Endless War?

A Mid-War Assessment

The Islamist war on the Jewish state, which began with the Palestinian Hamas assault from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, is still with us, and with no end in sight. That assault was followed the next day by rocketing by the Lebanese terrorist organization, Hezbollah, and the Yemeni Houthi rebels and assorted Islamist militias in Iraq joined in a few weeks later. On 13-14 April 2024, while Israel was still battling these organizations, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which in some measure orchestrated the Islamist campaign from behind the scenes, directly attacked Israel with ballistic missiles and suicide drones, initiating a frontal confrontation with the Jewish state. (In the previous two decades, Israel and Iran had conducted a shadow war, involving assassinations, sabotage operations, and cyberattacks.)

Since then, the multi-front war-making has continued in staggered fashion, with bouts of intensive fighting interspersed with official ceasefires, themselves often marred by low-scale exchanges of fire, the halts in warfare invariably imposed on Israel by American President Donald Trump and acceded to by the Islamist belligerents happy to enjoy breathers. The war significantly expanded on 21 June 2025 when the US directly intervened on Israel’s side when its stealth bombers mounted pinpoint strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations. And at the end of February 2026 the Americans partnered with the Israel Air Force (IAF) in a massive, unsuccessful 42-day campaign aimed at bringing Iran to heel. The Iranian counter-measures – closure of the Strait of Hormuz to Gulf shipping and missile and drone attacks on America’s allies in the region – resulted in intermittent US-Iranian hostilities which ended with a succession of ceasefires, amounting to a stalemate, and indirect negotiations that failed to end the blockade of the strait.

Elsewhere in the region, American “orders” compelled Israel to cease fire on the Lebanese and Gaza fronts, though occasional Israeli-Hezbollah and Israeli-Hamas skirmishing and inconclusive indirect negotiations left open the possibility of full-scale warfare resuming in the future. At the same time, the Houthis and the Iraqi militias, on Iran’s instructions, have raised the ante by closing the Bab al Mandab Strait to Saudi and other American-allied shipping and have begun bombarding Saudi bases and seaports with missiles and drones.

The present stalemate leaves both Israel and the US in a strategic quandary, with Iran controlling passage through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and the Houthis, recovering from Israeli and Saudi blows, are still in the fight. The core Israeli-American objectives – of toppling the radical ayatollahs’ regime in Teheran, halting the Iranian nuclear weapons project, and demolishing Iran’s ballistic missile production sites and depots, and the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah – remain unachieved, though both Iran and its proxies have suffered severe damage and casualties.

Indeed, Iran’s shift to the strategic offensive in the course of the American-Israeli aerial assault in February-April, by blocking exit from and entry into the Persian Gulf and periodically rocketing and droning America’s regional Sunni allies – Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan – and America’s military bases in these countries have severely undermined American power and prestige and have underwritten what amounts to Iran’s current hegemony in the Gulf if not in the wider Middle East. Indeed, during the hostilities Iranian or Iranian-proxy drones even struck an American oil tanker in Damietta, Egypt, and Britain’s Akrotiri air base in Cyprus. In practice, at the moment Iran controls the outflow to Asia, Africa and Europe of Arab Gulf oil and gas exports, threatening the stability of the world’s economy, with knock-down effects on America’s. And the renewed Houthi blockade at Bab al Mandab, preventing the export of Saudi oil to Asia and Africa (and Israeli shipping), has only added to Iran’s stranglehold on the world economy.

All of this said, the war’s ultimate outcome remains in the balance. Trump, prodded by his Sunni Gulf allies, who seek an end to the war; by the threat to the global and American economies; by munitions shortages and by his advisors and generals who see no gain in further hostilities - is palpably reluctant to resume the war with Iran, and the Iranians are exploiting this weakness to the hilt. But, at the same time, Trump is reluctant to go down in the history books as a “Loser.”

Similarly, the past three years of inconclusive warfare have left Netanyahu’s domestic image and self-image as “Mr. Security” in tatters. But, the son of an historian, he too is reluctant to go down in history as a “loser.” As well, in the short term, he faces general elections on 27 October, with the polls predicting that he will lose. A “victory” – against Iran, Hamas or the Hezbollah – may help pull his chestnuts out of the fire.

