Quarterly Journal of Political
Research in Islamic World

Arabic Spring and its consequences, particularly in Syria and later its civil war, has led to fundamental changes in political layouts and alignments in the region and beyond it. One of the main effects of these developments is the deepening of the ethnic and religious divisions in the Middle East and consequently new alignments of national and subnational actors. Subnational ethnic-religious groups in the region, especially in Iraq and Syria are the most active and effective actors. Islamist fundamentalists and terrorist groups such as ISIS along with ethnic groups (Kurds) have greatly changed political and geopolitical developments in Iraq and Syria. Analysis of the new alignments in the framework of three Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish crescents and geopolitical consequences of these developments, has faced the world with the most critical milestone in the Middle East history especially after World War I. After a century, for the first time, Middle East’s geopolitics and existing Westphalian order changed because of Islamic fundamental domination over some parts of Iraq and Syria. In this paper, we have tried to clarify some aspects of these geopolitical developments and their effects by a descriptive and analytical method, based on library and internet resources and studies.