The Middle East is transforming before our eyes. While much of the global conversation fixates on the volleys of violence between Israel and Iran, a far more profound shift is underway: The regional order established after two world wars is coming to an end. The paramount question is no longer whether the old arrangements will survive, but what the new order will look like.
In 1967, Israel achieved its greatest military feat. In a mere six days, the fledgling Jewish state overcame a collection of militaries and captured territories vastly larger than its own. More significant than the territorial gains was the strategic shift this victory heralded. For the first time, Israel’s adversaries confronted an unassailable reality: Israel is here to stay. Aspirations to eradicate it had to be dispensed—or at least shelved. In the decades since, Israel has made peace with two of its formidable rivals, Egypt and Jordan, and established formal and informal relations with other states in the region.
The changes that have taken place since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, are no less momentous. If 1967 established Israel’s permanence, 2025 removed its last existential threat. For the first time in its history, the “small state, surrounded by enemies,” which sees itself as a “villa in the jungle,” is now an uncontested regional heavyweight.
Nevertheless, celebration will be premature, as it was in 1967. Back then, Israel failed to translate its stunning military triumph into political resolution on its most pressing front: the Palestinian issue. Rather than using its success to embark on a path of reconciliation that would fortify its position and its security, successive governments surrendered to irredentist urges and messianic visions, turning victory into a source of chronic internal and external strife. Removing the Iranian threat, while a strategic achievement, might also sow the seeds of persistent conflict.
Though the end is not yet in sight, it seems clear that Iran will not return to being a dominant regional force. For decades, Iran was revered as a formidable regional power. Its ayatollahs vowed all manner of doom to “the Zionist entity” should it dare to raise its hand against them. Security and intelligence experts predicted disaster in any potential conflict. Israel’s surprise assault on its military leadership and security installations exposed the Persian Lion as a paper tiger. How has it come to this?
Iran’s military strategy rested on three pillars: a network of regional proxies (including Hamas, Hezbollah, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen), an arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones, and the nuclear program. Israel’s war in Gaza crushed Hamas, and its campaign in Lebanon eviscerated Hezbollah. This has neutralized the proxy network, as evidenced by its inaction in the wake of Israel’s assault on Tehran.
Israel’s air campaign has also eliminated much of Iran’s ballistic arsenal, which had already proved of limited capacity to overcome Israel’s air defenses in April and October of last year. Years of corruption, technological straggle, and economic stagnation have depleted Iran’s military capacity, leaving only the nuclear program.
As the tone of the American president grows firmer, it seems increasingly clear that Iran will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. With the Americans now having joined the campaign, Iran will have to surrender its nuclear ambitions to reach a face-saving, and potentially regime-saving, agreement. However this ends, the ayatollahs’ power has drastically and irredeemably waned. So where do things go from here?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems intent on regime change. His defense minister declared that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, “must cease to exist,” while Netanyahu cast himself as a Jewish counterpart to Cyrus: “I want to tell you that 2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, liberated the Jews. And today, a Jewish state is creating the means to liberate the Persian people.” He was wrong in the past and he is wrong now. Netanyahu previously pushed the Bush administration to take out Saddam Hussein, with the confident assurance that “[i]f you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” The folly of the American invasion that followed allowed Iran to expand its influence and consolidate what Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, called “the Shia Crescent.” That development is in no small part responsible for the present.
The immediate cause of the current crisis is also Netanyahu’s doing. It was the Israeli prime minister who urged U.S. President Donald Trump in his first term to jettison the agreement reached by former President Barack Obama restricting Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Netanyahu assured Trump and the world that the Iranian regime will be weakened and a better deal will be reached.
Netanyahu’s predictions have been refuted time and again. Now he gambled on his ability to drag the Americans into the war, as Israel lacks the means necessary for taking out Iran’s underground nuclear infrastructure, and on the potential for regime change. His urging of Iranians to take to the streets against their regime while he is bombing their cities might seem laughable, but it is also precarious. As he should have learned from the debacle of Iraq for which he lobbied, a vacuum is not a stable solution. Decades of “successful” military interventions against bad actors in the region have only created space for others, often worse elements (Hezbollah and the Islamic State come to mind). An easily distracted U.S. president might lose interest, in which case Iranians are likely to make a dash toward a bomb.
The U.S. government still has the decisive voice but has a frail grasp of the region and seems unlikely to present a credible path forward. Europe can hardly influence events on the ground. But at this moment of transition, when no one is charting a course for the future, Europe together with other countries like Canada and Australia can play a crucial role.
The removal of Iran and its proxies as a regional menace and an existential threat to Israel provides a historic opportunity for regional rearrangement. With Hamas and Hezbollah enfeebled, a regional agreement along the lines of the Arab Peace Initiative introduced in 2002—which offered diplomatic normalization between Israel and Arab countries in return for a full withdrawal by Israel from Palestinian territories among other requirements—is not only possible but also almost a no-brainer.
It is also the only recipe for resolving the Palestinian issue, a constant thorn in the side of regional order. The conflict with the Palestinians is the persistent and immediate security threat for Israel and its reluctance to end the occupation is the chief obstacle to a regional alliance of moderates—the only stable bulwark against extremist resurgence.
The massacre in Gaza unequivocally indicates what the conflict’s continuation entails. Somewhat ironically, Israel’s operational success in Iran robs its right wing of its most precious argument—that military control over the Palestinian territories is a security imperative. A mighty military capable of taking out a regional power a thousand miles away in just a few days can surely cope with a tiny, demilitarized semi-state alongside it.
The prospect of making concessions for regional peace is not likely to win over the current Israeli government or the current U.S. administration for that matter. Nevertheless, if a new order is to ever take hold, Israelis must be confronted with the fact that there exists an alternative regional arrangement, supported by a vast international consensus, which will guarantee their long-term security much better than the eternal wars their current leaders offer. They should also begin to face real repercussions for resisting this alternative. Israel’s existential angst, which it consistently abuses, must cease to serve as a shield from international norms and meaningful pressure.
Outside actors can’t enforce their vision on the region, but they can certainly influence the terms of the discussion that is bound to take place once the dust settles. For the West, taking a principled, balanced stance on the future of the region might also go some way toward repairing its moral credibility and redressing its shameful support of Israel’s crimes in Gaza.