Simon Sebag-Montefiore is a historian and author of "The Cauldron: the Making of the Modern Middle East."

IF ONE STEPS BACK from the spasms of violence in the Middle East, it's clear that every day brings another revelation in a cascade of developments-momentous deals and alliances that not only mark a new epoch, but drive a dramatic convergence of geopolitical theaters that is changing the world game.

Consider just some of the events of recent months:

Days before what the Emiratis have declared a terrorist attack on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, the United Arab Emirates' president Mohamed bin Zayed publicly acknowledged for the first time a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu-months after deploying Iron Dome technology and Israeli personnel to the U.A.E. to repel Iranian attacks. The Abraham Accords are still very much alive.

In August, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a NATO-style mutual defense pact that is already being (awkwardly) tested after the Houthis took the Red Sea coast and Iraqi militias hit the Kingdom's east-west pipeline.

That same month, Greece signed a $3.5 billion defense agreement with Israel-the largest arms export deal in Israeli history, providing Greece an air defense and missile network, "Achilles Shield." Israel is also cooperating economically and militarily with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who paid a warm visit to Israel in February.

In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured the Arabian peninsula and signed historic security agreements with Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. and Qatar to provide drone interception teams.

Then there is the arena of East Africa, where a new scramble for power is intensifying. It encompasses the catastrophic civil war in Sudan which involves over a half dozen Middle Eastern nations competing for power, access and resources on the Red Sea coast and African interior. This includes the U.A.E., which at an earlier stage in the conflict supported one side as Iranian drones showed up on another. Middle Eastern powers are also backing a new war igniting in Ethiopia.

Ever since Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza tensions have escalated in the region after years of relative calm. The three mega powers are intensively present in all these theaters: The U.S. is squeezing the Iranian economy with increasing success. Russia is providing Iran with precise intelligence to hit U.S. forces. China is both supporting Iran (also providing intelligence on U.S. facilities) while protecting its new relationships with American allies like Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. After all, China buys roughly 90% of Iran's oil, while a third comes from the Arab monarchies.

If this sounds complicated, it is. Foreign policy in this interconnected, fast-moving world requires more clarity, coherence and measure than ever before-the rivalries and con?icts of the Middle East are not just spreading into neighboring regions, but are fusing into a single theater that stretches from sands of the Sahel to the Bay of Bengal.

The three major military powers of the Middle East-Turkey, Iran and Israel-are maneuvering for a dominant position: Iran is attempting to survive if not win control of the Gulf. Turkey is hoping to secure a neo-Ottoman presence in Syria. And Israel is seeking security without giving up the religious-nationalist project of its current extremist ministers (who may be removed by the imminent election).

Meanwhile, the expensively armed but vulnerable Saudi kingdom is fighting to protect its vast territory, its fragile oil facilities and its leadership of the Sunni world. Pakistan, a new contender, has long aspired to be an arbiter of Islamic power.

These countries are all competing in the new multiplayer tournament, no longer restrained by old traditions and systems, and no one power has hegemony, all being less formidable than they appear. The Middle East is, among other things, like a cerebrum of the world nervous system: its exposed nerves-trade routes and oil pipelines-making it especially sensitive to the rest of the body.

That means that contingent developments in obscure skirmishes by small forces such as the Houthis can exercise power far beyond their scale.

The new conjunctions of the Middle East are less about Sunni vs. Shia or West vs. Islam than they are about the open, pro-Western version of Islam represented by U.S. allies (Saudi, Egypt and U.A.E.) in conflict with the closed, anti-Western, radical resistance version of Iran and its vassals.

Conventional wisdom still tends to look at the Middle East in the way it has worked since the end of World War II. Instead, we are seeing a totemic reaffiliation in which the states are interested less by tradition, ideology and theology and more by cold interests of security, power, tech and economics.

But will the new convergences across the world ultimately lead to a new balance that brings stability-or a lethal interconnection of conflicts that could swiftly flashover into a raging conflagration of planetary proportions?

AS YOU WATCH what is happening you may well ask: What are Sudan, Greece, Azerbaijan and India doing in an article about the Middle East? To make sense of this, it's clear that six different theaters are converging in the region today.

Convergence 1

The Russian alliance with Iran and the recent Ukrainian arrangements that Zelensky made with the Gulf powers in August reveal the convergence of the Russo-Ukraine theater with that of Iran-Israel-U.S.-Gulf.

Convergence 2

The second involves the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia's stagnated war has allowed Turkey to ally with its Turkic, Muslim and oil-rich brother, Azerbaijan-which has been variously ruled by Persians and Romanovs and has recently fought several wars with Armenia.

Azerbaijan is close to both Israel and Turkey, two countries with rising tensions between them.

And now that Azerbaijan is close to Turkey-an ally of Pakistan-its enemy, Armenia, is being armed by India, Pakistan's enemy.

Meanwhile, in Central Asia, Uzbekistan is also close to Turkey while oil-rich Kazakhstan-eager to assert independence from Russia and nearby China-is close to Israel and joining the U.S.-created Abraham Accords.

Convergence 3

The third convergence is what I call the Byzantine Theater: Turkey has always been a pivotal bridge power between Europe and Asia, Christendom and Islam, and its close EU relations and NATO membership make it a longstanding U.S. ally.

But under the Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is asserting its military-economic power, Islamist mission and Ottoman legacy. Its ambition is to project its influence on both Southern Europe and the Middle East-and it is confronting not only Israel, but also a more traditional enemy, Greece.

Today, maritime disputes between Turkey and Greece and natural-gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean have drawn Greece into a closer strategic alliance with Israel who have quickly made common cause.

