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Regional friction since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack has normalized military confrontation between Israel and Iran, creating a “profoundly unstable equilibrium,” a prominent analyst warned in Foreign Affairs.
Tit-for-tat strikes between the two countries in recent months have lowered the threshold for direct conflict. Preventing a weakened Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon will be a key challenge for US President-elect Donald Trump, Suzanne Maloney, the director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, wrote.
However, Trump’s signature muscular approach — combined with a diplomatic offensive in the Gulf — could make all the difference in the Middle East’s trajectory, she argued.
SIGNALS
Syrian regime collapse could reset the balance of power
Israel and Iran view each other as representing an existential and unyielding threat, Maloney wrote, with further conflict highly likely — even if Tehran plays the long game it has wielded in the past. However, other Middle East specialists say the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has weakened Iran’s position: “Syria represented a springboard for the Iranian regime to project its influence as far as the Mediterranean, and that has disappeared,” an Iran specialist told France 24. With the destruction of its allied militias, Iran’s capacity for action is “greatly diminished,” he said.
Trump could wreak havoc with Iran — or ease tensions
Donald Trump’s Iran policy during his first presidential term “crossed every red line imaginable,” said John Ghazvinian, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He pulled the US out of a joint agreement meant to limit Iran’s nuclear program and imposed more than 1,500 sanctions. But the US president-elect “sees himself as the ultimate deal maker” so there is also the potential for “a historic reconciliation,” Ghazvinian argued. An “isolationist to his core,” Trump has staked a lot of his reputation on ending wars in the Middle East. Achieving peace through diplomacy, rather than war, offers Trump the opportunity to achieve a result his predecessor, US President Joe Biden, never could, Ghazvinian said.