Notes on the balance of power in West Asia
What explains Iranian primacy?
In the age of European imperialism, the predominantly Islamic region to the southeast of Europe was appropriately known as the Near East. With the eclipse of the European powers and the rise of the United States as the dominant world power, the same region came to be known as the Middle East. This was the point of view of US global strategy that viewed Eurasia as the grand arena. Now that the unipolar world has been replaced by a multipolar world, West Asia is the appropriate name for the region.
