For the First Time in Millennia: A Real Path to Middle Eastern Peace Emerges

For most of the modern era, the Middle East has been defined by cycles of war, proxy conflict, and manufactured crises. Israel sat at the center of that storm — sometimes as a genuine victim, often as a powerful regional actor shielded from accountability, and always as the country the world was told everything revolved around.

That era is ending.

For the first time in living memory — and arguably in thousands of years — a different power structure is emerging: a unified Arab bloc anchored by Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman, aligned with an America First White House, and backed by regional partners who have grown tired of perpetual conflict. Israel will survive this shift, but it will not define it. Peace is now possible not because Israel leads, but because the region is finally moving forward without waiting for Israeli permission.

This is a civilizational moment. What follows is the story of how we got here and what is unfolding in real time.

Israel at the Center: From Besieged State to Regional Enforcer

To understand the magnitude of the shift taking place today, we must first understand the world Israel believed it lived in — and the world the West allowed it to believe it lived in. For seventy-five years, Israel operated from a position of exceptional indulgence, unmatched protection, and nearly unconditional Western support. These forces shaped Israel’s identity, its military posture, and its belief in its own centrality to the Middle East.

I. The Birth Myth: The Besieged State Surrounded by Enemies

Israel’s modern story begins with a narrative that was both real and mythologized: a tiny, outnumbered state fighting for survival. The 1948 war established Israel in the global imagination as David surrounded by many Goliaths. The Holocaust was a fresh wound. Western audiences saw Israel as a moral imperative. Arab states, though numerically superior, were fractured, uncoordinated, and undergoing their own internal upheavals. Israel’s survival forged an identity of heroism under siege — one that Israel would rely upon for decades, long after the danger had evolved.

II. The American Security Umbrella

The United States transformed Israel from a small embattled state into a regional military superpower. Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating after the Six-Day War, America provided:

• massive military aid packages,
• cutting-edge weapons platforms,
• the doctrine of QME (Qualitative Military Edge),
• diplomatic shielding in the United Nations,
• and full-spectrum intelligence cooperation.

Washington treated Israel as its forward base in the Middle East — a Western-aligned outpost during the Cold War, a counterterrorism partner in the 90s, and a centerpiece of U.S. regional strategy after 9/11. Israel mistook this privileged position for permanent centrality, not realizing how dependent it was on American domestic politics and global strategic calculations.

III. Mossad and the Rise of the Shadow Superpower

While Israel’s military gained unmatched firepower, its intelligence services achieved near-mythic stature. Mossad’s operations — from Entebbe to targeted assassinations to deep-cover sabotage inside Iran — elevated Israel’s reputation far beyond its size. Western media amplified this mystique, portraying Mossad as all-knowing and all-capable. Israeli leaders internalized this myth. They came to believe the intelligence advantage was permanent, endless, and self-justifying.

But the same operations that built Mossad’s reputation also deepened Israel’s addiction to covert manipulation. The state that once relied on necessity gradually relied on impunity.

IV. The Intelligence Cartel Era

By the 1980s and 1990s, Israel was part of an informal intelligence triad with the CIA and MI6. Covert operations in Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf, and beyond shaped regional dynamics in ways that benefited Israel’s strategic interests. Politicians in the United States, influenced by domestic lobbying and theological narratives, provided diplomatic cover for actions that would have isolated any other nation.

Money, influence, kompromat, technology transfers, and quiet backchannel deals created an ecosystem where Israel operated above the rules that governed other states. Strategic necessity calcified into a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement.

V. The Hidden Limits Beneath the Illusion

Yet for all its military and intelligence advantages, Israel’s dominance was always conditional — and built on foundations Israel did not control:

• Israel could not prevent demographic shifts in the region,
• could not control Arab political awakening,
• could not control oil geopolitics,
• could not control American domestic fatigue,
• and could not control the rise of new economic powers.

Israel never understood the difference between being protected and being central. It mistook American indulgence for permanent primacy, and it built an entire national strategy around the assumption that Washington would always defer to its interests — even when those interests contradicted America’s broader geopolitical goals.

