History Main / MiddleEasternCoalition

Prior to the 1980s, these tended to be secular military dictatorships or socialist/nationalist regimes (like the real-life abortive attempt to set up a United Arab Republic combining Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as Libya's attempt). Since the rise in fundamentalism, the Iranian Revolution, and especially 9/11, a more popular idea is to combine it into one huge poorly defined "Randomid Caliphate" [[TheTheocracy theocracy]]. This is al-Qaida's and ISIL's primary war aim, but it is probably not in the stars -- at least not if Iran and Turkey have anything to say about it. Beyond that, al-Qaida and ISIL are, at the end of the day, lunatic fringes; most other Muslims are non-violent nationalists who probably have a worse view of Osama bin Laden than most Westerners ("[[DontShootTheMessage You're making us ALL look evil!]]" is what they usually say), and al-Qaida itself – according to the CIA, [=MI6=], French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, and pretty much everyone else – is down to about 300 guys on the run in the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen.

Compare UnitedEurope and ExpandedStatesOfAmerica. Contrast BalkanizeMe.[[note]]Ironically, both of these tropes have a shared history, as their respective {{Trope Namer}}s (the Middle East and the Balkans) were under control of the UsefulNotes/OttomanEmpire at various points in their history before the Ottoman Empire ''itself'' was Balkanized (as in "dissolved", not "made more Balkan in culture") into most of the modern countries in the Middle East after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI - an event that is still a sore spot for al-Qaida, ISIL, and other Islamic fundamentalists well into the 21st century[[/note]] See also SpaceFillingEmpire.

Compare UnitedEurope and ExpandedStatesOfAmerica. Contrast BalkanizeMe. See also SpaceFillingEmpire.

[[folder: Anime And Manga ]]

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'' had the "Middle Eastern Federation". Not given much depiction; [[ThrowAwayCountry conquered by]] [[TheEmpire Britannia]] fairly early.

[[folder: Fan Fiction]]

[[folder: Film]]

* The monumentally-tasteless cult film ''Film/{{Americathon}}'' parodies this trope, featuring an anti-Western, oil-hoarding ''Hebrab'' coalition of Middle Eastern states, that includes both Islamic nations and Israel.

[[folder: Literature ]]

* The Caliphate in Stuart Slade's [[Literature/TheBigOne TBOverse]] actually subverts this trope in that the stories show the proposed caliphate to be unworkable due to its internal contradictions and it collapses in barely more than a decade. By the time of the last story, set in 1986, "The Caliphate" has collapsed and the ruling authorities are trying to rebuild their relations with the rest of the world.
* In Tom Clancy's ''Executive Orders'' the ayatollah leading Iran manages to unite his country and Iraq with an eye towards further expansion but it doesn't last.
** Note that Iraq doesn't do this willingly – Saddam (the book was written prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq) is assassinated by an Iranian deep sleeper agent, paving the way for Iran to move in and take over.

* The Caliphate in Lee Konstantinou's satire PopApocalypse.

* Creator/TomKratman's ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'': While the core Middle Eastern lands do become a Caliphate, it does not take part of the story. And with [[{{Mordor}} good reason]].

* One of these is mentioned in the ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series. They're barely tolerated by the Terran Confederation of States because Islamic terrorists were responsible for WorldWarIII in the backstory, started by their nuking several major Western cities.
** They also refuse to adopt the White Covenant, forbidding proselytization, a requirement for joining the Confederation.
** In the fifth novel, they ally with the [[ExpandedStatesOfAmerica USNA]], Russia, North India, and China in the [[spoiler:war with the Terran Confederation]], demanding that the other powers agree to include them [[spoiler:in the new Confederation]] with the White Covenant repealed.
* Present in the AlternateHistory duology ''Literature/WolfishNature'' by Creator/VladimirVasilyev with the nation of Turan (some amalgamation of Turkey and Iran) effectively running the show. It's more like EU in RealLife than an actual government.
* In ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' the various Muslim nations all unite to invade Boston, along with a Black Muslim uprising, with the full approval and backing of the United Nations. Almost a decade later, all forms of Christianity unite to invade the Middle East (which isn't exactly the totality of Islam) and end the Islamic faith forever.
* In ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'' an alien invasion causes one of these to form that includes ''Israel.'' Which is destroyed off-screen and only given an offhand reference after the fact.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* The ''FTL Newsfeed'' near-future news program that ran on the [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] in the mid-1990s had a Holy Islamic Federation covering the whole of Africa (except Fortress Israel).
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Phobos Rising" and its sequels "The Human Factor" and "Human Trials", the Coalition of Middle Eastern and Pacific States is one of the two major power blocs on Earth and UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}, the other being the Free Alliance.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* In ''[[TabletopGame/WitchCraft Armageddon]]'', the Middle East's held by a military alliance against the Church of Revelations, aided by the largest single group of the Heavenly Host in the world. The main players in the alliance are Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran - an EnemyMine that would not have been possible if the world weren't ''literally'' coming to an end.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The Middle Eastern Coalition from ''VideoGame/{{Battlefield}} 2'' is the TropeNamer. In fact, their combined forces prove to be so powerful, that they actually have the ability to ''[[InvadedStatesOfAmerica invade the East Coast of the United States]]''! They are also allied with [[UsefulNotes/ChineseWithChopperSupport China]] which may explain how they got so powerful.

