One year after Oct. 7, 2023, the Middle East has changed much — but in other ways, it has not. The worst has not come: The regional war we analysts have discussed and warned about for many years, triggered by an assassination or covert attack or terror incident, has not evolved as rapidly as we thought it might. But a larger type of conflict has started, one that is intermittent and fought by its strongest actors at a distance, and one in which the most powerful actors — Iran, Israel, Hezbollah and the United States — are still girding themselves for escalations yet to unfold. That the most impactful, even wider regional war scenario, of oil cutoffs and U.S. attacks on Iran has not unfolded is somewhat surprising after a full year of fighting and given our prior assumptions about how rapidly security could collapse in the Middle East. That it will not is not assured. That is because there is still a great deal of fight left in the region's combatants as they ratchet up tensions in an effort to force their rivals to back down without continuing the cycle of escalation. In a regional war where no one can achieve a military victory, the war has become one of attrition. And that suggests another year of war is probable, even if its final nature is more uncertain.
Israel's Most Likely Course
The Middle East has had long wars before. The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years, the most intense phase of the war against the Islamic State was three years long and the most impactful part of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was about six years — to say nothing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now 76 years old, from which this current war emerges. But history tells us that wars continue until they cannot. Some factor, whether economic, political, social and/or military reaches a breaking point, and a combatant yields, collapsing or accepting a cease-fire. The Gaza War must end, too, but will it have ended by Oct. 7, 2025? The factors in play would suggest not.
Now fighting its longest war in history, Israel has not yet reached the economic, military or diplomatic breaking point that would force it to change its campaigns. Its debt-to-GDP ratio remains lower than during the COVID-19 crisis; its military losses, while substantial, still pale in comparison to the massive battles of 1967 and 1973; and its primary arms suppliers in the United States and Germany have shown no sign that they are prepared to cut back military aid to the country substantially. While political divisions wrack Israel internally, particularly regarding the controversial figure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lackluster public support for the left-wing opposition likely means any replacement government would be right-wing — and would pursue a similar strategy in Lebanon and against Iran and its proxies. Beset by foreign enemies, most Israelis have become hawkish, and will have the geopolitical resources to act accordingly for many months to come.
In Gaza, Hamas is battered and bruised, not broken. Though it has endured substantial conventional losses in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of much of its leadership, including Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran over the summer, Hamas is a militant underground organization capable of regeneration in the back alleys and refugee camps of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon. Israel can deprive the group of its ability to govern territory, but military pressure alone will not stop the group from acting in accordance with its ideological charter and fighting Israel. Hamas may only be able to launch a handful of rockets toward Israeli cities and conduct hit-and-run raids against Israeli armored columns, but this is enough to sustain the group. It is therefore easy to see it continuing its insurgency in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon for another year.
Hezbollah meanwhile is under intense military pressure as the Israelis begin their ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and it is reeling from targeted attacks including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. But like Hamas, the Lebanese militant organization has a high tolerance for casualties and conventional military setbacks, and is capable of regeneration. So long as it maintains its supply lines to Iran and has a well of recruits among Shiites in Lebanon and throughout the region, it will likely continue to resist Israel, particularly so long as Israeli troops are on Lebanese soil. The group once fought a nearly 20-year-long guerrilla war against Israel over this same territory. And it probably still can for the next year.
Then there is the rest of the so-called Axis of Resistance — the assortment of Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. These militias are fighting a more distant war with Israel, one primarily playing out through the air and on the seas. The Houthis are taking on the United States, United Kingdom and Israel all at once, but given that these powers are not interested in substantially altering the Houthis' position in Yemen's still simmering Civil War, the Houthis seem capable of maintaining an open-ended campaign of intermittent strikes against both civilian and military traffic in the Red Sea and against Israel itself. The militias of Syria, which have endured a decadeslong Israeli air campaign, are also girded for more conflict. Meanwhile, Iraqi militias aligned with Iran are wary of destabilizing their positions domestically in Iraq, but nevertheless can intermittently strike Israeli targets with a degree of comfort.