VI. The Thesis of This Section

Israel’s era at the center of Middle Eastern power was not the result of invincible military genius or divine mandate. It was the result of geopolitical circumstances, American cover, Arab disunity, and a mythologized sense of exceptionalism. That world is gone. The shift now underway — driven by Arab unity, American realignment, and global strategic changes — is exposing just how fragile Israel’s perceived centrality truly was.

This realization sets the stage for Netanyahu’s strategic collapse, the rise of nationalist saboteurs, and the emergence of a new regional order led not by Israel, but by Saudi Arabia and a unified Arab coalition.

Netanyahu’s Long Game and Strategic Collapse

Benjamin Netanyahu did not rise to power by accident. He is one of the most durable political figures in the modern world — a man who mastered the dark arts of coalition politics, intelligence backchannels, American donor networks, and manufactured crises. For decades, Netanyahu operated like a political escape artist: slipping out of scandals, indictments, and diplomatic disasters with a mixture of fearmongering, opportunism, and ruthless coalition engineering.

But every long game has an expiration date. And Netanyahu’s came the moment the Middle East realigned without him.

I. The Survivor-in-Chief

Netanyahu’s brand was built on two pillars:

• security panic — the perpetual warning that only he could keep Israel alive,
• political fragmentation — deliberately empowering extremists so he could remain the “moderate” glue holding the government together.

He cultivated chaos as a governing strategy. Peace was a threat to his career; crisis was oxygen. He ensured no rival could ever consolidate power by stitching together unstable coalitions of ultra-nationalists, ultra-orthodox kingmakers, and ideological hardliners who viewed compromise as betrayal.

Netanyahu survived by making Israel ungovernable without him.

II. The Doha Betrayal and Trump’s Breaking Point

The rupture between Netanyahu and Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere. The breaking point was a series of reckless actions by Netanyahu during moments when Trump was brokering delicate regional choreography.

The most infamous was the Doha missile strike — launched by Israel during the opening hours of what was meant to be a ceasefire window. Trump took this personally. Netanyahu blindsided him, undermined U.S. diplomacy, and tried to use crisis to box Washington into deeper regional escalation. Trump does not tolerate disloyalty or diplomatic sabotage, especially when it endangers American interests.

Since then, Trump has treated Netanyahu more like a liability than a partner — and he has repeatedly humiliated him in public to make that clear.

III. The Legal Trap Netanyahu Cannot Escape

Beneath Netanyahu’s statesman persona lies a simple truth: the moment he leaves office, he is a man with serious legal exposure. His corruption cases — financial, political, and personal — hang over him like a guillotine. He is not governing Israel; he is fleeing the consequences of his own actions.

His far-right coalition knows this. They exploit it. They know he cannot risk new elections. They know he cannot antagonize them. They know he needs them to stay out of prison. And so:

• they demand settlements,
• they demand escalations,
• they demand ideological purity,
• they demand rejection of Palestinian statehood,
• they demand permanent conflict.

Netanyahu is hostage to the very extremists he empowered.

IV. The Coalition of Teeth

Netanyahu’s current coalition — Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and their ideological counterparts — is not simply politically far-right. They are historically maximalist. They believe Israel’s borders extend from the Nile to the Euphrates. They oppose any peace agreement on theological grounds. They do not recognize Palestinian political rights. They consider perpetual conflict a national virtue.

This bloc does not want peace — not now, not ever.

They want expansion, domination, and the slow suffocation of Palestinian political existence.

Netanyahu aligned with them because nobody else would keep him out of prison.
And in doing so, he attached Israel’s national destiny to an ideological kamikaze squad.

V. The Moment Netanyahu Lost the Americans

The Biden administration had already frozen him out diplomatically. But the true shock came when the America First wing — the movement that once treated Israel as a sacred cow — began to publicly question Israeli intelligence failures, foreign influence operations, and the October 7 narrative.

Charlie Kirk said the quiet part out loud.
Laura Loomer pushed the window open farther.
Steve Bannon amplified it.
Grassroots America began asking questions that were once taboo.

Trump saw the trend — and leaned into it.

