The Chessboard of the Middle East

In less than two years the chessboard of the Middle East has been upended and set up anew, and even the people who have watched it their whole lives stand looking on, dizzy.

Pieces that for decades dominated the board have been swept off it in a handful of months. A dictator who had ruled for half a century in Damascus has fled. A militia that was the most powerful non-state fighting force in the world has been beheaded. A regime that for forty years pulled the strings from Tehran has itself been forced to its knees and has lost its highest leader. And at the same time new pieces are rising, mightier and more self-assured than before. The map you had in your head no longer holds.

In the previous chapter the center of gravity of the world shifted toward the desert. This chapter zooms in on the region itself, on the struggle for power within the Middle East — for before any single hand can grip the whole board, that board must first be swept clean and set anew. And that is precisely what is happening, before our eyes.

One agreement first, for this chapter leans on current events more heavily than any other: everything stated here as fact is dated — spring 2026 — and it is moving fast. By the time you read this, some of it will have been overtaken or revised. The dated facts, with their sources, are in Appendix C; the spiritual line hangs not on any one of them, but on the pattern that becomes visible beneath.

Iran: The Fall of the Crescent

Begin with the piece that has fallen hardest, for its fall explains almost everything else.

For forty years Iran was the great director of the enmity against Israel. Since the revolution of 1979 the regime in Tehran had elevated one mission to state doctrine: the erasure. Not as an insult, but as a program. "Death to America," the Great Satan; "death to Israel," the little Satan — not merely a slogan shouted on Fridays, but the official line of a state that made the destruction of another country a pillar of its existence, complete with countdown clocks and target years for the end of the "Zionist entity." And to give that mission force, Iran had patiently built a crescent of allies around Israel: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, the militias in Iraq, and the Syria of Assad as the bridge that connected it all. The "axis of resistance" — a ring of proxies, ready to assail Israel from all sides at once.

And then, in less than two years, that whole construction collapses.

First Hezbollah falls: in 2024 thousands of its fighters are maimed in a single day by exploding communication devices, and shortly after, its legendary leader is killed beneath a mountain of bombs. Then the bridge falls: in December 2024 Assad flees, and the supply line from Tehran to the Mediterranean is severed. Hamas is militarily gutted. And finally the center itself falls: in two wars, in 2025 and in the spring of 2026, Iran is struck so heavily that even its highest leader perishes. The axis of resistance, built up over forty years, lies in fragments in twenty-four months.

And note an honesty that must not be skipped over: this is the fall of a regime and its doctrine, not of a people. The Iranians themselves — above all the young, who took to the streets and paid with their lives — never chose that mission of erasure; many despise it. The doctrine died; the people remained.

But what does that fall mean now, read spiritually? Here I must be careful and give you a weighed reading. The mightiest enemy that had sworn Israel's destruction has itself been humbled — and precisely thereby a void arises. The Shiite great power that the Sunni world feared has been broken. The old order is gone. And in such a vacuum, you will remember the eighth chapter, a figure can arise who bridges the oldest rift of Islam — whom the Shiites recognize as their hidden imam and whom the Sunnis accept as their Mahdi. Iran weakened is therefore not the end of the danger. It is the precondition for the next phase.

And note who, besides Iran, also bleeds in these wars. The campaign against Iran is for America no clean, swift victory, but a war of attrition: depleted stocks, fathomless costs, and a credibility that takes on damage — precisely as Russia ground itself down in Ukraine. The two greatest nuclear powers in the world, the two old giants that divided the whole twentieth century between them, both suffer painful loss of face: Russia, which could not save its client Assad and got stuck in Ukraine, America, which fights itself empty in a region it can no longer order. While the Gulf grows richer and stronger, the old great powers wear down. The center of gravity is shifting not only away from the West — it is shifting away from both giants of the old order, toward the middle, toward the desert.

Turkey: The Pivot That Rises

For where the one piece falls, the other rises. And no power is better placed in this new game than Turkey.

Look at what Turkey holds in hand, and you understand why it is becoming the pivot of the region. After the United States, it possesses the largest armed force of NATO. It has become world leader in the armed drone, the weapon that is redrawing modern war. It controls, by way of a centuries-old treaty, the straits that guard access to the Black Sea — a tap on Russia's throat. It is an energy crossroads between east and west. And it keeps a hand on the migration tap toward Europe, a lever with which it holds a whole continent in check.

