Security Landscape Three Years After October 7 Terrorist Attacks

Irena Tsukerman 

 

 

Three years after the October 7 terrorist attacks, the global security landscape is difficult to capture through a simple account of what has changed. The consequences have unfolded across different regions, institutions, alliances, conflicts, and political systems, often through developments whose connection to October 7 becomes visible only when examined closely. This report therefore proceeds through a series of critical questions, each addressing a specific aspect of the security environment that has taken shape over the past three years. The questions provide the structure for investigating how particular developments occurred, which actors drove them, what assumptions failed, how governments and terrorist groups adapted, and which problems remain unresolved. Examining each question in depth also makes it possible to trace connections among developments that are often discussed separately, from shifting regional relationships and changing forms of deterrence to intelligence failures, terrorist adaptation, information warfare, and the growing interaction between conflicts across regions.

Mission Accomplished? Netanyahu’s New Middle East, Three Years Later

When Benjamin Netanyahu told officials in southern Israel on October 9, 2023 that Israel’s response to the October 7 terrorist attacks would “change the Middle East,” he was making the prediction at an extraordinary moment. Hamas had just demonstrated that the Israeli security establishment had badly misread both its intentions and capabilities. Hezbollah remained heavily armed across the Lebanese border. Iran had spent years surrounding Israel with organizations capable of launching missiles, rockets, drones, terrorist attacks, and other forms of pressure while Tehran retained considerable distance from the consequences. Bashar Al-Assad remained in Damascus, Syria provided the geographic connection between Iran and Hezbollah, and Russia’s presence constrained Israeli calculations over Syrian airspace. Saudi-Israeli normalization appeared close enough that Washington was devoting substantial diplomatic effort to completing it. Three years later, nearly every component of that regional picture has changed, although the resulting Middle East bears little resemblance to the one Netanyahu had hoped to create.

Netanyahu had already presented his preferred regional future at the UN General Assembly in September 2023, only weeks before the attacks. His “New Middle East” map envisioned Israel connected economically and politically to Arab states through an expanding normalization process, with Saudi Arabia providing the decisive breakthrough. Transportation, energy, technology, investment, and infrastructure would connect India and the Gulf to Israel and Europe. Iran would remain contained, while the Palestinian issue would lose its ability to prevent Arab governments from building formal relationships with Israel. The Abraham Accords appeared to provide the political model, and a Saudi agreement promised to move that model from a collection of bilateral relationships toward a broader regional architecture.

October 7 destroyed the assumptions behind that project before Israel began destroying the military structures surrounding it. The subsequent wars transformed Israel’s security environment through force on a scale few Israeli governments had previously contemplated. Israel killed Hamas leaders and commanders, demolished much of the organization’s military infrastructure, invaded Gaza, and deprived Hamas of the territorial freedom it had previously enjoyed. It then turned increasingly toward Hezbollah, striking commanders, weapons, communications systems, storage sites, and infrastructure that Iran and Hezbollah had spent years constructing. Israeli intelligence penetration exposed vulnerabilities inside Hezbollah that damaged the organization far beyond the physical destruction produced by airstrikes. Iran’s own territory eventually became a battlefield, while Syria ceased to provide Tehran with the political and geographic environment it had enjoyed under Assad.

Lebanon illustrates the scale of the transformation as well as the limits of Israel’s ability to control it. Before October 7, Hezbollah operated as both a Lebanese political force and an independent military organization possessing capabilities greater than those of the Lebanese state. Its missile arsenal gave Iran a powerful deterrent against a major Israeli attack. Its involvement in Syria had provided combat experience, while Iranian financing, weapons, training, and political support helped sustain an organization capable of influencing Lebanese government formation and national security decisions. Hezbollah could impose risks on Israel and political constraints on Beirut simultaneously.

Israel subsequently killed much of Hezbollah’s senior command, destroyed substantial quantities of weapons and infrastructure, disrupted communications, and exposed the depth of Israeli intelligence access inside the organization. The damage affected Hezbollah’s prestige as well as its military capabilities. An organization whose political authority partly depended on the claim that it alone could defend Lebanon against Israel had suffered devastating penetration by Israeli intelligence and had brought enormous destruction upon the constituencies it claimed to protect. Lebanese politicians could discuss Hezbollah’s disarmament with a seriousness that had rarely existed while the organization possessed overwhelming coercive advantages over its domestic opponents.

Yet Lebanon has not simply moved into an Israeli-designed post-Hezbollah order. Hezbollah survived, retained weapons and political networks, and continued resisting efforts to eliminate its independent military position. Lebanese institutions face the difficult task of extending authority without triggering another internal conflict. Israeli operations inside Lebanon can weaken Hezbollah militarily while making it easier for the organization to argue domestically that an armed “resistance” remains necessary. Iran has every incentive to preserve enough of Hezbollah’s infrastructure to rebuild over time. Money, weapons, personnel, smuggling routes, political alliances, and institutional weakness can eventually restore capabilities that airstrikes destroyed far more quickly than Lebanon can construct effective state institutions.

Syria has undergone an even more dramatic transformation. Assad’s fall deprived Iran of one of its most important Arab state partners and severed the permissive environment through which Tehran had moved personnel and weapons toward Lebanon. Israel had already spent years attacking Iranian assets inside Syria, but Assad’s government continued to provide the political structure within which Iran, the IRGC, and Hezbollah could operate. Once that government disappeared, Iran lost both an ally and a geographic system that had connected Iraqi territory to Lebanon through Syria.

Israel exploited the transition aggressively. It destroyed Syrian military assets, struck strategic weapons, expanded its security presence, and sought to prevent the emergence of another hostile military structure close to the Golan Heights. The new Syrian authorities under Ahmed Al-Sharaa had powerful reasons to prevent Iran from restoring its previous position. Damascus needed sanctions relief, reconstruction financing, foreign investment, and political acceptance from Arab and Western governments. A Syrian leadership seeking those objectives had little incentive to become an Iranian forward operating base.

The same transition created opportunities for Türkiye that Israel could neither prevent nor fully shape. Ankara had supported Syrian opposition forces for years, maintained troops in northern Syria, developed relationships with Syrian political and armed actors, and possessed immediate economic and security interests across the border. Assad’s disappearance therefore gave Türkiye opportunities that extended well beyond removing an adversarial government. Ankara could influence Syrian security structures, reconstruction, trade, border arrangements, Kurdish questions, and relations between Damascus and neighboring states. A Syria freed from Iranian domination did not automatically become a Syria oriented toward Israel. It could instead become a state in which Turkish influence increased substantially while Damascus pursued its own combination of Arab, Turkish, Gulf, Western, and even selective Lebanese relationships.

Reported contacts between Syrian officials and Hezbollah make that point particularly important. The organization helped Assad wage war against forces from which the new Syrian political order emerged, giving Damascus ample historical reason for hostility. Yet governments rarely construct foreign policy solely around wartime grievances. Syria has a long border with Lebanon, economic interests connected to Lebanese trade and finance, security concerns involving smuggling and armed groups, and a need to manage actors that retain influence across the border. Even a weakened Hezbollah can become an interlocutor Damascus decides it cannot simply ignore. Israel helped destroy the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah arrangement that existed before October 7, while the relationships replacing it are already being negotiated by actors pursuing interests Israel does not control.

Iran has experienced the most consequential losses because the regional structure Israel attacked was largely an Iranian creation. Tehran spent decades developing an asymmetric system that compensated for conventional military weaknesses. Hezbollah threatened Israel from Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operated from Gaza, Iraqi groups provided additional reach, Syria offered strategic depth and transit, and the Houthis eventually added missiles, drones, and maritime disruption from Yemen. Iran could distribute capabilities across several theaters and force Israel and the United States to calculate the consequences of escalation across all of them.

The Israeli campaigns broke important components of that arrangement and demonstrated that geography could no longer provide Tehran with the protection it had expected. Israel penetrated Iranian security systems, attacked military and nuclear targets, killed senior personnel, and forced Iran to devote increasing attention to defending its own territory. Hezbollah’s degradation reduced one of Tehran’s strongest deterrent instruments. Assad’s fall damaged the supply architecture supporting the Lebanese front. Hamas suffered immense losses in Gaza. The old assumption that Iran could continually increase pressure through partners while keeping direct warfare away from Iranian territory became increasingly difficult to sustain.

Tehran responded by redistributing pressure rather than conceding the regional contest. The Houthis became more valuable as Hezbollah weakened. Iraqi armed groups offered another source of geographic reach. Missiles, drones, maritime disruption, sabotage, and pressure against US and Gulf interests allowed Iran and aligned organizations to expand the geographic cost of confrontation. By 2026, direct US-Iranian warfare had turned the Gulf itself into a central theater, while the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb became increasingly connected within the same regional conflict. Israel had succeeded in bringing unprecedented pressure onto Iran, yet the price of that pressure was increasingly shared by governments whose territories, economies, infrastructure, and trade routes became exposed to retaliation.

Yemen consequently moved from the outer edge of Israeli security planning toward the center of the regional struggle. Before October 7, the Houthis posed a major problem for Saudi Arabia and Yemen while occupying a far smaller place in Israeli strategic calculations. The Gaza war gave the organization an opportunity to claim participation in a conflict carrying enormous emotional and political resonance across the Arab and Muslim worlds. Missile and drone attacks against Israel expanded the Houthis’ geographic profile, while attacks on Red Sea shipping allowed an armed organization in Yemen to impose costs on international commerce far beyond its own territory.

Repeated Israeli and American attacks failed to remove the underlying problem. The Houthis could disperse launchers, exploit Yemen’s geography, absorb damage, obtain external assistance, and impose costs using weapons far cheaper than many of the systems required to intercept them. Their survival also gave Iran an increasingly valuable partner after Hezbollah’s losses. By 2026, renewed Houthi attacks against Saudi interests and the widening Yemen conflict had again forced Riyadh to treat its southern frontier as an urgent national security problem. Israel had weakened Iranian power in the Levant while one of Iran’s partners on the Arabian Peninsula became more consequential.

That development has altered Saudi calculations in ways that directly affect Netanyahu’s regional project. Saudi Arabia had strong reasons to welcome the weakening of Hezbollah, Assad’s fall, and damage to Iranian military capabilities. Riyadh had spent years confronting Iranian influence and had suffered direct attacks from the Houthis. Saudi leaders nevertheless had equally strong reasons to fear a regional war that threatened airports, energy facilities, shipping, investment, and the economic program surrounding Vision 2030. Riyadh wants Iran constrained without having Saudi territory repeatedly turned into a battlefield for conflicts initiated elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia therefore expanded security relationships that provide options beyond dependence on Washington or normalization with Israel. Its growing coordination with Türkiye and Pakistan reflects the immediate demands created by Yemen and the broader uncertainty surrounding Gulf security. Pakistan offers military capabilities, longstanding Saudi defense connections, and channels to Tehran. Türkiye possesses military capacity, a defense industry, influence in Syria, and its own interests in containing regional instability. Those relationships do not preclude future Saudi relations with Israel, although they reduce the plausibility of a regional architecture centered primarily on an Israeli-Gulf alignment against Iran.

The UAE faces a related calculation. Abu Dhabi has maintained its relationship with Israel under the Abraham Accords and has substantial commercial, technological, and investment interests connected to regional stability. It also has major interests in maritime commerce, ports, financial services, and the security of trade routes stretching through the Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Red Sea. Every expansion of Israeli-Iranian warfare creates additional sanctions, compliance, financial, reputational, and physical-security risks for Emirati institutions. The UAE can value cooperation with Israel while pursuing relationships with Tehran, Damascus, Ankara, Riyadh, and other governments whose interests diverge from Israel’s on individual questions.

Egypt and Jordan have faced their own consequences. Both maintain peace treaties with Israel, both have strong security relationships with the United States, and both have reasons to prevent Hamas or other terrorist organizations from gaining greater regional power. Gaza nevertheless placed enormous pressure on each government. Egypt confronted the possibility of Palestinian displacement toward Sinai, the economic effects of Red Sea disruption on Suez Canal revenues, and the prospect of prolonged instability immediately across its northeastern border. Jordan faced intense domestic pressure connected to Gaza and the Palestinian issue while also dealing with smuggling, Iranian regional activity, Syria’s transition, and broader economic vulnerabilities. Israel’s military victories against common threats therefore coexist with political and economic costs imposed on two Arab states whose stability is itself important to Israeli security.

The Palestinian issue has returned to regional diplomacy with particular force. Netanyahu’s pre-October 7 model assumed that normalization with Arab governments could continue while Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy remained frozen. The Abraham Accords had provided evidence that Arab governments could establish relations with Israel without waiting for a final-status agreement, and Saudi normalization appeared capable of extending that principle dramatically. October 7 and the Gaza war changed the political environment in which Arab governments make those decisions.

Saudi Arabia has attached normalization increasingly explicitly to Palestinian statehood. Arab governments have faced sustained public anger over Gaza, while reconstruction requires Arab money and political participation that cannot easily be separated from demands concerning Palestinian governance and political status. Israel can prevent Hamas from reconstructing major military capabilities through surveillance, raids, territorial control, and repeated military operations, but it cannot finance and administer Gaza indefinitely without accepting immense political, economic, and military costs. Any alternative eventually requires Palestinian administrators, Arab participation, external financing, security arrangements, and some political formula capable of attracting enough support to function.

This leaves Israel facing a paradox created by its own success. It has demonstrated military and intelligence capabilities far beyond what many adversaries expected after the catastrophe of October 7. Hezbollah has been severely weakened. Iran has suffered direct attacks on capabilities it had spent years protecting. Assad is gone. Hamas has lost leaders, infrastructure, fighters, weapons, and territorial freedom. Israel has shown that distance offers adversaries far less protection than they once assumed. Senior commanders across the region now have to consider the possibility that Israeli intelligence has penetrated their communications, organizations, facilities, or personal networks.

Those achievements have also encouraged Israel’s adversaries to search more aggressively for methods that reduce exposure to Israeli strengths. Cheap drones can force the use of expensive interceptors. Maritime attacks can impose economic losses on states thousands of miles away. Criminal networks can provide deniable personnel for sabotage. Cyber operations can target civilian systems without crossing a conventional border. Terrorist cells require far less infrastructure than missile forces. Information campaigns can exploit civilian casualties, displacement, economic disruption, and disagreements among Israel and its partners. Iran and its remaining allies have strong incentives to distribute pressure across more targets precisely because concentrating military power creates opportunities for Israeli detection and destruction.