Netanyahu has lost the right, lost the populists, lost the independents, and lost the policy class. There is no ideological force left in America that views him as indispensable.

VI. Netanyahu’s Absence From the New Middle East

But the most devastating blow came from the region itself. As Arab unity solidified and MBS emerged as the central statesman of the Middle East, Netanyahu was shut out of summits, excluded from planning sessions, and treated not as a power broker — but as a problem to be managed.

This is the humiliation Israeli opposition leaders now speak about in panicked tones: Israel was not at Sharm el-Sheikh. Israel was not at the Gaza reconstruction meetings. Israel was not consulted on the new security architecture. Israel was not invited to the discussions shaping the future of the region.

For the first time in Israel’s modern history, the Middle East moved on without them.

VII. Strategic Collapse

Netanyahu’s long game relied on four illusions:

• that America would always defer to Israel,
• that Arab states would always be divided,
• that Israeli military superiority would always be permanent,
• that perpetual conflict was a sustainable national strategy.

All four have collapsed.

Arab unity is real.
American patience is gone.
MBS is ascendant.
Turkey is inside Gaza.
F-35s are heading to Saudi Arabia.
And Netanyahu is being publicly sidelined by the very American president he once believed he could manipulate at will.

VIII. The Thesis of This Section

Netanyahu’s downfall is not just political — it is strategic. He gambled Israel’s future on a model of dominance that could only survive as long as the region stayed weak and America stayed blind. Both of those conditions have ended.

Netanyahu rose by exploiting chaos.
He is falling because the Middle East is stabilizing without him.

And that collapse is the prelude to everything that follows — the rise of ideological saboteurs, the emergence of the Arab bloc, and the moment Israel realizes it no longer commands the center of the world stage.

The Ideological Saboteurs: The Machinery of Perpetual Conflict Exposed

For decades, the Israeli political system has been held hostage not by moderates or pragmatists, but by a hardline faction whose entire worldview depends on the continuation of conflict. These actors were never harmed by the sabotage they engineered. They didn’t pay the price for derailed negotiations, failed agreements, or escalated tensions. The innocent public did.

• 90% of the agenda is hidden from public view.
• 90% of the consequences fall directly on civilians.
• The political class stays insulated while the public bleeds.

These extremists didn’t sabotage peace out of necessity — they sabotaged it out of ideology. Legitimate actors were pushed aside because stability threatens the power structures the hardliners rely on. A nation kept in fear is a nation easy to control.

I. A Faction Built on Ideological Compulsion, Not Security Logic

This bloc treats conflict as cleansing and compromise as contamination. It is a worldview built on:

• militant nationalism,
• apocalyptic political rhetoric,
• a belief in endless territorial entitlement,
• a rejection of diplomacy as weakness.

Their leverage is structural. They control:

• coalition survival,
• settlement expansion,
• internal security portfolios,
• the political “kill switch” for any peace initiative.

II. Israeli Civilians as Political Human Shields

For years, Israeli leaders have used their own population as political cover. Fear wasn’t a byproduct — it was a weapon.

• Crisis justified extremist policy.
• Trauma became political leverage.
• Instability validated hardliner control.

Ordinary Israelis weren’t protected by the political class — they were exploited by it.

III. The Permanent War Strategy Finally Cracks

Today, the permanent-war dynamic is breaking in real time. Israelis are seeing clearly that conflict was prolonged not by external enemies, but by:

• personal ambition,
• ideological obsession,
• entrenched power centers,
• a deep state addicted to crisis management.

Netanyahu’s opposition admitted something historic today:

• Israel will have to accept a two-state solution.
• Security guarantees will be mutual, not unilateral.

This is the first public recognition that the old sabotage playbook no longer works.

IV. A Stunning Shift: Israelis Trust Foreign Stability More Than Their Own Government

Reports emerging today show Israeli civilians relieved to see U.S. troops on the ground. Not because of Iran. Not because of Gaza. But because:

• U.S. presence stabilizes the region,
• U.S. forces act as a deterrent on Israeli hardliners,
• neighbors finally feel protected from sabotage,
• and Israelis finally feel a stabilizing adult in the room.

