- The History of the Ottoman Empire and Türkiye since 1900
- The History of Persia/Iran since 1900
- The History of Israel and Palestine since 1900
- Coups, Dictators and the Arab Spring
- Religions of the Middle East
- Since 7 October
The History of the Ottoman Empire and Türkiye since 1900
Late Ottoman Empire and World War I (1900–1918)
- The Armenian Genocide (1915–1916): Triggered by the arrest of intellectuals on 24 April 1915, the state orchestrated the execution of men in military labour battalions and forced women and children onto death marches into the Syrian desert, resulting in 1 million to 1.2 million deaths.
- The Greek Purges (1914–1918): Parallel actions targeted indigenous Greeks along the Aegean and Black Sea (Pontus) coasts, using violent expulsions and deadly labour battalions.
War of Independence and the New Republic (1919–1938)
World War II and the Cold War Era (1939–1989)
Recent Decades (1990–Present)
Century of Transformation: Key Eras of Modern Turkey
| Era | Key Leaders / Factions | Primary Characteristics | Defining Events & Consequences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late Ottoman & WWI (1900–1918) | The Three Pashas (CUP) | Military dictatorship; shift to radical ethno-nationalism. | Armenian & Greek Genocides: Destruction of Anatolian Christian populations; WWI collapse. |
| Independence & Reform (1919–1938) | Mustafa Kemal Atatürk | Armed resistance; radical top-down secularisation. | Foundation of Republic (1923): Westernisation, replacement of Islamic law, mandatory population exchanges. |
| Cold War & Coups (1939–1989) | İsmet İnönü / Military High Command | Transition to democracy checked by military tutelage. | 1952 NATO entry; Direct military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980 to enforce secular stability. |
| The AKP Era (2002–Present) | Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Rise of religious conservatism; centralisation of executive power. | Failed 2016 Coup; Transition to a presidential system; assertion of Turkey as an independent regional power. |
The History of Persia/Iran since 1900
Modern Iran's history is defined by its passage from a weak Qajar monarchy, squeezed between Britain and Russia, to a centralised Pahlavi state and then an Islamic Republic. Along the way it went through two revolutions, two coups, repeated foreign occupation and intervention, and a long struggle over who would control its oil. Unlike most of its Arab neighbours, Iran was never colonised and was an old state rather than a newly drawn one. Its rulers have nonetheless repeatedly been made, broken or propped up by outside powers.
Late Qajar Iran and the Constitutional Revolution (1900–1921)
In 1900 Persia was nominally independent but financially dependent on, and politically manipulated by, Britain and Russia. Protest against royal corruption and foreign concessions produced the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, which forced Mozaffar ad-Din Shah to grant a constitution and an elected parliament, the Majlis. His successor, Mohammad Ali Shah, shelled the Majlis in 1908 and was deposed after a brief civil war. The country was left too weak to resist the great powers.
- Partition by agreement (1907): The Anglo-Russian Convention divided Persia into a Russian sphere in the north and a British sphere in the south-east, without consulting the Persians.
- The oil strike (1908): William Knox D'Arcy, a solicitor who had made his fortune from the Mount Morgan gold mine near Rockhampton in Queensland, financed the search that struck oil in Khuzestan. His concession became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP). Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, then switched the Royal Navy from coal to oil. Britain had coal but no oil of its own, so in 1914 the government bought a controlling stake in the company. Persia became a strategic asset rather than merely a buffer, and protecting its oil would shape British intervention for forty years, from the 1941 invasion to the 1953 coup.
- The Great Famine (1917–1919): Although neutral in the First World War, Persia was occupied by Ottoman, Russian and British forces. Requisitioning, crop failure, cholera and Spanish flu killed roughly a million people or more, though estimates vary widely.
Reza Shah and the Pahlavi State (1921–1941)
On 22 February 1921, Reza Khan, commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade, seized Tehran in a coup approved by British officers. Within five years he had deposed the Qajars and crowned himself Reza Shah Pahlavi (1926). Like his admirer and model Atatürk, he imposed top-down modernisation:
- he built a national army, a railway and a secular legal and education system
- he subdued the tribes
- he promoted Persian nationalism, and in 1935 asked foreign governments to call the country "Iran"
- in 1936 he banned the veil
He ruled with growing paranoia. Former ministers were murdered in prison, and in 1935 troops fired on protesters at Mashhad's Goharshad Mosque, killing hundreds. His tilt towards Germany proved fatal. In August 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded to secure Iran's oil and a supply route to Stalin, and forced him to abdicate in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza.
