Israel unbound

The latest Gaza war has produced a profound humanitarian catastrophe, the impact of which will be felt long after the fighting has ended. The conflict also quickly expanded into a broader war between Israel and the Iranian-anchored “Axis of Resistance,” turning Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and even Qatar into battlefronts. Israel has scored important victories in each, crushing Hamas, defeating Hezbollah (by eliminating its leadership), vastly reducing Iran’s influence in the Levant, and inflicting significant damage on the Islamic Republic’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Following Israel’s strike on Hamas targets in Qatar in September, the United States began pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza. But with or without one, Israel will continue to pursue expansive goals, redrawing borders in the West Bank, southern Lebanon, and southwestern Syria in ways that could further fracture its neighbors. The Axis of Resistance is, for all intents and purposes, no longer the grave threat that it once was. In its absence, the Levant is being carved into a pliable “axis of minorities,” with Alawite, Druze, Maronite, Shia, and Sunni camps competing against one another within an expanding Israeli sphere of influence.

Thus, the regional balance of power that was obtained before 2023 has changed profoundly. The war has not only empowered Israel and weakened Iran, but also diminished the roles of both the US and the region’s Arab power brokers. While the US and its allies have finally led a push to end the Gaza war, it is not clear that a ceasefire and prisoner exchange will produce a viable peace agreement, and, failing that, how regional stability will be restored, or what a new regional order will look like. For the foreseeable future, the Middle East will be bracing for prolonged conflict and simmering chaos.

America’s role in the Middle East since the Hamas attack has been sporadic and largely reactive. Its vision for the region has not caught up with how dynamics have changed. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the US believed that regional stability could be anchored in the Gulf monarchies, with their vast economic potential. Then the Biden administration expanded on that vision, arguing that if the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, could be expanded to include Saudi Arabia and others, the region would be integrated by trade corridors connecting Asia to Europe. Arab economies would be put on the fast track, whereas Iran and its clients would be marginalized.

US officials continue to invoke this vision, even though it was an early casualty of the Gaza war. Israel does not see economic interdependence and regional integration as a guarantor of its own security, nor is it putting much stock in the potential for a negotiated political settlement with other regional players. Its goal is to press its military advantage to eliminate all threats.

This posture understandably worries the rest of the region, which fears that, barring an American intervention, Israel will continue pursuing maximal goals. Chief among these may be to “resolve” the decades-old Palestinian issue unilaterally by annexing the West Bank and Gaza, and forcing large numbers of Palestinians living in those territories into exile. But such a strategy would not actually address Israel’s long-term security concerns. Though Israel would not be ruling over restless Palestinian populations, it would abut a more unstable and hostile Arab world.

Among other things, expelling Palestinians and annexing Gaza and the West Bank would risk Israel’s peace treaties with various Arab states, as well as introduce more political instability into Egypt and Jordan, both of which have been crucial to Israel’s security strategy for decades. The shock waves from Gaza and the West Bank would radiate outward, plunging the region into the unknown.

In place of the current relative calm across much of the Arab world would be persistent social unrest, political crisis, and extremist violence. Israel’s military supremacy would not offer a solution to these problems. On the contrary, using its firepower would only fuel popular outrage and weaken the local regimes seeking to contain it.

Developments in Lebanon and Syria provide a window onto the instability that haunts the broader region. Since Hezbollah’s defeat and the Assad regime’s collapse, Lebanon and Syria, respectively, have been breaking up into autonomy-seeking minority regions, some of which Israel (and Turkey, in Syria’s case) have occupied—perhaps permanently.

In Syria, the Alawites, Druze, and Kurds are all resisting the new government’s consolidation of power. With memories of the Islamic State’s savagery still fresh, these minority communities fear that the former rebels who now rule in Damascus are still virulent Sunni jihadis who will return to their old ways once they have consolidated control. That fear is even echoing in Iraqi politics, where Shia militias who previously fought the Islamic State are now on high alert about the Sunni ascendance in Syria.

The same worries are also informing Hezbollah’s calculations. The militia-cum-political party is wary of Israel, but also increasingly concerned about civil war in Lebanon and an intervention by Sunni forces from Syria. Thus, the Levant is facing a new round of sectarian politics. Not only has an expansion of the Gaza war opened the door to this fracturing, but Israel sees benefits in stoking it further, calculating that warring sectarian and ethnic communities will pose little threat. But this is a risky bet. Chaos in the Levant may provide Israel some short-term respite, but it could threaten stability across the rest of the region, with consequences for Turkey, Europe, and ultimately Israel itself.

But the Islamic Republic did not collapse after these assaults, and the fate of its nuclear program remains unclear. During this brief war, Iran did manage to cause notable damage inside Israel with barrages of cruise missiles, before the US stepped in to call for a fragile ceasefire. Ultimately, Iran was weakened, but the conflict fell short of Israel’s expectations. Israel remains eager to fulfill its war aims, and Iran has an imperative to re-establish deterrence. That leaves ample grounds for renewed conflict in the year ahead.

Knowing that it cannot rely solely on its missiles to deter future Israeli attacks, Iran will be seeking better diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbors; but it could also seek to exploit the very chaos that Israeli policy is spreading in the Levant. Israel may well find it difficult to isolate Iran while also pursuing its war aims in Gaza and the Levant. And, of course, ongoing military exchanges between Israel and Iran risk undermining the regional stability that Gulf economies need to prosper.

All this will unfold against the backdrop of a tense standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. In September, European powers reimposed sanctions on Iran that had been suspended with the adoption of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. This development drastically changes the context in which the US and Iran have managed the nuclear impasse in the past. Without a diplomatic path to reverse course, there will be a higher likelihood of renewed war between Iran and Israel, or even between Iran and the US in the Gulf.

In fact, heading into 2026, Israel’s strategy has prompted the rest of the region to come together to thwart its plans, with many in the Arab world seeing Iran as a less urgent threat. The issues weighing most heavily on regional strategists’ minds are the fate of the Palestinians, instability in the Levant, and Israel’s willingness to use its military might even against friendly countries in the Gulf.

The US has generally allowed Israel to prosecute its wars as it sees fit. But the strike on Hamas targets in Qatar cast doubts on America’s commitments to defend its regional allies, at least if they come into Israel’s crosshairs. The Trump administration’s security guarantee to Qatar is likely to have done little to assuage these fears, given the contempt that Trump shows for the security guarantees the US has given to its other allies.

This realization is prompting America’s Arab allies to hedge their bets. For example, Saudi Arabia has responded by forging a security partnership with Pakistan, which could be replicated by other regional actors (from Iran to Turkey) that are also seeking strategic alternatives.

America’s Arab allies hope that the US government will be wise to the dangers inherent in a regional order dictated by Israel. They will try to convince Trump to support their own vision for a regional order supported by inclusive diplomatic and economic deals. Trump’s push for a ceasefire in Gaza is an important win, but it still falls far short of heralding a credible American commitment to restore order to the region. For now, the region is groping for ways to counterbalance Israel by forging alliances across political and ideological fault lines, as well as looking to China and Russia for support.

The conflict that started on October 7, 2023, has changed—and is continuing to change—the Middle East in profound ways. But it may be years before the final outcome and the full costs become clear.

Vali Nasr is professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s school of advanced international studies; and is the author, most recently, of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.