But neither has it been all roses for the Islamist coalition. At base, they failed in their oft-declared objective to destroy Israel. But the three years of warfare have significantly weakened the Jewish state. Israel’s internal societal cohesion, already undermined by Netanyahu in the months before October 7 through his efforts to subvert the country’s judicial system and democratic norms, has been severely strained by the war. The IDF suffered significant casualties, more than one thousand dead and 20,000 seriously injured and thousands with PTSD, and the army’s reserve formations, the bulk of its manpower, tested to the limit. The war has also resulted in serious losses to the economy and tens of thousands of Israelis, especially among the better-educated, have emigrated since 2023. Moreover, the war, with Trump serially issuing diktats, has undermined autonomous decision-making in Jerusalem.

But as Israelis see it, the war is far from over, and most assume that the Islamists, once ready, will resume their war-making against the Jewish state and a very revenge-minded Iran will press ahead with its nuclear program. Iran’s Islamist leaders have consistently declared that their goal is Israel’s destruction.

In the wider war, Washington, and less loudly, its regional and European allies, continue to insist that the straits, at Hormuz and Bab al Mandab, international waterways, must remain open to all and free for passage. The current situation, with Iran and the Houthis effectively imposing sovereignty over the waterways, is tantamount to an extortion racket (Iran is demanding that all ships pay a toll to pass through Hormuz). It is unlikely that Trump and the Sunni Gulf states will accede to the current situation; a resumption of hostilities, either before or just after the American mid-term November elections, is on the cards.

In an unpredictable twist of fate, the Islamists’ war against Israel has left the country more or less isolated in the international community and Jews around the world are suffering from the most severe outbreak of antisemitism since the end of the Second World War. Muslim and mixed Muslim-Christian mobs regularly chase and beat Israeli visitors and local Jews from Amsterdam to Athens, Manila and London to New York, and terrorists have periodically targeted Jews in Australia, the US and London and arsoned synagogues and Jewish community centers. The violence has been driven by anti-Israeli sentiment but also by overt Islamic and Christian antisemitism.

Without doubt the anti-Israel sentiment was heightened these past three years by the major increase in Jewish settler violence against Arab communities in the West Bank, quite often resulting in the death of Palestinian shepherds and farmers. This violence has been quietly encouraged by right-wing Israeli politicians and occasionally supported by IDF troops, and has never been restrained by the police. During the war, Israeli security authorities feared the outbreak of a new “Intifada” or uprising by the West Bank Arabs, and blanketed the occupied territory with as many as 26 IDF battalions. So far, the West Bank has seen few Palestinian terrorist attacks.

The events in the West Bank have certainly contributed to Israel’s global isolation. But somewhat illogically, the country’s pariahdom began with the Islamist attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when 2,000-3,000 Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad gunmen surprised the Israeli political, military and intelligence establishments, crossed the barely defended border, and murdered some 850 Israeli civilians in kibbutzim and towns and in two music festivals as well as some 350 soldiers in border outposts, and took hostage more than 220 Israelis, including women, children and octogenarians, and several dozen foreign guest workers. During the invasion, the Islamists raped (and then murdered) women, and, later, raped some of the hostages, female and male, during their detention in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas’s leaders launched the invasion without coordination with the region’s fellow Islamists. (They apparently tried to achieve coordination but the Hezbollah and Iranians said they were not yet ready.) But Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza Strip Hamas leader, believed – correctly - that the others would rapidly or eventually join in.

After recovering from the shock of October 7, the IDF swept back the jihadist invaders and launched a protracted bombing campaign against the Islamists and their Gaza Strip bases. But the Islamists had prepared well; many hid in the vast tunnel system they had constructed deep under the strip’s residential neighborhoods, hospitals, mosques, schools and universities. Other jihadists were embedded among the Strip’s 2.2 million civilian inhabitants’ homes, in effect among their families (the concept of “innocent civilians” is something of a misnomer given Gaza’s clan-based social structure).

The Israel Air Force (IAF) and intelligence services understood that striking the Islamist fighters would involve largescale civilian deaths – but given October 7, the Israelis were in a vengeful mood and were willing to cause collateral damage far in excess of what had been routine in previous Israeli-Hamas clashes.

The IDF followed up the pounding from the air with a ground invasion, with armor and infantry over the next year intermittently targeting the Islamist brigades and battalions in the Strip’s cities and towns. But before almost every air strike and ground thrust, the IDF informed the inhabitants what neighborhood was about to be attacked, even telephoning families in specific high rises to clear out. Many refused to heed the warnings or were forced by the Islamist gunmen to stay put – and the Hamas refused to allow civilians to enter and seek safety in their tunnel system.