The same problem applies to deterrence. Killing commanders and destroying arsenals can reduce an adversary’s ability to attack, while repeated warfare also shows that fear of Israeli retaliation has not prevented every adversary from trying. Hamas launched October 7 despite Israel’s military superiority. Hezbollah entered the conflict the following day despite the destructive capacity Israel could eventually bring against Lebanon. The Houthis continued launching missiles and attacking shipping after repeated US and Israeli strikes. Iran crossed thresholds that previously appeared unlikely, while Israel crossed its own. Deterrence after October 7 has therefore become more violent and more dependent on demonstrations of willingness to inflict damage.

The economic map Netanyahu displayed in September 2023 has changed along with the military one. Regional corridors require predictable borders, secure shipping, functioning infrastructure, insurable investments, and governments confident that wars will not repeatedly interrupt major projects. Red Sea attacks, Hormuz threats, renewed Yemen warfare, Israeli-Iranian escalation, and uncertainty in Syria complicate precisely those conditions. Gulf governments can still pursue connectivity projects, and Israel can eventually participate in them, although the political center of regional economic integration may increasingly be determined by Gulf states that have relationships with China, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, Europe, the United States, and Israel simultaneously.

Türkiye’s position is particularly revealing because its gains were never central to Netanyahu’s original vision. Ankara has acquired greater influence in Syria, developed defense relationships across the region, expanded its indigenous weapons industry, and positioned itself as a power capable of dealing with governments and movements that Israel cannot approach directly. Turkish and Israeli interests may overlap in limiting Iranian influence in Syria while colliding over the military and political structure that replaces it. The destruction of Iran’s old Syrian position therefore created room for another ambitious regional power rather than leaving a vacuum Israel could simply dominate.

Iraq remains another unresolved piece of the post-October 7 order. Iranian-backed armed groups retain political, military, and economic influence, and Baghdad continues struggling with the relationship between formal state authority and organizations possessing independent weapons and foreign relationships. A weakened Iran may have fewer resources to distribute, but Iraqi groups also have domestic constituencies, businesses, political connections, and institutional footholds that cannot be removed through Israeli strikes on Iran. If Tehran relies more heavily on Iraq after losses in Syria and Lebanon, pressure on Baghdad to restrain those organizations will increase. Israel may therefore find that dismantling one Iranian corridor pushes activity toward another arena where Israeli military action carries substantial diplomatic risks.

Three years after October 7, Netanyahu can credibly claim that Israel helped destroy much of the regional military architecture that existed when he made his promise. The Hezbollah of 2026 is not the Hezbollah of October 6, 2023. Syria no longer provides Iran with the same strategic environment. Iran can no longer assume that its own territory will remain protected while its partners attack Israel. Hamas has lost much of the infrastructure that allowed it to prepare October 7. Governments and terrorist organizations across the region have had to revise their assumptions about Israeli intelligence penetration, air power, long-range operations, and willingness to escalate.

The harder part of Netanyahu’s promise begins where destruction ends. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and the United States are all making decisions about the regional order according to their own security and economic interests. The Houthis have gained importance while Hezbollah has lost it. Türkiye has gained influence in Syria as Iran has lost it. Saudi Arabia has expanded security relationships while normalization with Israel has become more politically demanding. The Palestinian issue has returned to the center of Arab diplomacy after Netanyahu’s prewar strategy had treated it as increasingly separable from Israel’s regional integration. Iran has suffered extraordinary damage while continuing to search for cheaper and more geographically dispersed ways to impose costs.

Netanyahu promised to change the Middle East, and Israel has unquestionably helped produce a region profoundly different from the one that existed on October 6, 2023. His original “New Middle East,” however, was supposed to emerge through normalization, economic integration, Iranian containment, and expanding Israeli acceptance across the Arab world. The Middle East that emerged through three years of war has been produced through military destruction, state collapse, shifting alliances, revived conflicts, new security partnerships, and competition over the spaces left behind by weakened actors. Israel has become capable of reaching farther across that region than at any previous point in its history, while its ability to decide what political structures emerge after its missiles arrive remains considerably more limited. Netanyahu helped redraw the map. The struggle over who gets to fill it in has only become more crowded.

Dead, Defeated, or Rebranded? Islamism Three Years After October 7

On October 7, 2023, Hamas demonstrated what an entrenched Islamist organization could accomplish after years of territorial control, outside financing, military preparation, tunnel construction, weapons accumulation, intelligence collection, and Israeli misreading of its intentions. The attack also initiated the destruction of much of what Hamas had built. Israel killed senior leaders and commanders, demolished tunnels and weapons infrastructure, eliminated thousands of fighters, occupied large areas of Gaza, and subjected the organization to surveillance and military pressure far beyond anything it had experienced during previous rounds of fighting. By 2026, Hamas operated under conditions radically different from those that had allowed it to prepare October 7.

Yet Hamas also forced the Palestinian issue back into regional and international politics after years during which several Arab governments had increasingly pursued their foreign policies without making Palestinian demands a prerequisite for relations with Israel. Saudi-Israeli normalization had appeared increasingly plausible in 2023. The Abraham Accords had already demonstrated that Arab governments could establish formal relations with Israel while Israeli-Palestinian negotiations remained frozen. Three years of war in Gaza reversed much of that political environment. Saudi Arabia tied normalization more explicitly to Palestinian statehood, Arab governments faced sustained domestic pressure over Gaza, and reconstruction became inseparable from arguments about Palestinian governance and political status.

For Hamas, the destruction of its military infrastructure therefore occurred alongside an expansion of the political terrain on which its message could operate. Its propagandists could point to civilian deaths, displacement, destruction, Israeli military operations, American weapons, and Western diplomatic support for Israel without first persuading audiences to accept Hamas’s Islamist program. Anger over Gaza provided the entry point. Arguments about Western hypocrisy, Arab government weakness, or the failure of diplomacy could follow. Islamist claims that secular Arab governments had failed to defend Muslims could then enter a conversation that began with Gaza rather than theology.

This mechanism has particular value for organizations whose explicit ideological brands have become liabilities. The Muslim Brotherhood remains suppressed in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE continue treating Brotherhood political organization as a security threat, and the movement has never recovered the extraordinary opportunities created by the 2011 Arab uprisings. Mohamed Morsi’s brief presidency in Egypt ended more than a decade ago, while the political parties and movements associated with the Brotherhood across the region have faced bans, electoral losses, internal divisions, exile, or government pressure. A return to the post-2011 model of Brotherhood parties winning elections and entering governments has not occurred.

Brotherhood-associated networks, personalities, charities, religious institutions, media platforms, and diaspora organizations have had considerably more room to maneuver outside those states. Türkiye and Qatar have provided varying degrees of political or media space over the years, although both governments have repeatedly adjusted their relationships with Brotherhood figures as their diplomatic interests changed. European and North American political systems offer entirely different opportunities through civil society organizations, religious institutions, universities, advocacy groups, elections, media, and litigation. Formal membership in a Brotherhood organization becomes much less important when activists can advance overlapping arguments through institutions that have no formal organizational connection to the movement.

Gaza greatly widened the coalition available for such activity. Brotherhood sympathizers could appear at demonstrations alongside Palestinian nationalists, revolutionary socialists, progressive activists, Iranian-aligned groups, anti-war organizations, students, religious conservatives, and people motivated principally by civilian suffering. They did not need agreement on Islamic government, Sharia, Iran, women’s rights, democracy, sexuality, or even Hamas. Agreement about Israel, Gaza, American policy, or Palestinian rights was sufficient to create a common political space. Islamist activists could consequently reach audiences that would never attend an Islamist political meeting or respond favorably to an explicitly Brotherhood message.