Behind all of this looms Iran, which is growing increasingly comfortable with direct back-and-forth attacks with Israel. The April and October missile barrages from Iran against Israel indicate a pattern of escalation, but a deliberate one in which Iran is attempting to keep the conflict within the confines of strikes on military targets that may or may not have much impact. Iranian voters recently sent a message that they would prefer a reformist agenda after the sudden death of hard-liner President Ebrahim Raisi in May. But its supreme leader and hard-liners have concluded they have some space to escalate against Israel, as they remain wedded to the ideological framework that unites them and their proxies abroad. Iran is under no threat of invasion, and its missile, drone and rocket arsenals have hardly been tapped. For Tehran, there is still much more road to travel when it comes to conflict.
All of these ingredients suggest that over the next year, the regional conflict will escalate but not necessarily explode. Israel will continue to hunt the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and the other members of the Axis of Resistance regionwide, and will attempt to degrade them militarily. The guerrilla movements will resist this campaign as best they can, even as they are forced to give ground when Israeli troops move on their hideouts. This suggests that in another year Israel may face a redux of 30 years ago, when Israel occupied southern Lebanon and was fighting an intifada in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. This was an Israel facing security challenges, but not a crisis it could not manage. Should Israel find itself in this place, its government will likely declare "mission accomplished" and focus on marshaling the political, diplomatic, and economic resources to maintain its new buffer zones for as long as it can against still entrenched local and regional resistance — even if its ability to hold these buffer zones increasingly appears doubtful.
Israel's Alternatives
While this outcome is the most likely at present, in the recent history of the region, major players have not proved content to simply follow the simplest geopolitical path. Escalations create uncertain trajectories. Certainly, not all actors will be content to play reactive geopolitics over the next year. This is particularly the case with Israel, which sees itself in a 1967 moment in which, if it can out game rivals, it believes will give it a security breakthrough — one that would go beyond creating buffer zones to instead ending or at least severely limit direct attacks on Israel without a constant need to maintain heightened military readiness. Israeli hawks think that if they can use this moment to degrade enough of Iran's proxies and threaten Iran's energy and nuclear sectors, they might convince Iran and its Axis of Resistance to step back from permanent confrontation. This may not lead to the sort of diplomatic breakthrough seen in Egypt in 1979, but it might be enough to prevent another Oct. 7.
Where Israel's campaign goes over the next year will define the trajectory of escalation and security deterioration in the region. For the next few months, Israel will be focused intensely on fighting its ground war in Lebanon, a ground war certain to be tougher than the conflict in Gaza as Hezbollah's supply lines to Iran remain open and the terrain of southern Lebanon is considerably more difficult for conquest. It is currently more conceivable to see Israel bogged down in this campaign for another year, and for the Israelis to mark Oct. 7, 2025, with a memorial for all the soldiers lost in this grueling ground campaign. But in the alternative, more aggressive scenario in which Israel can defeat or effectively debilitate Hezbollah, its military and political resources will be freed up for further escalation elsewhere in the region, and it will almost certainly take that opportunity should it arise.
Certainly, Yemen would be of particular interest to the Israelis, and they would attempt to degrade the Houthis militarily. The Israelis might expand their interest in the country's civil war and become a more direct partner of the factions in Yemen that might serve as a proxy for Israel, like the Southern Transitional Council. Israel would also likely lobby the Gulf Arab states to resume military action in Yemen, though such lobbying would probably fall on deaf ears in Riyadh and might receive only a tepid response in Abu Dhabi. But even without their cooperation, an increased Israeli campaign in Yemen would risk not only Houthi escalations against Israel itself but potentially Houthi strikes on U.S. facilities throughout the region seen as facilitating such a campaign. That Yemen could become a much hotter geopolitical point in the region over the next year is becoming a distinct possibility given the chance that Israel could succeed in its Lebanon campaign.
