The Fog of Non-Victory (2/2)

The first part of this analysis established that neither the United States nor Iran emerged from six weeks of war with a strategic victory. This second part examines what that non-outcome means for the actors who must now live with its consequences: Israel, Lebanon, Türkiye, the Gulf states, and the broader Western alliance. What follows is an overview of the contradictions and dangerous calculations now shaping the region's next chapter.

 Israel: The Permanent Disruption Doctrine

The Israeli prime minister entered the Iran campaign as its chief architect and advocate. He exits it under pressure from both directions simultaneously. On one side are military and political hardliners who wanted to continue operations despite the American ultimatum to stand down, and who believe that the ceasefire, like the Yemen deal before it, has left Israel more exposed, not less. On the other side is a reinvigorated opposition that has always described Netanyahu's strategy of permanent escalation without a political horizon as a formula for endless war rather than lasting safety.

Underlying these political pressures is a security doctrine that has undergone a fundamental shift since October 7th. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Israel shifted from deterrence to prevention,  assuming that pre-emptive military action, rather than the credible threat of retaliation, represents the only reliable guarantor of Israeli security. Gaza was the first full-scale application of this doctrine, and its results exposed a core limitation. Overwhelming force can destroy infrastructure and eliminate leadership, but it cannot produce sustained political control, nor can it prevent gradual reconstitution. Hamas has survived as a political actor. Israel maintains uncontested military dominance over the Strip but does not govern it,  which means that while the immediate threat to surrounding settlements has been neutralised, the conditions for Hamas's eventual rebuilding have not been. The adapted doctrine now combines demilitarised buffer zones with sustained efforts to keep hostile actors consumed by internal strife. The goal is not to govern these territories but to prevent any coherent military threat from reconstituting within them. It is a doctrine of permanent disruption rather than decisive, one-off victory.

Recent surveys indicate that only around 22% of Israelis believe their country or the US has won this war, while just 32% express satisfaction with the overall outcome. At the same time, 79% continue to support ongoing military operations in Lebanon. Israel's 2026 legislative elections are likely to sharpen these tensions rather than resolve them. Political leaders will face pressure from constituencies demanding security guarantees, not abstract strategic benchmarks. That pressure is likely to sustain continued military operations in Lebanon until Hezbollah is fully disarmed, complemented by heavy diplomatic pressure on the Lebanese government, sustained targeted strikes, and demilitarised buffer zones designed to prevent Hezbollah from returning to its pre-2023 military posture.

A word on territorial expansion is warranted here. Israel's stated military objective is the establishment of security buffers in the form of forward-positioned perimeters designed to push threats farther from existing borders. Therefore, Israel can’t possibly look into extending sovereignty over new territory. Permanently annexing southern Lebanese land would place Israeli civilians closer to Hezbollah's remaining capacity, not farther from it, which is the precise opposite of what the prevention doctrine requires. The historical record supports this reading. Israel withdrew from Sinai in the 1980’s, from southern Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza in 2005. The single exception is the Golan Heights,  formally annexed and subsequently recognised by the US under Trump's first term following sustained lobbying by pro-Israel groups in Washington. As for the broader 'Greater Israel' project, it has never coalesced around a single agreed map even within Israel's hard-right constituencies. Were territorial maximalism genuinely driving Israeli policy, the withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon, both of which appear in at least some versions of the Greater Israel map, would be inexplicable.

Lebanon: Between Vanished Hope and Suspended Catastrophe

Inside Lebanon, the picture that was cautiously optimistic a year ago has darkened considerably. The Nawaf Salam government that took office in early 2025 was genuinely promising, being the first Lebanese government in three decades to remove the famous 'People, Army, and Resistance' formula from its ministerial statement, stripping Hezbollah of its official political cover. The Lebanese Army began deploying south of the Litani River for the first time in decades. Hezbollah, severely weakened by the 2023–24 war with Israel and the killing of its senior leadership, appeared, for a moment, to be genuinely contained. However, the party's performance since it decided to join the war on March 2nd clearly demonstrates that it had been constantly reconstituting and adapting, shifting toward a more dispersed, guerrilla-style posture. More importantly, it is now seeking to leverage the US reversal on Iran to rebuild domestic legitimacy, using the current moment to forestall any return to pre-war arrangements or to the military-political conditions that had previously stripped it of formal governmental cover. The group is actively assessing ways to sideline and weaken its political opponents, initially through legal and parliamentary means, and if those avenues prove insufficient, through assassinations and targeted killings of the kind Lebanon endured between 2005 and 2013. Lebanon's consociational system, rooted in rigid sectarian power-sharing, renders decisive action against any single actor exceptionally difficult.