Convergence 4

The most dangerous theater is in South Asia. Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, have been enemies ever since the bloody partition in 1947 that divided them along religious lines. They have since fought five wars-most recently in 2025.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a chronically unstable garrison state with swaggering paladins and feudal political dynasties vying with popular Islamism, surging debts, economic stagnation, internal repression and two bloody insurgencies. Not only does it have a hair-trigger rivalry with India but a new minor war with its ungrateful ally in Afghanistan, the Taliban, which it has been bombing over the past week.

Traditionally Pakistan balanced two patrons: China and the U.S. Pakistan recently turned Trumpian favor (Trump has described Pakistan's chief of defense forces, Asim Munir, as "my favorite field marshal") into in?uence through mediation with Iran, business transactions and the new alliance with Saudis and Turks.

Simultaneously, India, the world's most populous state and a potential superpower, balances a deepening alignment with Israel-where its Hindu nationalism ?nds some a?nities with Israeli nationalism-with its traditional links with (and oil dependence on) Iran, as well as its friendship with Russia, reflecting its old Soviet alliance.

Its plan for an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), joining India, the Gulf and the E.U., was expected to add in Israel but was put on hold by the Oct. 7 wars. Offering a a different vision to the Mecca alliance, it may eventually be reactivated creating a new economic Eurasian region.

Convergence 5

East Africa and the Red Sea are already in the midst of a brutal neo-imperial conflicts. In this scramble for Africa, the empires are no longer European but Middle Eastern and African. Now, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf are more invested in picking winners and losers in the region.

SUDAN: The Houthi attacks on Saudi pipelines, seizure of the Bab al-Mandeb strait, and attacks on Riyadh have helped focus the Middle East powers on an intensifying battle over the war-torn African coastline. It's a place where boutique powers of the Gulf already have major, almost neo-imperial, interests, seeking gold and ports and farm land in Sudan to feed their desert-dwelling populations. The atrocities of the civil war in Sudan have spun so out of control that many are now seeking a halt-before it spreads.

SOMALIA: Israel and the U.A.E. are supporting Somaliland-which declared independence from Somalia in the 1990s and is making a new push for international recognition-and may seek bases there to use against the Houthis. Somalia is resisting that effort and is backed by the Saudis and the Turks, the latter of whom are stationing forces there like an imperial power.

ETHIOPIA: The country simultaneously comports like an expansionist empire while facing multiple insurgences. The landlocked country is on a quest for a Red Sea port that may be granted by Somaliland or seized in a new war from Eritrea. Ethiopia just this month accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of inciting rebel violence against it.

Convergence 6

The Sahel is the region that runs east-west across the southernmost part of North Africa, where beleaguered juntas of young officers are battling jihadist militias in a band of failing states, backed traditionally by former imperial power France and recently by Russia and its mercenaries.

If or when one of these states falls, the jihadists could ride southward into Nigeria or north to converge with civil war in Libya and even menace the taut, anxious order of Egypt.

FOR NOW THESE convergences mean that the very name Middle East may soon be obsolete-business and politics alike need to coordinate their strategies for a wider region.

Calling it West Asia misses Africa and Europe. Using the fashionable term SWANA, which stands for Southwest Asia North Africa doesn't include the Byzantine, Central Asian, East African and indeed South Asian theaters.

I prefer something like SEMESTEA which would bring together South Europe, Middle East, Sahara, South Asia and East Africa.

Whatever catches on, one of the few pleasures of today's alarming geopolitics is the coining of new acronyms. Let us enjoy that at least.

It is important to realize the fluidity of the region now: These new conjunctions are flexible and overlapping. The Mecca Pact does not rule out the very current Abraham Accords nor an India-Arabia-Israel corridor.

The great peril is that the Russo-Ukraine war merges with the U.S.-Iran-Israel war and any India-Pakistan conflict: If the fires in these separate arenas join up in what pyrologists called flashover, a fire becomes an inferno that could become a world war.

It has always been the case that any megapower that seeks multi-domain planetary power must have a presence in the Middle East be it Cold War superpowers, Europeans or the Ottomans.

Today, China is still not ready for full engagement, but its mustering of a battle fleet makes it tempting to take advantage of U.S. follies: It's worth noting how often Xi Jinping mentions the eunuch Admiral Zheng He and the Ming Dynasty treasure fleets that visited Arabia and East Africa between 1405 and 1433.

The Saudis and the nervous powers of the region want China, the most important business partner, engaged in the region even if they know Beijing can't replace Washington as a reliable security partner.

The present conflicts-the Oct. 7 Wars that include the war against Iran-are unlikely to end cleanly for a while, if only because Iran lacks a united leadership after the 37-year reign of Ali Khamenei.

The irony is that Iranian attacks on Arab states have made an American presence all the more necessary to many nations in the region. No one trusts America, but many desperately crave its presence and protection. Similarly, they are making Israel, whatever its flaws, more strategically attractive to Arab powers than it has ever been.

In recent negotiations, the U.S., subject to the rivalries of the Trumpian court, has seemed to be running different, even contradictory policies for Turkey, Lebanon and Iran.

But however impetuous the start of the war in February may have seemed, the operation in Venezuela and the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in 2025 showed that this administration can act with stealth and focus

And now seven months into the Iran war, Trump's blockade of Iran seems to be working. Oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz and other sources including the Saudi east-west pipeline are rising toward prewar levels for now. How will Iran's Revolutionary Guard react? There is nothing so dangerous as a wounded tiger.

However that ends, the growing convergence of theaters and peril of flashover means that a measured, coherent America is more essential than ever-it is the only power capable of managing this new increasingly dangerous, converging world.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian and the author of bestselling and prize-winning books about Russian and Middle Eastern history that are published in 48 languages and include "Catherine the Great & Potemkin" and "Jerusalem: The Biography-A History of the Middle East." He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he earned his Doctorate of Philosophy. His latest book is "The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East."