The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

When Hamas militants led a deadly cross-border raid into Israel on 7 October 2023, Hamas leaders were convinced that this event would trigger a wider Middle East war that would result in the end of Israel.  The exact opposite has occurred.  The Hamas terrorist attack triggered a war with Israel that has devastated Gaza, and it set off additional shock waves that have reshaped the Middle East:  Powerful alliances were upended. Long-established “red lines” were crossed. A decades-old dictatorship at the heart of the region was swept away.  The Middle East has been radically transformed.

Erika Solomon and Ephrat Livni of the New York Times provide a helpful summary of this radically transformed Middle East:

1. Israel:  Israel has reasserted its military dominance; Israel’s leaders have treated the Hamas-led attacks as an existential threat and have been determined to defeat Hamas and weaken its main backer, Iran. Israel has not only succeeded in debilitating Hamas in Gaza, but has also decimated the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s network of Middle Eastern allies.  While its assault on Gaza has severely weakened Hamas, it has not destroyed it, as the government had vowed to do.  Israel’s economy has been battered by the war, and its fractured political order remains fractured.   “In the longer term, it is hard to predict what threats Israel may face from a generation of young Lebanese and Palestinians who have been traumatized by the death and destruction that Israel’s bombardment has wrought on their families and homes.”
2. Hamas.  Israel has killed off Yahya Sinwar and the rest of Hamas’s top military and political brass, and the group’s popularity among Gazans has faded, though U.S. officials estimatethat Hamas has recruited almost as many fighters as it has lost over 15 months of fighting.  For Palestinian civilians, the future looks bleaker than ever.  Israel’s bombardment and invasion have forced almost all Gazans from their homes and killed more than 45,000 people, according to the Gazan health authorities; these authorities do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has reduced vast swaths of the enclave to rubble.  And yet, its remaining leaders may claim that its survival is a victory.  “Israel insists Hamas cannot rule the enclave after the war, but has resisted calls to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza. Gulf states like Saudi Arabia now say they won’t normalize relations with Israel unless it commits to a path to establish a Palestinian state.”
3. Lebanon.  A shattered Hezbollah, once the crown jewel of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, has loosened its grip on Lebanon. But Israel’s invasion and bombardment have left Lebanon facing billions of dollars in reconstruction costs amid an economic crisis that predated the war.  Hezbollah, formerly Lebanon’s dominant political and military force, has suffered a stark reversal of fortunes since the 2023 attacks. Israel has killed most of its top leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah. Its patron Iran has been weakened. And its supply lines through Syria are in jeopardy. “More broadly, the group’s core promise to Lebanon—that it alone can protect the country from Israel—has been gutted.” Despite the blows, Hezbollah can still call on thousands of fighters, and has support from Lebanon’s large Shiite Muslim community.  Years of political gridlock, largely blamed on the militant group, eased up enough this month to enable the Lebanese Parliament to elect a new president and appoint a prime minister who is backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
4. Syria.  The most dramatic and unexpected consequence of 7 October is the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria.  For nearly 13 years, Bashar al-Assad had largely contained a rebellion against his family’s five-decade grip on power—with help from Russia, Hezbollah and Iran.  “But as Moscow focused on its war in Ukraine, and Iran and Hezbollah reeled from Israeli attacks, rebels led by the Turkish-backed Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham sensed an opportunity. They surged through Syria and toppled the government in a matter of days.”  Turkey is now poised to see its influence now expand in Syria.  Meanwhile, the United States has maintained a small military presence in Syria to fight the Islamic State terrorist group and is allied with Kurdish-led forces that Turkey regards as an enemy. Further, Israel has seized Syrian territory near the Golan Heights as a buffer zone and has been carrying out extensive airstrikes on Syrian military and weapons targets.

The new Syria has one great gift:  it can get rid of Iran and Russia.  They spent billions of dollars to keep Assad in power.  Russia had failed to realize its imperial ambitions.  In a little over a year, Iran has seen its proxies defeated in Gaza, Lebanon and now Syria.  Its influence has shrunk dramatically.

