By Alastair Crooke* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While the United States and Europe have been struggling to find a path forward in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Afghanistan and Iran, the strategic ground upon which their assumptions about the region rest has begun to shift dramatically.

Most significantly, Turkey has finally shrugged off the straightjacket of a tight US alliance, grown virtually indifferent to EU membership and turned its focus toward its former Ottoman neighbours in Asia and the Middle East.

Though not primarily meant as a snub to the West, this shift does nonetheless reflect growing discomfort and frustration with US and EU policy, from the support of Israel's action in Gaza to Iran to the frustrated impasse of the European accession process. It also resonates more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been taking place within Turkey.

If Turkey continues successfully down this path, it will be as strategically significant for the balance of power in the region as the emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the later destruction of Sunni dominance in Iraq by the US invasion.

In recent months, a spate of new agreements have been signed by Turkey with Iraq, Iran and Syria that suggest a nascent commonality of political vision. A new treaty with Armenia further signals how seriously Ankara means its "zero problem" good neighbour policy.

More importantly, however, the agreements with Iraq, Iran and Syria reflect a joint economic interest. The "northern tier" of Middle Eastern states are poised to become the principal supplier of natural gas to central Europe once the Nabucco pipeline is completed – thus not only displacing Russia in that role but gradually eclipsing the primacy of Saudi Arabia as a geostrategic kingpin due to its oil reserves.

Taken together with the economic stagnation and succession crisis that has incapacitated Egypt, it is clear that the so-called moderate "southern tier" Middle Eastern states that have been so central to American policies are becoming a weak and unreliable 
link indeed.

Political players in the region can't but notice the drift of power from erstwhile US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward the northern tier states, and are starting to readjust to the new 
power reality.

This can most clearly be seen in Lebanon, where a growing procession of former US allies and critics of the Syrian government, including Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblat and, reportedly, some of the March 14 movement's Christian leaders, are making their pilgrimage to Damascus. That message is not lost on others in the region. If the Obama administration is not fully cognizant of these developments, its awareness will surely be raised as it attempts to mobilize the world for a new round of punitive sanctions 
against Iran.

These sanctions are likely to fail not only because Russia and China won't go along in any serious way, but precisely because the much touted "alliance of moderate pro-Western Arab states" is turning out to be a paper tiger.

Given the shifting balance of power, the "moderates" are in no position to seriously confront Iran and its allies. Hopes that the recent Saudi bombing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen would incite sectarian Sunni hostility toward Shia Iran have not been realised. On the contrary, the Saudis' action has been clearly seen in the region as a partisan and tribal intervention in another state's internal conflict.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not only embraced the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election, but has insisted as well on the right of Iran as a sovereign nation to enrich uranium.

Unlike Western leaders, he doesn't at all seem inordinately worried about Iran's course.

The US and Europe are going to have to grapple with the pending replacement of its "southern tier" allies in the Middle East by the rising clout of the "northern tier" states. It would be best to make this adjustment sooner rather than later. None of the issues that matter to the West – the nuclearisation of Iran, Israel's security, the future of energy supplies – can be solved by ignoring the emergent reality of a new Middle East.

* Alastair Crooke is a former British intelligence agent in the Middle East and the author of "Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution."