For decades, Israel's strategic objective was clear: neutralise Iran and dismantle its network of proxies.
After 7 October 2023, that ambition appeared, briefly, to be within reach . Hamas was devastated, Hezbollah’s leadership was decimated , Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria collapsed , and the Houthis were degraded.
In February, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian commanders seemed to herald the decisive breakthrough Israel had long planned for.
But nearly three years into Israel’s most expansive military campaign since 1948, and six weeks into the war with Iran, a more difficult question presents itself: what, precisely, has been won?
The answer is considerably less than the scale of the destruction across the Middle East suggests. Tactical gains, strategic impasse Israel has undeniably altered the region's military landscape. It has dismantled Hezbollah's command structures, suppressed Hamas's operational capacity, established a military footprint in southern Syria, and accelerated annexation in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that his army had “changed the face of the Middle East forever”. The language of transformation was deliberate and revealing, but according to experts, it spoke to ambition, not achievement.
Political analyst Dr Makram Rabah is blunt about what actually drove the campaign's logic. He stressed that part of what has enabled Israel's current position in the region is a direct consequence of Iranian policy choices.
“One of the reasons for the escalating Israeli role in the region goes back to Iranian policies themselves, which sought to impose influence in the Arab world through military tools, militias that fought inside Arab countries, not only through traditional political influence,” he told The New Arab .
Crucially, that same expansion exposed its own hollowness when tested, and enabled Israel to impose the current reality on the ground. The concept of “unity of fronts” within the Iranian axis was not translated into practice, Rabah notes.
“Gaza was largely left to face its fate, and the expectations linked to a regional expansion of the confrontation did not materialise.”
Iran's policies, he concludes, “led to reversed results in the balance of power, and opened the door to greater escalation and wider consequences for the peoples of the region”. The Lebanon trap Nowhere is the gap between ambition and reality more exposed than in southern Lebanon . Analyst Nader Ezzeddine, who is an expert in Israeli policies, frames the scale of what Israel has attempted.
“What Israel has been doing since 7 October is no longer limited to managing a war in Gaza or a confrontation in Lebanon aimed at destroying or disarming Hezbollah. It has evolved into a path of military expansion on more than one front.”
Israel's declared objective - reaching the Litani River and establishing a wide buffer zone - amounts in practice, Ezzeddine says, to something “reaching practically the level of occupation or direct control”.
Yet “this high ceiling is colliding, so far, with a field reality that shows a clear gap between intention and the ability to consolidate”.
The battle for Bint Jbeil , near the Lebanese border with Israel, which the Israeli army is currently fighting on the ground, illustrates the distinction with particular clarity.
The town was considered militarily fallen after the 2024 campaign. Yet the direct and violent clashes it has witnessed in recent days, and the Israeli army's failure to consolidate a clear presence there , “reflect an equation based on the possibility of advancing without the ability to hold the ground”.
Ezzeddine notes the added significance: “The town had been considered militarily fallen since the 2024 round, which confirms that field resolution is still far off.”
Israel's advantage in the south, Ezzeddine argues, is primarily in the domain of firepower, including intensive airstrikes, violent artillery bombardment , and repeated targeting of the border strip. But “this superiority has not translated into complete field control”.
The border strip remains unsettled, the front line of forward villages “still an open combat zone, not a stable area under the control of one party,” Ezzedine tells TNA .
Hezbollah's strike rate , though reduced during the US-Iranian negotiation period, has not stopped, reflecting “a capacity for continuity that keeps the confrontation within a framework of mutual attrition”.
Any withdrawal, Ezzeddine adds, is tied to conditions that force cannot deliver.
“Linking it to security arrangements and Hezbollah's disarmament, while achieving that by force appears extremely difficult without broader understandings, making any possible withdrawal closer to a repositioning within a settlement, not an achievement of the declared conditions in full.” The strongest actor, not the dominant one Political analyst and researcher in regional politics Joe Hammoura identifies the structural shift that 7 October enabled, while naming its limits.
Israel, he argues, “moved from the logic of containment to the logic of reshaping the regional environment surrounding it, benefiting from an international moment that gave it wide room to manoeuvre, and from a fragmented Arab reality incapable of producing a unified position or real influence”.
This expansion, Hammoura stresses, is not purely territorial. It manifests as “a harsh military reality in Gaza, a tightened security reality in the West Bank, a comfortable Israeli presence in southern Syria, and sustained military pressure in southern Lebanon”.
At the regional level , Israel is seeking “to reorder international priorities so that its 'security' becomes a central objective in US policy”.
The peace framework Israel has floated towards Lebanon, Hammoura argues, is not a contradiction of this strategy but an extension of it.
“Israel is not proposing peace from a position of weakness, but from the position of one who believes they have readjusted the balance of power in their favour, and wants to translate that politically,” he said. For Israel, peace is “a tool to consolidate a new reality”. For Lebanon, it is “closer to a forced choice for survival, not a firm conviction”.
Yet Hammoura is careful to define Israel's position precisely.
“Saying that Israel has become the sole dominant player or king of the region contains an element of exaggeration, but it reflects a part of reality.”
Iran, the analyst notes, “has not been finally defeated, it has repositioned itself, and the continuation of negotiations with the United States is evidence that the conflict has not yet been resolved”.
Israel, he says, is the strongest actor currently, but not the region’s absolute power.
“It has the capacity to initiate and impose conditions in many instances, but it does not have the capacity to end conflicts or impose a final regional order on its own.” The calculus of exhaustion What is unfolding, Hammoura argues, is closer to a calculated escalation with an open ceiling, rather than uncontrolled momentum.
Israel, in his words, is “pushing to the maximum what the international and regional environment allows, particularly the American position, but it is still avoiding sliding into a comprehensive war with unpredictable results. Even the confrontation with Iran remained within studied limits”.
What the campaign has achieved in Lebanon, he says, is a reduction of Hezbollah's operational capacity “in terms of pace, deployment, and freedom of movement, without eliminating it completely”.
In the border villages, Israel does not exercise comprehensive traditional control but imposes clear fire and security dominance enabling it to target freely, maintain constant military pressure, disrupt Hezbollah's positioning, and destroy homes to prevent any return.
The 2000 withdrawal, Hammoura notes, demonstrated that “any field vacuum can be filled again by Hezbollah”, which is precisely why Israel is now trying to bind any withdrawal to clear security guarantees.
The result is a formula that will directly impact Lebanon's displaced population: a return conditional on a political and security price - land for peace, but the Lebanese edition.
Israel's multi-front war may have disrupted the region, but it has not reordered it. The south of Lebanon is a live combat zone. Iran has repositioned. Hezbollah cannot be disarmed by force alone. Gaza remains under siege with no political horizon.
Nearly two years on, the distance between Israel’s ambitions and what its military campaign has delivered is increasingly difficult to bridge - and to overlook. Ali Awadah is a Lebanese journalist with bylines in several local outlets, focusing on human rights This article is published in collaboration with Egab Edited by Charlie Hoyle