With a series of powerful blows, Israel’s military reshapes the Mideast : NPR

With a series of powerful blows to Iran and its proxies, Israel has reasserted its military dominance in the Middle East and reshaped the region less than two years after it was caught off guard in a surprise attack.

The Israel-Iran ceasefire after 12 days of intense airstrikes may mark the end, for now, of the region's major battles that began with the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But the Middle East still faces much unfinished business.

Israel and its rivals have not resolved their political disputes, which in some cases have been further inflamed by the bloodshed. And Israel's international reputation has been badly tarnished by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the huge number of Palestinian civilian deaths in the territory.

Israel considered Iran its most dangerous enemy for decades. Yet from Israel's first strike on June 13, the air force was able to dominate the skies over Iran, repeatedly hitting the country's nuclear sites and military facilities, while also killing many top leaders.

Iran's supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Aly Khamenei, claimed his country came out on top. President Trump countered on Friday, saying, “I'm going to respond to the ayatollah's statement yesterday that ‘we won the war.' I said, ‘Look, you're a man of great faith, a man who's highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth — you got beat to hell.”'

This follows Israel's conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which wiped out their leaderships and devastated the two groups, both allied with Iran. In addition, Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, fled in December after more than a decade of civil war. While Israel didn't play a direct role, his ouster removed another regional rival with close ties to Iran.

The collapse of Iran's proxies

Iran spent decades building this network of proxies, collectively known as the “axis of resistance” and designed to pressure Israel from all sides. The result was an unstable Middle East featuring Israel, backed by the U.S., against Iran and its partners. Both sides believed they could inflict major damage on the other, a proposition that made everyone wary of a major confrontation.

The past two years made clear that Israel, with U.S. help, is the dominant military force.

“The Iranian camp is decimated and beaten to smithereens,” said Hussein Ibish with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank.

Middle East conflicts are frequent, though often the fighting is contained and for a limited period. But the severity of the Hamas attack, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis in one day, prompted a massive Israeli response, which Hamas should have expected, Ibish said.

“Hamas tries to claim, ‘We didn't know that the October attack would be game-changing and bring out Israel with all its force,” said Ibish. “That's just absolute nonsense. They knew it. They wanted it. And they said they'd keep attacking Israel until they got that result.”

The Hamas leader who orchestrated that attack, Yahya Sinwar, wanted allies to join in as part of a full-scale regional war against Israel. However, in the early months of the fighting, Hamas received only limited support from Hezbollah, which fired rockets into northern Israel, and the Houthis in Yemen, who fired on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Sinwar, who was killed by Israel in Gaza last October, was completely focused on the Palestinian cause. Yet the attack he launched set off the chain of events that have realigned the region — though not in a way he ever intended.

The changes came rapidly when Israel began an offensive against Hezbollah last fall, beginning with exploding pagers that killed or wounded many group members simultaneously.

“In very short order, Iran's entire presence around Israel's borders collapsed,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert who's a professor at Johns Hopkins University. “Israel found much greater room to maneuver in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza. And then Israel decided this was the time to press this advantage and settle things with Iran as well.”

The limits of military power

However, these military successes only go so far.

Israel has greatly reduced the security threat it faces, but has not solved political differences in the region, especially when it comes to the Palestinians, where a solution seems further away than ever.

The fighting in Gaza drags on, though it's almost entirely one-sided. Israel continues to carry out regular attacks and Palestinians continue to suffer high casualties, many of them civilians trying to get food aid that remains in chronically short supply. More than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.

The recent Gaza fighting received little attention amid the Israel-Iran war. But more broadly, the Palestinian call for statehood still generates widespread support in the region and in the West. This ranges from political protests to sanctions to a genocide case filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

“When the genocide case was first launched, I thought it was plainly hyperbolic, sort of an interesting rhetorical exercise in law, but not really a serious case,” said Hussein Ibish. “Now, obviously, it's become a very serious case indeed.”

Before the Gaza war began, Israel was making headway in establishing diplomatic and business relations among Arab countries. The U.S. was pushing for formal ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would be a major breakthrough. But the Saudis say that's on hold until Israel makes progress toward a political deal with the Palestinians.

“Relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was to become the basis for the integration of the region,” said Vali Nasr. But the Gaza war “disrupted this and put the Palestinian issue squarely on the table. Israel cannot move into the region, coexist with the region, build these normal relations, without solving this issue.”

Over the past two years, Israel has had moments of friction with the U.S., including an angry outburst by Trump when he said Israel didn't observe the start of the ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday.

But the U.S.-Israel alliance was on display with the U.S. airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program last weekend. And on Wednesday, Trump praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a hero and said a long-running corruption case against him in Israel should be called off.

“Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

After the Hamas attack, Netanyahu's days as prime minister seemed numbered. But Netanyahu, and Israel, have made a comeback.

“The Israel that has come out of October 7th and the Gaza war is confident. It wants to settle its security issues around the region once and for all,” said Vali Nasr. “If it's successful, then we will be dealing with a very different Middle East in which Israeli military power will reign supreme.”

But, he added, the outcome is not entirely clear. If Israel doesn't succeed, “then the region is going to roll back again into the kind of stalemate it had, except far more dangerous than the one before.”