But most striking is its double face. Turkey is a member of the Western alliance — and at the same time the loudest state voice against Israel, which broke off trade and joined the indictments against Jerusalem. It is a partner of the West — and at the same time interwoven with Russia, through weapons and nuclear plants and gas. It deliberately cultivates that ambiguity, and precisely that makes it so dangerous and so usable at once. And now that America is withdrawing, Turkey is sliding into the gap: in the new Syria after Assad, Ankara has become the most important patron, and it openly seeks leadership over the Sunni world. And Turkey's arm reaches far beyond its borders. Throughout the Middle East and Africa it wages shadow wars — with its drones, its proxy militias, its money — for influence: in Libya, in Sudan, in the Horn of Africa, in post-Assad Syria, each time in rivalry with the Gulf states that back the other party. And here is a detail that sits the attentive reader bolt upright. Look at where Turkey extends its influence — Libya, Sudan, the region around Ethiopia — and set that beside the names of the outer ring from Ezekiel 38: Put (Libya) and Cush (the Sudan region), the allies that advance with Gog, with the power from the north, against Israel. The power from Anatolia that today stretches its tentacles toward precisely those lands sketches — unintentionally — the coalition of the old prophecy onto the map in advance.

It is the power of Anatolia raising itself up — and whoever has read the tenth chapter feels the shudder: this is precisely the corner of the map where the prophecy lets the outer ring arise.

Israel: The Wall Crumbles Beneath His Feet

And in the midst of all this stands the one land around which everything turns, and it stands there ever more alone.

The inner ring has never gone away. The immediate neighbors, the peoples who dwell right up against Israel, keep denying the state's existence; the slogan "from the river to the sea" — that Israel must vanish between the Jordan and the Mediterranean — still rings out every day across the squares of the world. But something new has been added, and it is perhaps the most dangerous of all: the isolation from without.

Land after land recognized a Palestinian state in 2025 — for the first time the great Western powers among them. The international courts tightened their grip. And most painfully: even the old patron began to shift. The American leadership openly showed irritation, and warned that Israel "might come to stand alone." Do you remember the load-bearing wall from the previous chapter? Israel has leaned against that American wall for eighty years. And now it feels the wall crumbling beneath its own feet.

But do not now make the mistake of thinking that Israel stands there waiting, anxious and helpless. On the contrary. Israel is a cool, resolute player who believes he holds the cards himself. At this moment it is using the power of America for its survival — as long as that is the best deal. But the moment that patron becomes an unreliable partner, or forces it in a direction it does not want — for example, toward a covenant with the many — then Israel, with that same sober calculation, will move on to the next provider. Everything for survival; sovereign, self-determining, in the conviction that he keeps the wheel firmly in hand.

And precisely there lies the subtlest trap of the whole book. For the counterfeit redeemer need not frighten Israel; he need only offer him a better guarantee than the tottering American wall. And a land that thinks it is shaking hands from a position of strength does not notice that it is giving away the leverage piece by piece — until the covenant it thought it was using uses him. The deepest deception seizes not the one who trembles with fear, but the one who thinks he has it in hand himself.

The Board Is Swept Clean for One Move

Now take a step back and look at the whole board, for then you see what is really happening.

Iran fallen. Turkey rising. The Gulf immensely rich and in position. America and Russia weakened. Israel isolated, but self-assured. One by one they seem like loose events, fragments of news succeeding one another. But lay them side by side and they all point the same way. Every swept-off piece, every rising piece, every shift tilts toward the same outcome: a region that is exhausted, leaderless, and terrified, and that longs for someone who brings order, who heals the breaches, who makes peace where no one could make peace. The board is not being shaken at random. It is being swept clean for one move.

And that is the weighed reading I give you: the geopolitics of our years is, beneath the surface, the preparation of the stage. Not the end time itself — you remember the preliminary birth pangs — but the run-up, the chairs that are being set in place, the birth canal that is being prepared. All the lines this chapter has drawn run toward one point: the cry for a savior, and the covenant that he will offer.

The Invisible Board Beneath

But do not, in the midst of all these armies and oil and treaties, forget what the third chapter showed. Beneath this visible chessboard lies a second, older board — that of the princes behind the nations. The struggle for the Middle East is, in the last instance, not about resources or borders. It is the age-old territorial struggle over the one contested inheritance. And therefore every move, however complicated, tilts ultimately toward the same place. The pieces shift; the target never changes. It is, and remains, Jerusalem.

The Hand Above the Board

Here, finally, is how you must look upon all this without fear taking you in its grip.

The board has been upended so quickly that the cleverest analysts have lost the trail. The temptation is to read the news with a knot in your stomach, and to see only the chaos — a world run wild, enemies rising, an ally falling away. But the believer sees no board being lost. He sees a board being set up.

For above the chessboard of the nations is a Hand, and of that Hand Daniel wrote: He "changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings" (Daniel 2:21). Iran does not fall outside His knowing; Turkey does not rise outside His counsel; Israel's loneliness has not escaped His eye. The pieces are not shifted by chance and not by evil — they are being set in position, for a move that He announced long ago.

So when you see the board tilt, and the old certainties swept away, and all the lines running to that one city — then do not be afraid. You are not looking at a game that heaven is losing. You are looking at the last moves before the checkmate. The enemies position themselves around Jerusalem because they think the win lies there. They have chosen the right board, the right city, and the wrong ending. For the Hand above the board played the closing move before the game began: a Stone, cut out without human hands, that will come down upon the mountain — and then the game is over.