PARIS — One year into Russia's war on Ukraine, an array of temblors has shaken the foundations of the Middle East system of alliances. 

A number of so-called Global South countries — many of them Arab — that were taken for granted as being pro-Western have now refused at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion. And when asked by the United States to increase oil production so as to weaken Russia, whose hydrocarbon exports were boycotted by Western Europe, Saudi Arabia refused to play along anymore and kept the prices high. As for Israel, the Jewish State declined to provide Ukraine with Iron Dome batteries against Iranian missiles used by the Russian military.

At the very least, the recent Abraham Accords don’t look as good as they did. And the US-Saudi “oil for protection” deal — signed February 1945 between US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud aboard the USS Quincy, moored in the bitter lakes of the Suez Canal, which framed US relations to the Middle East for the last 75 years — has become obsolete. A sea change is taking place, north and south of the Mediterranean.

The accords, signed in 2020 between Israel on one side and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan on the other, suggested that a new regional dynamism was underway. Compared to the attempts of the George W. Bush administration, the Trump administration policy looked like a significant step forward — or such was the perception at the time.