The restraining influence of the so-called ‘balance of terror’ has all but disappeared in the Middle East. The region is teetering on the brink of a full-scale regional conflict, threatening to suck into its vortex Israel’s Western allies on one side and Iran and its Axis of Resistance on the other.
For decades, Israel and Iran have followed a policy of uneasy deterrence through proxy conflicts. However, Israel’s aggression and continuous attacks on civilian populations in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon have shattered this fragile equilibrium. The implications for the Middle East could be disastrous.
In 1996, during Operation Grapes of Wrath — the 17-day campaign of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Hezbollah in Lebanon — Israel normalised the use of terror. It targeted Lebanese civilians to pressure Lebanon into disarming Hezbollah, but it ended up uniting the Lebanese population against Israel and making terrorism a standard tool of keeping the regional pot boiling.
Moral outrage was almost a thing of the past. In the 1990s, terrorism practically replaced conventional methods of waging war in the region. This was also because of the strategic importance of the Middle East for global powers and the ineffectiveness of external restraints on violence. But this approach, namely terrorism and warfare through proxies, which had become the default setting of conflicts in the region, is now unravelling.
The turning point in the old narrative was 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel. Using this as a pretext, Israel carried out devastating strikes on the civilian population in Gaza, while its settlers intensified attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, resulting in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
What began, on the face of it, as a confrontation with Hamas has escalated into a multi-front war involving the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance, featuring the Hezbollah, the Houthis and militias in Iraq and........