It speaks volumes that U.S. troops are effectively in Israel to prevent Israeli extremists from igniting another engineered crisis.

V. Real Diplomacy Starts Delivering Tangible Peace

The Trump–MBS partnership is giving Israelis something they’ve never really had: real, lived, touchable stability.

• borders cooling down,
• open lines of regional cooperation,
• a credible horizon for Palestinian governance,
• a leash placed on Netanyahu’s sabotage machine.

For the first time, Israelis can feel the difference between real diplomacy and political theatrics. This isn’t Oslo. It isn’t PR peace. It’s functional, stabilizing, adult statecraft — and the public recognizes it immediately.

VI. The Thesis of This Section

The enemy of peace was never the Arab world. It was a small, entrenched faction inside Israel whose survival depends on perpetual war.

• This faction sabotaged legitimate diplomacy.
• This faction derailed moderates for decades.
• This faction kept Israel fearful so it could remain powerful.

But now, the spell is breaking. Israelis are experiencing the benefits of diplomacy handled by leaders who don’t need war to justify their existence. A regional order is forming that doesn’t revolve around Israeli extremism — and the public is waking up to it.

This awakening brings us to the next section: the rise of the unified Arab bloc under MBS — a bloc that now holds the key to a stable Middle East.

The Arab Bloc Awakens: MBS and the Return of Regional Adulthood

The most consequential shift in the Middle East is not happening inside Israel — it’s happening around it. For the first time in the modern era, the Arab world has a center of gravity that isn’t fractured, compromised, or operating under foreign influence. It has a leader with legitimacy, power, and vision: Mohammed bin Salman.

Leading into the November 18, 2025 visit of MBS to the White House, the region feels different. The temperature has dropped. The theater of conflict is giving way to the architecture of stability. And the Arab public — long dismissed as divided or directionless — is rallying around something they’ve been denied for generations:

• a leader who isn’t a CIA puppet,
• a regional strategy not written in Washington or London,
• a future that doesn’t depend on Israel’s approval,
• a legitimate path to prosperity, modernity, and dignity.

I. MBS Carries Something No Arab Leader Has Had in 70+ Years: Legitimacy

The Arab world is responding to MBS because he carries real weight — strategic, economic, and cultural — that decades of Western-backed placeholders never possessed.

• He controls capital, not poverty.
• He controls vision, not stagnation.
• He controls diplomacy, not dependence.
• He controls regional respect, not resentments.

And unlike past Arab leaders, he is not a front for foreign intelligence services. That alone shifts the entire equation.

II. The Arab Bloc Finally Has a Leader — and Israel Doesn’t Know What to Do With That

Israel’s political establishment is rattled because they’ve never had to deal with a unified Arab front. Their entire geopolitical doctrine was built on the assumption that:

• Arabs would stay divided,
• Arabs wouldn’t modernize,
• Arabs wouldn’t coordinate,
• Arabs wouldn’t challenge Israeli centrality.

All four assumptions collapsed the moment MBS stepped into the White House and the F-35s did their ceremonial passes overhead.

III. MBS and Trump Speak the Same Language: Results, Not Theater

This partnership is working because neither leader has patience for the old diplomatic religion where peace talks are endless, abstract, and deliberately impotent. They share a simple framework:

• end the war economy,
• stabilize the borders,
• bring Saudi capital into the region,
• force accountability on actors who sabotage peace,
• impose adult supervision on the international system.

These aren’t slogans — they’re operational steps.

IV. The People See It Immediately

Across the region, the Arab public is seeing something they’ve been denied for generations: a peace process led by Arabs, not imposed on Arabs.

• Saudi Arabia is the economic engine.
• Turkey is the NATO-based stabilizer.
• Egypt and Jordan are the border custodians.
• Pakistan and Indonesia are legitimacy and manpower.

Israel isn’t the hub anymore. It’s one spoke among many — and the region is functioning better without it calling the shots.

