Club Valdai’s Middle East Conference has started in Moscow News

One of the guests of honor was Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Bogdanov, who read Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech to participants of the Middle East Conference. “Despite unprecedented pressure from the collective West led by the United States, our Arab friends take a balanced position on the Ukrainian crisis, guided by their national interests,” Bogdanov said quoting Lavrov.As Vitaly Naumkin, scientific director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RG, for the moment “the states of the region have, in their vast majority, resisted the pressure of the West”. “It’s indicative. I don’t see any signs that anyone can now join the sanctions against Russia,” the expert said. According to him, the countries of the region adhere firmly to their position, demonstrating their independence in decision-making. “I think if they manage to maintain this potential, they will have more freedom to maneuver, the possibility of diversifying their external relations,” Naumkin said. He also stressed that it is impossible to build a security system without taking into account the interests of all the countries of the region, this system must be based on the transparency, step by step, of the negotiation formats. According to the expert, it is extremely important to solve emerging problems through dialogue and to deal with security problems alone, without entrusting them to external forces. This has taken on particular significance now, as the world faces three consecutive crises: a pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and an earthquake in Turkey.At present, states in the Middle East region have overwhelmingly resisted Western pressureAs noted by conference participants, this process is already underway. Countries that had difficult relations are now engaging in dialogue (eg Iran and Gulf States). This is partly due to the fact that the United States has become less influential in the situation in the region. After the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, their prestige was somewhat shaken and the countries of the region had the opportunity to prove themselves, to benefit both politically and economically.Separately, participants in the Middle East Conference discussed the impact of the Ukrainian conflict on the region. Fyodor Lukyanov, director of research at the Valdai club, underlined that “the Ukrainian crisis has consequences for the whole world”, it has become the quintessence of the very deep contradictions that have accumulated. The conflict has exposed the problem of food security in the Middle East region, which is largely dependent on supplies from Russia and Ukraine. Separately, Lukyanov mentioned the situation in the energy market, where a new order was established. As noted by the expert, the region cannot be called a new player on the international scene. But if it has not become a new pole, there are too many contradictions between its member countries. But there is a circle of players who have become more independent than a few years ago.There are several scenarios on the possible development of the situation in the Middle East region. They were identified by Vitaly Naumkin and his colleague, director of the Center for Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Vasily Kuznetsov Institute of Oriental Studies, who prepared a report “The Middle East and the Future of the Polycentric World” for today’s event. According to them, there are three ways. One of them involves the transformation of the Middle East into an independent center. The other is exactly the opposite, when the region becomes the periphery of world politics. The third scenario involves the creation of a local center of power in the Persian Gulf and the joining of other countries in the region to the already existing European and Eurasian centers.