How the Oct. 7 Attacks Transformed the Middle East
When Hamas militants led a deadly cross-border raid on Oct. 7, 2023, they triggered a war with Israel that has devastated Gaza. They also set off shock waves that have reshaped the Middle East in unexpected ways.
Powerful alliances were upended. Long-established “red lines” were crossed. A decades-old dictatorship at the heart of the region was swept away.
Fifteen months after the October attacks, with a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas set to start on Sunday, here is a look at how the region has been radically transformed.
Israel
Israel has reasserted its military dominance but may face heavy diplomatic and domestic costs.
The country’s leaders treated the Hamas-led attacks as an existential threat and have been determined to defeat Hamas and weaken its main backer, Iran. Israel has not only succeeded in debilitating Hamas in Gaza but has also decimated the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s network of Middle Eastern allies.
Closer to home, and in the realm of global public opinion, Israel’s successes have been more ambiguous. While its assault on Gaza has severely weakened Hamas, it has not destroyed it, as the government had vowed to do.
Israel’s economy has been battered by the war, and the country’s polarized politics — briefly overlooked when the war began — seem to have returned to their fractious state of affairs. The country’s international standing is in tatters, threatening its diplomatic goals, such as the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia.
These dynamics could shift once again with Monday’s inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who pushed in his first term to normalize ties between Arab states and Israel and may seek to revive those efforts.
In the longer term, it is hard to predict what threats Israel may face from a generation of young Lebanese and Palestinians who have been traumatized by the death and destruction that Israel’s bombardment has wrought on their families and homes.
Hamas
Hamas and its leader at the time of the Oct. 7 attacks, Yahya Sinwar, wanted them to set off a wider regional war between Israel and Hamas’s allies. But the group failed to anticipate how the conflict might end.
For Palestinian civilians, the future looks bleaker than ever.
Israel’s bombardment and invasion have forced almost all Gazans from their homes and killed more than 45,000 people, according to the Gazan health authorities, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has reduced vast swaths of the enclave to rubble.
Israel has killed off Mr. Sinwar and the rest of Hamas’s top military and political brass, and the group’s popularity among Gazans has faded, though U.S. officials estimate that Hamas has recruited almost as many fighters as it has lost over 15 months of fighting.
And yet, its remaining leaders may claim that its survival is a victory.
Israel insists Hamas cannot rule the enclave after the war but has resisted calls to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza. Gulf States like Saudi Arabia now say they won’t normalize relations with Israel unless it commits to a path to establish a Palestinian state.
Lebanon
A shattered Hezbollah, once the crown jewel of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, has loosened its grip on Lebanon. But Israel’s invasion and bombardment have left Lebanon facing billions of dollars in reconstruction costs amid an economic crisis that predated the war.
Hezbollah, formerly Lebanon’s dominant political and military force, has suffered a stark reversal of fortunes since the 2023 attacks. Israel has killed most of its top leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah. Its patron Iran has been weakened. And its supply lines through Syria are in jeopardy. More broadly, the group’s core promise to Lebanon — that it alone can protect the country from Israel — has been gutted.
Years of political gridlock, largely blamed on the militant group, eased up enough this month to enable the Lebanese Parliament to elect a new president and appoint a prime minister who is backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Despite the blows, Hezbollah can still call on thousands of fighters, and has support from Lebanon’s large Shiite Muslim community. It may yet find a way to rebuild within Lebanon’s fractious political system.
Syria
The toppling of Bashar al-Assad last month — one of the most dramatic and unexpected consequences of Oct. 7 — dismantled a brutal authoritarian regime. But the inevitable turmoil that followed has created the conditions for new power struggles.
For nearly 13 years, Mr. al-Assad had largely contained a rebellion against his family’s five-decade grip on power — with help from Russia, Hezbollah and Iran.
But as Moscow focused on its war in Ukraine, and Iran and Hezbollah reeled from Israeli attacks, rebels led by the Turkish-backed Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham sensed an opportunity. They surged through Syria and toppled the government in a matter of days.
With Iran and Russia on the back foot, Turkey is now in a prime position to play a pivotal role in Syria. Moscow hopes to maintain some of its naval and air bases, but the fate of its negotiations with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is uncertain.
Meanwhile, the United States has maintained a small military presence in Syria to fight the Islamic State terrorist group and is allied with Kurdish-led forces that Turkey regards as an enemy. And Israel has seized Syrian territory near the Golan Heights as a buffer zone and has been carrying out extensive airstrikes on what it says are Syrian military and weapons targets.
Syria’s neighbors and European nations — hosting millions of Syrian refugees — are watching closely to see whether the country can achieve stability or will descend once more into violent chaos.
Iran
Iran’s powerful network of regional alliances has unraveled, leaving the country vulnerable — and potentially incentivized to build a nuclear weapon.
Long seen as one of the Middle East’s most influential powers, Iran has emerged severely diminished from the reordering of the past 15 months. It has effectively lost much of its once-potent “axis of resistance,” the network of allies it used to counter the influence of the United States and Israel.
Its closest partner, Hezbollah, is now too weak to pose a serious threat to Israel. And with Mr. al-Assad ousted from Syria, Iran has lost influence over the country that provided a critical supply line for weapons and militants.
Previous red lines that kept the region from all-out war have been erased: Since Israel assassinated Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was a guest in Tehran, Iran and Israel have carried out direct airstrikes against each another.
Where exactly that leaves Tehran is unclear. A weakened Iranian government that feels increasingly vulnerable may be compelled to weaponize its decades-old nuclear program. U.S. officials have warned Iran may need only a few weeks to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.
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