Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Happy New Year! And welcome back to MBN Agenda, our weekly look at the stories driving the news in the region and Washington. Brought to you by the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, the premier Arabic-first, American-based news and commentary platform.
Today, something different. In the spirit of fresh beginnings, we chart out the five trends that will shape 2026 in the Middle East and Africa. If last year was one of war and conflicts, this one looks bound to unsettle – in both the positive and negative sense of that word – the region.
We don’t claim a monopoly over the crystal ball. So we asked 22 of the world’s best minds on the region to look into theirs and tell us what they see.
If you prefer to read this in Arabic, click here. Share your thoughts anytime at mbnagenda@mbn-news.com. And if the Agenda was forwarded to you, please subscribe.
– Rasha, Aya and Ringo
🌍 5 THINGS THAT WILL SHAPE MIDEAST
Don’t let the familiar datelines fool you. The usual news cycle in the region is hiding bigger changes that will play out in 2026. Here we bring you the five that matter most.
1. Forget the Levant. The Red Sea is the Middle East’s new flashpoint.
Somewhat buried in the holiday news lull, the Red Sea region caught fire in a way that looks likely to grow in the coming months. It is home to hot conflicts over territory and equally heated disputes over trade. The list of countries directly involved there is a who’s who of the region: UAE, Israel, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey.
Let’s start from the far south. The Bab al-Mandab Strait controls the entrance to the Red Sea, a chokepoint through which approximately one-tenth of global trade passes. The strait is less than 30 miles wide and is bordered by Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea.
However, just dozens of miles further south lies Somaliland, a territory that has maintained de facto independence from Somalia for nearly 34 years. No UN member state had recognized the region as an independent nation until Israel became the first to officially do so last week, just a day after Christmas.
Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and most importantly Egypt were furious. Two countries took a more ambiguous stance: Ethiopia, Egypt’s regional rival and a landlocked country with access to Somaliland’s ports, and the UAE.
What does Israel get? Well, look at the map above: The Iran-supported Houthis in Yemen just across the water now have an Israeli ally to reckon with.
As to the UAE, this is also, in a sense, about Yemen. The UAE has for years established a presence in small islands in the Gulf of Aden: These control the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Before 1990, this region was part of the independent state of “South Yemen.” A separatist movement calling for regaining independence has been active and enjoying the UAE support for years, at least since the Houthis took control of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and tried to move south.
Then, on December 30, Saudi Arabia intervened: Its jets struck the Yemeni port of Mukalla to destroy a weapons shipment destined, according to Riyadh, for the separatists. Saudi Arabia gave the UAE an ultimatum to cut their support. Hours later, the UAE announced a full withdrawal. End of story? Not quite!
See, the Saudis and the Emiratis also support warring parties in another Red Sea nation: Sudan. Sudan is now divided into a “Riverine State” (Army-held, backed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey) and a gold-rich region (RSF-controlled, UAE-supported).
Saudi Arabia and Egypt both have to tread carefully here however. Egypt desperately needs the cash flow from the Suez Canal and Saudi Arabia needs stability for NEOM, its futuristic economic zone near the Gulf of Aqaba, at the very northern tip of the sea, that’s a central piece in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 modernization strategy.
The upshot: Watch this space – make that Sea.
2. Ottoman Encirclement
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is pushing ahead this year to turn Turkey into the region’s indispensable hegemon – a strategy that places Ankara on a direct collision course with Israel.
One friction point is the Mediterranean. Turkey’s “Blue Homeland” doctrine – an expansive claim to 462,000 square kilometers of maritime territory – is in a direct standoff with the “Achilles Shield” bloc, an alliance of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus cemented at a December 22, 2025, summit in Jerusalem to protect their shared energy corridor with a joint force.
This has heightened the potential for military tensions. In response, Ankara doubled its Northern Cyprus troop presence to 100,000 and converted the Geçitkale Air Base into a permanent hub for Kizilelma stealth drones.
Another friction point is Gaza. As efforts to solidify the ceasefire in Gaza stall, Ankara’s offer of “peacekeepers” to police the truce would place Turkish forces on Israel’s southern border. While a Turkish deployment might help keep Gaza calm and has growing international support, it creates a security dilemma for the Israeli Defense Forces, which views such a presence as a direct threat.
