Now that the guns have fallen (largely) silent in Gaza, it is possible to begin judging what two years of war have done to the Middle East. As the smoke clears, it becomes clear that the battles of the past two years haven’t led to a fundamental strategic transformation of the region. The balance of power between existing power blocs has been somewhat altered, but no one has faced total defeat, with the notable exception of the Assad regime in Syria.
In the Middle East before the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, it was possible to discern three broadly defined power blocs. The first, of which Israel was a part, consisted of states and movements committed to alliance with the West, and the maintenance of a U.S.-aligned counterradical security architecture as the key strategic arrangement in the region. The Abraham Accords of 2020 were an attempt to formalize this alliance.
The second bloc consisted of mainly non-Sunni movements and regimes organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This alliance included the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, the Houthis in Yemen, the Iraqi Shiite militias, the Assad regime in Syria, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians. The goal of this alliance, as openly stated by its leaders in Tehran, was to replace the U.S. as the security guarantor of the region, while also seeking the destruction of Israel.
The third bloc was the Sunni Islamist alliance, which has a complex and ambiguous relationship with American power. The main components of this bloc were Turkey and Qatar. Formally aligned with the West, these countries nevertheless also offered support to a variety of Sunni Islamist and jihadist forces across the region, which included Hamas (a Sunni organization somewhat uncomfortable with the largely Shiite Iran-led group), Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Published originally on October 27, 2025.
Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal (paywall).