All in all, the IDF attacks over 2023-2024, mainly from the air, killed some 70,000 Gazans, about one-third Islamist combatants and the rest civilians. Subsequently, through 2026, Israel continued delivering pinprick attacks targeting Islamist personnel involved in the October 7 massacre, with a special IDF-Shin Bet (security service) unit, “Nili,” established for the task. Israel vowed that it would “get them all.”

But the Hamas won the propaganda war, hands down. The organization daily produced footage (mainly dispensed through Qatar’s Al Jazira broadcasting service) of dead and wounded civilians, especially women and children, and devastated infrastructure. The footage was routinely broadcast in the Western media; and it never, ever, showed dead or wounded Islamist fighters. What emerged was not a depiction of a war (which, in fact, was only a small segment of the pan-Islamist onslaught on the Jewish state), but of an IDF continuously brutalizing the Strip’s civilians.

This imbalanced reportage came on top of continuous media coverage, since 1967, of Israel’s oppressive occupation of the Palestinian-inhabited territories coupled with years of depiction of Netanyahu’s belligerent, expansionist and hubristic pronouncements and positions. And so, after October 7, public opinion and then governmental positions in the Western democracies swung against Israel if not actually in favor of the Hamas (which, incidentally, had long before been officially designated by most Western governments a “terrorist” organization but which the media now generally left unmentioned).

Anti-Israeli (and antisemitic) passions were most prominent in Western university campuses, where years of Islamic and Arab (especially Qatari) subsidies and penetration had seeded the ground. The upshot was implicit and sometimes explicit support for the Islamists’ assault and, even, for Israel’s destruction (epitomized in the slogan “Palestine from the river to the sea”). Some Western and Israeli commentators, including here and there Holocaust scholars, charged Israel with committing “genocide” though most historians dismissed the charge as inconsistent with the nature of the IDF counter-offensive which had included no massacres or rapes of the sort that characterized past genocides. (But, without doubt, IDF troops had here and there committed war crimes against Gazans and the Israeli authorities consistently failed to investigate or punish the perpetrators. Indeed, in one prominent case, the IDF’s advocate-general, Major-General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, trying to bring to book troops serving as prison guards suspected of abuse and rape, was herself fired and is currently facing charges of leaking information to the press).

By 2026 almost all of Hamas’s senior commanders, including Sinwar, and about half of its 30-40,000 fighters were dead, and 65-70% of the Gaza Strip, the area west of the line of Israeli kibbutzim, was occupied by the IDF. The Hamas retained the rest of the Strip, including most of the Mediterranean shoreline, where almost all the Strip’s civilian population hunkered down miserably in makeshift tent-camps and urban ruins. Israel allowed into the Strip sufficient food and other supplies to avert starvation while the Hamas confiscated and then sold much of the humanitarian aid to finance its war-making. Here and there, at times, there were pockets of malnutrition.

Over the months, American-led efforts to replace the Hamas with some form of non-terrorist rule under the auspices of Qatar and Turkey – both long-time Hamas supporters – and to achieve Hamas’s disarmament came to nought. The Hamas refused and still refuses to disarm. Israel, for its part, said it would not allow the West Bank-based Palestinian National Authority into the Strip and would not withdraw from the part of the Strip it occupies or, in effect, allow the start of the Strip’s reconstruction until the Hamas disarmed and was removed from power.

A similar stand-off characterizes the current Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire. After about a year on the defensive in the north, while the IDF was preoccupied with Gaza, Israel in autumn 2024 savaged the Hezbollah, the Mossad maiming and killing thousands of Hamas operatives on 17-18 September in a brilliant exploding beeper and walkie-talkie operation, and the IAF destroyed many of the organization’s missile stockpiles and effectively beheaded (and demoralized) the organization. On 27 September the IAF assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime, legendary chief, Hassan Nasrallah, and many of his aides in a precise bunker-bombing in Beirut’s largely Shi’ite Dahiya neighborhood. During the following months, the IAF severely mauled the Hezbollah and IDF ground forces occupied a strip of southern Lebanese territory along the border, up to 12-kilometers deep, pushing the Hezbollah (and hundreds of thousands of local Shi’ite villagers, who had sired and harbored many of the Islamists) northwards.

An American-brokered agreement in November 2024 led to an Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire. But Iran has threatened to renew the war against the Americans and Israel if the IDF renews its battle with the Hezbollah. In consequence, Trump has “ordered” Israel to stand down. Meanwhile, despite some skirmishing, that ceasefire is holding.

