does not allow one state in any region to monopolize strategic superiority. We can see this principle clearly in South and East Asia, where nuclear balance exists between China and India, and between India and Pakistan.

In the Middle East, however, the Jewish entity insists on being the only nuclear strategic power, which creates a major obstacle to the American vision of geopolitical stability. At the time of writing this article, the Jewish entity is still preparing and conducting military exercises for possible decisive strikes against Iran, openly challenging the general framework of the American Middle East policy.

Since this deadlock is caused by the stubborn position of the Jewish entity, the United States uses Turkey and Iran as balancing forces, to prevent a complete explosion. Recently, there has been talk about Turkish-Iranian coordination to restrain the Jewish entity in Syria. The reality is that the demands of the Jewish entity in the region never end, and it has now become the final obstacle preventing the completion of the American project for a secure, stable Middle East fully under its dominance.

The Greatest Challenge to the American Middle East Model

The greatest challenge to the American model of the Middle East lies in the Khilafah state, as an Islamic inevitability and a historical process. This model rejects artificial nationalistic divisions and colonialist borders. It asserts that real stability cannot be achieved through a fragile balance of power supervised by foreign forces, but instead through an authentic political unity that restores independent authority to the Ummah and ends colonialist domination.

This model relies on intellectual and political unity, not on balance-of-power politics. It’s a model that once produced centuries of civilizational stability and cohesion in the region until 1924.

The United States began its project of domination over the Middle East in 1950, under what became known as the Truman Doctrine, which was mentioned by US Secretary of State Dean Acheson in his memoir, “Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969).” He stated that American strategy after World War II was based on seizing the initiative wherever empires retreated, rebuilding a global order in which American power — military, economic, and ideological — replaced the British Empire, without appearing openly colonialist.

From 1950 until today, the United States has achieved many gains on the ground, including dominance over most Middle Eastern countries, and the establishment of military bases in others. However, its project remains incomplete, despite 75 continuous years of implementation, the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars, and the loss of millions of Muslim lives.

The Islamic Project

The Islamic project led by Hizb ut Tahrir began three years after the American project, in 1953. After 73 years of intellectual struggle and political work, it has expanded and stabilized in more than fifty Muslim countries. It has succeeded in forming a strong public opinion among Muslim peoples regarding the necessity of returning Islam to ruling governance and unifying Muslim lands, despite facing political, financial, and security obstacles.

Nothing now separates the Islamic project — represented by the establishment of the Khilafah on the Method of Prophethood — from becoming an actual independent authority except one final step, through which Allah’s (swt) clear victory (nasr) will be achieved, by His Permission,

[وَاللَّهُ غَالِبٌ عَلَى أَمْرِهِ وَلَكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ] “And Allah is dominant over His affair, but most people do not know” [TMQ Surah Yunus: 21].