The Middle East is caught between two regional orders. It is a region adrift. Israel’s rampage in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen and its genocidal war in Gaza have truly exposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to cement Israel’s place as the dominant regional power.
While Israel has succeeded in shredding what remained of the regional order, purporting to lead to the point of no return, the chances of a new Israeli-led Middle East seem far from being on the point of emerging.
With fears of tectonic shifts from the tremors triggered by Israel’s dangerous escalation of the conflicts in the region, the geopolitical future of the Middle East is anything but certain.
Netanyahu has persistently claimed that Israel’s campaign to conquer its enemies could herald a fresh era of stability for the region and has declared that his ambition is for Israel to be in the driving seat of the new Middle East.
In order to change the face of the Middle East in the way Netanyahu wants, Israel seems determined to subdue its enemies and cow the rest by dictating its terms to the region.
As a result, it has launched a multipronged war on Iran and its network of regional proxies that includes Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, and it has exploited the collapse of the Al-Assad regime in Damascus to create footholds in Syria.
With American help, Israel has also applied maximum pressure on the Iran-backed militias in Iraq to stay out of the confrontation with the Islamic Republic.
In Gaza, Israel has continued its brutal war in the wake of Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attacks. Its ultimate goal is to “conquer” the Palestinians and control or even annex the Gaza Strip after forcing them to leave.
Israel claims that it has eliminated most of Hamas’ forces, killed over half its military commanders, and neutralised much of Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure in Gaza, as well as the facilities it used to manufacture drones, rockets, and other munitions.
However, a new two-month ceasefire now under consideration is not expected to bring Israel’s military operations to an end and is largely viewed as an enabling mechanism for Israel to force Hamas to its knees.
In Lebanon, Israel’s overall goals are to decapitate Hizbullah and to turn a ceasefire reached in November 2024 after a year of cross-border attacks into permanent security arrangements.
Though the agreement mandates a halt to hostilities, during which it must withdraw its forces from Southern Lebanon, Israel has refused to pull back its military and has also continued to sporadically bomb areas of the country.
Israel is clearly intending to continue to target Hizbullah’s operatives and infrastructure, particularly in the hope of disarming it and depriving the party of its de facto veto power in Lebanese politics.
Yet, the Shia Party has made it clear that it will not relinquish its arms throughout Lebanon before Israel withdraws its troops occupying areas of South Lebanon and allows thousands of people to return to their homes in border villages.
In Syria, following the fall of the Al-Assad regime in December 2024, Israel invaded a large chunk of the southwest of the country adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and continued to carry out incursions and aerial attacks in the beleaguered country.
Later, Israel declared strategic objectives in Syria that include securing complete control over a security buffer zone it has established and removing threats and establishing direct contact with local Druze communities and others.
But Israel’s attempt to open peace talks with Syria’s new rulers has been met with deep scepticism, as it continues to show signs that it is not ready to withdraw from Syrian territory and stop fuelling the country’s ethnic conflicts.
In Yemen, Israel has been launching heavy airstrikes against the Houthis in response to missile and drone attacks by the Shia group that controls most of country’s north. Some of the strikes have been devastating, and among their targets have been the Houthi leadership, the airport in the capital Sanaa, and ports and energy facilities on the Red Sea.
Israel hopes that it will not only be able to force the Houthis to halt their missile and drone attacks but also to end the war of attrition and the year-and-a-half-long blockade of the Red Sea. But as long as the Houthis remain in power in Sanaa, and there is no reason to believe they will disappear soon, this Israeli strategy of deterrence will prove futile.
All the while, Israel has continued to prioritise Iran, suggesting that with its ambitious nuclear programme the Islamic Republic is a much bigger threat than its regional allies.
After nearly 21 months of conflict in the region, during which Israel has effectively dealt devastating blows to these allies, Netanyahu resorted to a military strategy to consolidate Israel’s gains by launching massive airstrikes on Iran.