Some of the most important ideological transmission occurs precisely inside these mixed environments. A university student may enter activism because of images from Gaza and encounter claims about colonialism, Western foreign policy, Zionism, Arab governments, Islamic history, and armed “resistance” through the same social networks. An activist who begins with humanitarian concerns may gradually enter online communities in which Hamas propaganda appears alongside legitimate reporting and advocacy. Religious arguments can then reinforce political ones, while algorithms continue recommending material based on previous engagement rather than ideological provenance. No recruiter needs to begin the conversation by asking the individual to embrace Islamism.

The same process does not require most participants to radicalize. A relatively small number of highly committed organizers can exert influence inside a much larger coalition if they possess institutional experience, established networks, fundraising capacity, media skills, or ideological coherence. Muslim Brotherhood movements historically invested heavily in precisely these forms of organization. Their ability to survive long periods of repression depended partly on social institutions and personal networks that could persist when political parties were banned or leaders imprisoned. The post-October 7 environment offers opportunities to apply those skills without reconstructing the Brotherhood as a mass electoral movement.

Salafi-jihadist organizations followed another path. ISIS never restored the territorial caliphate it lost in Iraq and Syria, and Al-Qaeda’s central organization never recovered the operational position it possessed before the global counterterrorism campaigns of the previous two decades. Security services learned how to track financing, intercept communications, penetrate cells, target commanders, disrupt travel, and cooperate across borders. Holding conspicuous territory also exposed ISIS to sustained military attack, making the spectacular caliphate model extraordinarily expensive to reproduce.

Across the Sahel, jihadists found conditions that rewarded a less centralized approach. Weak governments, military coups, communal conflicts, porous borders, corruption, limited state presence outside major cities, and the deterioration of Western security partnerships provided openings in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and neighboring areas. Fighters could intimidate villages, tax local populations, attack military outposts, exploit ethnic grievances, and gradually make government authority disappear from rural areas without declaring another Mosul or Raqqa. A national flag could continue flying over a capital while hundreds of communities experienced government primarily through occasional military operations.

Military governments that expelled Western forces also inherited the security burden they had accused foreign partners of mishandling. Russian involvement and new security arrangements did not automatically produce the intelligence coverage, mobility, local legitimacy, professional forces, or sustained administrative presence required to deny jihadists access to remote territory. Every abusive counterterrorism operation created another opportunity for recruiters to present the state as predatory. Every abandoned village gave armed groups another population from which to extract food, money, intelligence, or recruits.

Al-Shabaab has survived through similar adaptation in Somalia despite years of American strikes, Somali offensives, African Union operations, leadership losses, and international counterterrorism pressure. It developed taxation and extortion systems, intelligence networks, relationships with local communities, and mechanisms for punishing cooperation with the government. Its ability to collect money from economic activity in areas it did not formally govern showed how an Islamist terrorist organization could exercise authority without conventional territorial administration. Government forces could capture a town while Al-Shabaab retained enough local intelligence and coercive capacity to punish residents after troops departed.

The widening conflict around Yemen and the Red Sea created additional possibilities for interaction among actors that previously had little reason to cooperate. Smugglers already move weapons, people, fuel, and contraband across the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters. The Houthis require supply networks capable of surviving interdiction, while Al-Shabaab and other terrorist organizations need weapons and revenue. Ideological hostility between Sunni jihadists and a Zaydi movement aligned with Iran remains substantial, yet criminal intermediaries do not require theological agreement to sell weapons or transportation. Tactical transactions can occur where strategic alliances would be impossible.

The Houthis themselves acquired an international profile after October 7 that years of war against the Saudi-led coalition had never given them. By attacking Red Sea shipping and launching missiles and drones toward Israel, they could portray a Yemeni conflict through the language of Gaza and Islamic solidarity. Commercial vessels, American warships, Israeli territory, Saudi infrastructure, and international maritime routes became connected to a movement that had once been treated principally as a Yemeni or Saudi security problem. Repeated American and Israeli attacks then provided the Houthis with material for their own propaganda, allowing leaders to depict survival under bombardment as evidence of strength.

That survival carries ideological value even when military infrastructure is destroyed. Islamist armed organizations have repeatedly used the disparity between their own resources and those of their enemies to redefine victory. Hamas does not need to defeat the IDF conventionally to claim that continued existence represents resistance. Hezbollah can lose commanders and weapons while presenting its refusal to disarm as evidence that Israel failed to eliminate it. The Houthis can lose launch sites while emphasizing that American and Israeli forces still have to intercept their missiles. The military measurement and the propaganda measurement operate according to different standards.

Hezbollah paid a far greater price during the same period. Israel penetrated its communications and organizational networks, killed senior leaders and commanders, destroyed weapons and infrastructure, and damaged the Syrian supply environment that Iran had relied upon for years. Assad’s fall removed a government that had allowed Hezbollah and the IRGC to operate across Syrian territory. Lebanese political actors gained greater room to challenge Hezbollah’s independent weapons, while communities that had borne the physical consequences of the war had additional reasons to question whether the organization’s military strategy had protected them.

Hezbollah can still draw on religious identity, communal institutions, political representation, patronage networks, Iranian support, and the continuing Israeli military presence to resist disarmament. A Shiite family that depends on Hezbollah-associated institutions for employment, social assistance, education, or local protection does not make political choices solely by comparing missile inventories in 2023 and 2026. Lebanese state weakness has allowed Hezbollah to build relationships that extend into everyday life. Dismantling those relationships requires functioning alternatives, not simply the destruction of bunkers and launchers.

Iran has relied on that institutional depth across several countries. Iraqi groups associated with Tehran participate in politics, maintain armed formations, control businesses, receive access to state resources, and cultivate religious or communal constituencies. Their relationship with Iran does not erase their Iraqi interests. If Tehran has fewer resources after Israeli and American attacks, individual groups may seek additional domestic revenue or greater autonomy rather than disappear. Attempts by Baghdad to disarm them can threaten political careers, economic interests, patronage systems, and personal security simultaneously.

The loss of Assad forced another adjustment. Iran had used Syria as a geographic corridor, political ally, military operating environment, and connection to Hezbollah. A post-Assad Syrian government seeking Arab investment and Western sanctions relief has powerful incentives to prevent Tehran from restoring the previous arrangement. Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s own history, however, introduces a very different question about the trajectory of Sunni Islamism.

Al-Sharaa emerged from jihadism and subsequently spent years transforming the organization he led, abandoning some transnational commitments, focusing increasingly on Syria, constructing governing institutions in territory under his control, and eventually presenting himself as a national political leader. Once in Damascus, he needed diplomatic recognition, functioning ministries, foreign investment, reconstruction financing, sanctions relief, minority accommodation, professional security institutions, and relations with governments that jihadist ideology had once treated as enemies.

Every one of those requirements places pressure on ideological commitments developed during insurgency. Foreign fighters who were useful against Assad can become liabilities for a government seeking recognition. Religious absolutism can frighten investors and minorities whose cooperation the state needs. Independent armed formations can challenge central authority. Revolutionary rhetoric offers little help in restoring electricity, collecting customs revenue, reopening airports, negotiating trade arrangements, or persuading Gulf governments to finance reconstruction.

The eventual Syrian system will reveal far more than Al-Sharaa’s speeches about how much transformation occurred. The composition of the security services, treatment of Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, and other communities, role of Islamic law, status of former foreign fighters, independence of courts, freedom permitted to religious authorities, and relationship between armed groups and government institutions will show which parts of the old ideological project survived the transition into state power. A government can moderate its diplomatic language much faster than it changes the people and institutions exercising coercive authority.

