Israel Emerges Stronger From Iran War, But Risks Blowback

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(Bloomberg) — 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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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 defense doctrine it says is needed to prevent another Oct. 7-style attack.

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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. 

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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 defense 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.”

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International Backlash

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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.

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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.” 

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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-defense.”