Of the many worrying developments across the Middle East this year, the direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran stands out. The two states have long fought a shadow war, but their dangerous escalations in 2024—from brazen Israeli assassinations in Damascus, Tehran, and Beirut to barrages of Iranian missiles launched at Israel on two occasions—have once again brought the question of Tehran’s nuclear capability to the fore.
Since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, which would have constrained Iran’s capabilities, the regime in Tehran has advanced its program while debating whether to cross the nuclear threshold—an outcome that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to prevent with force. With a friend poised to return to the White House, the Israeli leader may feel more confident than ever of U.S. support for such a strike.
Of the many worrying developments across the Middle East this year, the direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran stands out. The two states have long fought a shadow war, but their dangerous escalations in 2024—from brazen Israeli assassinations in Damascus, Tehran, and Beirut to barrages of Iranian missiles launched at Israel on two occasions—have once again brought the question of Tehran’s nuclear capability to the fore.
Since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, which would have constrained Iran’s capabilities, the regime in Tehran has advanced its program while debating whether to cross the nuclear threshold—an outcome that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to prevent with force. With a friend poised to return to the White House, the Israeli leader may feel more confident than ever of U.S. support for such a strike.
Iran has flexed its regional muscle elsewhere, too. For most of 2024, Tehran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have threatened Western ships entering the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, dealing a serious blow to global commerce as vessels that typically travel from Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal divert south around South Africa—adding days and high costs to their journeys. (The Houthis have largely given Chinese and Russian ships a pass.)
In September, after nearly a year of war in Gaza, Israel opened a second front against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon—simultaneously detonating pagers that killed and maimed many Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Airstrikes and a ground invasion soon followed, an outcome that the U.S. government claimed it was trying to avoid. The offensive in Lebanon sparked fears that Hezbollah might unleash its advanced arsenal of guided missiles against Israel.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza has continued despite pressure from the Israeli public for a hostage deal and Washington’s stated desire for a ceasefire. Some critics of U.S. President Joe Biden—as well as tens of thousands of Arab American voters in Michigan—blame his administration for the ongoing war. They contend that his seemingly unconditional embrace of Israel gave Netanyahu carte blanche to pulverize both Gaza and Lebanon, increasing the risks of a regional conflagration that does not serve U.S. interests.
Then, in December, a seemingly frozen conflict turned hot again: In Syria, a lightning rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) marched across a large swath of territory. Reportedly with a green light from Turkey, HTS pushed government forces out of Aleppo and then Hama, forcing President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian backers to scramble aircraft to counter the rebel advance. The Assad regime fell within days. By Dec. 8, the longtime dictator had fled to Moscow as jubilant crowds celebrated, even in the old regime stronghold of Latakia.
Below are five of Foreign Policy’s top reads on conflict in the Middle East this year.
1. Why Can’t the U.S. Navy and Its Allies Stop the Houthis?
by Keith Johnson and Jack Detsch, July 1
In July, Foreign Policy’s Keith Johnson and Jack Detsch noted that “the world’s premier navies appear to be struggling to subdue a band of insurgents … rais[ing] painful questions about both the utility of sea power and the proficiency of the Western navies that are meant to carry the burden in any future showdown with a major rival such as China.”
The situation in the Red Sea has also shown “the degree to which Europe and much of the world have taken for granted the security of the seas that made globalization possible but which did not appear out of thin air,” Johnson and Detsch write.
2. Will Hezbollah Choose to Keep Its Word—or Its Arsenal?
by Hanin Ghaddar, Sept. 23
As the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah began, Lebanese writer Hanin Ghaddar argued in Foreign Policy that “[u]ntil a long-term solution is reached, the best-case scenario is for Hezbollah to accept a separate cease-fire, disconnected from the war in Gaza.”
Though a tenuous version of that agreement has now come into force, it may not hold. Ghaddar warned that “a long-term policy will have to be designed after a cease-fire is achieved in order to contain Hezbollah in Lebanon—a policy that will address interrupting its weapons supply routes from Tehran via Iraq and Syria as well as help the Lebanese state regain its sovereignty when it comes to decisions of war and peace.”
3. Biden’s ‘Bear Hug’ of Israel Is a Failure
by Khaled Elgindy, Oct. 10
As the war in Gaza entered its second year in October, the Middle East Institute’s Khaled Elgindy took the U.S. president to task. Though past U.S. presidents have often shown deference to Israel, “Biden has been unique in his uncompromising, almost fundamentalist, refusal to use U.S. leverage or apply any meaningful pressure on Israel,” Elgindy wrote in Foreign Policy.
Elgindy contends that Biden has allowed Israel “total impunity, even when it acted in ways the United States strongly opposed,” leading the White House to “consistently undercut its own cease-fire diplomacy while allowing Netanyahu to expand the war.” In his view, this approach has “blinded [Washington] not only to the humanity of Palestinians and Lebanese but to the long-term damage done to the region, U.S. interests, and even Israeli security.”
4. Iran Has Every Reason Now to Go Nuclear
by Ellie Geranmayeh, Oct. 24
After the most recent escalation between Iran and Israel in October, Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations argued in Foreign Policy that “Tehran may look to check Israeli behavior through rebalancing the nuclear playing field,” much as Pakistan did a few weeks after India conducted its second nuclear test in May 1998.
Advocates of going nuclear have argued that “the country has already paid the high cost of becoming a nuclear weapons state without receiving the perceived benefits of having the bomb,” Geranmayeh notes. Time to influence Tehran’s decision-making may be running out. “Western governments should act now to shape the internal debate inside Iran to avoid this outcome,” she writes.
5. A Weak Assad Benefits Turkey—and Is a Headache for Trump
by Jeremy Hodge and Hussein Nasser, Dec. 2
This month, regional experts Jeremy Hodge and Hussein Nasser explained in Foreign Policy how Biden’s lame-duck period “granted Turkey a more permissive window within which Ankara can create facts on the ground that will strengthen its position in any negotiations over the future of Syria.”
The rebels toppled the Assad regime astonishingly quickly and have placed his longstanding Russian backers—who retain vital military bases on the Syrian coast—in a difficult position. But their victory creates a challenge for the incoming Trump administration, because substantial territories held for years by Kurdish forces are not under the control of Syria’s new leaders.
Turkish or Turkish-backed attacks on Kurdish-held regions in Syria mean that “U.S. troops will either be forced to confront a far stronger and more empowered rebel force backed by Turkish air power or withdraw” from Syria. Trump, Hodge and Nasser warn, is likely to be “caught between the isolationist wing of his party and more hawkish voices.”
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