Türkiye presents another route through which political Islam has changed form. Erdoğan’s political tradition emerged from Turkish Islamist politics, while two decades in power fused religious conservatism increasingly with nationalism, centralized presidential authority, economic interests, defense policy, and a broad conception of Turkish regional influence. Ankara’s engagement with Islamist movements therefore operates alongside military bases, drone exports, commercial agreements, intelligence relationships, and conventional state competition.

Assad’s fall expanded Ankara’s room in Syria. Turkish relationships with Syrian actors developed over years of war, and Türkiye already possessed troops, commercial connections, border infrastructure, and extensive knowledge of northern Syria. Its influence over Damascus can now intersect with reconstruction, Kurdish questions, defense arrangements, trade, and the organization of Syrian security forces. Political currents with Islamist origins consequently gained influence through the foreign policy of a powerful state rather than through an insurgent movement seizing another capital.

Arab governments have responded to these developments with considerable attention to the distinction between support for Palestinians and political empowerment of Islamists. Egypt has little interest in allowing anger over Gaza to revive the Muslim Brotherhood domestically. Saudi leaders can condemn Israeli actions, support Palestinian political claims, and finance humanitarian assistance while continuing to treat Brotherhood organization as a threat to the monarchy. The UAE can maintain diplomatic relations with Israel and simultaneously support Palestinian relief while preserving its longstanding hostility toward organized political Islam.

That effort becomes more difficult when younger audiences consume political information through digital environments in which institutional boundaries mean little. Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, encrypted messaging platforms, podcasts, livestreams, and short-form video place material from governments, journalists, terrorist organizations, activists, religious figures, propagandists, and ordinary witnesses in the same feed. Authentic footage may appear beside old video relabeled as current, edited clips, fabricated claims, or synthetic imagery. A user following Gaza can move rapidly from news reporting to highly ideological material without consciously deciding to enter an Islamist media environment.

Generative AI lowers the cost of producing that material. Propaganda can be translated into multiple languages, reformatted for different platforms, accompanied by synthetic narration, and tailored to audiences far more quickly than organizations once managed through dedicated media departments. A small network can produce material resembling the output of a much larger institution. Automated amplification can keep a claim circulating across platforms, while the emotional intensity of wartime imagery rewards speed and outrage long before verification catches up.

Younger audiences also approach these messages with historical memories different from those of the generation shaped by September 11. Someone born in 2005 was a child when ISIS declared its caliphate and may remember little of Al-Qaeda’s major attacks, the sectarian bloodshed of the Iraq war, or the political violence associated with earlier Islamist movements. Gaza may provide a far more immediate reference point. Recruiters can begin with images and experiences familiar to that generation rather than defend the record of organizations whose names carry heavy historical baggage.

A young person facing unemployment, corruption, poor public services, housing costs, political exclusion, or police abuse may encounter religious politics through arguments about justice and dignity rather than debates about the structure of an Islamic state. Islamist organizers have long understood the importance of connecting ideology to failures people experience personally. Charitable assistance, community networks, religious education, legal support, and social services can create relationships that doctrinal appeals alone cannot. Where secular opposition organizations have been destroyed, fragmented, or driven into exile, religious networks may retain social infrastructure long after formal Islamist parties disappear.

Three years of war have consequently rewarded Islamist actors capable of attaching themselves to local grievances and punished many of those that depended on conspicuous centralized structures. ISIS’s territorial caliphate gave its enemies identifiable territory, ministries, commanders, revenue sources, and military formations to attack. Hamas’s control of Gaza allowed Israel eventually to bring overwhelming force against infrastructure accumulated over years. Hezbollah’s huge military organization created capabilities that threatened Israel while also producing targets Israeli intelligence could map and penetrate.

A terrorist cell, decentralized propaganda network, informal fundraising operation, criminal intermediary, local insurgency, or loosely connected online community presents a different problem. Removing one commander may change little when participants require no central command to circulate propaganda or organize a small attack. Closing one organization may move activists into another institution. Blocking one financial channel may push transfers toward cryptocurrency, cash couriers, informal businesses, or criminal networks. A movement that stops insisting upon a single recognizable organizational identity becomes more difficult for governments to isolate politically.

Hamas has been battered in Gaza, Hezbollah has lost leaders and military capacity, the Muslim Brotherhood remains suppressed across several major Arab states, and ISIS has failed to recreate its caliphate. Meanwhile, Houthi leaders who once struggled for international recognition can command global attention by threatening Red Sea commerce, jihadists in the Sahel can expand into communities where governments barely function, former jihadists can enter ministries in Damascus, and Islamist narratives can circulate through Western political coalitions whose overwhelming majority would reject Islamist government for their own societies.

The next contest will therefore unfold inside institutions and conflicts that do not necessarily announce themselves as Islamist projects. A Syrian ministry staffed by former fighters, an Iraqi political party connected to an armed group, a Houthi-controlled port, a charity raising money around Gaza, a religious association in Europe, an encrypted propaganda channel, a smuggling network across the Gulf of Aden, or an armed group taxing villages in the Sahel can each advance different parts of an Islamist political ecosystem. Their participants may disagree bitterly with one another and occasionally fight one another. They do not require a unified movement to exploit the same wars, grievances, institutional failures, and declining confidence in governments that have repeatedly allowed political Islam to regenerate after earlier declarations of its defeat.

Cornered, Cracking, or Cutting a Deal?

Hezbollah entered October 2023 with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, experienced commanders, access to Syrian territory, and years of Iranian financing and weapons transfers behind it. Hamas governed Gaza and had accumulated the personnel, tunnels, weapons, and institutional infrastructure used to prepare the October 7 attacks. Assad still controlled Damascus, allowing Iran to move personnel and materiel through Syria toward Lebanon, while Iraqi armed groups extended Tehran’s reach toward US positions and the Gulf and the Houthis controlled much of northern Yemen. Three years later, Hezbollah has lost much of its senior leadership and military infrastructure, Hamas has lost leaders, fighters, tunnels, weapons, and territorial control, and Assad is gone. Syria’s new authorities have pursued relations with Arab states and the West and have dismantled parts of the environment through which Iranian personnel and weapons once moved. Tehran has devoted greater attention to Iraqi groups and the Houthis as a result, even as both operate according to domestic interests that Tehran cannot simply erase. The same government trying to preserve those relationships has spent 2026 repairing damage to Iranian military facilities, protecting its nuclear program, financing a wartime state, containing domestic unrest, and replacing senior personnel killed during direct attacks.

When the United States and Israel began direct military operations against Iran on February 28, Tehran answered with strikes against Israel, American military facilities, and targets connected to neighboring Arab states and used the Strait of Hormuz to spread the economic cost of the war. Washington imposed a blockade directed at Iranian ports and oil exports, bringing tanker movements and access to foreign currency directly into the conflict. Pakistan subsequently mediated negotiations that produced a 14-point memorandum of understanding in June. Iran sought relief from the blockade and restrictions on its oil exports, while Washington demanded restored passage through Hormuz and restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program. The United States temporarily waived some sanctions for 60 days after negotiations in Switzerland, and tanker traffic through Hormuz began increasing as the parties attempted to implement the arrangement. The agreement broke down and military operations resumed, yet Tehran returned to indirect diplomacy by the September UN General Assembly after enduring several additional months of warfare and economic pressure. Qatar carried messages between the parties, and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner communicated indirectly with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Iranian officials again raised the blockade, frozen assets, oil exports, and an end to fighting, while Washington returned to Hormuz and the nuclear program.

