Eurasia Press & News
Bottom Line Up Front
Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, numerous seemingly sacrosanct red lines in the region have been crossed, including extensive warfare between Iran and Israel on each other’s territory, and the Houthi threat to commercial freedom of navigation through the Red Sea.
The October 7 attack transformed Israel’s approach to the region, centered on striving for an elusive absolute security through preemptive and aggressive military action, even to the point of violating the sovereignty of close U.S. allies in the region.
Even though Gaza has been devastated by war, the Palestinian national movement has resumed its role as a core determinant of whether the region descends into all-out warfare or achieves durable peace and stability.
Washington remains aligned with Israel and with its Arab allies in preventing Iran from shifting the regional balance of power back in its favor and in defeating Sunni jihadist groups.
The Hamas attack on Israel two years ago has produced dramatic and fundamental change throughout the region, far beyond the borders of the Gaza Strip, where the war that the Hamas assault started has been fought. Many of the changes the region has undergone will outlast an end to the war in Gaza, even if the latest peace plan advanced by U.S. President Donald Trump is implemented. The October 7 attack transformed Israel’s approach to the region from largely reactive to preventive and preemptive, based on a perception that Israel can address its security concerns through aggressive military action anywhere in the region, even far away from Israel’s borders and in violation of the sovereignty of U.S. allies. Prior to the October 7 attack, few forecasted that Israel would attack Iranian territory militarily or dare strike targets in close U.S.- aligned states such as Qatar. Experts and global officials broadly assumed Israel would continue to limit its battle with the Islamic Republic to covert and hybrid operations.
Yet, Israel’s post-October 7 quest for absolute security has led the country to become more isolated in the global community than at any time since the state’s founding in 1948. Israeli tactics have, at times, strained relations with its key benefactor, the United States. To an unprecedented degree, since the October 7 attack, Israel has undertaken actions not supported in advance by U.S. leaders and, in some cases, at odds with U.S. strategic goals. Still, the broad vilification of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s tactics in Gaza has not proved a “game changer.” Israel has not wavered from its insistence that Hamas no longer govern or field a militia force in Gaza or from its opposition to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The U.S.-Israel strategic relationship remains close, intertwined, and organic, as the two governments, both quietly backed by a critical mass of Arab and other regional leaders, remain aligned in their efforts to ensure the Islamic Republic of Iran does not recover from its setbacks.
The U.S., Israel, and U.S. regional allies continue to work in concert to battle radical armed factions supported by Iran or tied to Sunni jihadist movements. The jihadist groups, such as the Islamic State (IS), remain active and seek to take advantage of the post-October 7 regional turmoil to rebuild their ranks and capabilities. The Israeli and U.S. strategy to confront Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” militarily has weakened the non-state actors aligned with Iran and emboldened several governments in the region, particularly in Beirut and Baghdad, to assert state sovereignty over all national territory. These governments now seek to disarm the factions and movements that have often drawn the countries into interstate conflicts, although they proceed cautiously to avoid backlash from the domestic populations that support the non-state militias. The new, prevailing approach in Lebanon and Iraq contrasts dramatically with a decades-long region-wide status quo in which resistance movements and ethno-sectarian militia groups could determine state policy.
The global revulsion at the high numbers of Palestinian civilian deaths and extensive humanitarian suffering in the Gaza war has brought the Palestinian cause to the forefront of global diplomacy after decades of global and regional neglect, even as governments worldwide condemn Hamas and seek to engineer its disarmament. International leaders have acted to punish Israel and increasingly express support for Palestinian aspirations of statehood — despite the Trump administration’s opposition to that outcome under current conditions. Hamas leaders point to Israel’s growing isolation and the expanding support for a Palestinian state as accomplishing the core intent of the October 7 attack, despite the massive destruction the war has brought to the Gaza population. Still, Israel’s war strategy and the Trump 20 Point Plan for Gaza, as well as the policy of the Arab states, suggest that Hamas and its ideology of “resistance” will not lead the next phase of the Palestinian national movement, even if Hamas survives the Gaza war.
