New Middle East: Post-War but Not Post-Conflict

Shortly before leaving my home in Virginia to spend the holidays in Beirut, a colleague asked me, echoing Ronald Reagan’s old one liner from 1980: Isn’t Lebanon better off now than at the start of the year?

My answer was immediate — but incomplete.

“Yes,” I said.

Then I paused.

“And no.”

That ambivalence might as well apply to the entire Middle East in 2025. This is not just an analytical dilemma, it is a lived one.

Over the past year, as journalists at MBN, we have followed big shifts in our region in real time: wars slowing down without truly ending, power balances tilting without fully settling, and diplomatic breakthroughs colliding with unresolved realities on the ground. Reporting from Washington, Beirut, and across the region, we experienced moments when we no longer felt fully detached from events. At times, we felt as if we were documenting history; at others, we felt as if we were moving inside it.

The region today is neither stabilized nor collapsing. Instead, it is undergoing a managed reordering, shaped less by negotiated settlements than by a realignment of power.

Levant Logic

The Gaza ceasefire is emblematic. Brokered by the U.S., the ceasefire deal succeeded in halting large-scale combat and securing the release of hostages. From a policy standpoint, this met Washington’s immediate aims of preventing regional escalation, stabilizing Israel’s security environment, and ending a political headache. What it did not do is resolve the power vacuum in Gaza, clarify post-war authority, or establish a credible pathway to Palestinian political renewal. The conflict has been frozen in a new configuration rather than resolved.

Israel’s security environment reflects this same paradox. Large-scale military action on both the Gaza and Lebanese fronts is effectively over. What followed is not peace, but a reduction in intensity. Compared to the past two years, Israel no longer operates under a sense of immediate existential threat. While security challenges remain, Israel currently holds the upper hand militarily, easing public anxiety and pushing security issues out of daily life and constant public discourse.

Washington has worked actively to prevent renewed escalation, signaling clearly that a return to full-scale war would not be tolerated. As tensions have eased, economic conditions inside Israel have begun to stabilize. The economy is not booming, but it is recovering, supported by major trade and defense deals and growing arms exports.

Yet, as we have reported repeatedly over the past year, external security gains have not translated into internal political stability. Israel is polarized. The most acute concerns today are not about war, but about governance: institutional erosion, pressure on the judiciary, politicization of the civil service, and corruption. The war may have ended, but the domestic reckoning has not.

Lebanon reflects a similar logic of partial stabilization without structural resolution. After years of institutional paralysis, the country regained a minimal level of state functionality in 2025. The election of a president and formation of a government brought some  political stability. More significantly, Western pressure put something on the table that had long been unimaginable: the disarmament of Hezbollah.

From Washington’s perspective, this represents incremental progress. The U.S. quietly pushed for de-escalation along the southern border, reduced the risk of renewed Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and explored frameworks that could eventually lead to a Lebanon-Israel security arrangement. Yet Lebanon’s fundamentals remain unchanged: a hollowed-out economy, a lack of control over its own security, and reforms contingent on political will that remains elusive. Hezbollah isn’t giving up its arms anytime soon. Lebanon is no longer in free fall, but it is not on a trajectory to recovery. 

Syria made an even sharper turn. Following the end of the Assad era last year, the U.S. established diplomatic contacts and moved to lift sanctions. That reflects Washington’s belief that exclusion had become strategically counterproductive and that the new President Ahmed al-Sharaa is a man it could do business with. Yet this re-engagement is conditional and transactional, focused on counterterrorism, refugee stabilization, and preventing renewed large-scale violence. The transition, however, remains fragile. Institutions are shallow, authority fragmented, and the risk of internal conflict unresolved. Syria is post-war, but not post-conflict.

Tehran, Deterred

The most consequential shift of 2025 came with Iran.

Iran enters the new year materially weakened and strategically exposed. The regime is operating from the most vulnerable position it has been in for decades. As a result of the war sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel two years ago, Tehran saw its proxy network – which had  stretched from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and made Iran a feared regional power – largely broken up. The fall of the Assad regime disrupted Iran’s supply corridor to Hezbollah, while sustained military pressure degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities and fractured Hamas. These setbacks have sharply reduced Tehran’s capacity to project influence through regional militias.

Equally significant, Iran’s nuclear program, long treated as a looming crisis, was forcibly rolled back through coordinated Israeli and U.S. action. Facilities were struck, timelines disrupted, and escalation was tightly managed on terms set by Washington and Jerusalem. Iran’s restrained response was a reflection of its weakness, not strategic patience. The regime survived, but its deterrent credibility did not.

For U.S. policymakers, this represents a meaningful if incomplete success. Iran has been weakened without triggering regional war. Yet 2025 didn’t produce a lasting solution to the Iranian problem.

Throughout this year, Gulf states responded pragmatically. They avoided getting sucked into the conflict, while cozying up the U.S. This renewed openness toward Washington resulted in deeper security cooperation, accelerated defense coordination, and closer political alignment. These countries aren’t embracing a new worldview as much as managing risk.  

Elsewhere, Yemen continues to fragment, moving from stalemate to disintegration. Sudan has collapsed into a humanitarian catastrophe largely beyond anyone’s capacity — or appetite — for intervention.

So is the Middle East better off now than it was a year ago?

If you were to judge by whether there are fewer active wars and the risk of another big hot conflict is lower, then the answer is plainly yes.

If the metric is whether the region is now seeing durable political settlements to the biggest conflicts, strong sovereign institutions taking root, and the realistic prospect of legitimate and good governance, then no.

For those of us who spent the past year reporting these shifts day by day, the answer to the are-you-better-off question feels less theoretical than personal.

Yes.

And no.