The United States has so far been unable to provide a clear statement of intent in its current military campaign against Iran. Yet Israel, its close partner, has made clear that it is fighting this war according to its own extraordinarily ambitious agenda. The Israelis are using the current war to achieve no less than a complete transformation of the Middle East. They aim to bring to an end the harsh and deeply draining conflict that has raged for nearly eighty years between it and its many, shifting adversaries across the region.
The assault launched by Hamas on that bloody morning of Oct. 7, 2023 provided Israel with a rare window for decisive change. Previous attempts had ended either in partial, hesitant successes or in clear and resounding failure. One may recall the 1979 Camp David Accords, which produced a cold peace and limited normalization between Israel and Egypt, ending three decades of confrontation between the two. Likewise, the Madrid Peace Process, inaugurated in the early 1990s, was built on the formula of “land for peace.” At the time, this bold and ambitious framework envisioned the creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel within the context of a just resolution to the Palestinian question.
The Background to Failure
The Madrid track, sponsored by the United States, appeared promising and serious because it marked, for the first time, a public and official commitment by the Arab world – particularly Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (the so-called “frontline” or “confrontation” states) – to forge a genuine and lasting peace with Israel and to cooperate with it in exchange for the return of territories occupied by Israel. In doing so, these states – along with the broader Arab world –would effectively abandon the doctrine of “armed resistance” against Israel.
From the outset, however, serious obstacles undermined the process. These included deep mutual mistrust between Israel and the newly established Palestinian Authority, created with international backing under the 1993 Oslo Accords as one of the outcomes of the Madrid framework. The Palestinian Authority’s poor governance, coupled with Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in Palestinian territories despite American and European objections, further eroded confidence.
Yet the most decisive factor in the collapse of the Madrid framework and the arrangements that emerged from it was Iran’s sustained and systematic effort to undermine it. The Islamic Republic constructed a regional “Axis of Resistance,” led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, to ensure the process would fail.
Hamas formed its military wing – the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades – in 1991, the same year the Madrid process began. The new group benefited from Iranian funding and Hezbollah training. Throughout the 1990s, the Brigades organized suicide bombings and military operations targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers. These attacks exposed the Palestinian Authority – led by Fatah, Hamas’s secular Palestinian rival – as unable to fulfill its commitments to prevent Palestinian violence against Israel.
As this violence intensified over time, it facilitated the rise of the Israeli right, which had already been skeptical of the Madrid framework and partnership with the Palestinian Authority. Hardline factions eventually assumed power in Israel. It was in this context that Benjamin Netanyahu – Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, with nearly seventeen years in office – emerged as the central political figure of this camp.
Israel Confronts the Axis
In his widely noted address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2024, Netanyahu declared that Israel was “compelled to defend itself on six more war fronts organized by Iran.” These fronts included Hamas and its supporters in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed Iraqi factions.
Israel’s focus on Iran as the principal adversary – one that should be confronted directly in response to the Oct. 7 attacks – was neither a belated discovery nor mere rhetorical positioning to mobilize support. It was an early political decision that received American backing. Roughly three weeks after Oct. 7, Netanyahu described Israel’s response as a “turning point for leaders and nations,” asserting that by fighting Hamas and the “Iranian axis of terror,” Israel was confronting “the enemies of civilization itself.” He thus framed the confrontation in global and moral terms – a claim that later faced severe challenge following accusations by the International Criminal Court that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Through sustained effort and clear prioritization, Israel – supported politically and militarily by the United States – managed to defeat or neutralize its adversaries across these six fronts, one after another. The most significant confrontation was with Hezbollah, the strongest and most cohesive component of the Axis of Resistance.
Intense Israeli military pressure on Hezbollah produced an unexpected domino effect in Israel’s favor. Under sustained and escalating pressure throughout the autumn of 2024, Hezbollah was compelled to withdraw its forces from Syria, where they had been defending the Assad regime. This withdrawal helped Syrian opposition forces to topple the Ba‘athist government in Damascus that had been allied with Iran.
Perhaps the most consequential strategic shift produced by Israel’s multi-layered response to Oct. 7 was the collapse – likely unintended – of the Assad regime and Syria’s rapid transition from the Axis of Resistance into the Western camp. The loss of Syria constituted Iran’s greatest strategic setback. The Axis lost its continuous geographic corridor stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. This corridor had enabled Iran to move fighters, equipment, and logistical support with relative ease to its allies, especially in Lebanon.
With Syria’s departure from the Axis, such operations became significantly more difficult. Simultaneously, Iranian influence in Lebanon receded, and Hezbollah experienced growing vulnerability due to the loss of its primary supply line.
An Iran Robbed of Its Friends
These Israeli successes paved the way for direct military confrontation with the leader and chief patron of the Axis: Iran. Such a confrontation, however, required elevated coordination with the United States in logistical and military terms, as well as political authorization that was not easily secured due to Israeli-American differences over how to address the Iranian challenge.
Washington preferred a diplomatic resolution – combining economic and political pressure with the threat of military force – to induce Iran to voluntarily dismantle its proxies, abandon the military dimensions of its nuclear program, and constrain its ballistic missile program in exchange for sanctions relief and reintegration into the international community as a “normal” state without cross-border ambitions.
Israel benefited from what it viewed as Iranian political miscalculations, particularly Tehran’s limited concessions to Washington that focused narrowly on the nuclear file. It was this Iranian intransigence that ultimately led the United States and Israel to launch the current joint air campaign against Iran – surpassing in intensity the twelve-day war conducted by Israel alone in June 2025.
The effectiveness of this joint campaign became evident from its opening hours, when it resulted in the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, along with dozens of senior security and political figures.
Unlike Israel, however, the administration of President Donald Trump may calculate that a swiftly appointed new Supreme Leader – elected under immense military pressure – could adopt new policies responsive to American demands, thereby saving the Islamic Republic from the overthrow that Trump has threatened.
Should that occur, Trump would likely press Israel – whose preference is not merely behavioral modification but the end of the Islamic Republic itself – to halt the joint campaign and instead coexist with an Islamic Iran that is inward-looking and no longer poses a threat to Israeli security.
Regardless of which scenario ultimately materializes, one thing is clear: The old Iran is gone. The new one will be markedly different from the one that existed before.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Akeel Abbas
Akeel Abbas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Iraq Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs, focuses on national and religious identities, modernity, and democratization in the Middle East.