[[folder: Web Original ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

[[folder: Film]]

* Subversion: The Ten Rings organization in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse version of ''Film/IronMan'' appears to be this (despite speaking languages such as Urdu and Romanian), but [[AllThereInTheManual the novelization refers to the head of the organization, Mandarin, who is Mongolian]].
** Of course, this is blindingly obvious to anybody who know anything about the comics.
** The [[Film/IronMan3 third film]] reveals that [[spoiler:the Mandarin is unaffiliated with the Ten Rings (although he wears them) and is actually an actor hired by [[BigBad Aldrich]] as a cover for his failed experiments and to drum up the need for his SuperSoldiers]].
*** Then it's revealed in ''Film/AllHailTheKing'' that [[spoiler:there is a real, ''[[TheSpook genuine]]'' Mandarin. [[BerserkButton And he's not happy]] with [[NeverLiveItDown Trevor's depiction of him.]]]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Homer is concerned about Bart's new Jordanian friend, simply because the boy is Muslim. Homer has a dream where "their kind" takes over the world, and turns Springfield into a {{Qurac}}...and wakes up [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl screaming.]] [[spoiler:Eventually, [[JerkAss (emphasis on "eventually")]] he learns that Bart's friend and the parents of Bart's friend are just regular people, not terrorists bent on [[TakeOverTheWorld world domination]].]]

[[folder: Real Life]]

* Averted in the Post-Ottoman era due to a wide variety of factors, mostly being that the reason why the Islamic Caliphates succeeded was due to their egalitarian rule and their ability to unite the Arab peoples against the Byzantines and the Persians. Nowadays, many Arab nations have continuously changing differences, with their unaminous dislike for Israel leading to a failed coalition due to a lack of cooperation between nations (i.e, Egypt having a better military structure being unable to cooperate with Syria during the Yom-Kippur war). Additionally, political instability which has gotten worse due to a wide variety of coups, superpower meddling, or just plain corruption has led to the region having little political cooperation. Of course, since things can change in the future, this may or may not be true, but as of now a unified Middle East is far from reality.
** Besides corruption and Arab-Leadership being a failure, these circumstances have also been exacerbated by post-colonial undertakings by the Europeans to divide the region, with many nations of the area being quite young compared to others. It will take a very long time for these upheavals to quell.
** Evoked with the fact that the Age of "Empires" has long been gone since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Perhaps in the far future, there might be another Arab Empire, but until the concept of nation-states and separate nationalism dies off, this is an impossibility. Nowadays, it's more common to see individual Middle Eastern nations like Saudi, Israel, or Iran attempt to exert geopolitical influence in an attempt to create a region aligned with their views, which might be the closest we'll have to Empires ruling the Middle East today.

Israel's state with this power around is rarely mentioned. If Persians and Arabs are being conflated, there's often no mention of what the Kurds or Turks think of all this, and the Arab Christian population is… [[CriticalResearchFailure er, wait, there are Arab Christians]]?

** The earliest Muslim caliphates (specifically, the Rashidun, Umayyads, and Abbasids) unified and centralized the Middle East from the 7th to the 9th centuries CE. The Abbasids continued to exist for the next seven centuries after that, but its power was effectively ceremonial, with other states only paying nominal tribute to the central government in Baghdad, which for most of its existence was controlled by Iranian, and later Turkic, polities.

