The past 12 months have witnessed a transformation of the Middle East to an extent not seen since the eruption of the Arab uprisings 14 years ago. Across the region, as conflict has raged in Gaza and Lebanon, old certainties have been shattered while the future remains, as ever, unclear. For the most obvious reasons, global attention has focused on Palestine, where at least 45,000 people have lost their lives in an Israeli onslaught on a scale that no one could have anticipated, following the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th, 2023.
In addition to the human cost, Gaza has been devastated to the extent that senior UN officials were describing it as “uninhabitable” as early as January of this year. Sixty-six per cent of Gaza’s buildings are either damaged or destroyed and 90 per cent of its population are internally displaced. Despite all of this, there is no clear end to the conflict in sight. To the contrary, there are clear indications that the Israel Defense Forces are intent on indefinite occupation of parts of northern Gaza, paving the way, many fear, for annexation and resettlement. Hamas, on the other hand, continues to insist on a permanent end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as central to any cessation of hostilities.
The conflict in Gaza has had hugely significant ramifications for the region. In particular, the last year has seen the isolation of Iran and its weakening as a regional power. The dismantling by Israel of Hamas in Gaza was followed by an extraordinary set of attacks on Hizbullah in Lebanon, both of which fed into the fall of the Assad regime in Syria earlier this month. In the space of a single year, the Islamic Republic effectively lost three of the key elements in its so-called axis of resistance.
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Iran itself has been subjected to direct attacks by Israel, to which, despite some sabre-rattling, there has been no meaningful response to date. Earlier this year, the election of a new president in Iran appeared for a brief moment to signal the possibility of some rapprochement with the West. In August, following the surprise success of Masoud Pezeshkian in presidential elections, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, somewhat cryptically proposed that engaging with the enemy might under certain circumstances be warranted. This was interpreted as lukewarm support for renewed negotiations with the United States on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Pezeshkian’s new foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, was deeply involved in the negotiation of an earlier deal in 2015, which saw Tehran curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But in 2018, during the course of his first term in office, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the deal. In the intervening years, it is reported that Iran has made major advances, such that it is now close to the capability of developing nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.
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The Biden administration was dismissive of the possibility of renewed talks on the issue, not least because the prospect of negotiations with Iran was seen as potentially harmful of Kamala Harris’s hopes of success in the November presidential elections. Recent reports suggest that incoming president Trump’s transition team is examining a range of options to place additional pressure on Iran to desist from any provocative behaviour, including the possibility of supporting an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but not excluding a direct US attack on Iran. Quite how an isolated Iran reacts to the changed regional environment will be hugely significant for the Middle East in 2025.
Iran was not the only regional power to be severely damaged by the fallout of the conflict in Gaza. The consequences of the war have proved fatal for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who was forced from office by an extraordinarily rapid offensive led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement.
Selective adherence to the norms of international law has been another feature of the past year in the Middle East
While the future looks uncertain for a country that has been ravaged by civil war and external intervention since Assad set out to crush a popular uprising in 2011, the new rulers of the country have made encouraging sounds. The interim prime minister, Mohammad al-Bashir, stated that the new government would protect the rights of all people and all sects in the country, while it has been reported that enforced wearing of Islamic dress for women is to be prohibited.
But many inside as well as outside the country remain sceptical that a movement that has its origins in al-Qaeda is poised to oversee an inclusive transition from 54 years of authoritarian rule in Syria. The challenges facing the country are deepened by the array of external actors with interests at stake. Turkey has launched air strikes against Kurdish forces, while Israel’s response to the fall of the Assad regime was to embark on a series of attacks which destroyed much of the country’s remaining military assets. Israel moved its troops into the demilitarized zone to occupy previously unoccupied Syrian territory for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The response of the international community to what would usually be considered a breach of international law has been muted for the most part. France called on Israel to withdraw from the buffer zone along the border with Syria, while Germany and Spain urged “restraint” during the transitional period post-Assad.
The Biden administration, by contrast, repeated the Israeli position that it was acting pre-emptively against potential threats from across the border – despite repeated claims from the new rulers of Syria that their focus was on reconstruction and not conflict with Israel.
However, selective adherence to the norms of international law has been another feature of the past year in the Middle East. In September of this year, 50 days after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was unlawful, UN experts warned that the edifice of international law stood “on a knife’s edge” as most states failed to take meaningful steps to comply with their international obligations reaffirmed in the ruling.
The response of the Biden administration to the ICJ judgment had been to criticise its “breadth” because it would complicate efforts to resolve the conflict. When, in November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, his then minister for defence, Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas military leader, Muhammad Deif, Biden issued a statement that the issuing of the warrants was “outrageous”. Among the many casualties of 12 months of war in the Middle East may be the health of international law and the institutions set up for its vindication.
Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations
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