But, within Syria, there are a myriad of factions all seeking power and influence.  Ephrat Livni summarizes these factions:

• Hayat Tahrir al-Sham:  Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is a former affiliate of al-Qaida that broke with the older group years ago and came to dominate the last stronghold of Syria’s opposition.  It was the main rebel group leading the latest offensive, launching a surprise assault in late November out of its base in northwestern Syria that quickly led to the fall of the Assad government.  Members of the group had early links to the Islamic State group, and then to al-Qaida. In 2016, they tried to shed their extremist roots, banding together with several other factions to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.  The group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, is now going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.  Sharaa has declared that “his primary goal was to liberate Syria from this oppressive regime.”
• Syrian Democratic Forces.  Forces from Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority, which makes up about 10% of the population, became the United States’ main local partner in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces.  After the Islamic State group was largely defeated in 2019, the Kurdish-led forces consolidated control over towns in the northeast, expanding an autonomous region they had built there. But Kurdish fighters still had to contend with a longtime enemy, Turkey, which regards them as linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents inside Turkey.
• The Syrian National Army.  This umbrella group includes dozens of groups with different beliefs. It receives funding and arms from Turkey, which has long been focused on expanding a buffer zone along its border with Syria to guard against the activities of Kurdish militants based in the region that it sees as a threat.  “Turkey wants to create an area where it can resettle some of the 3 million refugees who have fled Syria and are living within its borders. But it has struggled to harmonize the ragtag groups that make up the Syrian National Army.”
• The Druse Militia.  Syria’s Druse minority is concentrated in southwest Syria. Druse fighters had joined the push to topple the Assad regime, launching an offensive in the southwest and clashing with government forces.  The Druse fighters are part of a newly formed group of Syrian rebels, which includes fighters from other backgrounds, working under the name the “Southern Operations Room.”  [The Druse are a religious group that practices an offshoot of Islam, developed in the 11th century, that contains elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Gnosticism and other philosophies. There are more than 1 million Druse across the Middle East, mostly in Syria and Lebanon, with some also in Jordan and Israel.]
• The Islamic State Group.  The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized vast stretches of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, establishing a brutal regime before it was beaten back by a US-led coalition. Now its members are largely in hiding.  Lately, there have been signs of the group’s resurgence in Syria amid wider instability in the region. The United States has about 900 troops in Syria to help contain and defeat what remains of the Islamic State group there. The US has not given a date for ending its presence in the country, saying it was contingent on conditions within the war-torn country. Those conditions have now changed dramatically.

5. Iran.  Long seen as one of the Middle East’s most influential powers, Iran has emerged severely diminished from the reordering of the past 15 months. It has effectively lost much of its once-potent “axis of resistance,” the network of allies it used to counter the influence of the United States and Israel.  Its closest partner, Hezbollah, is now too weak to pose a serious threat to Israel. And with Assad ousted from Syria, Iran has lost influence over the country that provided a critical supply line for weapons and militants.  “Where exactly that leaves Tehran is unclear. A weakened Iranian government that feels increasingly vulnerable may be compelled to weaponize its decades-old nuclear program. U.S. officials have warned Iran may need only a few weeks to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.”
6. The Houthis.  The Houthis, a political and religious group that originated in north-west Yemen, are part of Iran’s “axis-of-resistance.”  Despite the collapse of Hezbollah and the reduction of the threats of Hamas and Iran, the Houthis have staying power.  They are part of a remote, rugged nation that is violent, divided and poor.  An earlier attempt to quell the Houthis by force, led by Saudi Arabia n 2015-22, failed amid terrible civilian casualties.  Because of the proliferation of cheap missiles and drones to non-state groups that can strike frequently and at long range, the Houthis pose a credible and sustained threat to commercial shipping passing through he Red Sea via the Suez Canal.  They have extracted about $2 billion a year through their black-market schemes to use the Red Sea.  With the cease fire in Gaza, they have halted or reduced their attacks, but they will remain a formidable enemy in the Middle East.

But, as I have argued many times on Issues, the Jewish people are in an unconditional, unilateral covenant relationship with Almighty God called the Abrahamic Covenant.  And, as a fulfillment of that Covenant, Ezekiel 36:16-38 envisages the restoration of the Jewish people to their land.  As this event is accomplished, Ezekiel exclaimed, the nations will be silent in their amazement of what God has done (vv. 33-36).  I believe quite strongly that in the 21st century we are witnessing that restoration.  But the other dimension of Ezekiel’s prophetic claim is the spiritual restoration of the Jews.  That is detailed in Ezekiel 36:22-32 and 37:15-28.   God will put His Spirit in them; they will obey Him; and they will walk with Him forever.  The fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Abraham (land, seed and blessing), to David (an eternal throne, kingdom and dynasty) and the New Covenant of spiritual renewal are foretold in 37:24-28.  The Jewish people will be united as one people, secure in the land God promised them, renewed spiritually, with their Davidic King ruling in their midst.  We await that fulfillment.

See Erika Solomon, “How the Oct. 7 Attacks Transformed the Middle East” in the New York Times (20 January 2025); Ephrat Livni in the New York Times (12 November 2024); The Economist (14 December 2024), pp. 11, 16-17 and (18 January 2025), pp. 15, 57-58.