* Averted in the modern age due to multiple issues. The Post-Ottoman Arab nations are incredibly varied across all dimensions -- wealth, democracy, individual freedom, education, religion[[labelnote:*]] (while the divide between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam has in the past decade become somewhat more known in West over the past decade or so, in reality it's even more complicated than that)[[/labelnote]], the legacy of colonialism (and who did the colonizing), etc. -- and there are multiple "Arabic" languages; the homogeneous Middle East that most people imagine is a myth. Moreover, Lebanon, an Arab nation, is no longer "Lebanon" as the majority of its population is now a diaspora, with the Christian population displaced (being historically wealthier, they could afford to get the hell out of Dodge when things went bad in the 50s and 70s-80s) and Syrian refugees forming fully one-fifth of the population. Historically, the Arab nations have never been in universal agreement about ''anything'' due to said nations being run by strongmen who only cared for themselves and their country. At best, national sentiment and stereotypes about other Arab nations are similar to jokes between the French and the Germans, and at worst, WeAreStrugglingTogether is invoked. General consensus holds that the closest thing to this that is likely to happen is some kind of NATO-style alliance but that won't happen for at least another generation, if ever.

* Averted in the modern age due to multiple issues. The Post-Ottoman Arab nations are incredibly varied across all dimensions -- wealth, democracy, individual freedom, education, religion[[labelnote:*]] (while the divide between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam has in the past decade become somewhat more known in West over the past decade or so, in reality it's even more complicated than that)[[/labelnote]], the legacy of colonialism (and who did the colonizing), etc. -- and there are multiple "Arabic" languages; the homogeneous Middle East that most people imagine is a myth. Moreover, Lebanon, an Arab nation, is no longer "Lebanon" as the majority of its population is now a diaspora, with the Christian population displaced (being historically wealthier, they could afford to get the hell out of Dodge when things went bad in the 50s and 70s-80s) and Syrian refugees forming fully one-fifth of the population. Historically, the Arab nations have never been in universal agreement about ''anything'' and prolonged instability has given each nation a chance to hold a grudge against another. At best, national sentiment and stereotypes about other Arab nations are similar to jokes between the French and the Germans, and at worst, WeAreStrugglingTogether is invoked. General consensus holds that the closest thing to this that is likely to happen is some kind of EU-like "Arab Union", but that won't happen for at least another generation, if ever.

** UsefulNotes/TheAchaemenidEmpire (c. 500s BCE), centered in present-day Iran, was another ancient empire to have conquered most of the Middle East. The only territory it missed was the Arabian Peninsula (being mostly desert, the Persians didn't even bother). Even though it wasn't Middle Eastern, UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's Macedonian Empire, which brought an end to the Achaemenids and inherited most of its land, can be considered a SpiritualSuccessor, as it also unified the Middle East, at least for a few decades.

** UsefulNotes/TheAchaemenidEmpire (c. 500s BCE), centered in present-day Iran, was another ancient empire to have conquered most of the Middle East. The only territory it missed was the Arabian Peninsula. Even though it wasn't Middle Eastern, UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's Macedonian Empire, which brought an end to the Achaemenids and inherited most of its land, can be considered a SpiritualSuccessor, as it also unified the Middle East, at least for a few decades.

* A lesser form of the Arab League is the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of Gulf Arab nations Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, despite being Gulf Arab and having rich deposits of oil, is never considered for inclusion, thanks to UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar). Unlike the Arab League, this one is a considerably more active and inclusive union, with an EU-like free trade treaty and freedom of movement. However, it is still not immune to intra-group squabbles, as the recently ended [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis boycott of Qatar]] shows.

** ''Hearts Of Iron IV'' includes a few formable nations by uniting the nations in the Middle East. You can unite "Arabia" (which will be called "Arabian Federation" if democratic, "United Arab Socialist Republics" if communist and "Arabian Empire" if Fascist) by conquering and annexing all Arab countries in the Middle East and in North Africa. "Al-Andalus" can be formed by Marrocco by conquering Spain, and the Middle East can be "integrated" if conquered, and Turkey can reform the Ottoman Empire and unify the Middle East under their rule.