On the other side of Israel, Ankara is leveraging its influence in the new Syria to dismantle Kurdish autonomy. Turkey is pressuring the government of President Ahmad al-Sharaa to integrate the Kurdish-led SDF into the national army.
As Ankara becomes the new Syrian state’s primary security partner, it’s effectively creating its own sphere of influence along Israel’s northern border.
The danger in 2026 is not necessarily a planned war, but that the cumulative pressure on Israel’s borders eliminates the margin for diplomatic error.
3. Iran’s Year of Transition
The Islamic Republic enters 2026 brittle and combustible. The regime faces a deepening economic crisis, growing uncertainty over succession to an increasingly feeble and aging leader, and the lingering aftershocks of last year’s 12‑day war with Israel. The government wants to project strength abroad while maintaining control at home, but is weak on both fronts.
The latest slump in the rial currency right before the New Year sparked new protests that are significant enough to show how thin public patience has grown. Years of sanctions and mismanagement, high inflation, power and water shortages, and corruption touch every layer of daily life. Frustration is running deep, even if it hasn’t yet coalesced into a mass movement or produced a clear leader. Nor has it exposed any potential cracks within the ruling elite.
Still, 2026 will be a year of transition in Iran. It just isn’t clear to what. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei turns 87 in April, and succession politics are coming into the open. The Assembly of Experts elected in 2024 will choose his replacement when the time comes. Behind the scenes, competition among Revolutionary Guard commanders, clerics, and loyal technocrats is sharpening. The next Supreme Leader will inherit a weakened economy and command over a powerful security network that defines Iran’s reach across the Middle East.
Tehran’s nuclear program remains a question mark. The regime has the option of pursuing narrow “mini‑deals” that would trade limited sanctions relief for small steps on enrichment, while steering clear of a broader accord. But its confrontation with Israel last year exposed vulnerabilities in its deterrence strategy. Washington has revived threats of new sanctions, and Moscow and Beijing are reassessing how much cover they are willing to provide.
Regionally, Iran’s network of partners and militias, from Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis to Iraqi armed groups, remains its most important source of leverage. Yet each proxy carries risks. Israel’s strikes in Syria and U.S. pressure in Iraq have further raised the costs for Tehran, while Gulf states keep testing cautious engagement with the regime.
Iran’s domestic weakness and regional meddling increasingly feed off one another. The regime’s survival instincts may be its only unifying force. 2026 will test how long that can hold.
4. America’s New Mideast Push
Washington isn’t only the regional architect. Now it’s also an active stakeholder – in its security, trade and technological future.
President Donald Trump made the Gulf his first foreign visit, and has continued to press for tighter military cooperation, investments in AI and an expansion of the Abraham Accords to bring about normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Washington is expending significant political capital to make the Gaza ceasefire stick. It is actively partnering with Gulf states on AI governance to lock out Chinese standards.
China is of course the other power that looms over the region. While America no longer needs the Gulf’s oil, China does. By holding the security keys to the Strait of Hormuz, Washington effectively controls the throttle on Beijing’s economic engine, and as the MBN China Tracker shows, the U.S. retains a huge lead over China in military relations in the region.
But Beijing is making inroads. China’s the region’s biggest trading partner. Its Digital Silk Road has embedded Huawei and 6G standards into the nervous systems of Gulf smart cities, creating a technological dependency harder to uproot than any weapons system. This Great Power rivalry here will only grow more interesting in 2026.
5. Gen Z Rising
The Arab Spring of 2011 was driven by Millennials demanding democracy. Any unrest in 2026 will likely be driven by Gen Z’s demanding the opportunity to build a decent life.
In Morocco, “Gen Z 212” – named for the country’s international dialing code – bypassed traditional politics entirely. Galvanized by the death of eight pregnant women in an Agadir hospital, this movement organizes on encrypted Discord servers and flies the “Jolly Roger” flag from the anime One Piece. They view the state not as a government to be reformed, but as something to be rejected. Following a crackdown by Moroccan authorities in October – that led to over 2,000 arrests – Gen Z 212 seemingly vanished from the streets. But that silence could be a digital illusion. Unlike the Arab Spring of 2011, where organizing happened in the open on Twitter, this movement has retreated to closed, encrypted servers.
