Taking Stock and Outlook as the ‘Sixth Middle East War’ Nears Its End

October 7 is the second anniversary of the outbreak of the “Sixth Middle East War.” On that day, representatives of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Israeli government met at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss ending the fighting in Gaza and rebuilding Gaza’s governance around the “20-point plan” proposed by U.S. President Trump. On October 9th, Israel and Hamas announced that they had reached an agreement on a ceasefire. Although this is only the first stage and Israel and the Houthis in Yemen continue to strike each other at long range, this regional war that has dragged on for two years appears to be entering its closing phase.

Over the past two years, this large-scale regional war, which began with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and may temporarily end with the Palestinian-Israeli issue, has, with its heavy loss of life, out-of-control state behavior, and dizzying shifts and realignments of regional power, rewritten the political landscape of the Middle East, profoundly and extensively shocked the international community, and merits a timely summing up and sorting out to take stock of how it has changed the Middle East. What is certain is that the “Sixth Middle East War” will not easily come to a full stop; even if it does, that does not mean the next war can be completely avoided.

 “Al-Aqsa Flood” surprise attack and Israel’s tragic “9/11”

On the morning of October 7 two years ago, namely the day after the 50th anniversary of the 1973 “Yom Kippur War” in which Egypt and Syria jointly counterattacked Israel, Hamas, after meticulous planning and repeated rehearsals, launched a blitz offensive against Israel codenamed “Al-Aqsa Flood”: first, with unprecedented intensity, it fired 5,000 rockets in two hours to suppress Israeli depth and provide strategic concealment; then it used drones and rocket launchers to destroy the remote monitoring facilities of the Gaza barrier, broke through the “wall of bronze and iron” with high explosives and bulldozers, and sent 2,000 fighters riding single-seat motorcycles and pickup trucks to thrust into Israel and head to pre-assigned targets; at the same time, a small number of paragliders, under the cover of the rocket barrage, quickly descended on key locations such as the Israel Southern Command and an open-air music festival. In addition, to draw the Israeli army’s attention, Hamas organized makeshift naval raiding teams in simple fishing boats to launch harassment from the sea.

This raid by Hamas was called by military experts a textbook-level tactical assault in modern military history; it very easily and unexpectedly breached the barrier wall that Israel had spent billions of dollars to build and equip with automatic fire systems. The scene was just like half a century earlier, when the Egyptian-Syrian coalition, under modern reconnaissance conditions, successfully launched a desert blitz, crossed the Suez Canal and the “Bar Lev Line,” known as a “modern Maginot Line,” plunging the arrogant Israelis into an apocalypse-like panic.

Within four to five hours, Hamas’s assault caused the deaths of 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians, several soldiers were captured, and more than a hundred civilians were taken back to Gaza as hostages. At the same time, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which had not been involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for 17 years, opened fire from the north, forming a north-south, two-front pincer against Israel. That day, sirens wailed across the geographically small Israel, bullets rained, and smoke billowed. After mobilizing troops to wipe out the Hamas raiding parties, the Israeli government declared a “state of war,” thus opening the curtain on the two-year-long “Sixth Middle East War.”

After clearing the battlefields inside its territory, the Israeli military found about 1,700 bodies of Hamas raiders. Experts analyzed that none of them had been captured alive, none tried to flee back, none attempted to surrender, and each died only after expending all ammunition. The other 300 assault personnel who withdrew to Gaza as planned all shouldered a “deathless” mission of seizing prisoners, holding hostages, and capturing heavy weapons. Hamas’s later propaganda videos showed that these 2,000 raiders all swore to become “martyrs” before launching the attack, determined to go without return.

Thus, this Hamas operation can be described as an extremely rare, organized, one-time suicide attack involving as many as two thousand people in world military history, a shocking piece of “military performance art,” and enough to deliver an enormous double psychological jolt to Israeli society: the first is the historical lesson, namely that 50 years ago Egypt and Syria could create a military miracle and shatter the myth of Israel’s “invincibility,” and today Palestinians can do the same, striking Israel hard with the simplest weapons and equipment; the second is death-defying resistance, namely that Palestinians are not afraid of death, so how can Israel intimidate those who do not fear death?

Hamas’s intention in blitzing Israel was obvious: to stop the further expansion of the Abraham Accords camp before Saudi Arabia was about to normalize relations with Israel; to use the raid to warn Israel’s ruling and opposition circles not to forget the historical scar of the “Yom Kippur War”; to awaken the international community’s sympathy for the Palestinian cause of independence by means of Israel’s frenzied retaliation and the suffering of Gaza’s civilians, so as to avoid the continued marginalization of the Palestinian question.

Israel, which bills itself as the “world’s fourth military power,” was caught off guard and suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the “makeshift troupe” and militia forces it pummels every few years, resulting in “national mourning” and “national humiliation,” even an “Israeli 9/11.” This political and military failure and the shaming of national face thoroughly enraged Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing and far-right allies, and also angered most Israeli citizens, especially the majority nation, the Jews, driving Israel’s state machine to unfurl the wings of death, set the frenzied chariots in motion, and begin to crush across the Middle East, ultimately forming the vast battlefield of the “Sixth Middle East War.”

Why call it the “Sixth Middle East War”

Most scholars and media still describe the series of clashes triggered by the “Al-Aqsa Flood” as “a new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” This formulation is neither rigorous nor scientific, and even less realistic. In every sense, this is a new Middle East war triggered by the Palestinian dispute, a historical continuation and internal logic originating from the 1948 Palestine War (also called the First Middle East War or the Israeli War of Independence), the 1956 Suez Canal War (also called the Second Middle East War), the 1967 June War (also called the Third Middle East War or the Six-Day War), the 1973 October War (also called the Fourth Middle East War, or the Yom Kippur War), and the 1982 Lebanon War (also called the Fifth Middle East War, the Israel-Lebanon War, or the First Lebanon War), as well as the result of the evolution of Middle East disputes after the Cold War.

Judging by the number of countries and organizations involved, the degree of casualties caused, the scope affected, and the duration, this war exceeds any of the previous five Middle East wars. The countries directly engulfed by the flames of war include Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Qatar. The belligerents include state actors such as Israel, Iran, and the United States, as well as non-state actors such as Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi movement, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. If we add to the order of battle France, the United Kingdom, Jordan and others that assisted Israel in intercepting missiles and drones, as well as Turkey, which pushed for regime change in Syria, this Middle East war can be described as unprecedented in scale.

This war has caused unprecedented casualties: in the Palestinian Gaza Strip alone, 65,000 people have died and 169,000 have been injured. If the military and civilian deaths in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen are fully counted, the severity of the casualties is self-evident.

The scope of this war far exceeds that of the previous five Middle East wars, expanding from the Palestinian-Israeli area to the Eastern Mediterranean, then to the Red Sea, and finally to both shores of the Persian Gulf. Its duration also surpasses the total time consumed by the previous five Middle East wars.

Therefore, in any case the series of hostilities triggered by the Hamas-Israel conflict can collectively be called the “Sixth Middle East War,” rather than the vague and temporally indeterminate “new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Several main stages and principal battlefields of the “Sixth Middle East War”

Along the timeline, the “Sixth Middle East War” can be roughly divided into several important stages and key battlefields.
First stage: a southern campaign into Gaza, a three-dimensional encirclement and suppression of Hamas. From October 7, 2023 to the end of September 2024, the Israeli army launched a series of military operations in the Gaza Strip to encircle and suppress Hamas’s core forces in a multi-domain manner, destroy its tunnel system, rocket facilities, and military-industrial production lines, and rescue captured soldiers and detained hostages. These operations were successively codenamed “Iron Swords,” “Strength and Sword,” and “Gideon Chariot 1,” and were accompanied by a scorched-earth policy and a starvation policy, in an attempt to completely strangle Hamas. In August 2025, the Israeli army launched “Gideon Chariot 2,” attempting to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, “wipe out” Hamas, and reconstruct the security environment to Israel’s southeast.

From beginning to end, Hamas forces broke up into small units, hid among the population, and engaged the Israeli army with tunnel warfare, urban guerrilla warfare, and rubble guerrilla warfare. Although the Israeli army eliminated most of Hamas’s leaders and main combatants (about 20,000), and rescued dozens of prisoners of war and hostages, it never completely subdued the remaining Hamas forces or rescued the rest of the detainees, and was forced under multiple pressures to accept the Trump administration’s “20-point plan.” The encirclement and counter-encirclement between the Israeli army and Hamas ran through the entire course of the war, and the Gaza Strip remained the main battlefield of this war throughout.

Second stage: a northern campaign into southern Lebanon, a decisive battle with Hezbollah. From September 27 to November 27, 2023, Israel’s large-scale operations in Gaza temporarily came to a pause. It began shifting the focus and priority of its military offensive, concentrating attention and forces to launch a series of operations codenamed “New Order” and “Arrow of the North,” to punish Hezbollah. Through massive bombardment, Israeli intelligence and military severely damaged Hezbollah’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon; by tracking the location of an Iranian envoy, fixing the coordinates of Hezbollah’s senior encampments, and carrying out highly saturated airstrikes, it “wiped out” in one swoop Secretary-General Nasrallah and most of the leadership; by remotely detonating micro-bombs that had long been pre-installed in Hezbollah’s dedicated pagers, it launched a “supply-chain war” against thousands of Hezbollah’s mid- and lower-level cadres… The “catastrophe” brought by the IDF’s northern expedition and the war threat posed to all of Lebanon forced Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire and withdraw from southern Lebanon, while the IDF still retained the right to take military action at any time.

While launching a general offensive against Hezbollah, the Israeli military also heavily bombed targets inside Syria near Lebanon, especially the border and crossings, as well as the overland corridor that links Lebanon and Iran via Syria and Iraq, cutting Hezbollah’s relief route and the southern line that shields Damascus. In addition, the IDF bombed positions, facilities, and personnel of the Syrian Arab Army on the western front that faces rebels entrenched in northwestern Idlib, laying the groundwork to shift the trouble eastward, overthrow the Syrian government, and cut the western wing of the “Shia Crescent.”

Third stage: looting amid the blaze, overthrowing the Syrian government. On November 27, 2024, the very day the ceasefire between the IDF and Hezbollah took effect, Syrian rebels, with the coordination and instigation of Turkey and Israel, launched a strategic counteroffensive against areas controlled by the Syrian government. The Syrian government, which had held on for 13 years with the help of Russia, Iran, and other Shia-aligned forces, lost in just 18 days a succession of major cities including Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and the capital Damascus. President Bashar fled to Moscow and announced the transfer of all power to the rebels. The reasons were roughly these: Syria’s oil and grain were controlled by U.S. forces and their allied Kurdish fighters; the brutal sanctions brought by the U.S. “Caesar Act” left the government short of money and troops and cost it public and military support; Russia, preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, was unwilling and unable to rescue again; Iran, busy dealing with Israeli offensives, lacked the nerve and capability for urgent rescue; Hezbollah, hard-pressed to protect itself, was likewise unable to come to the rescue again.

Syria, once a frontline and bulwark against Israel, changed hands in an instant. For Israel and the United States it was an awkward and unexpected turn of events, like driving the wolf from the front door only to let the tiger in at the back, because the rebel core was a branch of al-Qaeda, whose ideological base is precisely “anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Zionist.” The day after the Damascus regime change, the IDF took the opportunity to expand its illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights and used overwhelming force to destroy all heavy weapons and equipment of Syria’s navy and air force. Having played a main-force role in the previous five Middle East wars, Syria unexpectedly capsized in the “Sixth Middle East War” as a supporting actor and secondary theater, leading to the collapse of the Assad family and the Baath Party, which had held power for half a century.

Fourth stage: Israel and Iran trade blows, triggering the Twelve-Day War. On June 13, 2025, Israel adopted a preemptive strategy and launched a large-scale air campaign against Iran codenamed “Lion of Ascendance,” destroying dozens of targets related to the nuclear program and missiles, and killing by various means a number of senior Iranian military commanders and nuclear engineers. In the final phase, on June 21 the United States dispatched strategic bombers to carry out long-range strikes against three of Iran’s nuclear installations. In this localized conflict known as the “Twelve-Day War,” Israel completely controlled Middle East airspace; its fighter groups even circled over Tehran for two hours and ostentatiously conducted aerial refueling. Iran, for its part, carried out nearly 20 rounds of “True Promise” counterstrikes against commercial landmark buildings in Israel’s major cities and against military and security facilities, using dense missile and drone attacks to break Israel’s air-defense system. On June 22, after a symbolic airstrike on a U.S. military base in Qatar, Iran agreed with the United States and Israel to a comprehensive ceasefire three days later.

In fact, as early as April and October 2024, Israel and Iran had already launched symbolic duels against each other, escalating decades of shadow warfare and proxy warfare into direct exchanges of fire and tests of strength. The “Twelve-Day War” formally drew the flames of the “Sixth Middle East War” into the Persian Gulf and marked the most dangerous, high-stakes phase of the conflict. A total of 935 Iranians were killed, nearly 5,000 were injured, and over a million civilians were displaced. Israel also suffered a heavy price of 28 dead and 3,238 injured.

Fifth stage: trampling red lines, an airstrike on Qatar. On September 9, 2025, Israel dispatched more than a dozen warplanes to brazenly bomb Qatar, which had been entrusted by the United States and Israel to host space for Palestinian-Israeli talks, aiming to “wipe out” Hamas negotiators, block efforts to release detainees, and prolong the Gaza war. This move drove Israel’s atrocities to the extreme and once again greatly angered the international community, prompting dozens of Western countries to cluster together during the 80th U.N. General Assembly to recognize the State of Palestine.

The airstrike on Qatar was not large in scale, but it became the turning point of the “Sixth Middle East War.” Israel fell into unprecedented isolation, and the United States’ political reputation suffered further damage and grew more embarrassing. The prolonged Gaza catastrophe and Israel’s unbridled launching of wars, even airstrikes on a U.S. ally, forced the Trump administration to speed up mediation to avoid being further dragged down by Israel, ultimately prompting the emergency rollout of the “20-point plan” and providing all parties with a new step to end the “Sixth Middle East War” earlier.

It should be noted that clashes between the Houthi movement and the United States and Israel were intermittent and brought the Red Sea region into the grand battlefield of the “Sixth Middle East War.” After the Houthis reached a ceasefire with the United States in May 2025, the U.S. fleet withdrew from the Red Sea theater, leaving Israel and the Houthis to fight one on one. Because of the long distances, the Houthis mainly harassed with long-range missiles and drones, while Israel chose opportune moments to heavily bomb key facilities in Houthi-controlled areas and carried out “targeted eliminations” of core members, including killing 12 senior Houthi officials in a single strike. The Houthis’ involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a classic hitch-a-ride performance, an attempt to raise their own voice and legitimacy by waving the banner of Arab nationalism.

What has the ‘Sixth Middle East War’ changed?

At this critical point marking the second anniversary of the outbreak of the “Sixth Middle East War,” a brief review and sorting show that a series of new changes and developments have emerged in the Middle East. This war has only losers. If there are any winners at all, then Turkey, which expanded its sphere of influence, the Syrian opposition that came to power unexpectedly, and Pakistan, which extended its nuclear influence into the Middle East, can be said to have won amid chaos. This war has greatly altered the geopolitical landscape and power configuration of the Middle East, and it is still in the process of change with the overall situation yet to be determined.

First, the “Axis of Resistance,” composed of the two state actors Iran and Syria plus four non-state actors — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi movement, and the Popular Mobilization Forces — was basically defeated militarily by Israel, and it even triggered the unexpected collapse of the Syrian government. This pattern will have far-reaching effects on the future Middle East peace process, indicating that the outdated thinking of trying to defeat Israel through armed struggle and military games has become seriously detached from reality; the traditional path is unsustainable and impassable.

Second, the “Shia Crescent” that rose with the 2011 “Arab Spring” (that is, what I often call the “Tehran–Baghdad–Damascus–Beirut axis”) has basically disintegrated because Iran was jointly attacked by the United States and Israel, the Syrian government collapsed, Hezbollah’s leadership was “wiped out” and lost combat capability. Having almost completely lost Syria and Lebanon, Iran suffered the most disastrous diplomatic and strategic defeat since the establishment of the Islamic regime over 40 years ago; the radius of its geopolitical projection and resource deployment was cut in half, its sphere of influence was forced to contract sharply, and sectarian conflict and identity politics that have long plagued the Middle East will further fade from view due to Iran’s historic major setback.

Third, Israel used force on multiple fronts and struck multiple countries, completely monopolizing air superiority in the Middle East and reaching the highest level of military influence since its founding. At the same time, Israel’s wanton trampling of the U.N. Charter, international law, and humanitarian law is unprecedented, and the “Greater Israel” dream driven by the far right has aroused widespread concern among Middle Eastern countries. Israel has fallen from a developed country known for technological innovation, strong education, and abundant investment into an abnormal state driven by a war machine; its national and ethnic reputation, hard power and soft power alike, are suffering unprecedented overdraw.

Fourth, the peace process between Arab countries and Israel has undergone a major test. None of the seven entities that normalized relations with Israel (including the PLO) took hardline measures such as severing diplomatic ties or imposing economic and trade boycotts; and in Arab countries’ large and medium cities there were no demonstrations in support of Palestinians like those frequently seen in Western countries. These two major signs indicate that pan-Arabism, popular in the Middle East for more than half a century, has completely exited the stage of history, and they also suggest that Palestine will further bear isolation and passivity from the Arab family in its game with Israel.

Fifth, Russia lost Syria, its last strategic asset in the Middle East, was unable to protect its former ally the “Shia Crescent,” exposing the limits of its strength in being unable to fight on two fronts; it lost great-power status and influence in the Middle East and will find it difficult to restore the ability to engage and speak with authority in the region in the short term. The United States, because of its unconditional and bottomless favoritism toward Israel, has become even more unpopular in the Middle East; the regional security cooperation architecture it promotes is questioned and challenged, and it will continue to pay the price for Israel as a “strategic negative asset.”

Sixth, the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s airstrike on Qatar, causing Gulf Arab states to lose confidence in U.S. security guarantees and triggering the leading state, Saudi Arabia, to upgrade a mutual defense treaty with Pakistan, the major Islamic power in South Asia, and obtain its nuclear protection commitment. This development means that the Middle East security architecture and nuclear-control agenda have expanded to South Asia, and it also implies the expansion of nuclear possession within the Islamic world, making future geopolitical relations and situation changes in the Middle East and even South Asia more complex.

Simple lessons from the ‘Sixth Middle East War’

The Israeli government reluctantly began negotiations with Hamas representatives and reached a ceasefire. It is expected that the two sides will find it hard to bridge the huge differences and overcome the major obstacles at the key future juncture of disarming the latter. Therefore, when the Gaza war will end remains unknown. The Houthi movement will link cessation of attacks on Israel to peace in Gaza, which means if Gaza is at peace, the Red Sea will be at peace; if Gaza is at war, the Red Sea will be at war…

Whether the window for Israeli-Palestinian peace that has appeared on the second anniversary of the outbreak of the “Sixth Middle East War” will be implemented by both sides will determine whether this war ends soon. However, according to the logic of historical evolution and conflict dynamics, the end of the Fifth Middle East War did not prevent the “Sixth Middle East War” from breaking out 41 years later, because the core issue of territorial disputes has never been resolved, and because all parties in the Middle East have not yet extricated themselves from the vicious circle of a culture of violence, nor have they withdrawn from the quagmire of zero-sum games and jungle law.

“If Heaven does not change, the Way does not change.” Even if the “Sixth Middle East War” puts a period this year, it will be only a semicolon marking a phase in Middle Eastern conflicts, a historical pause, not the historical end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Middle East wars.