*The Middle East Friendship Chart*, NYTimes

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Opinion Today

April 22, 2024



By Gus Wezerek

Graphics Editor


Nearly 10 years ago, Slate published one of my favorite graphics of all time: “The Middle East Friendship Chart.” The diagram — an easy-to-read, color-coded matrix of smiling and frowning faces — showed whether various nations and groups in the Middle East were friends, enemies or frenemies.

Slate

I remembered Slate’s chart this year, after America bombed the Houthis in Yemen. I’m not the closest follower of international affairs, and I didn’t really know who the Houthis were or how they were connected to Israel’s war against Hamas. So I thought it was time to make my own version of the Friendship Chart, updated to reflect current alliances and rivalries.

The resulting diagram, which we published this weekend, was a collaboration with the Middle East expert Daniel Levy. He decided whether each relationship was hostile, supportive or complicated and wrote an essay contextualizing the exercise.

The New York Times

For my part, I didn’t want readers to see the chart — an admittedly dense web ringed by faces that will be unfamiliar to some — and throw up their hands in confusion. So I’ve tried to play tour guide, pausing to discuss constellations that explain why, for instance, Israel is frosty toward Qatar or how Syria is bound to Iran. (I kept Slate’s traffic light color scheme in a small homage.)

I hope that readers like me, who don’t know a lot about the Middle East, will use the chart to learn more about the region’s shifting dynamics. But even for those who follow the region closely, Levy’s analysis is full of insight.

The project took a few months to finish; it was difficult to summarize decades of on-again, off-again alliances. Luckily, Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator, was more than up to the task.

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