The UAE and Israel: Middle Powers in the Transforming Middle East
https://doi.org/10.46272/IT.2026.24.1.84.1
Abstract
The ongoing transformations in the Middle East are marked by shifts in power dynamics, the decreasing role of extraregional actors, and the strengthening regionalization trends. Against this backdrop, the autonomy and initiative of the regional players are significantly growing. Nowadays, they are capable of projecting both hard and soft power, thereby increasingly defining key trends and principles of the regional landscape. The UAE and Israel are two prominent examples of Middle Eastern middle powers. The normalization of relations between them in 2020 had significant regional implications and aligned with their national development priorities. This event acted as both a reflection and a catalyst of contemporary transformational processes in the Middle East. The recently activated process of the “regionalization of the region”, its evolution as increasingly single and interconnected as well as the rise of new centers of power that formulate the logic of international relations within the region and bring it to life, are of critical importance in this context. The UAE and Israel play key roles in these new regional dynamics – the former being the driving force of regionalization, and the latter as a vital component of this process, capable of making a significant contribution to the development of the Middle Eastern countries but constrained in isolation from it for decades. The authors conclude that recent years have seen the emergence of preconditions for a new regional architecture in the Middle East, prompted by the strengthening of the UAE and Israel as new regional and middle powers and manifested in their bilateral and regional interactions.
Keywords
About the Authors
Tatiana Tyukaeva
Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Liudmila Samarskaia
Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
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For citations:
Tyukaeva T., Samarskaia L. The UAE and Israel: Middle Powers in the Transforming Middle East. International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy. :1-21. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.46272/IT.2026.24.1.84.1
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