Israel emerges stronger from Iran war, but risks blowback

Bangkok Post

18 hours ago

Over the past two years, Israel has become more militarily dominant in the Middle East than at any time in its history. But its success has also laid the groundwork for future risks.
Since the Oct 7th, 2023, attack by Hamas, Israel has crushed the Palestinian group and brought Hezbollah — widely considered the world's most powerful militia — to its knees, crippling Tehran's regional proxy network.
Within the last two weeks, it's dealt severe blows to its arch-enemy Iran, a country 75 times the size of Israel and with a population nine times bigger — and achieved a decades-long goal by bringing the US directly into the fight.
Its strikes killed a number of top Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists, eliminated a big part of Tehran's missile arsenal and — with US help — damaged its nuclear sites. During the 12-day war, which ended with a US-brokered ceasefire this week — Israel had total control of Iran's airspace.
These events reveal how the military and intelligence prowess of Israel, a country of 10 million people, is unmatched in the Middle East. It's increasingly assertive, building military positions beyond its borders in Syria and Lebanon as part of a new defence doctrine it says is needed to prevent another Oct 7-style attack.
But such moves have also opened the country to risks of blowback from regional partners wary of its assertiveness; pariah status in much of the world over its prosecution of the war in Gaza; and the possibility that Iran is merely biding its time before its true retaliation.
Israel's decimation of Hamas and Hezbollah — both designated terrorist groups by the US and other governments — has 'altered the balance of power in the region,' said Michèle Flournoy, a former US under secretary of defence for policy and now the managing partner of WestExec Advisors. But 'its blatant disregard for civilian casualties in Gaza has significantly damaged its moral standing and international support.'
International backlash
The repeated Israeli security victories have revived the political fortunes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption and whose popularity plummeted after Hamas's attack.
This week, he argued that the war with Iran will be studied in military academies and that Israel had 'placed itself in the first rank of the world's major powers.'
Most analysts are less effusive, while acknowledging Israel's achievements on the battlefield when it comes to intelligence gathering. 'Israel has proven to be a regional military power,' said Amos Gilead, a retired Israeli general now at Reichman University in Tel Aviv. 'Is it a world power? I don't like to talk in such terms. The Israeli military is designed for self-defence.'
Nevertheless, Israel is a lonely victor.
There's a growing international consensus that Israel's campaign in Gaza must stop. Since Oct 7, its military has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and sparked a hunger crisis, which has awoken young people across the Arab and broader world to the Palestinian cause.
Images of injured children have prompted protests across the world and condemnations by traditional allies like the UK, France and Canada. Public opinion has even begun to shift in the US, its most stalwart supporter. A Gallup survey in March found only 46% of Americans expressed support for Israel — the lowest level in 25 years.
Israel's policies also run the risk of emboldening radical forces across the region, creating future enemies, as well as making it more difficult to normalise ties with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
There are also economic costs and rising social divisions within Israel related to its expanded military might.
The multi-front conflict of the past 20 months has strained the Israeli economy, causing investment to drop and leading to labour shortages with so many reservists called up for duty. Israel's military spending increased by 65% to $47 billion last year, second only to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
To pay for that, Israel's borrowing and fiscal deficit have soared. The central bank governor, Amir Yaron, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that Israel needs to 'reassess its priorities' when it comes to civilian and defence spending.
With all that spending and the reputational damage that the Gaza war has brought, Israel's victory is far from total.
Iran has found itself humbled, but retains plenty of capacity to hit back. It can work with proxy forces in Iraq and Houthi militants in Yemen, who have disrupted Red Sea shipping with missile and drone assaults.
There are also questions about how far Iran's nuclear programme has really been set back, raising the possibility that it could still decide to make nuclear weapons.
'Iran has a voice too,' former US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. 'They will retaliate at some point.'