U.N. secretary general predicts a ‘deeply reshaped’ Middle East
António Guterres praised Israel’s cease-fire deals with Hezbollah and Hamas and reiterated global pushback against Iran’s nuclear program

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses a speech during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2025.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres predicted on Wednesday that the Middle East would be “deeply reshaped” by the conflicts and emerging new governments across the region in the last year.
“We face widening geopolitical divisions, rising inequalities and assault on human rights, and we see a multiplication of conflicts, some of which are leading to the reshaping of different parts of the world, not least the Middle East,” Guterres said in his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Guterres said, is a “win-win solution” in which the “cease-fire holds, hostages go on being released, and the massive distribution of aid takes place. First day: 640 trucks. Second day: 930 trucks.”
“Now this success story must translate itself into a success story in the next phases,” Guterres said, “leading to a situation of permanent cease-fire in Gaza and a situation in which a transition can be established in Gaza, allowing for the reunification of the occupied Palestinian territories, and allowing for a serious negotiation of a political solution based on the two states.”
Less clear, he said, is “the future of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.”
“One possibility is to move into [Israeli] annexation of the West Bank, and probably a kind of limbo situation in Gaza, which, of course, is against international law, and [would] mean there will never be peace in the Middle East,” Guterres said. The other option, he posited, was to move forward “with a revitalized Palestinian Authority and an open approach by the Israeli government to still be able to move into the two-state solution.”
Guterres’ session came a day after Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a longtime advocate of a two-state solution, described the “wake-up call” he had following the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, “in the sense that I want to hear my neighbors say how much they object, regret, condemn and do not accept in any way the terrible tragedy of the terror attack of Oct. 7 and the fact that terror cannot be the tool to get there.”
“We should strive for peace, and they deserve to have peace just like us. But it requires them to disseminate and understand that terror is out of the question under any circumstances,” said Herzog. “There will be a moment where we’ll have to have real peace with our Palestinian neighbors. I dream of that day, but it will take time.”
Guterres also praised the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, noting that Beirut, which elected a new president earlier this month, “will be able to finally have an effective government” after years of economic and political stagnation.
Guterres described neighboring Syria, a month after former President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia amid rapid advancement by Turkish-backed rebel groups, as “the big question mark.”
“We have a new government that is saying all the right things,” he said, noting that the new Syrian government is comprised of officials who were involved in last month’s overthrow of the Assad regime, but that they hail from “organizations that have a tradition that is not exactly the members of the choir of a church.” Regardless, Guterres added that international observers have seen “some signals that the openness and tolerance that [has been touted by the new government] really will translate itself into reality.”
Guterres said that the reshaping of the Middle East — and of Iran’s proxy network across the region — will have serious implications for Tehran.
“My hope is that the Iranians understand that it is important to, once and for all, make it clear that they will renounce to have nuclear weapons,” he said, “at the same time that they engage constructively with the other countries of the region to have a new security architecture in the region, with full respect of independence, territory, integrity, non-interference in the region, and with that having a so-called ‘great bargain’ that allows them to be fully integrated in the global economy.”
The “first step” toward diplomacy between Iran and the West, Guterres said, “now must come from Iran.”
“I hope that Iran understands that it is useful to have this first step, and that it doesn’t make sense at all to bet on the possibility — because it’s not even a reality — or the perception that Iran is aiming at having nuclear weapons, I think, to make it clear once and for all that that will not happen.”