October 7, 2023 was certainly the worst day in Israel’s history. An unimaginable intelligence and security failure produced a horrific number of deaths, unspeakable atrocities, and the loss for Israelis of a sense of security. But it did not produce what Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, expected. He believed he would trigger all of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance members joining in a massive, collective attack on Israel. He was certain this attack on all fronts would be joined by a new intifada erupting in the West Bank and an uprising by Israeli Arabs – the sum total of which would lead to the collapse of Israel.
Sinwar was wrong on several counts. He failed to understand Israel’s staying power and extraordinary resolve. Moreover, he was wrong about Hezbollah and the other Iranian proxies joining in an all-out onslaught. They did not, even though Hezbollah, starting on October 8, began firing into Israel but in a geographically constrained way; Hassan Nasrallah might have been prepared to tie down Israeli forces in the north, but he was not ready for a full war or confrontation with Israel. Palestinians in the West Bank might be angry at the policies of the fully right wing Israeli government—and there clearly were areas where groups like the Lion’s Den in Nablus were attacking Israelis--but the population as a whole was not ready for a new intifada. And, as for Israeli Arabs, Sinwar’s marauders on October 7th drew no distinction between Jews and Arabs in their killing spree, and Israeli Arabs unmistakably rejected Hamas and what it had done. Indeed, Israeli Arabs were among the few Arabs/Muslims in the Middle East who openly and explicitly condemned Hamas for the wanton killings and their atrocities.
Sinwar did not trigger Israel’s collapse though he did force a cruel dilemma on the Jewish state: either go after Hamas embedded underground in densely populated Gaza and necessarily kill large numbers of civilians who Hamas treated as human shields in the process, or limit the scope of destruction on Hamas as a military and its extensive underground military infrastructure, and necessarily allow it to recoup and resume its war at a time of its choosing. In the aftermath of the catastrophe of October 7th in Israel—and the sense that Israel could not live with Hamas still in control next door—it should have come as no surprise as to how Israel chose to resolve this dilemma. But that seemingly inevitable choice has come with a terrible cost for Gazans, and, relatedly, a very high political price for Israel. It is increasingly isolated internationally, and so long as right-wing Israeli governments reject even the possibility of a Palestinian state at some point, it will be difficult to reverse that isolation.
There is a two-fold irony here. First, ultimately, Hamas bears the responsibility for triggering a conflict in which its leaders knew that the Gazan population would pay the greatest price and for which they had an interest in maximizing the number of Palestinians killed as a way of putting international pressure on Israel to stop. Indeed, the Hamas leadership could have allowed Palestinians in Gaza to take shelter in the tunnels, but as one Gazan friend of mine told me a month into the war, “they [the Hamas leaders] protect themselves but none of us.” Similarly, Israel’s security cabinet at different points was prepared to end the war in return for the Hamas leaders leaving Gaza and releasing the hostages. That would have ended the suffering of Gazans but that has never been Hamas’ concern and was not of interest to its leaders.
The second irony is that Israel is increasingly isolated not just because of the death and destruction that it has inflicted on Gaza, but also because its government rejects two states. But, of course, Hamas has always rejected two states—and has actively sought to undermine any possibility of peace or a two-state outcome. And, yet that seems to be of little concern to those whose criticism is riveted only on Israel.
Sinwar may not have been totally wrong about the price Israel would pay for waging this war that Hamas triggered, but he certainly miscalculated about who would join in. His miscalculation has led to the destruction of Hamas as a military and his own demise. But he was not the only member of the Axis of Resistance to miscalculate. Hassan Nasrallah thought he could fight a limited war against Israel, depopulate its northern areas, and continue this as long as the war in Gaza lasted. He was not prepared to de-couple his ongoing launches into Israel until Israel ended the war in Gaza. He might not have been prepared to wage an all-out war against Israel for the sake of Hamas, but he was ready to continue his limited war for its sake—and keep this ongoing, convinced that he had deterred Israel from deciding to go to all-out war against Hezbollah. Nasrallah not only paid for that miscalculation with his life, but with the life of essentially the entire leadership cadre of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has not disappeared and still exists as a force in Lebanon, but it has been dramatically weakened. It has lost its leadership, its command and control has been decimated, its communications have been compromised, and Yoav Gallant, until recently Israel’s defense minister, has declared that 80% of their rockets have been destroyed. If Nasrallah knew this was a possibility, he would surely have looked for a way to delink the conflicts or join with Iran to put much greater pressure on Hamas to look for a way out of the war. And here we are reminded that Iran—and its Supreme Leader—also has grossly miscalculated. The last thing Ali Khamenei would have wanted is to lose Hassan Nasrallah and see Hezbollah greatly weakened.
Hezbollah is the most important Iranian proxy. It trains all the other proxies; it has developed all their local arms production capabilities; it was the shock troops Iran used in Syria. And, the 150,000 rockets Hezbollah formerly had been Iran’s insurance policy or deterrent against Israel attacking its nuclear infrastructure. That deterrent is now gone. The Axis—part of what Iran saw as its forward defense and as its lever on other states in the region—has been shaken and weakened. And that is not the sum total of Iran’s loss and miscalculation.
