Some positive conventional wisdom is taking root in Israel and among many observers of Middle East politics: Israel’s strategic environs have improved considerably and the country’s position in January 2025 is significantly better than on the morning of October 7, 2023.
From a purely security and military perspective, this conventional wisdom is well-founded and sensible. It seems to be an incontrovertible strategic truism to argue that the past year produced major regional shifts that are clearly advantageous to Israel. Whether these shifts are “tectonic,” as the most overused term goes, remains to be seen.
They certainly might wind up on that scale, but judging by Israel’s policy, or lack thereof, they could equally turn out very differently, and the conventional wisdom might wind up premature.
There is no doubt that the erosion of Iran’s geopolitical power is a net positive strategic gain for Israel, but this is offset by growing hostility around the world, the reemergence of the Palestinian issue, which Israel is neither prepared nor willing to engage in, and an ominous loss of levers in Washington given regional power plays and the identity of the new U.S. president, Donald Trump. These negatives are equally strategic in scope and meaning, so the validity of conventional wisdom can be challenged.
Which developments underlie this conventional wisdom? Militarily, Hamas has been immensely degraded, though not “eradicated” or “decimated,” as the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to do. It’s very doubtful that in any postwar scenario Hamas will be able to restore its military capabilities to anywhere near those on October 7, 2023.
Hezbollah has been badly battered regarding both its political and military leadership and its missile capability. Furthermore, the Lebanese Shi’ite organization has lost much of the deterrent power it had over Israel for many years and the cover that this perceived deterrence provided Iran.
Iran has suffered major strategic setbacks. Even if temporarily, it has lost the ability to project power through Hezbollah, its prized asset and proxy. It has been attacked on its own soil, much of its antimissile-detection and air-defense system has been destroyed, and though Iran was more than able to retaliate with missiles and drones against Israel, it has been fundamentally weakened, its intelligence penetrated, its vulnerabilities exposed and its main land conduit for arms supplies to Hezbollah, Syria, eliminated for now with the collapse of the Assad regime.
Russia, an Iranian ally, quickly left Syria and is preoccupied with the war in Ukraine ahead of expected cease-fire negotiations in the coming months. This makes Iran’s choice binary: break out of its nuclear-threshold status, try to develop a military nuclear capability and risk a major war, or engage in a new nuclear disarmament and supervision deal from a weakened position.
Saudi Arabia, which already improved relations with Iran in a Chinese-brokered rapprochement in 2023, is hospitable to both the United States and China, has potentially enormous sway on Trump, and isn’t ruling out a normalization process with Israel under certain circumstances.
Russia is effectively out of the Middle East, even if it maintains a residual presence on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and has announced that it still has interests in the region. Russia has nothing to sell or anything positive to provide the region.
Which brings us to the Palestinians. The savage terror attack on October 7, 2023, comprehensively set back Palestinian political aspirations.
Gaza has been pulverized and rendered uninhabitable, the Palestinian Authority is weak, ineffectual and dysfunctional, and Israel thinks, or at least the current coalition government thinks, that wide swaths of the West Bank can be annexed in the coming months. All this, particularly Iran’s isolation and precariousness, amounts to an Israeli strategic triumph — so goes the conventional wisdom.
But there’s a countervailing interpretation to the very same events and processes, and it begins with the Palestinians. The horrid catastrophe of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war and devastation of Gaza, only exacerbated the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Decimating Hamas is good but doesn’t change by one iota the demographic equilibrium between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The prevailing mindset in Israel that a Palestinian state is unviable, undesirable and would precipitate more “October 7s” is understandable and natural, but equally myopic. The status quo would also precipitate more October 7s, and certainly a one-state solution too.
The fundamental flaw in Israel’s policy has been to deliberately and recklessly fail to define political goals for the war in Gaza and then refuse to engage in any postwar political framework that would replace Hamas. When a war has no political aims, when military means aren’t derived from political objectives, even the greatest military accomplishments become perishable goods and go to waste.
Saudi Arabia is the one major regional actor that has real potential influence on Trump. On Wednesday, in a phone call with the U.S. president, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman promised that the Saudis would increase their investment and trade with the United States by “at least $600 billion” over the next four years. Presumably that includes a $40 billion to $60 billion mega arms deal.
The Saudis would ask Trump to engage Iran in a new nuclear deal and could very well insist on a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian political process based on the principle of a Palestinian state as a condition to any kind of relations with Israel. Trump would ask the Saudis to use their clout in OPEC to lower oil prices, a good tool for Trump against Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump is transactional and the Saudis can transact. Israel can’t; it has no tangible deliverables because it has no defined political goals in Gaza or the West Bank.
Then there is world opinion. Whether the world’s hostility toward Israel is distorted, predicated on falsehoods and vilely motivated, or whether this is warranted criticism of the management of the war, the fact remains that Israel is ostracized and resented, with its claims about the Iranian threat accepted as a unique Israeli issue, not a global one. This is as important as striking Hezbollah and is a strategic debacle when it comes to reputation and brand value.
Actually, both interpretations of these dynamics — the strategic improvement and the longer-term disadvantages — are true.
The upside of these developments is that it’s up to Israel to shape its environment by crafting smart policies, beginning with the Palestinians. The downside is that such policies cannot and will not be formed under the current prime minister and government.
First published in Haaretz, 24.01.2025
