The holiest site in Christianity — the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — is normally full of worshippers at this time. This year it will be closed for the first Easter since 1349.

Jews spent Passover alone at home, and millions of Muslims will no longer be preparing to make the Ramadan pilgrimage to Mecca this month.

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken many things that even the constant upheaval in the Middle East previously could not.

Easter and Passover are usually the busiest times of year for Israel, but instead the streets are nearly deserted. ( AP: Oded Balilty )

The price of oil — the foundation of many Middle Eastern economies — has dropped to its lowest level in 18 years.

Worse still for oil producers, global demand for oil has fallen by an unprecedented 20 per cent thanks to lockdowns, a fall 10 times greater than during the global financial crisis.

Saudi Arabia, for example, needs an oil price of $US80 per barrel to balance its national budget. It's currently $US20.

Its neighbours aren't much better off.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar rely on energy exports to fund extravagant spending and employ millions of foreign workers.

Research firm IHS Markit said business conditions in the Emirates — the region's financial and tourism hub — have deteriorated to record lows.

Recovering from a war, only to be hit by a pandemic

It has caused some analysts to fear economic collapse for many countries in the region.

Iraqi health ministry workers carry a COVID-19 victim's coffin to a makeshift cemetery in Najaf. ( AP: Anmar Khalil )

The situation is worse for countries devastated by war, such as Iraq.

The world's fifth-largest exporter of oil was wracked by months of huge protests before the pandemic.

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The country, which has endured four devastating wars in the last four decades, is facing a pandemic with a depleted health system, dysfunctional government and an impoverished population.

Many Iraqis rely on informal work — impossible during lockdown — to survive.

Many Iraqis live hand-to-mouth and rely on informal work, but the coronavirus lockdown leaves them with few options. ( Reuters: Essam al-Sudani )

"People will have to make up their minds. They will either die from coronavirus or from starvation," Iraqi political analyst Shivan Fazil told the ABC.

"Staying indoors is a matter of survival but how can they expect to survive when they don't have food on the table, when they have such a low level of resilience and they have no social safety net in place?"

How will coronavirus affect the future of the Islamic Republic?

Neighbouring Iran — struggling under US sanctions — also fears a coronavirus-induced collapse.

Iran is in the grips of a massive coronavirus outbreak, though no-one is sure of the exact death toll there. ( AP: Ebrahim Noroozi )

Its government is now hoping to return many people to work this month, to restore livelihoods but also to suppress simmering anger at the country's theocratic regime.

After initially downplaying the outbreak and allowing pilgrims to spread the virus from holy sites, Iran's leaders are now trying to contain it while stemming growing discontent.

Their mistakes led to a huge death toll, one that came after widespread unrest, especially after the military tried to hide the fact it mistakenly shot down a civilian airliner in January.

The scale of the failures made many observers question whether the pandemic is weakening the Islamic Regime's hold on power.

But Iran analyst Holly Dagres, from the Atlantic Council, sees few signs of that so far.

"I haven't really heard Iranians say the regime's on the verge of collapse the way I've seen western analysts put that vision out there," she said.

Coronavirus hit Iran at a time when dissatisfaction with the regime was growing. ( West Asia News Agency via Reuters: Ali Khara )

"But I think it's worth noting that Iranian Government officials have contracted the virus, including those close to the Supreme Leader and President Hassan Rouhani, and there are also ones that have died from the virus.

"So when you're looking at that, you're kind of scratching your head saying that doesn't bode well for the future of the Islamic Republic."

Syria braces for a pandemic amid food shortages

Perhaps the greatest impact of the virus could be in the places it hasn't yet spread widely.

In Syria, the pandemic has hit after nine years of civil war.

Millions of Syrians have been displaced, hundreds of thousands killed and the country's previously advanced infrastructure left in ruins.

An outbreak of COVID-19 at Syria's Al Nour refugee camp could be a disaster. ( Reuters: Khalil Ashawi )

They endured lengthy urban sieges, chemical weapons attacks and indiscriminate bombing of residential areas. A pandemic will likely bring another level of chaos.

Even now, Syrians in government-held areas are facing food shortages while tens of thousands of people remain in government prisons for political reasons.

"A lot of Syrians we speak to say 'what's a pandemic in the face of what we've actually dealt with in the last nine years?'" Human Rights Watch Syria researcher Sara Kayyali said.

"It's very tragic to try to explain to them that it's likely to be worse … [because] at this point it seems unstoppable.

"The healthcare system is almost completely decimated, the economy is in the ground and Syria is almost completely isolated from the international community, so you can imagine how disastrous its effects are going to be."

It wasn't that long ago that the Islamic State group used the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where rebels and jihadists seized large parts of the country, to take control of significant territory and found its so-called caliphate.

It starkly demonstrates how instability in the Middle East can affect the whole world.

The Arab Spring uprisings — popular movements challenging the region's old order of corrupt dictators — were still playing out before the pandemic, with mass protests in Sudan, Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq bringing governments to their knees.

More instability from an uncontrollable virus could challenge the remaining autocrats, many of whom control significant energy reserves and are supported by Western governments, despite their increasingly repressive policies.

The Middle East's most vulnerable residents could be hit hardest by coronavirus and its economic and political impact. ( AP: Nariman El-Moft )

The pandemic now adds new threats to a region that was already struggling with rising unrest, economic inequality, corrupt and authoritarian regimes and geopolitical struggles.

While the rest of the world is distracted by the outbreak, a dangerous new phase in a tense region has begun.