* In an episode of ''TheSimpsons'', Homer is concerned about Bart's new Jordanian friend, simply because the boy is Muslim. Homer has a dream where "their kind" takes over the world, and turns Springfield into a {{Qurac}}...and wakes up [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl screaming.]] [[spoiler:Eventually, [[JerkAss (emphasis on "eventually")]] he learns that Bart's friend and the parents of Bart's friend are just regular people, not terrorists bent on [[TakeOverTheWorld world domination]].]]

A frequent occurrence in TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture settings, especially those with some version of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. A strange coalition that seems to consist of most Islamic and/or Arab nations or just of numerous terrorist organizations (often themselves funded by a Western AncientConspiracy of some sort) excluding Pakistan, Turkey and Iran. Sometimes, writers who don't know better have Shi‘a Persian Iran uniting with Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia.[[labelnote:1]] In real life, the mullahs of Iran hate Saudi Arabia even more than they hate the West.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:2]] Often overlooked in this mix is Oman, which ''is'' Arab but mostly follows the otherwise-rare Ibadi sect of Islam and tends to stay unaligned in Gulf geopolitics.[[/labelnote]])

** Evoked with the fact that the Age of "Empires" has long been gone since [[UsefulNotes/WW2]]. Perhaps in the far future, there might be another Arab Empire, but until the concept of nation-states and separate nationalism dies off, this is an impossibility. Nowadays, it's more common to see individual Middle Eastern nations like Saudi, Israel, or Iran attempt to exert geopolitical influence in an attempt to create a region aligned with their views, which might be the closest we'll have to Empires ruling the Middle East today.

** Evoked with the fact that the Age of "Empires" has long been gone since WW2. Perhaps in the far future, there might be another Arab Empire, but until the concept of nation-states and separate nationalism dies off, this is an impossibility. Nowadays, it's more common to see individual Middle Eastern nations like Saudi, Israel, or Iran attempt to exert geopolitical influence in an attempt to create a region aligned with their views, which might be the closest we'll have to Empires ruling the Middle East today.

* Real life will enforce the failure of this trope at every possible attempt. The Arab nations are incredibly varied across all dimensions -- wealth, democracy, individual freedom, education, religion[[labelnote:*]] (while the divide between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam has in the past decade become somewhat more known in West over the past decade or so, in reality it's even more complicated than that)[[/labelnote]], the legacy of colonialism (and who did the colonizing), etc. -- and there are multiple "Arabic" languages; the homogeneous Middle East that most people imagine is a myth. Moreover, Lebanon, an Arab nation, is no longer "Lebanon" as the majority of its population is now a diaspora, with the Christian population displaced (being historically wealthier, they could afford to get the hell out of Dodge when things went bad in the 50s and 70s-80s) and Syrian refugees forming fully one-fifth of the population. Historically, the Arab nations have never been in universal agreement about ''anything'' and prolonged instability has given each nation a chance to hold a grudge against another. At best, national sentiment and stereotypes about other Arab nations are similar to jokes between the French and the Germans, and at worst, WeAreStrugglingTogether is invoked. General consensus holds that the closest thing to this that is likely to happen is some kind of EU-like "Arab Union", but that won't happen for at least another generation, if ever.

Prior to the 1980s, these tended to be secular military dictatorships or socialist/nationalist regimes (like the real-life abortive attempt to set up a United Arab Republic combining Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as Libya's attempt). Since the rise in fundamentalism, the Iranian Revolution, and especially 9/11, a more popular idea is to combine it into one huge poorly defined "Inevitable Caliphate" [[TheTheocracy theocracy]]. This is al-Qaida's and ISIL's primary war aim, but it is probably not in the stars -- at least not if Iran and Turkey have anything to say about it. Beyond that, al-Qaida and ISIL are, at the end of the day, lunatic fringes; most other Muslims are non-violent nationalists who probably have a worse view of Osama bin Laden than most Westerners ("[[DontShootTheMessage You're making us ALL look evil!]]" is what they usually say), and al-Qaida itself – according to the CIA, [=MI6=], French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, and pretty much everyone else – is down to about 300 guys on the run in the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen.

* Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom frequently parodies this trope (especially if it's linked to bad research on the author's part), resulting in hilarious MemeticMutation terms like "the Random(id) Caliphate", "the Obligatory Supercaliphate", etc.

* A lesser form of the Arab League is the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of Gulf Arab nations Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, despite being Gulf Arab and having rich deposits of oil, is never considered for inclusion, thanks to UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar). Unlike the Arab League, this one is a considerably more active and inclusive union, with an EU-like free trade treaty and freedom of movement. However, it is still not immune to intra-group squabbles, as the ongoing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis boycott of Qatar]] shows.

A frequent occurrence in TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture settings, especially those with some version of UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror. A strange coalition that seems to consist of most Islamic and/or Arab nations or just of numerous terrorist organizations (often themselves funded by a Western AncientConspiracy of some sort) excluding Pakistan, Turkey and Iran. (Sometimes, writers who don't know better have Shia, Persian Iran uniting with Arab Sunni states like Saudi Arabia.[[note]]Whom the Iranian government detests more than the West.[[/note]][[note]]Never mind Ibadi Oman.[[/note]])

Prior to the 1980s, these tended to be secular military dictatorships or socialist/nationalist regimes (like the real-life abortive attempt to set up a United Arab Republic combining Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as Libya's attempt). Since the rise in fundamentalism, the Iranian Revolution and especially 9/11, a more popular idea is to combine it into one huge poorly defined "Inevitable Caliphate" [[TheTheocracy theocracy]]. This is al-Qaida's and ISIL's primary war aim, but it is probably not in the stars -- at least not if Iran and Turkey have anything to say about it. Beyond that, al-Qaida and ISIL are, at the end of the day, lunatic fringes; most other Muslims are non-violent nationalists who probably have a worse view of Osama bin Laden than most Westerners ("[[DontShootTheMessage You're making us]] ''[[DontShootTheMessage all]]'' [[DontShootTheMessage look evil!]]" is what they usually say), and al-Qaida itself--according to the CIA, [=MI6=], French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, and pretty much everyone else--is down to about 300 guys on the run in the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen.

Israel's state with this power around is rarely mentioned. If Persians and Arabs are being conflated, there's often no mention of what the Kurds or Turks think of all this, and the Arab Christian population is -- [[CriticalResearchFailure er, wait, there are Arab Christians]]?

Often portrayed as a sort of SpiritualSuccessor to RedScare, [[WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell for fairly obvious reasons on the writers' part.]] May or may not be a {{Qurac}}.

** Note that Iraq doesn't do this willingly - Saddam (the book was written prior the 2003 invasion of Iraq) is assassinated by an Iranian deep sleeper agent, paving the way for Iran to move in and take over.
* In ''Literature/WildCards'', the Caliphate of Arabia runs from Sudan to Egypt, although some independent arab states still exist. The Caliphate becomes a real problem when it decide to [[spoiler:stop selling oil to western countries]].

** Turkey, Cyprus and Syria were taken over in the mid-2030s by militant Muslim sects (under the umbrella of "Alliance for Allah") and formed an alliance called the Second Jihad to launch an invasion of Europe. It ultimately failed, and the three countries have since broken free from these militant sects' control.
** The countries of the Arabian Peninsula[[note]]Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain[[/note]] merge in 2055 after prodding by the Islamic Unity Movement, forming the Arabian Caliphate. It then absorbed Jordan in 2063.

* A unified Middle East had happened many times throughout history:

** The earliest Muslim caliphates (specifically, the Rashidun, Umayyads, and Abbasids) unified and centralized the Middle East from the 7th to the 9th centuries CE. The Abbasids continued to exist for the next seven centuries after that, but its power was effectively ceremonial, with other states only paying nominal tribute to the central government in Baghdad, which for most of its existence was controlled by Iranian, and later Turk, polities.
** The Ottoman Empire was the latest one, unifying most of the Middle East from the 16th to the 20th centuries (the notable exception was Iran, with which it was an ArchEnemy). It championed itself as a reincarnation of the aforementioned early caliphates, which by all accounts worked; it was the last widely-recognized state to claim itself as a caliphate.

