Iran war highlights fragile order in Middle East

The Iran war has accelerated the fragmentation of the Middle East, analysts wrote.

With a provisional agreement due to be signed Friday that cements a truce between Washington and Tehran, countries across the region are picking up the pieces from the conflict. Far from imposing a new balance of power, a Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar wrote in Foreign Policy, the war showed the Middle East is “a region in which every actor can impose costs, but none can impose order.”

Meanwhile, it “compromised the United States’ status as the Middle East’s main security guarantor,” a Biden-era official argued in Foreign Affairs.