Two days after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that “we are going to change the Middle East.”
That phrase was used by Netanyahu repeatedly over the next two and a half years, as Israel went to war against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
“We turned Israel into a regional power that deters and defeats its enemies,” Netanyahu boasted in March, at the height of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran.
At the time, the Iran war looked like the successful culmination of Israel’s military response to October 7. It had delivered painful blows to Hamas and Hezbollah, and was now fighting alongside the most powerful military in history to topple the Iranian regime and permanently end the threat posed by the Iranian axis.
Published originally on June 15, 2026.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
