This article by adjunct professor of social sciences at The University of Western Australia, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University and author of How to Lose a War: The story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan Amin Saikal originally appeared in The Strategist on 27 August 2024.

Another round of Israel-Hezbollah tit-for-tat attacks is over for now, but the danger of an all-out war continues to haunt the Middle East. Both sides have said that despite their reluctance to escalate, they are prepared for it.

It is nearly 11 months since Hamas’s declaration of war on Israel on 7 October 2023. With no end in sight to that war, the Middle East has been teetering on the edge of a regional conflict whose scope and intensity could be more devastating than any since the 1967 and 1973 Israeli-Arab wars.

In a new war, Israel is set to be confronted not by Arab state armies, but by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its regional network of affiliates, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Syrian regime and the Yemeni Houthis in particular. With the United States acting as Israel’s security guarantor, and its global adversaries in China and Russia as well as North Korea supporting Iran, there is little chance of confining the impact of the war to the regional antagonists alone.

All parties in the current conflict are aware of the magnitude of such a scenario, and this has so far deterred them from allowing the conflict to expand into a regional confrontation. Yet, the situation is unsustainable in the medium to long run.

Israel cannot continue to ensure its security and durability based on the indefinite repressive occupation of the Palestinian territories, even with the power of the United States behind it. Israel has already experienced windows of vulnerability in the face of Hamas’s resistance, Hezbollah’s attacks and Iran’s retaliatory actions. Israel’s pre-emptive and assertive military actions have done little or nothing to maximise its security and well-being over the long-term. The country’s people have increasingly been living in fear and uncertainty; its national cohesion, economy, social services and technological edge have suffered significantly.

Without America’s all-round help, Israel is no longer in a position to defend itself against Iran and its allies on its own. As the only nuclear-armed state in the region, Israel possesses the ultimate weapons of deterrence and destruction. But Iran is now a threshold nuclear power.

The United States’ unwavering commitment has been critical in empowering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist ministers to maintain their catastrophic Gaza operations, tighten Israel’s hold on the Palestinian lands and engage in frequent applications of disproportionate force in the name of improving Israel’s security at the cost of widespread global condemnation and isolation.

Israel’s current circumstances do not inspire much confidence about its future. This will remain so, unless there is a change of leadership and policy direction. Instead of focusing on occupation, territorial expansion and warfare, there should be an understanding that Israel’s security and well-being are intertwined with those of the Palestinians within a two-state solution.

Similarly, Iran is not in a strong position to ignite a regional conflict. Under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s severe political, economic and social challenges do not leave it in a state to engage in such a conflict. Iran’s own foreign policy complications, resulting partly from mismanagement and partly from US and Israeli actions, including crippling American sanctions, minimise its choices. Meanwhile, hostility with Israel and the US, involving former president Donald Trump’s revocation of the July 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, has driven Tehran to accelerate its very costly support of regional affiliates and its nuclear program.

Despite all its difficulties, Tehran cannot be expected to remain passive in the face of Israeli actions such as the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on 31 July. Iran has reserved the right to retaliate, but in a manner and timing of its own choosing. It has linked its action to a Gaza ceasefire and Israel exhausting itself in the Strip and on the border with Hezbollah. In the event of a ceasefire not materialising, the Gaza killing fields persisting and the Israel-Hezbollah border confrontation expanding, Tehran will retaliate, most likely in a limited and targeted way, although somewhat bigger than its retaliation in April. Its act would simply be for deterrence and national pride purposes.

Given the precarious state of Israel, and Iran and Washington’s reluctance to see an all-out Middle East war, especially while the US is in the run-up to a presidential election, there is a strong case against, rather than for, a regional war. Yet, the Middle East has always proved to be a very unpredictable region where conflicts, limited or expanded, can­ —and do—break out at any time.