Neither broken, nor plunged into chaos, though splashing in uncertainty. The Middle East, the point of friction between East and West turned into breakers of global conflicts, culminates the first year of the Donald Trump era by emitting signs of increased regional instability.

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Middle East in the Trump era The impetus of the heir of Saudi Arabia fuels conflicts in the Middle East (Ángeles Espinosa)
It was not planned. The war in Syria begins to come to an end after seven years of atrocities and the Islamic State (ISIS) has been defeated on the ground. In the absence of the last battle against Salafist rebels, the regime can conclude its military campaign this year. In Jerusalem, symbolic epicenter of the tension, the president of the United States pledged in 2017 to close the "definitive peace agreement" between Israelis and Palestinians. For this he dispatched his son-in-law and his personal real estate lawyer to mediate what he perceived as an immemorial land dispute. And in Egypt, the most populated and impoverished country, the Muslim Brotherhood has been cornered by Marshal Abdelfatá al Sisi, who overthrew them in 2013 and who will try to validate his presidency at the polls in two months' time.

A year after the arrival of the New York mogul in the White House, uncertainty rules the Middle East. Syria is preparing to emerge from an endless war in a scenario of complete devastation. The martyred Arab country emerges fractionated under the Russian and Iranian military deployment, which is now joined by the American. Against his electoral promise, Trump will keep on the ground the troops that have backed the advance of the Kurdish militias against ISIS.

The republican president has not hesitated to kick the board of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict either. It has broken seven decades of international consensus on the final status of Jerusalem (and the financing of UN aid to Palestinian refugees). In addition, the appearance of stability in Egypt after the turbulent Arab spring is opposed to the rampant terrorist threat and, above all, to an economic readjustment that has placed half of the population below the poverty line.

These are the dilemmas, and their perspectives of evolution, which are presented at the beginning of 2018 in the major hotbeds of conflict in the Middle East, according to the opinion of experts in the region.