Informit article: Balance of power

The oil-rich but volatile Muslim Middle East, including North Africa, is falling apart. It is in the grip of multiple humanitarian and geopolitical crises and balance-of-power shifts, of a scale perhaps not seen since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the British- French colonial remapping of the region nearly a century ago. The old correlation of forces in support of maintaining the status quo, especially following the 1978-79 Iranian revolution, is altering. A set of new alignments and realignments along multiple overlapping and contested regional fault lines, including sectarian divisions and geopolitical rivalries at different levels, has come to redefine the region. Its traditional political and territorial contours are at risk of changing.