At the time of this writing, Iran is threatening to strike Israel again in response to Israel’s retaliation for Iran’s launching 200 ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1. Concern about looking weak probably explains why Iran did finally strike on October 1; that date was five weeks after the killing of Hamas leader Ismael Haniya in a Tehran IRGC safe house during the inauguration of the Iranian president and 4 days after the killing of Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. The former was a huge embarrassment for the regime and the latter was a strategic blow to it. Not responding after these two killings would have made Iran look weak to its proxies and its neighbors. Is the fear of looking weak likely to trigger another Iranian attack after Israel’s strikes on October 26? Maybe. But Iran would be running a very high risk, especially because in its October 25 strike, Israel destroyed Iran’s strategic air defenses, leaving it very vulnerable. Having taken out the radars of Iran’s S-300s (as well as much of its offensive ballistic missile producing capability), Israel would have mastery of Iranian airspace and could hit essentially any important target in Iran—even as it also reduced Iran’s capability to threaten Israel with its ballistic missile force. So, yes, Iran might respond directly, but it may be more likely to resort again to its proxies hitting Israel principally from Iraq and Yemen. For Iran, that will offer no guarantee against a direct Israeli response; alternatively, if Iran has used Iraqi proxies to attack Israel in appreciable numbers, the Israeli reaction against the Shia militias launching from Iraq could trigger a backlash against Iran in Iraq for exposing it to Israeli attacks because of Iran’s priorities not Iraq’s.
All this further reminds us that it is not just Iran’s most important proxies that are now much weaker. Iran, itself, is weaker. What does that mean for the region? Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf see that Iran is weaker than it was, with fewer instruments to threaten them. That certainly creates a new opening to build on one of the Biden Administration initiatives: the greater integration of the region. Militarily, Central Command has demonstrated in response to the missile attacks against Israel, that it has developed an integrated early warning system, enabling all the countries in this network to have a common picture of all missile launches in the region and their trajectories. Common air and missile defense is now no longer just a theoretical possibility. Now is the perfect time to begin to build a common response to missile launches. Just as this common picture of missile and air threats has been developed and made real with essentially no visibility, this too can be done under the Central Command umbrella.
To take regional integration beyond only its security dimension Arab states generally will need to see an end to the war in Gaza and probably also in Lebanon. I say this because of how the images of death and destruction in Gaza has clearly affected Arab publics. They have soured on public cooperation with Israel at least for the time-being. Ending the war may not immediately change the mood but will allow planning for more integration—and here much can be done to prepare the ground for economic collaboration and investments, especially on water, food, health, and cyber security. In terms of peace, Iran and its proxies may still want to frustrate or undermine any moves like Saudi normalization with Israel, but also be far less capable of acting in a way to disrupt it.
Still, the current exchanges between Israel and Iran will probably have to play out even as Israel must move to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Staying in Gaza or southern Lebanon will not just sour atmosphere, it will foster insurgencies in each place and create a justification for “resistance” to Israeli occupation. Nothing would do more to help Hezbollah or Hamas to make a comeback than to be able to justify their ideology of resistance and build support for it. Israel clearly needs to know how to declare success and avoid the risk of prolonging a presence that offers marginal gains but bigger losses over time.
For sure in Lebanon, there is an opportunity for the Lebanese state to reassert itself and extend its sovereignty to the Israeli border. A generation of Lebanese politicians who have become habituated to not putting the country first may be reluctant to be assertive enough, but producing a ceasefire in which there are monitoring mechanisms to identify violations of demilitarization of the area south of the Litani River—with an understanding that if it is not immediately rectified, the Israelis will take military action, can go a long ways to sustaining the reality that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was supposed to create in 2006 and never did. As for Gaza, the UAE has made it clear it is prepared to be part of a stabilization force that will go into the Strip to help a transitional administration rescue the future for Gazans and preside over reconstruction and eventual unification with the West Bank under a genuinely reformed Palestinian Authority leadership.
Given the weakening of the Iranian Axis of Resistance, can Saudi normalization with Israel be a part of shaping a new trajectory in the region? The Saudis want a defense treaty with the US and a credible pathway for Palestinian statehood to do normalization—once the war in Gaza is over. Israelis find it difficult to talk about Palestinian statehood when they fear it could be led by Hamas or extremist groups. That fear is understandable.
One way to address it is to acknowledge that the Palestinians as a people have a right to self-determination but before they can exercise that right they must demonstrate they will assume the responsibilities of statehood. To cite just a few examples, there cannot be a Palestinians state if independent militias and armed non-state actors continue to exist; alignment with Iran or those who reject Israel cannot be permitted; the state and the Palestinian identity must be based on coexistence and not resistance; genuine reform and strengthened rule of law must be implemented lest the Palestinian state become a failed state. To be sure, there cannot be obligations for the Palestinians and none for the Israelis; at a minimum, Israel cannot be taking steps on the ground that would make a Palestinian state impossible—meaning that the territorial expansion of settlements, especially outside the settlement bloc areas, must not be permitted. Making it easier for a reforming Palestinian Authority to succeed will be essential, requiring making movement easier, reducing red-tape on limiting external investment, opening up area C to Palestinian economic activity, etc.
Israel’s military defeat of Hamas and Hezbollah and the weakening of Iran and its axis creates potential to transform the region strategically. It is in Israel’s interest and America’s to take those military achievements and translate them into political outcomes. In its final weeks in office, that should be the focus of the Biden Administration. It should coordinate with the incoming Trump Administration to create the political outcomes and take advantage of the dramatic weakening of the Iranian axis. It will be left to the Trump Administration to further transform the region—necessarily requiring it to deal with the advancing Iranian nuclear program and ensuring that Iran never becomes a nuclear weapon state. A good starting point: before January 20th, President-elect Trump should declare before that his administration will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Ambassador Dennis Ross is the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. He is the author of the upcoming book, Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World—published by Oxford university Press, Feb 2025.
