The international retreat we are now witnessing by both Israel and the United States is deeply troubling. Equally concerning is the growing coordination among three nominal American allies: Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Washington long assumed that these states would remain dependent on American power and therefore politically manageable. That assumption now appears increasingly fragile. Amichai Chikli has already warned that this emerging alignment should concern Israel. Others have spent more than a year warning about the imperial ambitions of Turkey. Yet this development becomes clearer when examined alongside the activities of Qatar in the Middle East and the United States.
Qatar has deep strategic interests in the region. In my view, its objective is to lull Washington into a sense of security while helping create the intellectual and political conditions for a new regional bloc.
The primary role of Qatar is not to supply military strength. Rather, it helps prepare the ideological ground, particularly through its influence within American universities. Meanwhile, its more radical regional partners can contribute weapons, energy and industrial capacity.
Together, these elements could constrain American action and gradually weaken the position of Washington in the Middle East. But the ambition goes further. It seeks to challenge not only the regional presence of America, but the legitimacy of American power itself. Universities become instruments through which future elites are encouraged to view American influence as inherently corrupt, imperial or illegitimate.
Hostility toward Israel is the most effective vehicle for this project. By promoting the claim that the Israeli lobby controls American policy, this campaign turns Israel from an ally into the supposed explanation for American failures.
Such a narrative can achieve more than forcing an American retreat from the Middle East. It can divide both major political parties, fracture public opinion, intensify domestic radicalization and damage the cultural and economic foundations of American power.
Seen in this light, the emerging Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani axis serves more than a shared Muslim interest. It may also serve China.
Chinese and Islamist interests can operate in parallel without requiring a formal alliance. On American campuses, they converge in weakening confidence in the West. In the Middle East, they converge in eroding the strategic architecture of American influence.
This is how the new alignment should be understood. It is not merely another regional coalition. It is part of a broader process in which the ideological foundations and economic reach of the American order are being challenged simultaneously, from within and from abroad.