Into this tense context comes a displacement crisis involving more than a million uprooted people, the majority from communities aligned with or dependent on Hezbollah. Israel is determined to prevent the return of these villagers to Southern Lebanon before Hezbollah is fully disarmed. Potential donor governments continue to condition support on disarmament benchmarks that Hezbollah refuses to meet. More specifically, Gulf governments are reluctant to finance a state coopted by Hezbollah; that is, if we assume that the economic aftermath of the war in their own countries will still allow them to donate generously as they did before. The result, already visible, is a protracted displacement crisis in a country lurching toward the same suspended catastrophe as Gaza: too broken to recover, too armed to be governed, too divided to find a way forward on its own.

Türkiye: An Indispensable Power in a Regional Vacuum

A weakened Iran does not automatically stabilise the region. It creates a vacuum. Before the Iran war began, Ankara was already the dominant external actor in post-Assad Syria. Iran's degradation has accelerated Türkiye's centrality to whatever regional order emerges in Syria, in Iraq, and most importantly in shaping Muslim political opinion. This growing strength is placing Türkiye on a more direct collision course with Israel. Israeli officials have been increasingly explicit about viewing Türkiye as an emerging strategic threat,  especially in Syria, where Türkiye holds more cards than any other actor. Why Turkey will be a key regional powerbroker after the Iran war is no longer a question, it is a reality.

The Gulf: Triple Pressure on a Weakened Social Contract 

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have absorbed the most immediate economic shock from this war. The GCC's social contract, the implicit promise of quasi-unlimited prosperity in exchange for political loyalty to ruling dynasties, depends on a stable, wealthy, interconnected regional economy, and is now under stress. The GCC faces three simultaneous challenges, each of which would be demanding on its own. First, it needs to restore confidence in the economic model it has built since the 1970’s, which depends on predictable oil exports, safe transit routes, and foreign investment that is sensitive to regional instability. Second, it must decide how to handle an Iran that is wounded but not broken, and that will, under almost any ceasefire scenario, retain the capacity to threaten Gulf infrastructure again. Accommodation risks emboldening Tehran; confrontation risks another round of economic devastation. Third, and perhaps most urgently, the Gulf states need to kick-start an express economic recovery programme.

The Absent West: A Lasting Strategic Error 

Throughout this crisis, the most striking feature of European and broader Western policy has been its absence. While the US was fighting a regime that did not spare any Western interest, European governments were mostly watching from the sidelines, using the Iran crisis as an opportunity to settle political accounts with the Trump administration rather than engage with the strategic reality that Iran's threat is not limited to US interests. This will be remembered as a profound strategic error. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump's methods, the underlying reality remains that an emboldened Iran is emerging out of this conflict alongside a Gulf whose economic foundations are under sustained pressure. By choosing not to join, or at minimum not to support, the US-led effort to weaken Iran, reluctant Western actors have effectively fostered a more dangerous balance of power, one in which Iran's leverage grows, deterrence erodes, and the cost of eventual confrontation becomes far higher.

The Grey Zone as a Strategic Horizon

Iran's remaining asymmetric capabilities will not sit idle while diplomatic negotiations proceed. Short of a satisfactory deal for President Trump, both the US and Israel have strong strategic incentives to maintain an active pattern of targeted operations. Nonetheless, all three parties — and the GCC — cannot afford a return to full-scale war as it was in March and early April 2026. The purpose of the emerging grey-zone strategy is to disrupt Iranian nuclear and ballistic rearmament, degrade surviving proxy infrastructure, and signal through action that the cost of reconstitution will remain high. Grey-zone operations (precision strikes, cyber disruption, intelligence operations) have proven more durable in their effects than spectacular military campaigns, precisely because they deny adversaries the stable environment they need to rebuild. Strategic restraint premised on the hope that negotiations will resolve structural issues would, on current evidence, simply offer Iran and its proxies the breathing space they need to reload. The pattern has repeated itself too many times to assume a different outcome this time.

The scenario of a comprehensive diplomatic breakthrough that resolves the nuclear file, constrains Iran's proxy network, and produces a stable, enforceable new order would genuinely change the regional equation. But it is the least likely outcome on current evidence. It would require a level of sustained US political investment that Washington has consistently failed to deliver after military campaigns. It would require Iran's post-war leadership to make concessions that its predecessor explicitly refused. It would require a Hezbollah willing to disarm as a condition for Lebanon's recovery,  something the group has already signalled it will not accept. Regional actors are more desperate and less predictable, and the trust required for a durable settlement has been eroded by decades of broken agreements and bad faith posturing on all sides.

Conclusion

The new phase of the Middle East's never-ending crisis is not defined by a clear victor or a clear loser. It is defined by uncertainty,  in Israel, in the United States, throughout the Gulf, and in Lebanon; and by a general consensus among regional actors that the safest operating posture, for now, is to advance interests through low-intensity confrontation, back-channel pressure, and strategic ambiguity rather than open confrontation. The stakes are higher than ever and the actors more desperate than before.