In Tunisia, Gen Z’s are claiming a voice on campuses and streets. In Lebanon, the movement is digital and episodic. In Jordan, where youth unemployment exceeds 40%, many see no other options but to leave the country. In Egypt, worker strikes mostly go unnoticed yet other (newer) forms of protest are happening. On Telegram channels, gig workers coordinate to simultaneously disconnect from an app to trigger a service blackout during peak demand. This tactic forces the company’s algorithm to increase “surge pricing,” pressuring the platform to raise worker commissions.
This Gen Z awakening follows recent events in countries like Nepal, where a leaderless uprising in September 2025 used digital coordination to force out the government. Activists cite the 2011 Arab Spring as a reference point, though they aim to avoid its mistakes by staying decentralized and dark.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
U.S. President Donald Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, December 29, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
🔮 OUR EXPERT PANEL ON 2026
We gathered the smartest people we know to weigh in on the year ahead – and gave them two prompts. Here are the highlights. Read the whole here
In one word or short phrase, describe the state of the Middle East as it enters 2026?
“The Middle East presently is on the brink of a major development, but I am not sure which direction… It can be a positive development that would move forward towards a stable and permanent ceasefire… It can be the opposite, it all depends on one person and this person is President Donald J. Trump.”
– Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister
“Region filled with both perils and promise.”
– Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
“A phase of high strategic liquidity and a reconfiguration of the balance of power.”
– Mohamed Hegazy, Egypt’s former assistant minister of foreign affairs
“Unsettled is the word I would use to describe the Middle East. The past two years in the region have witnessed extraordinary applications of military force, but in 2026 the ceasefires are tenuous… The region is on a knife’s edge of further rounds of deadly conflict and could go either way.”
– Dana Stroul, Shelly and Michael Kassen senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East (2021-2023)
“Compute is the new oil”
– Mohammed Soliman, author of “West Asia” and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute
Who or what is the biggest potential ‘spoiler’ in the region this year?
“Uncontrolled escalation between Iran and Israel. By ‘uncontrolled escalation,’ I mean a crisis that starts small and ‘limited’ but then spreads faster than leaders can contain it – because each side keeps retaliating, misreading the other’s red lines.”
– Dr. Ebtesam Al Ketbi, president and founder of the Emirates Policy Center
“Major spoiler: The Iranian regime – largely responsible for turmoil in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen…has been hit, but not defeated. Its nuclear, missile, and terror ambitions have not been put to rest, and efforts to restore those capabilities are already underway.”
– Eyal Hulata, former Israeli national security advisor
“Israel, which believes it has the military might allowing it to be the region’s hegemon, and which will do everything to prove it through possible wars against Iran and in Lebanon, a continuation of military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, and through ongoing efforts to fragment Syria.”
– Michael Young, senior editor at Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut
“The greatest risk – one I would deeply regret – would be Syria’s descent back into a version of its devastating civil war… It would be a profound tragedy if these hopes were dashed.”
– Mustafa Akyol,
senior fellow at the Cato Institute and MBN columnist
“The U.S. What we do or don’t do will have a dramatic impact on the region. And what we will do is very hard to predict.”
– Ryan Crocker,
former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait and chair of MBN’s Board of Directors
Read the full insights and detailed forecasts from our 22 experts
MBN Agenda’s Aya Elbaz is creating her vision board for 2026. Science says it can help you achieve your goals, so she invites you to make your own and tag her @ayaelbaz_
CLOSER: YOUR VISIONARY 2026 STRATEGY
While the “macro” view of the region is unsettled – see above… – your “micro” view doesn’t have to be. There’s a way to help you personally navigate the year ahead. Introducing the vision board.
I know. I know. New year resolutions are inspirational at best. But 2026 can be different.
The idea is simple: Write your goals down, add some pictures and you activate the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS)— that’s a neural filter that helps you spot opportunities you’d otherwise miss. The theory: Seeing goals in advance makes the unfamiliar feel familiar, lowering the brain’s fear response and increasing action.
Don’t be shy, attend a workshop. They are more common than you imagine.
Now, take a picture of that board and post on social media. It is the new year trend. Don’t forget to tag me @ayaelbaz_
Rasha Ibrahim
Aya Elbaz
Ringo Harrison
Ringo Harrison is a content coordinator based in Washington DC. He is a recent graduate from Lund University in Asian Studies. He previously worked at American Purpose.