Iran’s offer to reopen Hormuz put an immediate price on a coercive tool Tehran had already demonstrated it was willing to use. Closing or disrupting the strait increased insurance costs, complicated tanker movements, threatened Asian energy supplies, and forced Washington to devote military resources to protecting maritime traffic. Restoring passage could therefore be exchanged for economic relief without requiring Iranian negotiators to begin by surrendering a nuclear capability. The same calculation appeared in the way Tehran approached its oil exports. Iranian leaders wanted the blockade relaxed because crude remained the country’s principal source of foreign currency, and foreign currency had become increasingly important as confidence in the rial collapsed. By early October, the dollar was trading at approximately 2.7 million rials on the free market after another severe depreciation. Iranians moved savings into dollars, other currencies, and gold. Importers needed progressively more rials to purchase the same quantity of foreign goods, merchants struggled to determine replacement prices for inventory, and salaried workers watched nominal wage increases disappear into higher food, housing, transportation, and medicine costs.

The Central Bank announced sales of as much as $2 billion through state banks at the end of September in an attempt to increase the supply of foreign currency. The rial continued falling after the intervention. Every dollar sold to support the exchange rate came from resources Iran also needed for imports, industrial equipment, weapons components, reconstruction, and government obligations, while the blockade made those dollars more difficult to replenish through oil exports. The problem became even more politically damaging when Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad resigned on October 5 amid allegations involving revenues from sanctioned oil sales. Reports concerning intermediaries used to move Iranian crude raised questions about approximately $2 billion allegedly owed to the National Iranian Oil Company. Parliament began examining the affair while Tehran was already struggling to generate foreign exchange. Years of sanctions had pushed Iranian oil into trading structures involving intermediaries, front companies, reflagged vessels, ship-to-ship transfers, informal payment mechanisms, and commercial entities designed to obscure the origin or ownership of transactions. Those methods allowed Iran to continue selling crude under sanctions, but they also gave politically connected intermediaries control over large sums moving beyond ordinary banking and auditing systems. A dispute involving billions in missing or inaccessible oil revenue therefore arrived at precisely the moment when the Central Bank was spending billions to keep the currency from falling farther.

The strain had already reached the personnel expected to protect the state. Teachers, nurses, civil servants, pensioners, and other salaried Iranians had spent years watching inflation erode their incomes, and by October the same complaints were appearing around military and law-enforcement compensation. An Iranian parliamentarian publicly described some military and police salaries as “embarrassing” on October 4. A junior policeman receiving a salary in rapidly depreciating rials still had to buy food, pay rent, cover transportation, and support relatives living under the same inflationary pressure as everyone else. Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei warned the following day that Iran’s enemies could exploit sanctions and public dissatisfaction and urged officials to avoid conduct that increased public anger. Earlier in 2026, merchants and shopkeepers had already demonstrated after currency instability made ordinary commerce increasingly difficult. Workers and students joined protests in several cities, and political slogans spread alongside economic grievances. Security forces answered with arrests, surveillance, communications restrictions, and lethal force. Ministries continued operating, provincial administrations remained under central control, security units continued deploying, prisons continued receiving detainees, and intelligence organizations continued identifying organizers. The same policemen whose salaries had become a subject of parliamentary embarrassment continued receiving and executing orders.

Ali Khamenei’s death during the war removed a leader who had spent more than three decades appointing commanders, judges, intelligence officials, clerics, council members, and managers of powerful foundations. Senior officials had built careers through relationships that he personally supervised, and institutions with competing economic and political interests had become accustomed to a final arbiter who controlled appointments and could settle disputes over access and authority. The difficulties became visible during the latest contacts with Washington. Vice President JD Vance said in early October that American officials were having trouble determining where final decision-making authority rested in Tehran. Washington was communicating with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi while questioning how much authority either possessed to commit the system to an agreement. Trump publicly raised the same issue. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the American characterization and argued that Washington understood Iran’s governing structure, while Mohsen Rezaei said that he, Pezeshkian, and Araghchi had jointly agreed on the conditions conveyed during the UNGA contacts. IRGC-affiliated Tasnim then criticized Araghchi over the engagement and questioned the authorization for his contact with the Americans when intermediaries had already delivered Iran’s demands. A limited diplomatic exchange in New York was therefore producing a domestic argument over authorization before either side had reached a major agreement.

Washington’s demands over enrichment have forced that internal argument onto territory Iranian leaders have spent years defining as central to national sovereignty. American officials have demanded a substantial reduction in enrichment capacity and action concerning Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, along with arrangements that would lengthen the time required to produce enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear device. An Iranian official involved in indirect contacts said Tehran would preserve the right to enrich uranium while discussing the details of enrichment, and Iranian officials have indicated at different stages that the 60 percent stockpile could be diluted or otherwise addressed through negotiations. That leaves room to bargain over enrichment levels, quantities, stockpile disposition, monitoring, inspections, and implementation periods while Iranian leaders continue telling domestic audiences that enrichment remains on Iranian soil. Tehran has spent huge sums on the program, endured years of sanctions, lost scientists and military personnel, and absorbed attacks on nuclear facilities while presenting enrichment as a sovereign right. An arrangement allowing lower-level domestic enrichment while removing or diluting highly enriched material would give Iranian officials a way to preserve that claim after accepting restrictions Washington could present as a major concession.

The argument over who moves first has repeatedly obstructed that possibility. Washington has sought observable Iranian action before lifting major economic pressure, while Tehran has pressed for movement on the blockade, frozen assets, oil exports, and the war before making its most expensive nuclear concessions. Qatar resumed shuttle diplomacy around UNGA, and Iranian and American officials exchanged proposals through intermediaries. Trump rejected the latest Iranian proposal, yet communications continued. Tehran had already gone through the June memorandum, watched it fail, returned to military confrontation, endured additional months of blockade, and then authorized another diplomatic channel. Each month added another round of government expenditures and military replacement costs while restrictions on oil exports constrained the foreign currency needed to cover them. Iranian negotiators therefore entered the autumn talks carrying demands connected directly to the government’s ability to earn dollars, move oil, stabilize the rial, and finance the war.

The Houthis have given Tehran another way to raise those costs outside Iranian territory. Their missiles and drones can threaten Red Sea shipping, Saudi infrastructure, and Israel, forcing the United States and regional governments to spend money on interception, naval deployments, air defense, and protection of commercial traffic. Attacks around Bab el-Mandeb affect insurance premiums, freight rates, shipping schedules, and traffic through the Suez Canal, allowing a comparatively inexpensive weapons system launched from Yemen to generate costs across several economies. Saudi Arabia has responded by increasing military coordination around Yemen, including contacts with Türkiye and Pakistan, while Saudi-backed Yemeni forces have prepared for operations against Houthi positions. Riyadh has tied security around Bab el-Mandeb to its own national security calculations, and the prospect of a renewed campaign against Houthi positions forces Tehran to consider how much equipment, technical assistance, intelligence support, and money it can devote to Yemen while Iranian infrastructure itself requires reconstruction.

