Even with dual-track peace talks underway to resolve conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the region is far from stable. Add in the uncertainty of the U.S. election next week, and the prospect of re-establishing an equilibrium seems even more remote.

I talked to experts on game theory and international relations about how they see the situation, and what they expect in the coming weeks and months.

An old equilibrium shattered

For years, Israel and Iran were in a state of stable but occasionally violent equilibrium.

The two countries were engaged in what amounted to a shadow war, but neither wanted all-out conflict. Each side had the ability to harm the other, and enough interest in avoiding that harm, to maintain a rough balance of mutual deterrence.

Israel had the more powerful army — and the support of an even stronger ally, the United States — while Iran cultivated a group of proxy militias that surrounded Israel. It made clear that any attack on Iran would be met with devastating retaliation.

That equilibrium began to crumble on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants from Hamas, an Iran-backed group, attacked Israel, massacring civilians and taking some 250 hostages. Hamas clearly hoped its attack would be the opening salvo of a broader war against Israel. Hezbollah fired rockets and missiles at Israel in support of Hamas, but both Iran and Hezbollah signaled that they did not want to escalate. Israel, for its part, engaged in heavy warfare against Hamas in Gaza, but initially avoided escalation with Iran or Hezbollah.

In recent months, the equilibrium began to disintegrate.

• In April, Israel and Iran traded direct strikes on each other’s territory following an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria.

• In mid-September, Israel sharply escalated its actions against Hezbollah with a heavy bombing campaign in Lebanon along with targeted attacks that have killed much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, before launching a ground incursion on Oct. 1.

• In early October, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli soil, a significant escalation in direct hostilities.

• And on Saturday, Israel delivered its long-awaited response to Iran’s attack: a series of airstrikes that destroyed much of Iran’s air-defense system.

Achieving ‘strategic stability’

There is little doubt that Israel is in a better strategic position today than it was before the Oct. 7 attacks, though they left deep scars on the country’s psyche. The Iranian “axis of resistance” — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Houthi rebels in Yemen — has been dramatically weakened.

“Hamas is still out there, but it has been disabled in various ways. Hezbollah’s entire leadership has been decapitated, and the Israelis have done a lot of damage to Hezbollah,” said Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Israeli attack on Iran on Oct. 26 seems to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses, impeding Iran’s ability to defend itself against future strikes. The Israelis, Cook said, “now kind of rule the Iranian sky.”

However, it is not yet clear whether Israel’s new advantage will lead to a new equilibrium.

Read more on original:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/world/middleeast/israel-iran-relations.html