Mohammad Reza Shah
Oil, the Cold War and Autocracy (1941–1979)
After the war, the Soviets backed breakaway republics in Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan (1945–46). These collapsed under American pressure and an Iranian army offensive. The defining crisis came in 1951, when Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In August 1953 a coup organised by the CIA and MI6, together with royalist officers under General Zahedi, overthrew him and restored the Shah's authority. That intervention would be remembered bitterly for generations.
From then on the Shah ruled as an autocrat and a pillar of the American alliance:
- SAVAK (1957): A secret police force, notorious for torture.
- The White Revolution (1963): Land reform and women's suffrage. The programme was denounced by a then little-known cleric, Ruhollah Khomeini, and the protests that followed in June 1963 were crushed with hundreds killed. Khomeini was exiled the following year.
- Oil-boom extravagance (1970s): Rising oil revenue paid for the lavish 1971 Persepolis celebrations, while inequality and resentment grew.
Mass protests in 1977–79, in which about 2,000–3,000 people were killed, drove the Shah into exile in January 1979.
The Islamic Republic (1979–Present)
Ayatollah Khomeini
Khomeini returned in February 1979 and established a theocracy based on velayat-e faqih, guardianship by the senior jurist, confirmed by referendum. Revolutionary courts executed thousands. Militant students seized the US embassy, holding 52 Americans for 444 days. In September 1980 Saddam Hussein invaded, beginning the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), which killed roughly half a million to a million people on both sides. As the war ended, the regime carried out the 1988 prison massacre, executing about 2,800–5,000 or more political prisoners.
Ali Khamenei succeeded Khomeini in 1989 and held supreme power for 37 years. Elected presidents, from the reformist Khatami to the hardline Ahmadinejad, rose and fell beneath him. Abroad, Iran built an "axis of resistance" of allied forces, including:
- Hezbollah in Lebanon
- Hamas in Gaza
- Assad's regime in Syria
- PMF militias in Iraq
- the Houthis in Yemen
At home, its nuclear programme brought sanctions, a short-lived 2015 deal and renewed confrontation after the US withdrew from that deal in 2018. Successive protest waves were met with lethal force:
- the Green Movement of 2009
- the November 2019 fuel protests
- the "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising of 2022
Open conflict with Israel followed in 2024–25, including a twelve-day war in June 2025 in which the US also struck nuclear sites. The protests of December 2025–January 2026 were the bloodiest yet, with at least 6,000 confirmed dead and some estimates far higher. On 28 February 2026, Khamenei was killed in an airstrike by the US and Israel. In March, the Assembly of Experts chose his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as Supreme Leader, a hereditary succession of the kind the revolution had been made to abolish.
A Century of Upheaval: Key Eras of Modern Iran
| Era | Key Leaders / Factions | Primary Characteristics | Defining Events & Consequences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late Qajar & WWI (1900–1921) | Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, Mohammad Ali Shah, Ahmad Shah | Weak monarchy; constitutional experiment; Anglo-Russian domination | 1906 Constitutional Revolution; 1907 partition into spheres; 1908 oil strike; wartime occupation and famine |
| Pahlavi State-Building (1921–1941) | Reza Shah | British-approved military coup; authoritarian, secularising nationalism on the Atatürk model | New dynasty (1926); forced unveiling; centralisation; Anglo-Soviet invasion and abdication (1941) |
| Oil, Coup & Cold War (1941–1979) | Mohammad Reza Shah, Mosaddegh | Royal autocracy as a US ally; struggle over oil sovereignty | Oil nationalisation (1951); CIA/MI6 coup (1953); SAVAK; White Revolution; 1979 revolution |
| The Islamic Republic (1979–Present) | Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei | Clerical rule over elected institutions; regional proxy network; repression of dissent | Iran–Iraq War; 1988 massacre; nuclear standoff; 2022 and 2026 uprisings; Khamenei killed and succeeded by his son (2026) |
The History of Israel and Palestine since 1900
The modern history of Israel and Palestine is the story of two national movements claiming the same small land. Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Palestinian Arab nationalism both took shape in the late Ottoman period, were set against each other by rival British promises, and fought through a century of revolts, wars, occupation and terror. Jews gained a state in 1948; Palestinians never have. Outside powers, from Britain to the Arab states to the United States and Iran, have repeatedly shaped the conflict, but its core has always been the rival claims of the two peoples on the ground.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict explained on a map
Ottoman Palestine and Rival Nationalisms (1900–1917)
In 1900 Palestine was not a single province but part of the Ottoman Empire, divided between the districts of Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre. Most of its roughly 600,000 people were Arab Muslims and Christians. Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat (1896) and the first Zionist Congress (1897) had launched political Zionism, and waves of Jewish immigrants fleeing Russian pogroms raised the Jewish population to about 85,000 by 1914.