Israel will also be looking toward Iran and Tehran's next moves. Should Israel perceive Iran taking steps toward obtaining a nuclear weapon, Israel will be more likely finally to conduct the air campaign against Iran's nuclear program it has been warning about carrying out for more than a decade. Iran's deciding to develop a nuclear weapon becomes notably more likely should Israel succeed in Lebanon. Tehran will conclude that its proxy deterrence strategy is eroding too quickly and internal opposition to nuclear weapons development, with all the diplomatic risks that pertains, could very well collapse. Should Israel detect this development, it may not even wait for a green light from the United States. With the region in turmoil and Israel looking to expand its strategic buffer zones, an Israeli direct strike on Iran's nuclear program becomes substantially more likely.
But striking Iran's nuclear program may be only one of many moves Israel might make. Should Israel believe that its buffer zones can only be secured by a chastened Iran, its military campaign against Iran may expand. Israel could decide to strike Iran's missile, drone and military facilities as well as its energy infrastructure in an attempt to humiliate its leadership and substantially set back Iran's capabilities. This might not emerge in one mass aerial campaign, but rather as a series of missions of degradation similar to its approach in Syria. Though Israel would be risking an open-ended Iranian missile response, it could readily conclude that such a campaign would be more likely to isolate Iran than to substantially damage Israel given the current U.S. willingness to defend Israel aggressively.
Washington the Decider
But the U.S. position perhaps matters the most of all for the next year of conflict. Neither Israel nor Iran and its proxies are capable of inflicting conventional victories; their conflict will continue to comprise guerrilla wars or wars of distance, and there will be no Israeli army marching into Tehran any more than there will be the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps massing at the Golan Heights. Instead, each side will seek less intense ways to weaken its opponent's political resolve to continue the conflict. Decisive U.S. action is one of the major ways in which such political resolve could crack. For Israel, this intervention could mean an overt U.S. demand to end its campaigns abroad, tied to the cutoff of arms sales to Israel long demanded by the U.S. far left. Such an overt demand would almost certainly mean that no Israeli government would enjoy political support for continued escalation, forcing Israel to stabilize or ratchet down tensions. Alternatively, the United States could become a more active participant in Israel's campaigns. Although it has assertively defended Israel by shooting down Iranian missiles, Washington might be convinced to conduct offensive airstrikes in tandem with Israel, particularly if Israel escalates against mutual foes like the Houthis.
It is hard to assess exactly how Washington will behave over the next year in this regard. Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have similar strategic interests in the Middle East — namely, security, trade and energy — but they have different political bases with different demands for political approaches to these goals. In Trump's first administration, his Middle Eastern policy was characterized by erratic rhetoric; sudden, substantial escalations; and a willingness to reframe strategic dynamics through transactional diplomacy. Harris, on the other hand, stands to take the mantle of the Biden administration's legacy of continuity, reactiveness and backroom diplomacy rather than confrontation and escalation. Neither of them is particularly likely to support an expansive war against Iran, but under certain circumstances, both could be convinced to support a limited campaign against Iran if their administrations conclude this is the only way to prevent or respond to an energy shock or restore regional stability. For that matter, Trump's propensity for risk-taking may yet still spark further waves of escalation, as he may come into office believing that only a show of force can end civilian attacks in the Red Sea or deter Iran. Conversely, Harris may perceive the Middle East as a sideshow rather than a central part of her administration's agenda, emboldening regional hawks, particularly in Israel, to escalate their campaign and further destabilize the region.
Ultimately, the United States remains the player most likely to impose conditions that would substantially alter the pattern of escalation or de-escalation. Should the new U.S. president prioritize de-escalation in the region and wield the full array of substantial U.S. leverage over Israel, this will likely restrain Israeli hawks. Similarly, Washington's military prowess could end the Axis of Resistance and Iran's campaign against Israel. But should the new president believe that domestic priorities or other priorities in Europe and Asia take precedence, the region would likely continue to move according to its own imperatives and timeline.
