The railway connectivity project between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Turkey via Jordan and Syria is no longer an isolated project. It has become part of a broader regional system in which Gulf railway networks intersect with highway projects and overland oil pipelines.

Alongside this, new urban centers are emerging, where population distribution is being reshaped due to service-related needs linked to these projects, within an integrated strategic vision aimed at redesigning the economic geography of the region.

This system is not limited to facilitating transportation. It seeks to create an integrated land corridor extending from the Arabian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean, which would redefine the position of the Levant within global supply chains.

This direction has its roots in the transformations imposed by the Iran–Iraq War, when threats to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz pushed Gulf states to search for land and sea alternatives that would reduce dependence on this passage.

Over time, and with accumulated strategic experience, the goal was no longer limited to securing oil flows but expanded to building an integrated system for both energy and trade flows.

This explains the parallel development of railway projects and pipeline projects that are expected to extend toward the eastern Mediterranean coast via Syria.

A tool of soft deterrence

What is taking shape today goes beyond technical infrastructure development and reflects a shift in the nature of the tools used to manage regional balances. States investing in transport and pipeline networks are not only seeking economic efficiency, but also aiming to redistribute power and influence by controlling the flow of trade and energy.

In this context, the concept of developmental deterrence emerges as a different approach to deterrence. It is not based on direct confrontation, but rather on building strategic alternatives that weaken the effectiveness of traditional pressure tools. Instead of merely protecting existing routes, work is underway to establish a network of multiple corridors, thereby reducing the ability to use geographic choke points as instruments of influence.

Within this transformation, Gulf investments can be understood as an expression of a strategic will to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, which for decades has been a sensitive element in the balance of power with Iran.

However, the new approach does not move toward escalation. Instead, it seeks to reshape the geo economic environment so that any potential disruption becomes less impactful and more costly for whoever attempts to exploit it.

In this sense, deterrence is not exercised through threats, but through reducing the very usefulness of the threat itself.

From the Strait of Hormuz to a network of multiple corridors

These projects cannot be understood without pausing at the position of the Strait of Hormuz in the regional balance of power. The strait has not merely been an energy passage, but a geopolitical leverage tool, especially amid tensions with Iran.

What we are witnessing today, however, is a gradual shift away from reliance on this passage toward building a network of land and sea alternatives that reduce its ability to exert influence.

This transformation does not mean that Hormuz has lost its importance. Rather, it places it within a broader system in which narrow chokepoints lose their monopolistic character. Here, the concept of developmental deterrence becomes evident, where infrastructure projects are used as a means of rebalancing power, by reducing the capacity of geography to function as an instrument of coercion.

Activated geography and the limits of expansionist narratives

Railway and energy connectivity projects extending from Saudi Arabia through Jordan and Syria to Turkey open a different horizon for understanding the relationship between geography and power. When geography becomes an interconnected network of interests and infrastructure, the ability of unilateral approaches or expansionist visions to produce real and lasting influence declines.

In this context, some narratives circulating in political and media discourse about so called Greater Israel are not presented as directly realizable projects, but rather as conceptions that collide with a complex geo economic and demographic reality.

A region spanning an area estimated at more than three million square kilometers of the Arab Levant, home to tens of millions of people, and moving toward greater interconnection through cross border infrastructure projects, imposes different equations from those that assume centralized control or direct administration is possible. Power in this context is no longer measured by the ability to control land, but by the ability to integrate into overlapping networks of production and exchange.

The Arab Levant from the margin of conflict to the center of networks

These projects are redefining the role of the Arab Levant, particularly Syria, extending toward Turkey, as a strategic transit space linking the Arabian Gulf to the Mediterranean, Europe, and Asia. Rather than being a theater of conflict, the region is gradually becoming a junction within a wider network of economic flows.

However, the importance of this shift lies not only in restoring a transit function, but in redefining it within a new economic structure. The Arab Levant, long viewed as a zone of geopolitical friction, is being reintegrated as a functional component in a cross-border production and distribution system, where energy routes intersect with trade routes within a single integrated network.

This transformation reflects a shift from a geography of conflict to a geography of networks, where the strategic value of a location is no longer tied to being a point of confrontation or a battleground, but to its ability to absorb and organize flows.

Lebanon and the problem of geopolitical exclusion

In this landscape, Lebanon emerges as a case that reflects a growing gap between geographic potential and actual function. The state, which historically served as a connecting hub between the Arab interior and the Mediterranean coast, was once assigned advanced roles within regional connectivity projects, including the Arab Highway project launched by Rafik Hariri, aimed at integrating Lebanon into a land network linking it with its wider Arab Levant hinterland.

To recall that Lebanon’s location was not only theoretical, but had in fact been part of a real regional energy network, one can point to pipelines that once passed through it, most notably:

• The Tapline from Saudi Arabia to Sidon

• The Kirkuk Tripoli pipeline from Iraq

These made Lebanon at an earlier stage a key station within the system for exporting energy toward Europe.

However, this role gradually declined with political transformations, turning it into a missed opportunity.

Today, with the return of land connectivity projects in more advanced forms, Lebanon finds itself outside negotiation and implementation circles, due to internal complexities and regional intersections that affect its position within strategic calculations.

Redefining the conditions of regional integration

In light of these transformations, it becomes clear that integration into new connectivity networks is no longer based on geography alone, but on the ability to produce an institutional and economic environment capable of being incorporated into cross border projects.

Modern corridors require:

• Political stability

• Legal reliability

• Implementation efficiency

• An open economic environment

In this sense, infrastructure becomes a sovereign test of a state’s ability to engage in complex systems, where geographic location alone is not enough, but instead becomes a latent factor that requires institutional activation.

For Lebanon, regaining its position depends on rebuilding the state as a reliable partner, not merely a potential geographic site.

Towards interconnection rather than confrontation

What is emerging today is not limited to a redistribution of corridors, but points to a deep transformation in the nature of regional balances. Instead of being built on military deterrence or control of choke points, these balances are being reshaped through dense economic interconnection that redefines the concept of power itself.

In this context, economic interconnection becomes not merely a result of cooperation, but a tool for producing stability. The denser the networks linking states become, the higher the cost of disruption or separation, not only for the targeted party, but also for the party attempting to use pressure tools.

Here the concept of developmental deterrence takes shape as an advanced form of balance. It is a form of deterrence that does not rely on preventing action through force, but on making that action unproductive within an interconnected system of interests.

Power does not disappear, but is reshaped within an environment where stability becomes the most rational option for all actors.

From separate projects to a regional transformation system

What is emerging today is the nucleus of an integrated regional system through which the geographic and economic space of the Arab Levant is being reorganized, where railways, pipelines, and roads intersect within a multi-functional network.

This system does not only redraw maps, but redefines power itself, from control to connection, and from monopoly to interdependence.

In this transformation, the central question becomes not who owns geography, but who has the ability to activate it.

Here the Lebanese question emerges as a revealing test. Does Lebanon regain its place within this dynamic or remain outside it.

The answer does not lie in geography, but in political decision making, and in the ability to transform location into function and latent potential into a project.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.