During the past few months Israel and the Lebanese government have negotiated interim steps to end the war. Last month, the IDF withdrew from a small area of its self-proclaimed “security zone” in southern Lebanon and allowed Lebanese Army units to take over, Israel hoping and the Lebanese promising that they would keep out the Hezbollah. But en large, and contrary to the November 2024 agreement, the Hezbollah refuses to disarm (and the Lebanese government and army lack the means or will to confront the Islamists, fearing instigating a civil war) and Israel is refusing to withdraw from the security zone before the Hezbollah disarms. Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers have been levelling the Shi’ite border villages and preventing the return of their inhabitants, fearing the return among them of Hezbollah fighters. Many Israelis (and Druse) remember the Hezbollah rocket that killed 12 Druse kids during a football match in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on 27 July 2024. And much as the fighting has created a Lebanese refugee problem, so tens of thousands of Israeli border inhabitants, displaced during the fighting, are reluctant to return home so long as the return of the Hezbollah to the border remains a possibility.

Israel’s savaging of the Hezbollah in autumn 2024 had a major geopolitical side-effect: the fall of the Iran-aligned Assad regime in Syria. Syria had long served as a conduit for Iranian weapons and personnel to Lebanon and thousands of Hezbollah fighters (alongside Iranian IRCG cadres and Russian fighter squadrons) had for years propped up the Assad regime during Syria’s protracted civil war (2009-2024). But in November-December 2024, bereft of Hezbollah fighters, the Sunni Islamists who controlled Syria’s northern Idlib province, backed by Turkish intelligence and armaments, swept southwards and in a brisk campaign, which saw the Syrian army dissolve, occupied Damascus, sending President Bashar Assad scurrying to Moscow. The former Al Qaeda officer and jihadist, and now the Sunni rebel leader, Ahmed al Shara’a, appointed himself president of Syria. Uncertain of his future political trajectory, Israel exploited the collapse of Assad’s army to occupy the UN-controlled buffer zone east of the Golan Heights, and a string of south Syrian hilltops. As well, the IAF methodically destroyed Syria’s navy, air bases, air defense batteries, and other sophisticated equipment to deny al Shara’a any possibility of threatening Israel in the foreseeable future.

With the Hezbollah cowed and absent Syrian air defenses, which had previously challenged IAF overflight of Syrian territory, Netanyahu decided to hit Iran, which had showered Israel with ballistic missiles and drones months before. After first laying the political groundwork with Trump, hundreds of Israeli fighter bombers, refueled by American KC-135 and KC-461 tankers, during 13 to 24 June 2025 daily flew the 1700 kilometers to western Iran and Teheran, first knocking out Iran’s air defenses and then bombing a range of military targets, including nuclear project installations, Iranian army and IRCG and Basij HQs, and ballistic missile storage sites and launchers, and assassinated a string of Iranian generals and nuclear scientists. Iran retaliated by launching 550 ballistic missiles and 1,000 suicide drones at Israel. The drones were easily neutralized but about 10-15% of the missiles got through, damaging several Israeli cities and military installations. On 22 June the US joined in and devastated three key underground Iranian nuclear installations (Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow) with deep-penetration bombs. Netanyahu wanted to continue the offensive but Trump “ordered” a halt and a ceasefire went into effect on 24 June.

The 12-day June war was followed by months of American efforts to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table. Teheran stonewalled. Meanwhile, with the Iranian economy devastated by American sanctions and home-bred corruption, massive anti-government demonstrations shook Iran’s cities. In January 2026 the IRGC and Basij let loose with guns and machineguns killing 30-40,000 of their fellow countrymen. Trump vowed to help the protesters but weeks passed before sufficient American naval and air units were in place, and the demonstrations collapsed.

Nonetheless, on 28 February 2026 Israel and the US struck, jointly launching a protracted air assault aimed at toppling the Islamist regime, halting Iran’s nuclear project and destroying its ballistic missile capabilities. The assault kicked off with an accurate IAF bombing of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound. The Supreme Leader, along with some family members, and a host of Iranian generals were killed. (Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was apparently seriously injured but survived. Months later he was appointed the new Supreme Leader, though power in Teheran remained effectively in the hands of the IRCG generals.)

During the following six weeks the American and Israeli air forces pounded Iranian military and para-military formations and HQs, ballistic missile bases and military-industrial sites. Iran responded with missile and drone launches against Israel and American bases around the Middle East, and against civilian targets, including air and seaports. On 8 April the US, having failed to topple the Teheran regime or to suppress Iran’s counter-strikes, halted the bombing campaign, in large measure pressured by the embattled Sunni Gulf states (though the UAE, Kuwait and the Saudis, without admitting it, periodically attacked Iranian targets). Hezbollah, coming to Iran’s aid, renewed its attacks on Israel’s troops in southern Lebanon.

