The Greatest Opportunity That Wasn’t
Opportunity appears to be the word of the year in the Middle East. War has brought death and devastation to Gaza and Lebanon, but various players still see within it a big chance worth seizing: to end the fighting, capitalize on tactical successes, crush their foes, or (more grandiosely) remake the region. If history is any guide to the Middle East, the player with the greatest chance of success is called chaos.
Last month, Israel struck the southern suburbs of Beirut and killed Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the militant group Hezbollah, then followed up with a military campaign against Hezbollah’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon and the capital. (This had been preceded by the detonation of hundreds of pagers in the hands of Hezbollah operatives.) From a tactical perspective, Israel pulled off a stunning feat: The four-decades-old Lebanese group was the most powerful nonstate military actor in the world, and Israel decimated its top three tiers of leadership, severely weakening it and throwing it into disarray.
White House officials and American journalists suggested that Israel’s military success presented an opportunity. Hezbollah has had a chokehold on Lebanese politics for two decades. For the past two years, Lebanon’s Parliament has been unable to elect a president, because Hezbollah has vetoed all candidates but its own. Maybe now Hezbollah would pull back (it had pledged not to stop firing on northern Israel until Israel ceased its war in Gaza), while Western pressure could help unlock Lebanese politics and prop up the army at Hezbollah’s expense.
[Read: A future without Hezbollah]
Regional and local players saw openings too. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had shunned Lebanon since 2021 because of Iranian interference in the country’s politics and Hezbollah’s powerful role. Now those countries sent Lebanon humanitarian aid, perhaps hoping to reclaim some influence over the country’s politics and populace. Inside Lebanon, the politicians who, together with Hezbollah, had driven the country into an economic ravine now began jockeying for power: Could Amal, the other main Shiite party, seize the advantage? Was this the right moment for opposition parties to ram through a parliamentary vote and elect a president?
“For two or three days, everything seemed possible,” one European diplomat in Beirut told me.
But the reality of war set in as Israel’s fifth military campaign in Lebanon continued apace. A quarter of Lebanon’s population has been displaced; a quarter of its territory is under Israeli evacuation orders. Lebanese institutions, barely functional to begin with, are overwhelmed. Israeli strikes may be targeting Hezbollah, but they have also flattened whole villages in southern Lebanon, as well as buildings in Beirut, killing women and children. Hundreds of civilians have died. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is regrouping, putting up a stiff fight in southern Lebanon, and even sent a drone to target Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s beach residence in Caesarea, Israel.
Hezbollah as we knew it a couple of months ago has ceased to exist. But the organization remains capable of drawing the Israeli army into a ground war of attrition and sending thousands of Israelis into shelters every day. At least 37 Israeli soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon so far, including five in a single battle. And some reports indicate that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has made up for the loss of so many Hezbollah leaders by getting more directly involved in running the group’s ground operations.
One American official, speaking with me on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the government, wondered why Israel hadn’t claimed victory within a week or two of killing Nasrallah. Then, in mid-October, Israeli forces also killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s military commander in Gaza. “Maybe now they claim victory?” the same official asked. The Biden administration did take the opportunity to press Netanyahu for a deal that would end the war in Gaza and allow for the return of Israeli hostages. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Israel last week to deliver that message in person: “Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success,” he said.
But that’s not what happened. Iran launched a missile barrage at Israel at the beginning of October, and last weekend, Israel attacked military sites in Iran. Afterwards, President Joe Biden again called for an end to the escalation—in other words, for Israel to take the win and focus on wrapping up its wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Iranian officials chimed in to say that Tehran had the right to respond, but would prioritize the pursuit of a lasting cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon instead.
The Israeli government seems to see a very different moment of opportunity—a chance to defeat its regional adversaries without actually addressing the Palestinian issue that lies at the root of the conflict. The strikes on Iran were limited, but they took aim at Iran’s air defenses, potentially clearing the way for further, deeper strikes. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the assault as an “opening blow.” In a statement reported in Haaretz, he said, “We have a historic duty to remove the Iranian threat to destroy Israel.” Netanyahu has taken the fight to the Iranians in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran itself. He called the killing of Nasrallah just the first step toward “changing the balance of power in the region for years,” and said after Sinwar’s killing, “I call on you, people of the region: We have a great opportunity to halt the axis of evil and create a different future.”
Israel has had similar notions before and been mistaken. In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon also saw an opportunity to remake the Middle East. They invaded Lebanon with the intention of evicting the Palestinian Liberation Organization, installing an Israel-friendly president, and forcing Lebanon and perhaps even Syria into a peace agreement. Tactically, this project succeeded: The PLO and its armed militants departed for Tunisia. Strategically, it failed: A Christian president was elected, only to be assassinated, and Syria and Iran launched a bloody campaign of bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings against Israel and the United States. Iran sent its Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon, where they helped establish Hezbollah. Israel occupied south Lebanon for 18 years before withdrawing unilaterally in 2000.
That was not even the most recent effort to remake the Middle East by way of Lebanon. In 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to destroy Hezbollah, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared the resulting Israeli onslaught against Lebanon the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Instead, the war ended in a stalemate, with Hezbollah further entrenched in the Lebanese political system, where it grew into the regional paramilitary force it was until mid-September.
Of course, few efforts to remake the Middle East by force have been more disastrous than the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Netanyahu was a big proponent of that adventure. He testified as follows before the U.S. Congress in 2002: “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
Instead, the U.S. invasion of Iraq removed Iran’s key foe from power and emboldened the Islamic Republic to build proxy militias in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, even while further strengthening Hezbollah in Lebanon. Whoever wins the White House on November 5 should remember this history when Netanyahu tries to sell his latest vision for remaking the Middle East.