V. A Middle East That Doesn’t Revolve Around Israel

For the first time in history, Arab unity is not a threat to the world — it’s a stabilizing force. Under MBS, the Arab bloc is becoming a responsible adult actor on the global stage:

• economic modernization,
• regional investment,
• security guarantees,
• shared intelligence,
• energy diversification,
• infrastructure diplomacy.

This is a Middle East where peace is no longer contingent on Israeli approval or Israeli sabotage. That alone is historic.

VI. The Thesis of This Section

The Arab world has awakened because it finally has a leader with legitimacy, resources, and vision. MBS is not a puppet. He is not a placeholder. He is not beholden to Western intelligence constructs. And his partnership with Trump is producing real, measurable peace that the people can feel in their daily lives.

The era where Israel shaped the region is over. The era where the Arab bloc shapes its own destiny has begun.

And this reality drives us into the next section: America’s pivot — the moment the U.S. stopped managing the conflict and started supporting the region’s self-governance.

Trump’s Long Game: The Riyadh Realignment of 2017

The events unfolding recently in late 2025 — the unity of the Arab bloc, the elevation of MBS, Saudi Arabia’s strategic centrality, the containment of Israeli hardliners — did not begin this week. They began the moment Donald J. Trump stepped off Air Force One in Riyadh in May 2017. That trip wasn’t ceremonial. It was structural. It was the quiet re-engineering of the entire Middle East power grid.

I. The Sword Dance: Trump Sends the First Signal

People remember the imagery — the sword dance, the orb, the massive reception — but they missed the meaning. In Saudi culture, the sword dance is not entertainment. It is:

• a declaration of alliance,
• a recognition of sovereignty,
• a gesture of mutual trust,
• a signal to the entire Arab world that the U.S. would back a modernization project led by Arabs themselves.

That moment told every regional actor — from Iran to Israel — that Trump saw Saudi Arabia not as a client state, but as a strategic peer.

II. The U.S.–Arab Islamic Summit: 45 Nations Under One Roof

Trump convened 45 Arab and Muslim-majority nations in Riyadh. No American president had ever done anything remotely like this. That summit laid the foundation for the unity we are witnessing today.

• Counter-terror cooperation across the region.
• Massive intelligence re-alignment.
• Economic modernization initiatives.
• A refocus on Iran’s destabilizing apparatus.
• A pivot away from the CIA-era puppet-state model.

This was the first time the Arab world had seen Washington treat them as a collective power bloc — not as a patchwork of fractured dependencies.

III. The Rise of MBS Begins Here

MBS wasn’t the global figure he is now back in 2017 — but Trump saw him coming. The Riyadh visit did three things simultaneously:

• Legitimized MBS as the regional modernizer.
• Signaled U.S. support for his future leadership path.
• Cut off the oxygen to the Wahhabist elements he later purged.

Those purges — the Ritz-Carlton arrests — happened months later. That was not a coincidence. Trump gave MBS the international cover he needed to dismantle the old guard.

IV. The Anti-Corruption Wave

Executive Order 13818 — targeting global corruption, trafficking networks, kleptocrats, and intelligence-linked money operations — was signed six months after the Riyadh Summit. That order smashed the financial infrastructure behind:

• the old Saudi royal factions,
• the Qatari shadow-finance pipelines,
• the intelligence laundering networks,
• the arms-and-human-trafficking ecosystem,
• and the “permanent war” money machinery.

This is why the Arab bloc is clean enough now to unite — the rot was cleared out starting in 2017.

V. The Pattern Was Obvious If You Knew What You Were Looking At

Everything that looks “sudden” today is in fact the maturation of a long-running structural redesign:

• Trump elevates MBS as the modern Arab leader.
• MBS purges the deep-state Wahhabi networks.
• Saudi capital becomes the engine of regional development.
• The U.S. pivots to Saudi Arabia as primary partner.
• Arab unity forms around a credible, sovereign axis.
• Israel loses its monopoly on regional influence.
• The peace architecture becomes Arab-led, not Israel-dependent.

The ceremony we saw at the November 18, 2025 reception of MBS to the White House was pure signal — it was fulfillment.

