[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
One of the most consequential strategic failures of Western foreign policy has been its persistent refusal to acknowledge what people across the Middle East have long understood: the Sykes-Picot agreement is dead, and the sooner we lay it to rest, the greater our chances of forging real, lasting peace in the region.
For over a century, Western policymakers have operated under the illusion that countries like Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon are coherent, sovereign nation-states. In reality, they are artificial constructs, lines drawn by British and French diplomats in 1916 with little regard for the human, religious, and tribal landscape beneath the ink. What the Sykes-Picot Agreement left behind were colonial cages; political contraptions that forced rival sects, ethnic groups, and historic enemies to share a flag, usually under the brutal rule of a dictator backed by one dominant faction.
This structural lie has inflicted devastation on countless communities, none more so than the region’s ancient Christians. Their roots in the Middle East predate Islam by centuries, yet they have been relentlessly persecuted, displaced, and, in many cases, erased. From Bethlehem under the Palestinian Authority to the once-thriving Christian communities of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, the story is tragically consistent. As identity-based governance collapsed and sectarian tyranny rose, Christians were left exposed, undefended, and increasingly unwelcome.
The atrocities are well documented: the Armenian and Assyrian genocides under the Ottomans, the burning of churches in Egypt, the exodus from Iraq after Saddam’s fall, and the ethnic cleansing campaigns of ISIS in Syria. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a failed Western framework that props up authoritarian “nation-states” while ignoring the indigenous identities within them. Christian persecution in these lands is not incidental; it is the direct consequence of being trapped in Islamic societies that neither practice nor protect religious pluralism.
Until the West embraces a regional realignment grounded in ethnic and religious autonomy, these communities will continue to vanish.
Consider Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority ruled by violently suppressing the Shiite majority and the Kurds. In Syria, the Assad regime, a tiny Alawite minority, has survived by massacring Sunnis, Christians, and even its own kin. Lebanon was once a Christian-led republic. Today, it is a failed Iranian outpost, crippled by Hezbollah, a Shiite terror proxy that has bankrupted the economy and paralyzed the state.
Iran itself remains an imperial Shiite regime that brutalizes all who fall outside its ruling sect. Recent uprisings, internal rebellion, and the crumbling of its regional proxy network, from Damascus to Sana’a, have left the Ayatollahs weakened and exposed. Israel’s strategic dismantling of the Iranian Crescent over the past two years has hastened that collapse.
Yet as the Iranian empire recedes, another is rising: the Turkish.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, increasingly autocratic and openly aspirational in his neo-Ottoman ambitions, is executing a calculated campaign to reassert Turkish dominance across the Sunni world. His actions speak louder than speculation. He has launched military operations in northern Syria and Iraq under the guise of counterterrorism, while actively seeking territorial influence. He supports Hamas and cultivates Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood to extend Turkish reach across Arab lands. Turkish drones and weaponry have surfaced in Sudan, Libya, and the Red Sea, where they threaten trade routes vital to Israel and the region.
His rhetoric is equally revealing. Erdoğan envisions himself as a caliph and custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, including Jerusalem. This is not subtle, and it is not merely symbolic.
Meanwhile, the United States under President Trump and his envoy, Tom Barrack, clings to fantasy. They speak of Syria’s “territorial integrity” while legitimizing Al-Qaeda-linked factions like Al-Jolani’s in Idlib. They speak of a unified Iraq while ignoring Turkey’s de facto occupation and its aggression against the Kurds. They suggest Iran can be contained even as the regime collapses into violent desperation. This is not strategy, it is denial.
The concept of a unified Arab nation-state has failed. The only viable future lies in a regional framework that supports a mosaic of autonomous ethnic and religious regions, each with the right to self-determination and protection. The Druze, Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrian Christians, Alawites, Baloch, and Arameans have suffered long enough under regimes that see them as threats to be silenced or erased.
No international actor is better positioned to support that future than Israel.
Israel has already demonstrated its commitment to minority protection. In southern Syria, it is Israeli presence alone that prevents the annihilation of the Druze. In Iraq and Iran, the Kurds have looked to Israel as a rare and reliable ally. Across the region, persecuted communities understand what much of the West still refuses to see: Israel, uniquely, has both the strength and the moral clarity to resist both Sunni and Shiite imperialism.
The longer the West clings to its maps and myths, the more chaos it will unleash. Every proposal for a “unity government” in Syria or a “power-sharing agreement” in Lebanon perpetuates a dangerous fiction that gets people killed. These countries are not broken; they were never whole. They are not states; they are pressure cookers of violence held together by force, not consent.
The Middle East that emerges from the ruins of Sykes-Picot will be tribal. It will be ethnic. It will be decentralized. And it must be defended.
Any deal negotiated by President Trump or his team must be rooted in reality. That begins with one non-negotiable principle: Israel must maintain a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and southern Syria. These are not functioning states. The minorities who live there are endangered. Any Israeli withdrawal would be a death sentence for them.
There must be no illusion of parity between those who build hospitals and those who build terror tunnels. There is no moral equivalence between a Jewish state that protects minorities and jihadist factions. Sunni or Shiite, who seek to eliminate them.
A permanent Israeli presence in these territories would send a clear signal to actors like Jolani in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The message: the West is no longer blind, and the age of manipulating Western guilt is over.
This is not about occupation. It is about liberation from a century of strategic blindness.
We are witnessing the collapse of two empires: the Iranian and the post-colonial Arab. If we are not vigilant, a third, the Turkish caliphate, will rise to replace them. And it will threaten not just minorities, but the fragile hope for pluralism in the Middle East.
The choice is urgent. Israel is ready to lead. The only question is whether the West is ready to follow.
Avi Abelow is the host of the Pulse of Israel daily video/podcast and the CEO of 12Tribe Films Foundation.