Iraq presents a different financial and political problem. Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya expressed support in early October for an Iraqi Shiite Coordination Framework arrangement concerning weapons. The reported terms allowed continued access to arms under restrictions and therefore fell short of Washington’s demand for full disarmament, but the negotiations brought the independent military role of Iran-aligned organizations into an Iraqi political process during a regional war. Baghdad has to consider the possibility that attacks launched by groups operating from Iraqi territory could bring American or Israeli retaliation onto Iraqi soil. The organizations themselves possess parliamentary relationships, businesses, government connections, security positions, and constituencies that give them interests extending beyond Tehran’s immediate needs. Iran can provide weapons, financing, training, and political support, but Iraqi leaders and armed organizations make decisions inside an Iraqi system whose survival and economic interests can diverge from Iran’s.

Hezbollah demands a much more expensive form of support. Israeli operations destroyed weapons, communications systems, command infrastructure, and personnel accumulated over years, while Assad’s fall removed the Syrian environment through which Iran had supplied Lebanon. Rebuilding a large missile arsenal requires manufacturing, procurement, transportation, storage, trained personnel, secure communications, and routes capable of surviving Israeli intelligence penetration. Iran must finance those requirements while replacing its own damaged air defenses, missile facilities, communications systems, military command infrastructure, and nuclear installations. The Central Bank is simultaneously selling foreign currency to defend the rial, government employees are demanding salaries capable of keeping pace with inflation, industry needs imported components and reliable electricity, and the oil sector requires investment at a moment when export revenue is constrained. Tehran can continue supporting Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi groups, but every shipment and transfer now competes with demands generated inside Iran by the same war.

Arrests, executions, surveillance, and prosecutions have continued as those economic pressures accumulate. Iranian security agencies have pursued alleged spies and collaborators and have used wartime security claims against political opponents. Activists organizing inside Iran operate under conditions in which a demonstration can lead to imprisonment and accusations of helping Israel or the United States. Monarchists, secular republicans, leftists, ethnic organizations, labor activists, women’s rights groups, and former regime insiders continue arguing over leadership and Iran’s political future, while diaspora organizations compete for influence from outside the country. The 2026 protests mobilized merchants, workers, students, and other constituencies across multiple cities, yet they did not create a national command capable of coordinating sustained strikes, defections, demonstrations, and territorial resistance. Oil and transportation workers retain particular leverage because prolonged work stoppages could affect government revenue and the movement of goods, and Iranian officials remember the role such strikes played during the collapse of the monarchy in 1978 and 1979. During the current unrest, police, Basij, IRGC units, intelligence organizations, and prison authorities have continued carrying out orders despite the deterioration of salaries and living standards.

Tehran has meanwhile kept putting specific assets onto the negotiating table. Iranian representatives have discussed reopening Hormuz and sought a phased arrangement involving the American blockade. They returned to indirect contacts after the June memorandum failed and have kept Qatar and Pakistan involved after subsequent proposals failed to produce an agreement. Officials have defended domestic enrichment while leaving enrichment levels and the disposition of highly enriched uranium available for discussion. Iranian officials have sought access to frozen assets and oil revenue while the Central Bank burns through dollars supporting the rial. The government continues financing the Houthis as Yemen again becomes a major arena of Saudi security policy, maintains relationships with Iraqi groups whose weapons have become the subject of negotiations in Baghdad, and faces the cost of rebuilding Hezbollah without the Syrian supply environment it once relied upon.

A merchant in Tehran can now go home after closing his shop, calculate the value of that day’s sales in dollars, and discover that replacing the same inventory will cost more when he opens again. A police officer ordered to control the next protest can leave his shift and encounter the same food and housing prices. His commander depends on a government whose parliament is already discussing inadequate security-sector salaries. The government paying both men is selling scarce dollars into the currency market while fighting to restore access to oil revenue that the American blockade has constrained.

That evening, another message can arrive through Doha or Islamabad. Washington wants movement on enrichment and Hormuz. Tehran wants the blockade eased and oil moving again. Iranian officials have to decide how much enriched uranium they can surrender, dilute, or place under restrictions while preserving domestic enrichment, and American officials have to decide how much economic pressure they will release in return. By the time the intermediaries carry another answer, the Tehran currency market will have opened again, another tanker will be waiting for clearance or protection, another government payroll will be approaching, and another Iranian official will have to decide whether the price of waiting has become higher than the price of the concession Washington is demanding.

The House America Built, China Gets to Use

Three years after October 7, has China’s hand in the Middle East actually been strengthened by the region’s instability and by Trump’s refusal to act as the security guarantor many US partners once expected Washington to be? The answer has to be tested against what regional governments have done as wars spread from Gaza into Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have continued buying American weapons and relying on US military capabilities while expanding political and economic engagement with Beijing and developing additional security relationships with Türkiye and Pakistan. Iran has become more dependent on Chinese oil purchases as sanctions and war restrict its alternatives, giving Beijing access to Tehran at precisely the moment Gulf governments need channels capable of influencing Iranian behavior. China has used that position without offering to defend Gulf territory or committing Chinese forces to the wars destabilizing the region. The question is therefore visible in the choices regional governments are already making: when Washington retains the military power to protect them but appears increasingly unwilling to provide the kind of predictable security guarantee they want, how much additional room does that create for China to shape their economic relationships and diplomacy?

Saudi officials confronted that question during the 2026 Iran war. Riyadh had spent months trying to contain an escalation capable of exposing Saudi territory and disrupting the economic projects on which the kingdom has spent hundreds of billions of dollars. Once Iranian attacks reached Gulf states and fighting disrupted Hormuz, Saudi officials needed access to Tehran as urgently as they needed military protection. Washington could deploy aircraft and warships, but it had few direct political channels into the Iranian leadership. Beijing had spent years preserving precisely those channels. Chinese purchases of Iranian crude continued to provide Tehran with foreign currency under sanctions, while Saudi Arabia had built an increasingly important commercial relationship with China. Riyadh could ask Beijing to carry messages to a government that depended heavily on continued Chinese economic engagement.

The value of that relationship became particularly clear around Hormuz. China imports a large share of its energy from the Gulf, giving Beijing its own reason to press Tehran to restore navigation. Iranian leaders also knew that disrupting Chinese energy supplies risked antagonizing the country purchasing much of the crude they could still sell. Saudi Arabia could therefore appeal to Chinese interests rather than asking Beijing to choose between Riyadh and Tehran. China could press Iran because continued disruption threatened Chinese energy security and the Gulf economies that buy Chinese goods and host Chinese investments.

Chinese officials were also communicating with the Houthis as threats against Red Sea shipping continued. Beijing sought assurances concerning the passage of Chinese vessels through waters where Houthi missiles and drones had altered commercial shipping patterns. The Houthis had received Iranian weapons and technical assistance and had spent years threatening Saudi territory and Saudi-backed forces in Yemen. China nevertheless retained enough access to communicate directly with them about Chinese commercial traffic. US and allied forces were simultaneously intercepting missiles and drones and conducting military operations against Houthi positions. Beijing could negotiate over the exposure of its own ships while Washington absorbed much of the military cost generated by the threat.

Saudi and Chinese officials remained in direct contact as warfare disrupted Gulf energy and commercial planning. Riyadh sought Chinese involvement in efforts to restore navigation and contain escalation with Iran. Xi Jinping called for a ceasefire and the reopening of Hormuz while promoting greater regional control over security decisions. Saudi officials were simultaneously dealing with American military institutions that remained essential to the kingdom’s defense. The two conversations served different purposes. American officials controlled military capabilities capable of intercepting attacks; Chinese officials controlled a political and commercial relationship that gave them unusual access to Tehran.