The Jewish National Fund bought land, often from absentee Arab landlords, and Tel Aviv was founded in 1909. Arab writers in Jerusalem, Beirut and Paris began warning of a clash between an awakening Arab nation and a Jewish return.
The First World War turned this local rivalry into an imperial question. Britain made three incompatible commitments:
- The Hussein–McMahon correspondence (1915–16): Promised Arab independence to Sherif Hussein of Mecca in return for an Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, with boundaries left vague enough for each side to claim Palestine.
- The Sykes–Picot agreement (1916): Secretly divided the region between Britain, France and Russia, with Palestine under international administration.
- The Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917): Promised British support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, without prejudice to the rights of the non-Jewish majority.
Meanwhile Ottoman wartime rule brought famine, deportations of Jews from Jaffa and Jerusalem, and the hanging of Arab nationalists.
The British Mandate (1917–1948)
Allenby's army took Jerusalem in December 1917, and in 1920 the San Remo conference awarded Britain the Mandate for Palestine, which wrote in the Balfour promise and was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922. In 1921 Churchill split off the land east of the Jordan as Transjordan for Abdullah. Britain appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and he became the dominant Palestinian leader for the next three decades. The Jewish community, the Yishuv, built its own institutions under the Jewish Agency and David Ben-Gurion, including a militia, the Haganah. Violence came in waves:
- Riots of 1920, 1921 and 1929: In 1929 Arab mobs killed 133 Jews, including 67 in Hebron; 116 Arabs were killed, mostly by British police.
- Immigration surge (1933–1939): Nazi persecution drove Jewish immigration to a peak of about 62,000 in 1935, as other countries closed their doors. Jews rose to about a third of the population.
- The Arab Revolt (1936–39): A general strike became an armed rebellion against the British and the Jews. Britain crushed it, killing around 5,000 Arabs; about 300–400 Jews and 260 British also died. The Husseinis also killed many Palestinian rivals.
The Peel Commission (1937) proposed the first partition. The Jewish Agency accepted the principle; the Mufti rejected it. In 1939 a British White Paper reversed course, capping Jewish immigration just as the Holocaust began, in which 6 million Jews were murdered. The Mufti collaborated with the Nazis. After the war, Jewish militias, the Irgun under Menachem Begin and the Lehi, waged a campaign of terror against the British, including the King David Hotel bombing of 1946 (91 killed).
Sebastian Faulks's novel Farewell to Eden, published on 17 September 2026, covers the period of the King David Hotel bombing and the British withdrawal.
1948 and Its Aftermath (1948–1967)
On 14 May 1948 Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel.
Ben-Gurion
The next day the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded. By the 1949 armistices Israel held about 78% of Mandate Palestine; Jordan took the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took Gaza. About 6,000 Israelis and 10,000–15,000 Arabs were killed. The war produced two great displacements:
- The Nakba (the Catastrophe): About 700,000–750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled and were not allowed to return. Massacres occurred, including Deir Yassin (about 110 killed by the Irgun and Lehi) and Lydda. The refugees and their descendants, supported by the UN agency UNRWA, became the heart of the Palestinian cause.
- The Jewish exodus from Arab lands: Over the following two decades about 800,000 Jews left or were driven from Arab countries, ending communities thousands of years old. Most settled in Israel.
Israel absorbed its immigrants and built a parliamentary democracy, while Arab citizens inside Israel lived under military rule until 1966. Raids and reprisals continued across the armistice lines, including Qibya (1953) and Kafr Qasim (1956). In 1956 Israel joined Britain and France in invading Egypt's Sinai over Suez. Palestinian nationalism revived in exile: Yasser Arafat co-founded Fatah in 1959, and the Arab League created the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964.
Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO
Occupation, War and the First Peace (1967–1993)
In May 1967 Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran and massed troops in Sinai. Israel struck first, and in the Six-Day War (5–10 June) it took Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Moshe Dayan. Israeli general in the Six-Day War
Israel after the Six-Day War
About 300,000 more Palestinians were displaced. The Arab states answered at Khartoum with "no peace, no recognition, no negotiation", and the UN's Resolution 242 set the formula of land for peace. Israel began building settlements in the occupied territories, and over a million Palestinians came under military rule.
The Palestinians now took up their own cause:
- The PLO under Arafat (from 1969): Fedayeen raids and spectacular terrorism, including airline hijackings and the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Expelled from Jordan in Black September (1970–71), the PLO moved to Lebanon.
- The Yom Kippur War (1973): Egypt and Syria's surprise attack shook Israel, but led to American diplomacy and, under Sadat and Begin, the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty (1979). Sinai was returned. Sadat, who had flown to Jerusalem in 1977 to address the Knesset, paid with his life: on 6 October 1981 Islamist army officers shot him dead at a Cairo military parade, denouncing his peace with Israel.