At the same time, some of Trump’s priorities have become threatened by the repercussions of the Gaza war. Some Arab leaders, particularly the rulers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have directly threatened to exit the Abraham Accords — Trump’s seminal first-term achievement that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states — if Israel takes further steps, such as annexing the West Bank, that foreclose any possibility of a Palestinian state. The stability of the Accords has been further undermined by Netanyahu’s decision to strike a meeting of Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar on September 9. In his second term, Trump sought to rely even more heavily on the Accords, including bringing in new participants, to transform the region from constant warfare to enduring peace and stability. However, the Gaza war and the Israeli strike on Doha have moved a Saudi decision to normalize relations even further into the future, if ever, even though brokering a formal Israel-Saudi accord has been a longstanding Trump goal.
The U.S. and Israeli deconstruction of Iran’s strategic architecture over the past year has produced a wholesale reassessment among Arab leaders about the key security threats they face. Many regional leaders have concluded that Israel has replaced Iran as the Middle East’s aggressive actor of paramount concern. The Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha not only fueled regional fears of Israeli aggression, but also called into question the decades-long reliance on a U.S. security umbrella for the Persian Gulf region. Still, Arab leaders do not view either Russia, China, Türkiye, or any other power as a substitute security guarantor. Regional heads of state have largely muted their criticism of Washington’s refusal to rein in Netanyahu’s actions, even when those actions, such as Israel’s attacks on military assets in post-Assad Syria, conflict with the U.S. objective to promote stability there. On the other hand, the region’s newfound fears of Israeli hegemony have shifted a critical mass of Arab diplomacy toward expanding engagement — not confrontation — with Iran. The new regional balance of power has also opened an avenue for Ankara to expand its influence, building on its predominant position in post-Assad Syria as well as its substantial role in western Libya.
The effect of the overthrow of the Assad regime in December 2024 — an outgrowth of the Israeli response to October 7 — on the geostrategic architecture of the region is hard to underestimate. Assad’s collapse largely eliminated Iranian influence from Syria and severed a key artery through which Iran supplies its main Axis of Resistance partner, Lebanese Hezbollah. A Sunni Islamist movement once aligned with al-Qaeda took power in Syria, but its leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has demonstrated the ability of jihadist groups to transform themselves into nationalist movements that can engage with the U.S. and other Western powers. President Trump’s decision to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, despite the background of Damascus’ new rulers, illustrated unexpected flexibility in U.S. sanctions policy as well as Washington’s ability to reconcile with former regional adversaries.
The repercussions of the October 7 Hamas attack have also illustrated the degree to which seemingly small non-state actors in the region can pose a threat not only to the Middle East but to global peace and security. The Houthi movement in Yemen has expressed solidarity with Hamas by attacking commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea. The attacks have caused several tankers to sink and prompted global shipping lines to re-route their voyages to avoid the Red Sea. Traffic through the Red Sea has decreased by at least 50 percent. The U.S. has conducted retaliatory attacks on Houthi installations, including a weeks-long bombing campaign (“Operation Rough Rider”) in the spring of 2025, that the Trump team represented as a U.S. attempt to uphold its historic commitment to preserving the freedom of navigation. Still, the Houthis have continued their attacks on shipping, interrupted periodically perhaps as a result of limitations on Houthi missile supplies, and vow to do so as long as Israel remains militarily engaged in Gaza. The Houthis have also kept up a steady barrage of missile and drone strikes on Israel, although most of their launches are intercepted. Neither the U.S. nor any of its coalition partners has yet centered on a successful strategy to contain or defeat the Houthis.
Yet, despite the many transitions in the region, one constant has been the unexpected lack of influence of two great anti-Western powers, Russia and China. The fall of Assad significantly diminished Russia’s position in the region by limiting Russia’s access to naval and air bases in the country — facilities Moscow used in its failed effort to keep Assad in power. Russia took no steps to help defend or support Iran in its twelve-day war against Israel in June. Nor did either Moscow or Beijing succeed in preventing a European effort in September to “snapback” UN sanctions against Iran. Beijing remains, by all accounts, primarily an economic rather than strategic player in the Middle East, and has been content to allow Washington to protect China’s interests in the free flow of oil and commerce in the region. Still, the regional perception that Washington is unwilling to rein in Israel’s aggressive posture might lead Arab leaders to further expand security ties to Moscow and Beijing over the longer term.