* Uniting the Arab countries [[labelnote:*]]at minimum Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, and usually Mauritania and most of Sudan[[/labelnote]] is the goal of the various pan-Arab/Arab nationalist movements; this includes (at the soft end) democratic Arab socialism and (at the hard end) the Ba'ath Party (which rules Syria and used to rule Iraq under Saddam). Under no circumstances were Turkey or Iran invited, for the obvious reason that they're Islamic, but not Arabic. There have been quite a few attempts in real life to achieve this. In chronological order:

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Republic The United Arab Republic]], a union between Egypt and Syria between 1958 and 1961. This one had a promising start, but President UsefulNotes/GamalAbdelNasser, despite his personal popularity with the Arab street--even in Syria--and his government fumbled the details. He favored fellow Egyptians over Syrians in high posts, and generally treated Syria as a junior partner--or to be more precise, as a group of new Egyptian provinces--rather than an equal partner. The union was dissolved by a coup in Syria, supported by the country's disgruntled business community and bureaucrats, that reasserted Damascus' independence. Egypt continued to use the formal description "United Arab Republic" until after Nasser's death in 1970; in 1971, it adopted the description "Arab Republic of Egypt".

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Arab_Republics The Federation of Arab Republics (1972-1977)]], a federation between Libya, Egypt, and Syria, which Sudan also intended to join. It was ratified by all three countries, but ultimately fell apart because its leaders couldn't agree on the specific terms of the merger. The stalemate in the [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict 1973 War]], which some Egyptians and Syrians blamed on the failure of promised Libyan (and Algerian) assistance to materialize, [[note]]They were supposed to make an amphibious attack on the Coastal Plain; whether this would have achieved anything directly is doubtful, but it would probably have relieved pressure on the Egyptians and Syrians in the Sinai and Golan.[[/note]] did not help matters. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was Egypt's decision to enter peace talks with Israel, announced by Sadat's trip to Jerusalem and speech before the Knesset in November 1977.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Emirates The United Arab Emirates]] (which still exists to this day), formerly known as the Trucial States, counts on a technicality. Although internationally considered a single country, it is actually a relatively loose federation between seven different Emirates in the region (with Abu Dhabi and Dubai holding most of what power exists in the federation, which is part of why they're the only two of the seven that anybody ever hears about).
* Real life will enforce the failure of this trope at every possible attempt. The Arab nations are incredibly varied across all dimensions -- wealth, democracy, individual freedom, education, religion[[labelnote:*]]While the divide between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam has in the past decade become somewhat more known in West over the past decade or so, in reality it's even more complicated than that.[[/labelnote]], the legacy of colonialism (and who did the colonizing), etc. -- and there are multiple "Arabic" languages; the homogenous Middle East that most people imagine is a myth. Moreover, Lebanon, an Arab nation, is no longer "Lebanon," as the majority of its population is now a diaspora, with the Christian population displaced (being historically wealthier, they could afford to get the hell out of Dodge when things went bad in the 50s and 70s-80s) and Syrian refugees forming fully one-fifth of the population. Historically, the Arab nations have never been in universal agreement about ''anything'' and prolonged instability has given each nation a chance to hold a grudge against another. At best, national sentiment and stereotypes about other Arab nations are similar to jokes between the French and the Germans, and at worst, WeAreStrugglingTogether is invoked. General consensus holds that the closest thing to this that is likely to happen is some kind of EU-like "Arab Union," but that won't happen for at least another generation--if ever.

Prior to the 1980s, these tended to be secular military dictatorships or socialist/nationalist regimes (like the real-life abortive attempt to set up a United Arab Republic combining Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as Libya's attempt). Since the rise in fundamentalism, the Iranian Revolution and especially 9/11, a more popular idea is to combine it into one huge poorly defined "Inevitable Caliphate" [[TheTheocracy theocracy]]. This is al-Qaida's and ISIL's primary war aim, but it is probably not in the stars -- at least not if Iran and Turkey have anything to say about it. Beyond that, al-Qaida and ISIL are, at the end of the day, lunatic fringes; most other Islamists are non-violent nationalists who probably have a worse view of Osama bin Laden than most Westerners ("[[DontShootTheMessage You're making us]] ''[[DontShootTheMessage all]]'' [[DontShootTheMessage look evil!]]" is what they usually say), and al-Qaida itself--according to the CIA, [=MI6=], French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, and pretty much everyone else--is down to about 300 guys on the run in the mountains of Pakistan and Yemen.