- Lebanon (1982): Israel invaded to destroy the PLO, which was forced to Tunis. Some 17,000–19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, and Israel's Phalangist allies massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila.
- The First Intifada (1987–93): A mostly unarmed uprising in Gaza and the West Bank; about 1,100–1,200 Palestinians and 180 Israelis were killed. Hamas was founded in 1987 as an Islamist rival to the PLO, rejecting Israel's existence.
In 1988 the PLO accepted a two-state solution in principle.
From Oslo to 7 October (1993–2023)
In September 1993 Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat signed the Oslo Accords: mutual recognition, and a Palestinian Authority (1994) with limited self-rule, leading toward a final settlement within five years.
Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994. Oslo was attacked from both sides. Hamas suicide bombings killed Israelis in buses and cafés, a settler murdered 29 worshippers in Hebron in 1994, and on 4 November 1995 Rabin was shot dead after a Tel Aviv peace rally by Yigal Amir, a religious-nationalist Israeli law student opposed to giving up land. Like Sadat fourteen years earlier, he was killed by one of his own people for making peace. The final settlement never came:
- Camp David (2000): Talks between Ehud Barak and Arafat on borders, Jerusalem and refugees collapsed.
- The Second Intifada (2000–05): Far deadlier than the first, with waves of suicide bombings and heavy Israeli military operations; about 3,000 or more Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed. Israel built a separation barrier, much of it inside the West Bank.
- Gaza (2005–2023): Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel's settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections and seized Gaza from Fatah in 2007, leaving the Palestinians divided between Hamas in Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas's Authority in the West Bank. Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza, and Hamas rocket fire brought repeated wars, in 2008–09 (about 1,400 Palestinians killed), 2012, 2014 (about 2,250) and 2021.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister for most of the years after 2009, the peace process lapsed. West Bank settlers grew to about 500,000, plus over 200,000 in East Jerusalem. The 2020 Abraham Accords normalised Israel's relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, sidelining the Palestinian question, and by 2023 Saudi normalisation was under discussion. Netanyahu's 2022 coalition, the most right-wing in Israel's history, divided the country with its judicial overhaul.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas-led fighters broke through the Gaza fence and attacked Israeli towns, kibbutzim, army posts and a music festival. About 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 were taken hostage into Gaza. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and it began the most destructive war in the conflict's history.
What happened during the October 7 attack? Warning; this contains graphic footage, some of it from GoPros worn by Hamas attackers.
A Century of Conflict: Key Eras of Israel and Palestine
| Era | Key Leaders / Factions | Primary Characteristics | Defining Events & Consequences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late Ottoman & WWI (1900–1917) | Herzl, early Zionists, Arab notables, Sherif Hussein | Rise of rival Jewish and Arab nationalisms under Ottoman rule | Early Jewish immigration; Hussein–McMahon, Sykes–Picot and Balfour promises |
| British Mandate (1917–1948) | British High Commissioners, Ben-Gurion, Haj Amin al-Husseini | Imperial rule over two communities with irreconcilable goals | 1929 riots; Arab Revolt (1936–39); Peel partition plan; Holocaust; UN partition vote (1947) |
| Statehood & Dispersal (1948–1967) | Ben-Gurion, Abdullah, Nasser, early Fatah | Israeli state-building; Palestinians stateless and in exile | 1948 war and the Nakba; Jewish exodus from Arab lands; Suez (1956); PLO founded (1964) |
| Occupation & First Peace (1967–1993) | Meir, Begin, Sadat, Arafat | Israeli occupation and settlement; PLO armed struggle and terrorism | Six-Day War; Yom Kippur War; Egypt–Israel peace (1979); Sadat assassinated (1981); Lebanon (1982); First Intifada; Hamas founded |
| Oslo & Its Collapse (1993–2023) | Rabin, Arafat, Sharon, Abbas, Hamas, Netanyahu | Limited Palestinian self-rule; failed final settlement; Palestinians split | Oslo Accords; Rabin assassinated; Second Intifada; Gaza withdrawal and Hamas takeover; 7 October 2023 attack |
Coups, Dictators and the Arab Spring
Between 1952 and 1989 a string of army officers seized power across the Arab world and built dictatorships that lasted for decades. They promised to sweep away corrupt monarchies and colonial influence, unite the Arabs and destroy Israel. Instead they built police states, ran their economies into the ground, lost their wars with Israel and killed their own people on a vast scale. In 2010–11 the Arab Spring toppled four of these regimes in a year. Only one country, Tunisia, briefly emerged as a democracy; most of the rest fell back into dictatorship or collapsed into civil war.
