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.
The war of the past two years consisted of a clash between the Iran-led regional alliance and Israel, with crucial support from the U.S. The result is that Iran and its allies have been bloodied but not destroyed. Iran itself was pounded by Israeli and American ordnance, which it proved unable to divert. Its nuclear program has been damaged and its centers of governance attacked. Its efforts to strike at Israel proved generally ineffectual.
Lebanese Hezbollah is similarly weakened. Its historic leadership is decimated, its missile array largely destroyed and many of its midlevel commanders killed. The Yemeni Houthis have been severely mauled by Israeli air power, with little to show for their many attempts to attack the Jewish state. The Iraqi Shiite militias, after some desultory drone and rocket attacks on U.S. forces, scaled back. Hamas and Islamic Jihad suffered enormous losses and ceded most of Gaza.
In all these cases, the damage suffered is considerable, but recovery and rebuilding are under way. There are no indications that Iran, the patron of this alliance, has elected to adopt a different regional strategy as a result of the experience of the past two years.
The single exception to this pattern is the Assad regime in Syria, which was broken in December 2024. It was replaced, however, by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni jihadist party aligned with the Sunni Islamist bloc of Turkey and Qatar.
That bloc appears to have played a crucial role in cajoling Hamas to accept the Trump plan and the Gaza cease-fire. It did so, as is now becoming apparent, not to secure a lasting peace, but to ensure Hamas’s survival. The Sunni Islamists of Gaza are a natural and comfortable ally of this bloc, whose outlook they share in all essentials.
In the Middle East, the West and its allies remain the strongest gathering in conventional terms. But they have yet to translate that superiority into a decisive victory. One Islamist bloc, that of the Iranians, has been considerably weakened. Another, that of Turkey and Qatar, has grown stronger. The contest is set to continue.
Published originally on October 27, 2025.
