Looking East

Sound Bite

How can Iran push back against American attacks? Building more long-term strategic and economic partnerships would be a good start in countering US belligerence, threats and interference in Iran and its neighbors.

In recent years, major Mideast nations are looking east, showing an accelerating tendency to forge closer ties with the quickly rising Asia. This may represent a different sort of geo-magnetic reversal, as this time the poles flip from West to East, with potentially the same shocking reverberations of a North-South polar reversal. And building a stronger, more diverse economic base is the surest way to build a stronger nation. Isolating Iran may not be enough to keep them down.

This work reviews the "Look East" approach that Iran, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Egypt have pursued in recent decades.The work concentrates largely on the critical contemporary aspects, while providing some references to important historical developments for context.

About the Book

US Moves in 2026

The new year started off with a bang! in Venezuela, while Trump issues non-stop threats to Iran and her neighbors. Meanwhile, China and Iran are signing trade deals and working to expand mutually beneficial ties.

The Global Strategic Perspective

In an era defined by shifting global power, no realignment is more consequential than the growing nexus between the Middle East and Asia. Shirzad Azad’s Looking East offers a deeply researched and sober analysis of this historic "geo-magnetic reversal," as the poles of influence, trade, and strategic alignment pivot from the long-dominant West to the rising East. For decades, the political and economic fortunes of the Middle East were inextricably tied to Washington and European capitals. This timely work argues that a new, more complex, and potentially more volatile era has begun.

Azad moves beyond simplistic headlines about China’s rise to provide a comprehensive, multi-layered examination of the trend. The book meticulously documents how major Middle Eastern powers—including traditional American allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, regional heavyweights like Iran and Turkey, and post-conflict states like Iraq—are recalibrating their foreign policies. This is not a uniform pivot, but a series of calculated, often anxious, national strategies. For some, like Saudi Arabia, looking East is a contingency plan born of anxiety over the reliability of its Western security umbrella. For others, such as Iran, it is the culmination of a long-held, if inconsistently applied, ideological and economic necessity. For nations like Israel and the UAE, it is a pragmatic embrace of the world’s most dynamic markets.

Looking East dissects the core drivers of this realignment across critical sectors. Azad explores the seismic shifts in energy markets, as Asian economies become the primary destination for Gulf oil. He investigates the diversification of military partnerships, as nations seek advanced weaponry without the political conditions often attached by Western suppliers. Furthermore, the book delves into the crucial realms of technology transfer, infrastructure investment through initiatives like the Belt and Road, and the subtle but growing cultural exchanges that underpin these new relationships. Authoritative and incisive, this book is essential reading for students of international relations, policymakers, and strategists seeking to understand the evolving architecture of global power and the future of two of the world’s most critical regions.