The Age of the Colonels (1952–1989)
The model was Egypt. On 23 July 1952 the Free Officers, a group of young army officers humiliated by defeat in the 1948 war against Israel and by British control, overthrew King Farouk. He was an isolated sybarite addicted to gambling, food and showgirls.
By 1954 Lieutenant-Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser had pushed aside the figurehead General Naguib and made himself dictator. His victory at Suez in 1956 made him the hero of the Arab world, and officers elsewhere copied him.
The coups came in waves:
- Iraq (1958): Brigadier Qasim's officers machine-gunned the royal family. Qasim was himself shot in the Baathist coup of 1963, and the Baath returned for good in 1968 with Saddam Hussein as the regime's enforcer.
- Syria (1949–1970): Syria had more coups than any other Arab state, three in 1949 alone, before Baathist officers took over in 1963 and Hafez al-Assad seized sole power in 1970.
- Algeria (1965): Three years after independence, Colonel Houari Boumédiène overthrew the first president, Ahmed Ben Bella.
- 1969: Colonel Gaafar Nimeiry seized Sudan in May, and in September a 27-year-old captain, Muammar Gaddafi, overthrew King Idris of Libya.
- Later coups: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali removed the ageing Bourguiba in Tunisia's "medical coup" of 1987, and Omar al-Bashir took Sudan in an Islamist-military coup in 1989.
The regimes they built looked alike. Nasser's formula of army power, a single ruler and the secret police (the Mukhabarat) spread across the region. Socialism and nationalisation drove out private enterprise, while the ruler's family, sect or clan took the key posts: Alawites in Assad's Syria, Saddam's relatives from Tikrit in Iraq. Rulers stayed in power for decades, and in Syria passed it on to a son.
The Dictators and the Harm They Did
The scale of killing varied enormously. Boumédiène and Ben Ali ran harsh police states but killed relatively few; Saddam, the Assads and Bashir killed hundreds of thousands. All death tolls are estimates and often disputed.
- Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt (1954–1970): Created the Mukhabarat state, jailed and tortured thousands of communists and Muslim Brothers, and hanged the Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb in 1966. He sent some 70,000 troops into Yemen's civil war (1962–67), where Egypt used poison gas; that war killed 100,000–200,000. His brinkmanship led to the 1967 defeat by Israel.
- Houari Boumédiène, Algeria (1965–1978): A one-party military state with political prisoners and opponents murdered abroad, but no mass killing. The army-dominated system he built later fought Algeria's civil war of 1991–2002, which killed 100,000–200,000.
- Muammar Gaddafi, Libya (1969–2011): Ruled for 42 years through personal charisma and terror, with public hangings of opponents. About 1,270 prisoners were massacred at Abu Salim prison in 1996. Oil money funded militant groups worldwide, and Libyan agents bombed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (270 killed) and UTA flight 772 (170 killed).
- Hafez al-Assad, Syria (1970–2000): Built an Alawite-dominated security state. When the Muslim Brotherhood rose in Hama in 1982, he levelled much of the city, killing 10,000–40,000. About 500–1,000 prisoners were massacred at Tadmur (Palmyra) prison in 1980.
- Bashar al-Assad, Syria (2000–2024): Inherited the state and met peaceful protest in 2011 with gunfire, starting a civil war that killed 500,000–600,000 or more, with the regime responsible for most civilian deaths. He used chemical weapons (Ghouta, 2013, about 1,100–1,400 killed), over 100,000 people disappeared into prisons such as Sednaya, and 13 million were displaced.
- Saddam Hussein, Iraq (1979–2003): Invaded Iran (1980–88, 500,000–1,000,000 dead) and Kuwait (1990). His Anfal campaign against the Kurds killed 50,000–182,000, including about 5,000 gassed at Halabja in 1988, and he crushed the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprisings. Human Rights Watch estimates his regime killed about 250,000–290,000 Iraqis, apart from the wars.
- Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia (1987–2011): A corrupt police state that jailed and tortured Islamists and dissidents; about 300 protesters were killed in the revolution that drove him out.
- Omar al-Bashir, Sudan (1989–2019): Prolonged the second civil war with the south (1983–2005), in which about 2 million died, mostly from famine and disease. In Darfur from 2003 his army and Janjaweed militias killed about 300,000. He became the first sitting head of state indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court.
The Arab Spring (2010–2012)
On 17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit seller harassed by police, set himself on fire. Protests spread across Tunisia and, through satellite television and social media, across the Arab world, driven by unemployment, corruption and the humiliation of police rule. Within fourteen months four long-serving rulers had fallen:
- Tunisia: Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011.