VI. The Thesis of This Section

The Middle East we see today — unified, confident, Arab-led — was engineered in 2017. Trump’s Riyadh trip marked the end of the artificial divides that intelligence agencies cultivated for decades and the start of a sovereign Arab future anchored by Saudi Arabia.

The long game is paying off. The region is stabilizing. The old saboteurs are losing relevance. And the world is witnessing the return of a Middle East that governs itself.

From this foundation, we now move into the next stage: America’s strategic pivot — the point where Washington stops managing conflict and starts empowering regional self-governance.

America First Rearranges the Board: Washington Stops Managing Conflict and Starts Engineering Stability

The shift in the Middle East did not happen because Israel changed direction. It happened because the United States — under an America First doctrine — stopped treating the region as an endless management problem and started treating it as a landscape capable of stable self-governance. Washington’s posture changed from paternalism to partnership, and the effects have been cascading ever since.

I. The Intelligence-Century Model Ends

For decades the Middle East was shaped by intelligence agencies, shadow networks, covert alliances, and manufactured instability. That framework depended on:

• endless proxy conflicts,
• dependent governments,
• regional fragmentation,
• a controlled energy market,
• a narrative built on Western mediation as the only path to peace.

America First dismantled that architecture. The new approach was simple and devastatingly effective:

• stop protecting failed models,
• stop underwriting permanent war,
• start empowering legitimate regional leadership,
• treat stability as a shared responsibility, not an American burden.

II. The Power Hierarchy Reverses

Under the old model, Washington acted as the central pole holding the region together. Under the America First model, Washington acts as the stabilizing anchor while regional actors — especially Saudi Arabia — form the actual structure. This inversion reshaped the board.

• Saudi Arabia emerged as the economic engine.
• Turkey as the NATO-embedded stabilizer.
• Egypt and Jordan as the security custodians.
• Pakistan and Indonesia as auxiliary pillars of legitimacy.
• Israel shifted from dominant arbiter to one regional participant among many.

This is not decline for Israel — it is normalization. And normalization ends the monopoly Israel’s hardliners once held over the region’s political gravity.

III. Policy Moves That Rewired the Region

The sequence of strategic actions that followed the 2017 Riyadh Summit created a new operating system for the Middle East:

• Executive Order 13818: targeted global corruption networks that sustained permanent conflict.
• Coalition realignment: elevated Saudi Arabia as the diplomatic and economic hub.
• Military posture shift: refocused American presence as a stabilizer, not an enforcer.
• Strategic energy partnerships: tied regional modernization to American technology, not Chinese extraction or European dependency.
• Security assurances: began flowing to Arab states as well as Israel, ending the one-sided model.

The result was profound: Arab sovereignty was no longer symbolic — it became operational.

IV. The Washington–Riyadh Axis Takes Shape

The November 18, 2025 visit of MBS to Washington marked the visible confirmation of an axis that had been built quietly for years. The ceremony was not theatrics — it was recognition:

• Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally,
• a signed strategic defense agreement,
• a civil nuclear cooperation framework,
• expanded access to American military technology,
• a direct invitation into the global microchip and AI industrial base,
• a financial architecture linking Saudi investment to American production.

All of this underlined a blunt reality: Saudi Arabia is now indispensable to the emerging international order.

V. A Region No Longer Built Around Israel’s Veto Power

For the first time in its modern existence, Israel is not the focal point around which Middle Eastern diplomacy orbits. America’s pivot made this possible by treating Arab nations not as clients but as fully sovereign partners.

• Arab unity no longer requires Israeli permission.
• Regional security no longer depends on Israeli primacy.
• Peace is no longer artificially constrained by Israeli hardliners.

This does not weaken Israel — it frees the region from Israel’s political dysfunction.

VI. The Thesis of This Section

The United States stopped trying to manage the Middle East and began enabling the Middle East to manage itself. That shift ended the decades-long cycle of dependency, manipulation, and manufactured crisis. America First replaced paternalism with partnership, and the entire region rapidly recalibrated around a stable, sovereign, Arab-led core.

This realignment sets up the next chapter: what this new architecture means for Israel — and