The Long Year: How Oct. 7 Changed the Middle East

Rachel Goldberg, the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 Hamas deadly attack hold his photo as hostages family members use giant speakers to call their captive loved ones near the border with the Gaza Strip in Nirim, Israel on Aug. 29, 2024. Amir Levy/Getty Images

One year after the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, the Middle East is a region changed.

The Hamas terrorist group lies crippled and its control over Gaza likely never to be restored. The Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon is quickly being degraded by a precise Israeli ground campaign. Iran, though more aggressive than ever, has failed to defeat Israel’s robust missile defense systems.

Tensions run high, and the fighting is likely far from over.

There remain an assortment of regional players, from the Houthi terror group in Yemen to Russian forces in Syria, that could further destabilize an already restive Middle East.

Most importantly, however, both Israel and Iran have forgotten former reservations about confronting one another openly, and appear ready to disregard the once common pretense of normative relations.

Iran and Israel Less Cautious

The adoption of a less risk-averse outlook by both Israel and Iran is a key change in the regional dynamics of the Middle East brought about by the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, according to Jason Brodsky, policy director for the United Against Nuclear Iran advocacy group.

Given Iran’s backing of Islamic terror groups, as well as its own direct attacks on Israeli soil, Brodsky said Israel appears to have lost its tolerance for merely limiting its military actions to small, attrition-oriented strikes.

“There is a lower tolerance for mowing the lawn and pursuing arrangements like the one with Hamas where it received funds in exchange for the illusion of quiet,” Brodsky said. “That, in retrospect, was a devastating delusion.”

“I also believe Israeli decision-makers have become much more risk-ready in contending with the Iranian threat.”

That much was apparent in recent weeks as Israeli officials launched a ground assault into Lebanon in order to confront Hezbollah, and vowed retaliation against an Iranian missile strike against U.S. pleas for deescalation.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Ashkelon in southern Israel, on Oct. 8, 2023. Amir Cohen/Reuters

Brodsky said that Iran had also become more ready to accept risk and engage in direct confrontation with Israel, largely due to Israel’s success in eliminating key elements of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” an Iranian-led coalition of state and non-state actors that cooperate to undermine Israel and the United States throughout the world.

To that end, many in Israel believe that the nation’s acceptance of increased risk in confronting Iran is necessary given Tehran’s commitment to undermining and, ultimately, destroying Israel.

Jonathan Harounoff, international spokesperson of the Israeli Mission to the United Nations, told The Epoch Times that Iran’s continued backing of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis demonstrated it was committed to conflict with Israel above all else.

“Since April, Tehran lost all credibility in claiming to want peace,” Harounoff said.

“The Islamic Republic can no longer claim to advocate for peace while hiding behind its proxies,” he said. “It yearns for Israel’s destruction.”

Harounoff stressed, however, that Israel’s fight was with the radical Islamist regime controlling Tehran and directing its proxies, not with the people of Iran or Lebanon.

“Israel will do what is necessary to defend its people and its territory. Israel’s enemies are not the people of Lebanon, nor the people of Iran ... Israelis know all too well that the clerical leaders of Tehran terrorize their own civilians too. Israel is merely acting in self defense against the evil forces who want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.”

Israel Hasn’t Become Overextended

Despite the increased willingness to enter open conflict, looming fears of a regional war that would lead to Israel’s possible destruction have not materialized.

In the early days following the Oct. 7 attacks last year, experts and strategists alike feared above all else that Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza would expand to Lebanon and beyond, placing Israel in a multi-front war it would struggle to maintain, let alone win.

Can Kasapoglu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, told The Epoch Times at the time that a large-scale attack from Lebanon could bring Israel’s worst fears to life.

“The nightmare scenario for Israel has always been a multi-front war,” Kasapoglu said.

Even small attacks by Hezbollah could have an outsized impact, Kasapoglu said, as they would draw away Israeli military resources that could otherwise go to confronting Hamas in Gaza.

U.S. defense officials likewise acknowledged a concern about containing the threat from Lebanon, fearing that Israel would be overextended.