- Egypt: After eighteen days of protest centred on Cairo's Tahrir Square, in which about 846 people were killed, the army forced Hosni Mubarak to resign on 11 February 2011.
- Libya: Gaddafi's threat to hunt down rebels in Benghazi led to a NATO air campaign. Rebels captured and killed him in October 2011; the war killed 10,000–25,000.
- Yemen: Ali Abdullah Saleh handed power to his deputy in February 2012 under a Gulf-brokered deal.
Elsewhere the old order held. Bahrain crushed its uprising with Saudi troops, the Gulf monarchies spent their way out of trouble, and Morocco and Jordan offered limited reforms. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad chose to fight.
The dictators overthrown by the Arab Spring
Aftermath: Counter-Revolution, Civil War and Collapse (2012–2026)
The Arab Spring removed dictators but rarely dictatorship. Where the army stayed intact it took power back; where the state broke, civil war followed, and jihadist groups and outside powers moved in.
- Egypt: Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won the first free presidential election in 2012. A year later General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew him; at Cairo's Rabaa Square in August 2013 security forces killed about 817–1,000 or more protesters in a single day. Sisi still rules, with tens of thousands of political prisoners.
- Syria: The uprising became a civil war drawing in Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Turkey and the US, and the so-called Islamic State, which declared its caliphate across Syria and Iraq in 2014. In December 2024 rebels led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda affiliate leader, took Damascus in eleven days and Assad fled to Moscow. Massacres of Alawites and Druze followed in 2025.
- Libya: The state fell apart into rival governments in Tripoli and the east, where the warlord Khalifa Haftar holds power. A June 2026 deal creates an uneasy dual executive.
- Yemen: The Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014, and a Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015. By 2021 the war had killed about 377,000, mostly from hunger and disease.
- Tunisia: The one democracy to come out of the Arab Spring lasted a decade, until President Kais Saied suspended parliament in a 2021 self-coup.
- A second wave (2019): Mass protests forced out Bashir in Sudan and Bouteflika in Algeria. In Sudan the generals then turned on their civilian partners and, in 2023, on each other; the war between the army and the RSF militia has killed tens of thousands, perhaps over 150,000, and displaced 14 million.
Fifteen years on, the regimes of 2010 are mostly gone, but the hopes of Tahrir Square have been met with repression in Egypt, war in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Sudan, and backsliding even in Tunisia.
Half a Century of Strongmen: Key Rulers
| Ruler | Country & Years | Came to Power by | Primary Characteristics | Defining Events & Human Cost (estimates) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gamal Abdel Nasser | Egypt, 1954–1970 | Free Officers coup (1952) | Pan-Arab hero; created the Mukhabarat state | Suez (1956); Yemen war (100,000–200,000 dead); 1967 defeat |
| Houari Boumédiène | Algeria, 1965–1978 | Army coup | One-party military socialism | Repression of opponents; no mass killing |
| Muammar Gaddafi | Libya, 1969–2011 | Officers' coup | Personal rule backed by oil wealth and terror | Abu Salim (about 1,270); Lockerbie (270); killed in 2011 war |
| Hafez al-Assad | Syria, 1970–2000 | 'Corrective Movement' coup | Alawite-dominated security state | Hama (10,000–40,000); Tadmur prison massacre |
| Bashar al-Assad | Syria, 2000–2024 | Inherited from his father | Dynastic dictatorship | Civil war (500,000–600,000+); chemical attacks; fled 2024 |
| Saddam Hussein | Iraq, 1979–2003 | Baath coup (1968), then pushed out al-Bakr | Tikriti clan rule; cult of personality | Iran–Iraq war; Anfal (50,000–182,000 Kurds); Kuwait; hanged 2006 |
| Zine El Abidine Ben Ali | Tunisia, 1987–2011 | 'Medical coup' against Bourguiba | Corrupt police state | About 300 killed in 2010–11; first to fall in the Arab Spring |
| Omar al-Bashir | Sudan, 1989–2019 | Islamist-military coup | Islamist military rule | Southern war (about 2 million); Darfur (about 300,000); ICC genocide charges |
Religions of the Middle East
Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all born in this region, and all three hold Jerusalem sacred. Religion here is as much a matter of identity as of belief: people are born into a community, marry within it, and are often governed by it. Under the Ottomans each religious community (a millet) ran its own courts, schools and family law, and in Lebanon, Israel and elsewhere marriage and divorce are still handled by religious authorities.
Sunni and Shia
About nine in ten of the region's people are Muslims. Their great divide goes back to a quarrel over who should lead the community after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632. The majority, who became the Sunnis, accepted a line of elected caliphs. A minority, the Shia (from Shi'at Ali, the party of Ali), held that leadership belonged to Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali and his descendants. In 680 Ali's son Husayn and his small band were massacred at Karbala, in modern Iraq. His martyrdom is mourned every year at Ashura and gives Shia Islam its strong theme of suffering and resistance to unjust rulers.
