The moments that defined the Middle East in 2021

Since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, tensions escalated across the Middle East not only between pro-democracy citizens and autocratic governments but also between states like Iran and the Saudi-UAE bloc.

This year, tensions have not significantly deescalated in the turbulent region, but at the same time, some positive trends have taken place in the Gulf where the Saudi-UAE bloc ended their blockade against Qatar. 

Normalisation between Qatar and other Gulf powers also helped promote diplomacy between Tehran and Riyadh whose interests clash across the region from Yemen to Iraq and Lebanon. 

Increasing diplomacy also led to other normalisation efforts between Turkiye and Egypt as the two countries began an official rapprochement process in May. In November, Ankara and Abu Dhabi also decided to normalise relations after ties worsened following the failed July 15 coup against the Erdogan government in 2016.

But in Palestine, nothing improved as Israel continued to increase its aggression against Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem to Gaza, launching a brutal aerial campaign against the Hamas-led enclave. 

Here is an overview of what happened across the region in 2021. 

Gulf normalisation

On January 5, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, the UAE and Bahrain alongside Egypt, signed an agreement with Qatar in Al Ula, normalising relations with Doha. 

The normalising effort seemed to have been pushed by the former Trump administration, which was also instrumental in enacting the Abraham Accords between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel in late 2020.  

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a full blockade over Qatar, due to the country’s close ties with Iran and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement. Both Iran and the MB are forces the Saudi-UAE alliance see as threats to their rule and they demanded Qatar to distance itself from both. 

The blockade ensured no tangible benefits for the quartet as Qatar continued to receive support from its allies like Turkiye and the US. 

Sheikh Jarrah protests & Israeli war on Gaza

Israeli expulsions of Palestinian residents from Sheikh Jarrah — a neighbourhood which has existed for more than nine centuries in occupied East Jerusalem — was the trigger for another round of tensions. 

In May, based on an Israeli court decision, Israeli authorities raided Palestinian homes and faced fierce resistance from both native residents and their supporters. The confrontation led to months of protests across Palestine from Jerusalem to the West Bank and finally Gaza. 

This time around, though, Palestinians were not alone. Many people across the globe from the US to Western Europe rose to oppose the Israeli expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah, supporting the Palestinian cause. 

The Sheikh Jarrah standoff also spread to Gaza, which has long been under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade. The Hamas-led enclave launched hundreds of rockets to Israeli cities as far as Tel Aviv leading the Israelis to respond with heavy bombardment from both land and air, leading to hundreds of casualties. 

At least 256 Palestinians including 66 children were killed due to Israel’s military campaign as tens of thousands were displaced to other regions. More than 1,900 Palestinians were injured. 13 Israelis killed and 200 Israelis were injured according to Tel Aviv. 

After 15 days of fighting, Israel with its obvious military superiority, halted its attacks under enormous international pressure. 

Iranian hardliners won

This year also witnessed a lot of soul-searching in Iran.

Under reformist leadership over the last decade, Tehran reached an agreement with the US and other major powers on its nuclear programme in 2015. But in 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, leaving the fate of the nuclear deal in the lurch. 

The US pull-out weakened Iranian reformists giving a boost to hardliners who long thought that the deal was an unnecessary appeasement to the West.

In June, Iran’s hardliners claimed a landslide victory in presidential elections thanks to both the US withdrawal from the deal and the election committee’s disqualification of many reformist candidates.

Even under hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, Iran returned to nuclear deal negotiations in Vienna after the new Biden administration expressed its willingness to restore the landmark agreement. But things are not exactly going smoothly in the Austrian capital so far. 

Netanyahu is gone

In 2021, another crucial development happened in Israeli politics: Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, exited from his post after unprecedented four back-to-back inconclusive elections. 

Netanyahu, a hardliner, faces various corruption charges, even seeing an indictment in early 2020 - but never showed the willingness to quit his job. 

After the latest elections in March, Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s former ally, who is also another hardliner, was able to bring together different forces from far-left to far-right to form an unlikely coalition, ousting the Likud leader. 

While he is gone, many still believe that his hardliner views continue to control the Israeli state.

Sudan coup

In October, another coup ousted Sudan’s interim government, which was in place after the country’s 2019 revolution, which brought an end to Omar al Bashir’s longtime dictatorial rule. 

Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the country’s top general, who also happens to be a protege of the jailed Bashir, launched a coup against Abdalla Hamdok’s civilian government, established after a deal between military leaders and protesting forces in August 2019. 

But generals have faced fierce opposition on the streets. Burhan, who was under strong international pressure, approached Hamdok, the man he ousted with his coup, to bring him back to power. 

After the initial refusal, Hamdok, who is strongly backed by the Western alliance, decided to accept Burhan’s offer, signing an agreement with him, laying out a kind of unclear path from military rule to democracy. The deal appeared to favour the military’s positions, but it also promised to release all political prisoners jailed after the October coup. 

After the initial refusal, Hamdok, who is strongly backed by the Western alliance, decided to accept Burhan’s offer, signing an agreement with him, laying out a kind of unclear path from military rule to democracy. The deal appeared to favour the military’s positions, but it also promised to release all political prisoners jailed after the October coup. 

But Sudan’s anti-military civilian leadership opposed the Hamdok-Burhan deal, continuing to protest across streets, showing an unseen resilience to move the country toward a democratic rule. Most recently, Hamdok has signalled that he may step down. 

Turkiye-UAE normalisation

Toward the end of the year, a surprising development took place between Turkiye and the UAE. Prior to the July 15 coup attempt, relations between the two states were warm, but after the coup attempt, whose perpetrators appeared to have links with Abu Dhabi, ties hit rock bottom. But that’s not where the tensions end - Turkiye and the UAE have been on opposing sides in Libya and Ankara also backed Qatar against the Saudi-UAE-led blockade. 

Despite continuing tensions on various issues, the two states decided to find common ground to normalise relations last month after seeing de-escalation across the Gulf after the end of the blockade. Turkiye and Egypt, a UAE ally, also launched a process to normalise relations, apparently boosting the rapprochement between Ankara and Abu Dhabi.  

In November, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, leading to the announcement of a $10 billion fund for investments in Turkey including several agreements to boost cooperation across sectors like energy and health.

Delayed Libya elections

The latest major development from the region came when Libya's election commission decided to delay the country’s long-awaited elections due to the inadequate preparation for holding polls. 

The elections were delayed for at least a month, but there is no official announcement clearing its schedule yet. The polls are aimed at addressing the country’s brutal civil war and leadership disagreements through a free and fair vote. But continuing tensions suggest that it will be an uphill task.

After years of fierce fighting between the UN-backed Tripoli government and warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces, both sides agreed in March to establish a unity government, which will theoretically oversee the elections and transition to a democratic rule.