Now, when it comes to influence and power, those terms barely overlap, said Andy David, deputy consul general of Israel to the Midwest.

"Most of the political agenda in the Middle East is not set by the Arab countries," David said Monday at the University of Nebraska at Kearney's James E. Smith Midwest Conference on World Affairs.

Arab countries that held much power in the past, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, have seen their influence erode or, in Iraq's case, collapse, David said.

To take their place, the major players in the Middle East besides the United States are Iran, Turkey and Israel, none of which are Arab. (Iran is Persian, and most of Turkey's residents are descendants of the Ottoman Empire.)

That has also changed the primary conflict in the Middle East, David said.

"The new paradigm is not between Arabs and Israel or Jews," he said. "It's between modernists and extremists."