Sunnis make up about 85–90% of Muslims worldwide and most of the Arab world. Shia are the majority in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and are the largest single community in Lebanon. Iran became a Shia state in 1501 under the Safavid shahs, which is one reason Persian and Arab identity have long pulled apart.
Religions by majority (teal = Sunni, purple = Shia)
The Smaller Faiths
The region is a museum of older and smaller faiths, many of them persecuted:
- Jews: Present for 2,500 years in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Yemen and Persia, until the exodus after 1948. Today about 7 million Jews live in Israel, about three-quarters of its population. Within Israel the split between secular, religious-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews drives much of its politics, including the settler movement that produced Rabin's assassin.
- Christians: Once the majority across much of the region, now about 4–5%. The largest group is Egypt's Copts (about 10% of Egyptians). There are also Lebanon's Maronites, Greek Orthodox Arabs, Armenians, and the Assyrians and Chaldeans of Iraq, whose numbers fell from about 1.5 million to perhaps 200,000 after 2003. Emigration has thinned most of these communities.
- Alawites: An offshoot of Shia Islam, about a tenth of Syria. The Assads were Alawites, which is why Syria's war, and the 2025 massacres that followed it, took on a sectarian edge.
- Druze: A secretive faith that split from Ismaili Islam in the eleventh century. They live in Lebanon, Syria and Israel, where Druze men serve in the army.
- Others: Oman's Ibadis, the Houthis' Zaydi branch of Shia Islam in Yemen, the Yazidis of northern Iraq (subjected to genocide by Islamic State in 2014), Iran's persecuted Bahá'ís and its few remaining Zoroastrians.
Political Islam
Three twentieth-century movements turned faith into a political programme:
- The Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt, 1928): A Sunni mass movement that aimed to Islamise society from below. Nasser hanged its ideologue Sayyid Qutb, and Sisi crushed it after 2013. Hamas began as its Palestinian branch.
- Wahhabism and Salafism: A puritanical Sunni creed whose eighteenth-century alliance with the House of Saud underpins the Saudi state. Oil money spread it worldwide, and its violent fringe produced al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
- Khomeinism: Khomeini's doctrine of rule by the senior Shia jurist (see the Iran section). It was exported through Iran's "axis of resistance".
How Much Does Religion Explain?
A good deal, but less than it seems. The Saudi–Iranian rivalry is often described as a Sunni–Shia cold war. After 2003, Iraq's Shia majority took power and the Sunni insurgency that followed bred Islamic State. Lebanon shares out its top offices by sect: a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister and a Shia speaker. Yet alliances regularly cross the divide. Sunni Hamas is armed by Shia Iran. Saddam's secular, Sunni-led Iraq fought Shia Iran for eight years, while most of Iraq's Shia soldiers stayed loyal. The PLO was a largely secular nationalist movement, and religion only came to the fore in the Palestinian cause with Hamas in the late 1980s. Most of the conflicts in this blog are about land, power and nationalism, with religion as a powerful badge of who is on which side. Even so, Hamas named its 7 October attack "Al-Aqsa Flood", after the mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Faiths of the Middle East: Who's Who
| Group | Main Strongholds | Political Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Sunni Muslims | Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Jordan, Syria, the Maghreb, Gaza | Most Arab states and their rulers; Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabism, Hamas |
| Shia Muslims | Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon | Iran's theocracy and its allies: Hezbollah, Iraqi militias |
| Jews | Israel | Secular, religious-nationalist and Haredi camps shape Israeli politics |
| Christians | Egypt (Copts), Lebanon (Maronites), Iraq, Syria | Shrinking; significant only in Lebanon |
| Alawites, Druze, others | Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Oman, Yemen, Iraq | Alawites ruled Syria under the Assads; minorities often vulnerable |
Since 7 October
The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 (described at the end of the Israel section) began the most destructive war in the conflict's history. Within months it had drawn in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran, and in 2026 it became a direct war between Iran and the United States and Israel. Three years on, the wars have smashed Iran's "axis of resistance" but settled almost nothing.
The Record of the Attack
The fullest account of the day is the report of the 7 October Parliamentary Commission, chaired by the historian Andrew Roberts (Lord Roberts of Belgravia). It was set up by the cross-party UK–Israel group of MPs and peers, and is not an official publication of either House of Parliament. Its first edition (March 2025) ran to over 300 pages. It documents 1,182 people killed over 48 hours, with testimony of torture, mutilation, sexual violence and the deliberate targeting of children, and it sets out to answer "7 October denial". A second edition was published in March 2026.
