On 30 September 2023, Joe Biden’s US national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke at a literary festival in New York, where he discussed the prospects for democracy around the world. He observed that the Middle East was “quieter today than it has been in two decades”. A week later, Hamas attacked Israel, unleashing a shattering conflict whose consequences are still unfolding across the region and proving Sullivan’s sanguine assessment wildly wrong.
The 15 months since have seen the destruction of much of the Gaza Strip and large swathes of southern Lebanon, as the Israeli military has vowed to destroy Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s capabilities – assassinating the militant groups’ top leaders and killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process. The war has left Iran’s “axis of resistance” across the region in ruins and exposed the weakness of the theocratic regime in Tehran, which has since been magnified by the collapse of the Assad dynasty in neighbouring Syria.
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