The operation, carefully coordinated with the US Trump administration, was aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities and triggering a popular uprising against the Islamic regime in Tehran.
But while Iran’s allies have quietly taken the blows, the Islamic Republic has remained resilient. It fired back at Israel with 550 ballistic missiles and around 1,000 drones, killing more than two dozen Israelis and wounding 3,238 others.
During the 12-day war, Iran’s missile arsenal proved to be far more destructive. It damaged several neighbourhoods in Israel along with key military sites, leaving over 13,000 Israelis displaced.
Despite the damage inflicted on its nuclear sites by Israeli and US bombs, Iran is expected to immediately begin the process of rebuilding its battered military capacity. It is thought to retain its 400 kg stockpile of uranium enriched to close to weapons-grade levels.
More significantly, Iran confirmed its military will by launching strikes against the US Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, retaliating for Trump’s attack on its nuclear facilities.
The bombing sent shockwaves throughout the oil-rich capitals of the Gulf, which feared the worst-case scenario of Iranian missile strikes shattering the region’s image of stability.
With the war over, Israeli and US leaders now speak of a region transformed, suggesting a joint Pax Americana-Pax Hebraica era influenced by the dominance of both the United States and Israel.
Netanyahu has argued that Israel’s “victory” over Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” “opens an opportunity for a dramatic expansion of the peace agreements” and a vision of a new regional order where the Islamic Republic has no place.
Trump believes that the post-war era will find new signatories to join the so-called “Abraham Accords,” a normalisation process he sponsored between Israel and four Arab states in 2020.
Israel’s war on Gaza and its aftershocks have altered the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. However, the hypothesis that Israel will be able to impose its hegemony over the region is farfetched, meaning that the drift towards further conflicts will continue.
Over the course of the war with Iran, Israel has probably made some strides through its “decapitation strategy” and has showed its tenacity to become the regional hegemon.
But when evaluating the political outcomes and the prospect of Israel acquiring the upper hand in the regional system, many do not take the true worth of Israel’s “historic victory” seriously.
Israel’s potential for regional hegemony faces several hurdles, including a lack of legitimacy due to its occupation of Palestine, the apartheid system it imposes on the Palestinians, and the genocidal war it has been waging on Gaza.
Israel seeks to expand its regional influence through exercising the arrogance of power and resorting to overbearing attitudes towards other nations in the region.
Israel believes that Iran and its proxies in the “Axis of Resistance” that have been the primary obstacles for normalising relations with it are now on the back foot and are more vulnerable and exposed, making it easier to allow a larger “Abraham Axis” to emerge.
This seems to be another example of the Israeli policy of “peace through strength” – something it has been trying to implement for decades and that has always proven to be simply a fantasy that has bred more wars.
Many will remember how peace agreements and initiatives that have been endorsed or pushed for by the Arabs have failed to bring peace due to Israel’s shortsighted strategy of pursuing regional dominance rather than peaceful coexistence.
Israel may have the military strength to decapitate its enemies, as it displayed in the recent war. Yet, its claim of being the region’s dominant power will surely cause it to face unprecedented challenges.
The immediate challenge is that Israel’s war on the Palestinians, Iran, and the “Axis of Resistance” may make its enemies temporarily stay aside, but it will hardly push them further towards surrender.
Furthermore, Israel will face resistance from other regional actors who will feel marginalised in an Israeli-led Middle East and from an alienated Arab public opinion that will sense vulnerability and betrayal.
Israel’s approach to the post-war regional arrangements exhibits a seductive logic, but it is one that has never been effective, and its advantage of military superiority has never made Israel safer or its people more secure.
Now that Israel seeks to impose a hegemonic order on the region, the stage is set for a new political framework that can reform and strengthen the Middle East security order.
An Israeli-led new Middle East order that does not bring a new future for the Palestinians in the shape of an independent and viable state and peace for the Arab nations is a logical impossibility. Early signs of the failure of this order are already emerging.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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