The Gaza War (2023–2025)
Israel set out to destroy Hamas and bring home the 251 hostages. A week-long truce in November 2023 freed 105 of them. The ground war then moved from north to south, ending in Rafah. Hamas's leader Yahya Sinwar, the planner of 7 October, was killed in October 2024. A ceasefire in early 2025 freed more hostages but collapsed in March. Israel then cut off all aid for nearly three months, and in August 2025 the UN-backed food-security monitor declared famine in Gaza City, a finding Israel disputed.
The cost was enormous. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry counted over 70,000 dead by the ceasefire, a figure that does not separate fighters from civilians but which the Israeli army has broadly accepted. Most of the population was displaced, and about 60% lost their homes. The war also turned world opinion:
- The courts: South Africa accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice, a case Israel rejects and which is still running. In November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defence minister Gallant, and the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.
- Recognition: In September 2025 the UK, France, Canada, Australia and others recognised a State of Palestine.
- Antisemitism: Attacks on Jews rose sharply worldwide, including the Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue in October 2025 and the murder of at least fifteen people at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in December 2025.
The Wider War
- Lebanon: Hezbollah opened a second front on 8 October 2023, emptying Israel's northern towns. In September 2024 Israel blew up thousands of Hezbollah pagers and radios, killed its leader Hassan Nasrallah and invaded. A ceasefire followed in November 2024, and a new Lebanese government began trying to disarm Hezbollah.
- Yemen: The Houthis fired missiles at Israel and attacked shipping in the Red Sea, bringing American and British airstrikes.
- Syria: With Hezbollah and Iran badly weakened, Assad's regime collapsed in December 2024 (see the Coups section).
- Iran: Iran and Israel exchanged direct missile strikes in April and October 2024, then fought the twelve-day war of June 2025.
The Ceasefire and Gaza Today
President Trump's 20-point plan brought a ceasefire on 10 October 2025. Three days later the last 20 living hostages came home, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. In all, 168 hostages returned alive, and the last body was recovered in January 2026. The UN endorsed a Trump-chaired "Board of Peace" to oversee Gaza's transition.
A year on, more than 100 aid agencies say the ceasefire "exists in name only". About 1,450 Palestinians have been killed since it began. Israel holds roughly 60% of Gaza behind a "Yellow Line", and the planned international stabilisation force has not deployed. The Palestinian technocrats meant to govern Gaza still sit in Cairo, and Hamas remains armed and in charge of what is left. Israel says it will not withdraw or allow reconstruction until Hamas disarms. Rebuilding is estimated at over US$70 billion, little of that money has arrived, and about 1.3 million people live in tents or makeshift shelters.
The Iran War (2026)
On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel struck Iran in the middle of nuclear talks, killing Ali Khamenei and much of the leadership (see the Iran section). Iran fired missiles at Israel, at American bases and at the Gulf states, and closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing the largest oil supply disruption on record. Hezbollah rejoined the fight, and Israel invaded southern Lebanon again; more than 4,000 people have been killed there and over a million displaced. About 3,500 Iranians and some ninety Israelis and Americans have died. A Pakistan-brokered interim deal in June broke down within weeks. As of October 2026, an American naval blockade of Iran and Iranian attacks on tankers in the Strait continue, and the nuclear question remains unresolved.
Where Things Stand
Israel's enemies have been battered: Hamas reduced from an army to a militia, Hezbollah weakened, Assad gone, Iran's supreme leader dead. No Arab state has broken off the Abraham Accords. Yet Israel is more isolated than at any time in its history, the Palestinians are no nearer a state, and Gaza lies in ruins. Israelis vote on 27 October 2026, in an election seen as a reckoning for Netanyahu over 7 October.
Since 7 October: Key Dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 7 October 2023 | Hamas-led attack on Israel: about 1,200 killed, 251 taken hostage |
| November 2023 | One-week truce; 105 hostages freed |
| September 2024 | Pager attacks; Nasrallah killed; Israel invades Lebanon |
| November 2024 | Lebanon ceasefire; ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Deif |
| December 2024 | Fall of Assad |
| June 2025 | Twelve-day war between Israel and Iran; US strikes nuclear sites |
| September 2025 | UK, France, Canada, Australia recognise Palestine |
| 10 October 2025 | Gaza ceasefire under Trump's plan; last living hostages freed 13 October |
| 28 February 2026 | US–Israeli strikes on Iran kill Khamenei; Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz |
| March 2026 | Hezbollah resumes fire; Israel invades southern Lebanon |
| 27 October 2026 | Israeli general election |
