Is America Tampering with the Sykes-Picot Maps?
- Part 1-
(Translated)

Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 566 - 24/09/2025 CE
Written by Ustadh Ahmad al-Qasas*

For years, America’s actions on the ground have indicated that it is laying the foundations for new entities, contrary and distinct from those established by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the San Remo Agreement, and the subsequent decisions taken by Britain and France to establish states whose nationalistic borders were drawn on paper and then in sand, thus creating the map we still know today. The American project, the project of fragmenting the region once again, is not new. Instead, it is old and evident to any observer. Decades ago, the most prominent proponent of this project was the renowned neoconservative orientalist Bernard Lewis, a specialist in Islamic history and political thought. He proposed a new map for the region, drawn along sectarian, denominational, and ethnic lines to further divide and weaken it, thus warding off the threat to the Jewish entity and facilitating the full extension of American influence.

When America launched the war on Afghanistan, and then on Iraq, under the neoconservatives, Bernard Lewis's disciples, it had a plan to create a Middle East unlike the one we know. After the easy fall of Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the path was now paved for Syria and other countries. However, most of the world rallied against the neoconservative faction, Russia, Europe, China, satellite states, and vassal states. This led to their failure and ouster from power even before George W. Bush left the White House. The Democrats then returned to the White House with Obama's victory to pick up the pieces of the neoconservatives and repair their fractured international relations, which postponed the New Middle East project indefinitely. It was notable that when Republicans assumed power in America, they tried to push ahead with this project, but when Democrats took over, it retreated. The revolutions that have erupted in the Arab region since the end of 2010 were a major factor in hindering this project once again. Obama took it upon himself to suppress these revolutions, particularly in Syria.

When Trump took office in 2016, he attempted to move forward with this project once again, but he was surrounded by a significant number of deep state figures who obstructed his efforts. He fell under the Democrats’ attacks in the 2019 presidential elections, and the Democrats returned to power once again with Biden. Before the end of Biden’s term, the Democrats’ decision this time to move forward with a plan to reshape the region and impose America’s direct control over it, after decades of entrusting it to regional guardians, most notably Iran, was clearly evident. The decision was made to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian presence in Syria, and even the Iranian nuclear program.

Therefore, the cornerstone for implementing the project to partition the region was not laid in the recent wars waged by America at the hands of the Jewish entity, starting with Operation Protective Edge in 2023, through the attack on the Iranian party in 2024, and then the attack on Iran itself this year. Instead, implementation began on the ground with its invasion of Iraq in 2003, by fueling sectarian strife in Iraq between Sunni and Shia, and by consolidating the division of the Kurdistan Region, which gained autonomy and transformed into a quasi-state. These foundations were then completed in Syria during the years of the revolution by strengthening sectarian and religious hatreds there, by sponsoring the establishment of the “minorities” alliance led by Iran against the Sunni Muslim majority, and by sponsoring the Kurdish separatist movement east of the Euphrates. As for Lebanon, it played a major role in undermining its political system. It prevented France from implementing the Paris Conference resolutions, which agreed to grant Lebanon billions of dollars to revive its economy. This accelerated its financial and economic collapse, and subsequently led to the outbreak of a quasi-popular revolution. It then instructed Saad Hariri to resign as prime minister, thus bringing down what was effectively a government loyal to Iran’s Hezb. All of these achievements were a prelude to undermining the regional order and reshaping the region anew.

America’s primary goal in fragmenting the region was to eliminate states with relative military, demographic, and geographic strength. Two states possessed considerable power in these areas, Iraq and Syria. Naturally, the danger did not lie in their Baathist regimes, but rather in the possibility of a sincere political regime, independent of foreign influence, emerging in either of them, determined to eliminate the Jewish entity, and the influence of America and the West in the region in general.

One of America's most important goals in the region is to establish the Jewish entity, making it a normalized entity. It is a racist entity based on religious mythology, and for it to become a normalized entity in the region, all the entities surrounding it must be similar in their essence, sectarian and denominational entities. Alongside it, there would be a Christian entity in Lebanon, a second Alawite entity on the Syrian coast, a third Druze entity in southern Syria and part of Lebanon, a fourth Shia entity in southern Iraq, a fifth Kurdish entity in northern and eastern Syria, and one or more Sunni Arab entities between Iraq and ash-Sham. This vision of the region thus makes the Jewish entity a normalized entity. After that, America might link all of these entities in some form of formal federal constitutional form. Many statements and decisions have suggested that these racist entities, including the Jewish entity, may be linked by an imaginary bond, namely the Abrahamic bond, in that all their peoples trace their lineage back to a single ancestor, the Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim (as)). It was not for nothing that Trump named the normalization agreements he sponsored during his first term between several Arab countries and the Jewish entity the Abraham Accords, paving the way for a project that could culminate in something called, for example, the “Abrahamic Union.”

However, no less important than all the above is the strategic economic conflict between America and China, as well as America’s plan to oppress and subjugate Russia. This is what I will devote the second part of this article to, Allah (swt) willing.

* Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir