Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been on an escalating rampage of unprovoked aggression, not just in Gaza, but across the Middle East. With U.S. weapons and backing and with Iran and its allies now in disarray, Israel has repeatedly attacked at will. It has demanded that sovereign countries disarm and leave themselves defenseless, and even vacate parts of their own territory. It threatens to attack any who oppose it and enforce unchallenged and unchallengeable hegemony. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. fascist-in-chief Donald Trump brag about having reshaped the Middle East. 

Just in recent weeks…

Iran. In the past 20 months, Israel has bombed or carried out covert attacks inside Iran at least a dozen times. This culminated in a massive, 12-day bombing assault beginning on June 13 and later joined by the Trump fascist regime. These attacks destroyed much of Iran’s defenses and military infrastructure and significantly set back its nuclear enrichment program. Israel—and Trump—have warned they’ll attack again if Iran takes steps to reconstitute its nuclear program or its ballistic missile arsenal.¹

Lebanon. After waging a tit-for-tat battle with Iran’s ally Hezbollah over a period of months, Israel launched a full-scale assault in September 2024. The assault inflicted widespread devastation across the country, killing over 4,000 people. The New York Times called it the most destructive war in Lebanon in decades. Hezbollah, once considered one of Iran’s main defenses against Israel, was shattered and gravely weakened. 

Israel continues to occupy parts of southern Lebanon and has carried out “near-daily” airstrikes on what it claims are Hezbollah targets—violating the ceasefire agreement it signed with Lebanon in November 2024. On July 9, Israel launched its first ground operation into Lebanon in months, and on July 14 carried out airstrikes in the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Israel’s Defense Minister said the bombing was “a clear message” that Israel would respond with “maximum force” to any attempt by Hezbollah to rebuild its military. (“Hezbollah has yet to respond militarily to any of the Israeli attacks since the November truce,” the New York Times reports.)

Syria. Since the fall of the hated, Iran-backed regime of Bashir Assad in December 2024, Israel has attacked Syria and its new Islamist regime nearly continuously, seized Syrian land to build some nine military bases, and evicted hundreds of Syrians from their homes. They have done this in the name of creating a “security zone” inside Syria. They actually mean weakening the new Islamist regime and destroying the country’s military hardware.

Just this past week, Israel seized on a bloody outbreak of sectarian violence to intervene, claiming to protect Syria’s minority Druze population.²  Israel launched repeated airstrikes, including against Syria’s defense ministry in the heart of Syria’s capital Damascus, and warned Syria’s new government not to send troops into the southern province where the fighting was taking place. (The U.S., which has been trying to build relations with the new Syrian regime, criticized Israel’s attacks³ and since then a ceasefire has been implemented.)

Yemen. Since May 5 of this year, Israel has carried out at least eight separate, deadly air attacks on Yemen.⁴ They are aimed at the Houthi militia forces (reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who control much of Yemen, and are allied with Iran). The Houthis periodically have used their position on the Red Sea to fire missiles and drones at Israel, and ships headed to Israel, attacks which have had a crippling effect on commercial shipping in that strategic waterway. The Houthis say their attacks are aimed at stopping Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

A New Regional Order?

Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its escalating violence and ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian West Bank, and now its U.S.-enabled regional military rampage, represent major changes in the Middle East. None of this would be possible without America’s overall military, political and economic domination of the region, and the weapons, intelligence, and political and diplomatic support it provides Israel.⁵

The New York Times argues, 

The collapse of Iran’s regional influence, in particular its expulsion from Syria, its main Arab ally, represents an inflection point of the kind not seen in the Middle East for more than two decades… With the fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria last December, what King Abdullah II of Jordan once famously referred to as the “Shiite Crescent”—a network of armed allies stretching from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah’s areas of Lebanon—disintegrated... [t]he Assad government in Syria, a fully-fledged state rather than a militia, had been the Iranians’ capstone and a hub for supporting other forces in the so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel and the West…. 

Ultimately, however, the short [12-day Israeli attack]… shattered the illusion of Iranian strength. Although just how much the strikes on Iran set back the country’s nuclear program is uncertain, its failure to protect itself exposed deep-seated weaknesses—and suggests that a new regional order has arrived.

Whether this turns out to be a “new regional order”—birthed by Israel’s genocide in Gaza—remains to be seen.

But if so, it will be a horror on top of the horror the U.S. imperialist-dominated Middle East has been for the last 70-plus years—a horror of oppression and exploitation, enforced by coups, bombings, invasions, and ruthless U.S.-backed tyrannies. (See the American Crime series at revcom.us for many examples.)