But the most telling, strategic development of the 42-day war was Iran’s imposition of a blockade, using drones, mines and missiles, of the Strait of Hormuz. The US responded with a counter-blockade, preventing Iranian exports of oil and gas, hammering the Iranian economy. The dual blockades caused major hikes in fuel costs around the world, including in the US.

The Israeli and American aerial campaign severely damaged Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure and its nuclear installations and army (and navy). But in this test of wills, the regime displayed resolution and staying power - and continued to counter-punch. The Islamic Republic emerged on its feet, in the end forcing the Americans (and through their diktat, Israel) to desist. In terms of image, Trump appeared a loser and the Iranians, winners, strongly impacting Middle Eastern geopolitics. Netanyahu, too, at least in the eyes of many Israelis and Arabs, emerged a “loser” (though the Iranians appear still to be wary of Netanyahu and the IAF, whose performance in February-April was seen by many observers as more effective than the Americans’).

Trump clearly wants ”out” of the war with Iran and is pressing Netanyahu to end Israel’s wars – at the moment dormant – with Hezbollah and Hamas. In effect, and without saying so clearly, he seems to want the IDF to withdraw from southern Lebanon and the territory it occupies in the Gaza Strip. Perhaps he believes that such withdrawals could be presented to the American public as foreign policy “wins.” But Netanyahu, facing elections in less than three months, is in no mood to give Trump anything that could be construed by Israelis as a sign of weakness.

Be that as it may, Trump reportedly is about to declare “victory” and pull most of his naval and air forces out of the Middle East. But whether anyone in America, Europe or the Arab world will be taken in by this is moot; most believe that Iran has won, at least for the time being. Its relentless blockade at Hormuz and its announcement that they will not lift it until Washington meets a swath of humiliating conditions, such as American payment of “reparations to Iran, underlined Iran’s victory.

Netanyahu these past weeks failed to persuade Trump to go all-in and attack Iran’s power plants and fuel production installations, which would likely have collapsed Iran’s economy. Trump’s refusal was motivated by the general domestic anti-war sentiment, by fears of a Republican defeat in the mid-term elections, by the depletion of American munitions (especially of anti-missile and ground-to-ground missiles), which might tempt China or Russia to challenge American power elsewhere on the globe, and by pressure to end the war by America’s Arab allies. He may also have worried about the fate of Iran’s civilian population should the country’s economy collapse.

It appears that Trump is now banking on its continued blockade of Hormuz and heightened pressure on the Iranian economy to bring back Teheran back to the negotiating table.

Noting Trump’s wavering and understanding that America is abandoning the fight, the Sunni Gulf states appear to be willing to accede to Iranian control of Hormuz. But Riyadh’s stance – and the Saudis are the most important of the Arab Sunni states - is not yet clear. Saudi Arabia has just sealed a mutual defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan hoping to obtain an additional measure of protection in case of future Iranian aggression (an attack on one will be considered an attack on all three, states the trilateral accord). The accord further distances Riyadh from possible “normalization” of relations with Israel, something that appeared possible if not likely before 7 October. Egypt is said to be considering joining this new alliance. Israeli observers fear that this emerging Sunni Muslim “bloc” will be steered by Turkey.

Interestingly, the other major Sunni Gulf state, the UAE, has not joined – and, taking a different tack, has massively expanded its purchase of Israeli-manufactured anti-missile and anti-drone equipment. During the February-April war, Israel reportedly flew Iron Dome air defense batteries to the UAE along with IDF troops to man them, a radical departure from traditional Arab (and Israeli) behavior.

Meanwhile, Israeli observers expect Iran to move as quickly as possible to acquire nuclear weapons in the hope that these will shield it from future American and Israeli attack (and provide it with the means to flatten Israel). But while Iranian intentions are crystal clear, its capacity to rapidly progress toward nuclear weaponry is unknown. Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facilities were devastated during June 2025 and February-April 2026 and the fate of the 450 kilograms of highly enriched Uranium and much larger quantities of 20% enriched Uranium that it amassed during the past years is unclear.

If the Iranians prove able to retrieve these materials, which are believed to be in bombed underground tunnels, and able to rebuild facilities to further enrich them to the 90% needed for atomic bombs, Israel will see itself in existential peril. The likely upshot would be a massive, new IAF assault on Iran, with or without Trump’s permission.