25 some reports, this has led to Iranian anger and a cessation of the flow of funds to the Hamas enclave in Gaza. These setbacks do not mean the end of Iran and its allies as a regional power bloc. Assad has not yet fallen. The Iranian nuclear programme is proceeding apace. Tehran's Hezbollah client is in effective control of Lebanon. But it does mean that in future the Iranian appeal is likely to be more decisively limited to areas of Shia population. The less good news, from Israel's point of view, is that the new forces on the rise in the region consist largely of one or another variant of Sunni Islamism. AKP-led Turkey has emerged as a key facilitator of the Syrian opposition, in which Sunni Islamist elements play a prominent role. Turkey appears to be in the process of making a bid for the regional leadership also sought by Iran. In Egypt, too, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces look set to reap an electoral dividend in November. The Sinai area has already become a zone of activity for Islamist terror directed against Israel, because of the breakdown in law and order in recent months. The attacks on the pipeline bringing Egyptian gas to Israel, and the recent terror attack in Eilat, are testimony to this. So while the "Shia crescent" may have suffered a strategic setback as a result of the upheavals in the Arab world, the space left by the fall of regional leaders looks to be filled largely by new, Sunni Islamist forces. Israel remains capable of defending itself against a strategic threat posed by any constellation of these elements. But the current flux in the region is likely to produce a more volatile, complex Middle East, consisting of an Iran- led camp and perhaps a number of Sunni competitors, rather than the two-bloc contest of pro-US and pro-Iranian elements which preceded 2011. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025021