Israel’s Campaign to Remake the Mideast Hurts America
Israel’s Campaign to Remake the Mideast Hurts America
The war with Iran is one part of a broader Israeli project.
“I promised you that we would change the face of the Middle East.” So spoke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly seven weeks after he and President Donald Trump initiated Operation Epic Fury. Amid the noise and chaos, it is easy to lose track of the broader vision behind the war with Iran. This war is the culmination of a comprehensive Israeli effort—backed by the United States—to remake the Middle East following Hamas’ terror attack on October 7, 2023. Proponents argued it would produce a more peaceful and stable region.
They were wrong.
Like past attempts to remake the Middle East, the post–October 7 vision relies on hubris: namely the belief that Washington and its partners can reshape the region through force alone. For two and a half years, Washington has backed Israel’s regional campaign, incurring significant political, economic, and strategic costs in the process. Continued U.S. support for this project guarantees perpetual conflict at further expense to American interests.
Israel’s post–October 7 vision is aggressive, expansionist, and open-ended. It is defined by three maximalist objectives: to entrench Israeli domination over Palestinian territories by establishing “facts on the ground” that preclude a viable political resolution; to dismantle the Iran-backed militant groups that comprise the so-called axis of resistance; and to neutralize the linchpin of the axis—Iran. To that end, Israel mounted a broad, multifront effort to reshape the regional order further in its favor.
This effort relied on the ability of the United States to insulate Israel from the political, economic, and military costs of its policies. Since October 7, the United States has shielded Israel from diplomatic blowback, helped pay for Israel’s wars, and, in some cases, undertaken direct military intervention to both protect Israel from retaliation and help fight its adversaries.
In Gaza, Israel employed overwhelming force to impose a new status quo on the enclave. Citing its two stated objectives—eliminating Hamas and freeing the hostages—Israel reduced Gaza to ruin and entrenched Israeli control over the enclave. By the October 2025 ceasefire, Israel had destroyed at least 70 percent of buildings in Gaza, displaced 90 percent of its population, and killed tens of thousands of civilians—the total number is unknown due to the extent of the destruction. The post-ceasefire “yellow line” left Israel in possession of more than half of Gaza, and Netanyahu remains adamant that Israel will retain “security control” over the entire enclave.
In parallel with the war in Gaza, Israel accelerated existing efforts to deepen its control over the West Bank. Israel increased and expanded its settlements, seized more land, and launched large military raids, all of which was accompanied by record rates of settler violence. In sum, the suite of policies amounted to de facto annexation and the destruction of a two-state solution. There is little pretense here—Israeli officials including Netanyahu openly boast about preventing a Palestinian state and ensuring lasting Israeli control over “all territory west of the Jordan River.”
American support is central to the post–October 7 vision in these territories. Washington embraced the war in Gaza without reservation. The United States vetoed six United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and weapons—which human rights organizations have linked to widespread atrocities. In the West Bank, Washington claims to oppose annexation—Trump said annexation “won’t happen” and that Israel would “lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.” Yet the United States has stood by as Israel pursued just that policy.
By backing Israel’s effort to indefinitely subjugate Gaza and the West Bank, Washington has committed itself to an endless conflict. In Gaza, despite considerable losses, Hamas remains the dominant political and military actor—it has effectively replenished its ranks to prewar levels, recruiting from a desperate population. Israel can degrade the group’s capabilities and kill its leaders, but without a route toward a credible political solution, militancy will persist, whether under the banner of Hamas or something else. In the West Bank, Israel is pushing the enclave toward collapse, risking mass unrest as desperation overtakes prospects for change. Enabling Israeli expansion in the West Bank risks foreclosing any political solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict. Trump’s policies do not match his rhetoric on the issue.
Instead of encouraging Israel to pursue a sustainable political solution to the conflict, Washington’s ironclad support encourages Israeli maximalism. So long as Israel feels it has American support to reject Palestinian self-determination or sovereignty in any form, it is unlikely to compromise. This trajectory will pull the United States deeper into the conflict as the occupation becomes more unsustainable.
As Israel aimed to consolidate its control over Gaza and the West Bank, it also went on the offensive against the loose network of Iran-backed regional actors spanning Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Here too, Israel had U.S. support—Washington considerably increased its military footprint in the Middle East to bolster Israel. Yet, as in the Palestinian territories, the post–October 7 vision produced unstable and untenable outcomes at the regional level.
In Lebanon, Israel’s campaign to degrade Hezbollah has expanded into an effort to establish a buffer zone as far north as the Litani River and potentially foment civil war between the group and the Lebanese government. However, a new Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the chaos produced by a Lebanese civil war risk empowering Hezbollah by reigniting precisely the same grievances that led to its rise in the 1980s. Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in a bid to deescalate with Iran, but Israel shows no indication of altering its strategy.
In Syria, following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel has sought to keep the country weak and decentralized, encouraging fragmentation along ethnic lines while also carving out a large buffer zone near the Golan Heights. This jeopardizes a fragile postwar order that Trump, claiming he wants to see the country succeed, has endorsed.
In Yemen, the Houthis responded to the war in Gaza by targeting vessels in the Red Sea in protest. Washington responded with a prolonged, multi-billion-dollar U.S. military campaign to defeat the group, which ultimately failed. The result is that the Houthis have demonstrated a new source of leverage over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait—an outcome directly linked to Israel’s actions.
Across these cases, force has failed to produce order. Yet, for Israel, these operations paved the way for it to go after Iran directly. After a series of tactical blows to Tehran’s regional partners, Israel sought to capitalize on this vulnerability to eliminate what Netanyahu has often called the “head of the snake.”
Israel’s shift toward direct confrontation with Iran unfolded through a series of escalating steps. Two rounds of direct Israel–Iran strikes in April and October 2024—during which the United States defended Israel from Iranian missiles—marked the pivot from decades of indirect competition to open conflict. Next, in June 2025, Netanyahu initiated what we now call the “12-day war,” hoping, according to leaked transcripts, to draw the United States directly into the fight. He succeeded: After again defending Israel, Washington carried out its own first direct strike on Iranian territory (Operation Midnight Hammer), targeting three key nuclear facilities. In late February, the U.S. and Israel jointly launched a war with Iran.
Netanyahu led the push for a large-scale U.S. war with Iran—something he has championed for more than three decades. On his seventh trip to the United States in the first year of Trump’s second term, he presented a confident assessment to Washington: Iran’s missile capabilities would be neutralized within weeks, Tehran would be unable to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and protesters would return to the streets and topple a weakened regime. Netanyahu acknowledged after the war began that American military support was decisive in enabling him to, in his own words, achieve what he has “yearned to do for 40 years.”
None of Netanyahu’s predictions proved correct—as in other cases across the region, strategic success remains elusive. The Islamic Republic remains intact, is unlikely to capitulate or collapse, and has hardened its resistance to the United States. Both Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs remain intact and likely cannot be eliminated with more bombing. Tehran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing the largest oil disruption in history—the ramifications of which will outlast the war.
By convincing Trump to initiate war with Iran, Netanyahu entangled the United States in a conflict it can neither easily win nor exit. Washington now seems desperate for an off-ramp—it was Trump who pushed Pakistan to host the initial negotiations between the United States and Iran on April 11. But Trump has adopted the same maximalist demands that precipitated this war, refusing to recognize that Tehran will not bargain away its sources of leverage after the United States and Israel failed to achieve their objectives through force.
Israel has signaled it intends to press forward with its regional vision and is preparing for prolonged conflict on multiple fronts. But Netanyahu can only sustain this campaign with the support of the United States—to maintain this pace and scale of military operations, he needs the guarantee of American help.
Israeli officials likely perceive this as a race against time—they are acutely aware of the seismic shifts in American public opinion and are acting with urgency while they have enough support in Washington. This shift is bipartisan and most pronounced among younger Americans: According to a recent Pew poll, disapproval of Israel among Democrats and Republicans aged 18–49 is 80 and 57 percent, respectively. To combat this, Israel has launched an aggressive public opinion campaign within the United States, particularly online—Netanyahu described social media as one of the most important “weapons” in this effort. With U.S. support declining and generational change on the horizon, Netanyahu’s urgency to harness American power will grow.
Continued support for this project sacrifices American interests at an extraordinary cost. Since October 7, Washington has enabled and initiated wars that have killed and wounded countless innocent people to no benefit for the Middle East or the United States. The United States has drained its resources subsidizing Israel through record amounts of military aid and expending massive sums in a host of military operations—even prior to Operation Epic Fury. Now, the Pentagon has requested at least $200 billion to compensate for the war with Iran, separate from the proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027. Additionally, the United States has depleted its stockpiles of critical weapons systems defending Israel, especially during the war with Iran—shortages that will take years to replenish. Washington continues to squander time and resources in the Middle East at the expense of more pressing policy issues at home and abroad.
Decades of American efforts to manage the Middle East through force have racked up immense costs for essentially illusory benefits to the United States, yet Washington refuses to change course. This latest attempt to transform the region with Israel is no different. Lockstep American support for Israel has fueled widespread hostility toward the United States while perpetuating the causes of regional unrest and conflict—outcomes that are anathema to U.S. interests. The result is chronic instability and endless American intervention in the Middle East.
The United States does not have an interest in perpetual war in the Middle East. The post–October 7 vision has no clear endgame and imposes significant costs on the United States. It is open-ended, driven by fantastical thinking, and can only happen because Washington insulates Israel from the consequences of its bellicosity. The Trump administration should stop enabling this disastrous campaign and make clear to Israel that U.S. support for this project is over.
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