An Israeli soldier moves on the top of a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border, as seen from southern Israel, on July 14, 2024. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP Photo)
Naveen Athrappully

By focusing all its efforts on eliminating Hamas first, however, Israel appears to have successfully laid the groundwork to shift gears into a more protracted struggle to eliminate the Hezbollah threat on its northern border.

Paul Crespo, president of the Center for American Defense Studies think tank, said that Israel was effectively able to take the fight to both Hamas and Hezbollah by managing its operations to focus on each enemy consecutively.

“Israel knew Hezbollah needed to be hit hard, but decimating Hamas first was clearly the right move,” Crespo said.

Crespo, who previously served as a Marine officer and naval attache for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that such a course of action played to the strengths of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), while mitigating the weakness of Israel’s relatively small size.

“The IDF is competent and powerful, but Israel is still a tiny nation. Fighting on two fronts would have been challenging,” he said.

An open question remains, Crespo said, as to whether Israel will now move to confront Iran in a more direct manner, or first seek to quash Hezbollah in Lebanon the way it has with Hamas.

Sam Kessler, a geopolitical analyst at the North Star Support Group risk advisory firm, said that it is “too early to tell” if Israel completely avoided stretching itself too thin, but that it had done well to disrupt Hamas and Hezbollah leadership before expanding its conflicts with the Iranian proxies.

“Israel is trained and prepared for a certain kind of war in the region, [but] the scenarios could change ... as well as the impact from regional power vacuums that may occur too,” Kessler said.

He added that there was an added layer of complexity in Israel’s strategic decision-making, insofar as it needed to successfully manage the expectations of key allies like the United States, which it depends on for arms.

“There’s the impact on how Israel’s military, diplomatic, and economic standing in the world is affected and how that impacts their future power projection capabilities if other conflicts arise in the near future as well.”

Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels shout slogans during a gathering to mobilise more fighters to battlefronts to fight pro-government forces, on June 18, 2017, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

Powder Keg Scenarios Still Possible

Proverbial powder keg scenarios are still possible, however, and Israel could find itself stretched thin if other regional powers decide to enter the fray between it and Iran’s myriad proxies.

There remains the issue of the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen who have successfully disrupted billions of dollars’ worth of commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and launched attacks against civil and military vessels alike.

Israel has thus far launched limited air strikes against targets in Yemen, but that situation could escalate quickly, particularly if the Houthis enhance their capabilities for targeting the Israeli homeland.

Likewise, there is the wild card of Russian influence in the region that recently reared its head.

Just a day before Iran launched some 180 missiles at Israel, the Islamist regime welcomed Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin as part of a wider strategic partnership that has aimed at developing projects in transportation, energy, agriculture, and other areas.

Days later, IDF authorities unveiled video footage of Russian-made weapons seized from Hezbollah fighters’ homes in Lebanon including anti-tank rockets.

Israel says that such weapons are smuggled into Lebanon from war-torn Syria to the north, where Russia has maintained a military presence for the last decade.

Soon thereafter, an Israeli strike on munitions warehouses and tunnels in Syria raised fears of an international incident, as Russian air defense system went to work bringing Israeli missiles down.

Russia has subsequently suggested that its citizens evacuate both Israel and Lebanon.

There are currently no indications that Russia has supplied Hezbollah with weapons directly, but arms deals between Russia and Iran mean that some of the weapons Moscow sells to the Islamist regime could make their way to the proxies carrying out terror attacks against Israel.

The situation serves to demonstrate the growing complexity involved in the region amid the authoritarian partnerships of Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, which prop one another up through mutually beneficial security arrangements.

Normalization Persists

Despite everything, something like a push towards normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors continues.

The effort to begin genuine relations between Israel and its neighbors, which began with the Trump-era Abraham Accords, appears to have been “only delayed” by Oct. 7, and not destroyed, according to Brodsky.

He said that the attacks “crystallized the threat from [Iran] and its proxies,” demonstrating the destabilizing influence of Iran in the eyes of the Arab states, rather than turning them against Israel outright.

“Left unchanged is the desire by Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, which is a defeat for Iran’s regime in itself as the Oct. 7 massacre was aimed to thwart normalization,” he said.

To that end, though Israel may have been badly bloodied by Oct. 7, and the Middle East’s geopolitical landscape forever altered, the ultimate goal of those terror attacks have failed, for now.