Riyadh also expanded security cooperation with Türkiye and Pakistan. Both countries could discuss military cooperation in forms Beijing had shown little interest in providing, allowing Saudi Arabia to strengthen relationships with states prepared to assume security responsibilities while preserving China as an economic and diplomatic partner. China did not have to persuade Saudi Arabia to abandon American weapons or exclude Turkish and Pakistani military cooperation. Beijing could concentrate on the areas where its access produced leverage and allow other states to carry responsibilities that required soldiers, aircraft, air defenses, or naval forces.

Egypt encountered the same Chinese diplomacy from another direction. During Xi’s September visit, discussions with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi included regional security at a time when conflict had disrupted Red Sea traffic and threatened revenues associated with the Suez Canal. Chinese firms had already become involved in major Egyptian development projects, giving Cairo reasons to preserve a strong relationship with Beijing regardless of its longstanding military relationship with Washington. Xi could discuss regional stability with the Egyptian leadership while Chinese companies continued working inside an economy suffering from the effects of wars China had avoided entering.

The Gulf economic relationship had also changed the context in which those conversations occurred. Chinese companies had become deeply involved in projects connected to Saudi and Emirati economic transformation well before the Iran war. Gulf energy continued flowing eastward toward Chinese customers as Chinese capital and companies moved in the other direction. Those projects created long-term commercial relationships extending beyond individual crises. Saudi officials considering how aggressively to pressure China over Iran therefore had to account for Chinese participation in their own economic plans, while Chinese officials deciding how far to support Tehran had to account for far larger commercial opportunities across the Gulf.

Trump’s reduction of American development activity created additional openings outside the wealthiest Gulf states. The dismantling of much of USAID removed programs through which Washington had maintained relationships with governments and communities far beyond conventional defense cooperation. Chinese state institutions and companies could approach those governments through financing and construction agreements tied to projects local leaders wanted completed. A government that lost an American development program could still negotiate a Chinese-backed project without altering its military relationship with Washington. Each agreement gave Beijing another institutional relationship inside countries where the American presence was contracting.

Iran’s economic deterioration simultaneously increased the importance of Chinese oil purchases. Tehran entered the war after years of sanctions had already restricted access to international finance, and the blockade placed additional pressure on the government’s ability to generate foreign currency. Chinese buyers remained among the few customers capable of absorbing large quantities of Iranian crude. Every barrel sold into that market helped Tehran obtain money needed for imports and government spending at a time when the rial was collapsing. Beijing could influence Iranian calculations through transactions Tehran needed to keep occurring.

Chinese support stopped well before military protection. Beijing condemned attacks on Iran and repeatedly called for negotiations. Chinese forces did not defend Iranian nuclear facilities when they came under attack, and Chinese naval forces did not challenge the American blockade. Iranian leaders therefore had to preserve a relationship in which China received discounted energy and political access while Tehran continued bearing the military risks associated with its confrontation with Washington and Israel.

The eventual reconstruction of damaged Iranian infrastructure could place Chinese companies in an even stronger negotiating position. Sanctions restrict Tehran’s access to Western capital, while Chinese firms already have experience operating inside the Iranian market. Iranian officials seeking investment after the war will negotiate with a limited pool of companies capable of taking the political and financial risks involved. Beijing can allow commercial firms and state institutions to bargain over access while Iranian leaders face immediate pressure to restore economic activity.

The relationship looks very different from the Saudi and Emirati side. Gulf governments possess capital and can offer Chinese companies access to major development projects. Beijing wants those opportunities, and Gulf leaders know it. They can negotiate with China without approaching it as dependent clients. Their ability to work simultaneously with American and Chinese companies becomes particularly useful when Washington restricts access to sensitive technologies because of concerns about Chinese involvement. Gulf governments can use the existence of competing suppliers to resist arrangements they consider too restrictive.

Defense procurement has created similar openings. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have purchased Chinese military equipment when desired American systems were unavailable or difficult to obtain. Those purchases introduced Chinese manufacturers into markets where American and European suppliers had enjoyed longstanding advantages. They also allowed Gulf governments to demonstrate that restrictions imposed in Washington could send business elsewhere. China gained access to military customers without promising that Chinese forces would defend those customers during a war.

The scale of American military power in the region remains visible whenever fighting begins. Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet, Qatar hosts major American facilities, and US forces operate through an extensive regional network developed over decades. American aircraft, intelligence systems, logistics, naval forces, and air defenses can respond to threats on a scale China has never attempted in the Middle East. Beijing maintains its base in Djibouti and has expanded military contacts with regional governments, yet Chinese forces remained largely outside the wars that followed October 7.

Houthi attacks exposed the advantages Beijing could extract from that arrangement. Chinese diplomats sought understandings concerning Chinese shipping while American and allied forces intercepted incoming weapons. The protection of broader commercial navigation required expensive naval deployments and repeated military operations. Beijing could preserve political relations with Iran and communicate with the Houthis while Chinese goods continued traveling through a maritime system whose defense depended heavily on other governments.

Hormuz produced an even more consequential version of the same arrangement. Chinese economic interests suffer immediately when Gulf energy traffic stops, yet Beijing could respond by pressing Tehran through diplomatic and commercial channels. American forces remained responsible for much of the military activity required to protect navigation. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf governments therefore had reasons to call both capitals. Washington could provide the military capabilities surrounding the waterway, while Beijing could speak directly to the government capable of disrupting it.

The Saudi-Iranian agreement announced in Beijing in March 2023 had already established the diplomatic channel before October 7. Iraq and Oman had hosted earlier rounds of dialogue, after which Saudi and Iranian representatives traveled to Beijing for the agreement restoring diplomatic relations. China gained direct involvement in one of the region’s most consequential bilateral relationships. When war later placed Saudi-Iranian relations under renewed pressure, Riyadh and Tehran already had experience using Beijing as an intermediary.

Iran’s dependence on Chinese oil purchases gave Tehran a reason to listen when Beijing called. Saudi Arabia’s economic relationship with China gave Riyadh confidence that Chinese officials would take Saudi concerns seriously. Beijing could communicate with each government without assuming the military obligations either relationship might have required from a conventional ally. Chinese officials could leave the most dangerous security responsibilities to states already committed to performing them.

Trump’s approach has made that arrangement easier for Gulf governments to accept. Regional leaders have watched Washington demand greater burden-sharing while retaining the freedom to make military decisions capable of exposing their countries to retaliation. They have also watched American policy change significantly between administrations. A government planning infrastructure or defense policy over twenty years has to account for the possibility that another election in Washington can change sanctions policy, military priorities, weapons approvals, or diplomatic relationships. Chinese policy has offered greater continuity in several of the commercial relationships Gulf governments care about, even though Beijing provides far less military protection.

A Saudi official confronting another crisis in Hormuz can speak with American counterparts about military protection and then ask Beijing to use its relationship with Tehran. Pakistani or Turkish officials may enter a separate discussion about Saudi defense requirements. None of those conversations requires Riyadh to choose a permanent camp. The official can seek a different capability from each government according to what Saudi Arabia needs at that moment.

The Chinese official receiving the Saudi call can then contact Tehran, where the government needs continued access to Chinese buyers. Iranian officials know that damaging Chinese interests could jeopardize one of the economic relationships still providing the country with substantial revenue. Beijing can carry the Saudi message and press for restraint while keeping Chinese forces away from the battlefield. Chinese companies continue doing business throughout the exchange.

A tanker approaching Hormuz may be carrying Gulf crude toward a Chinese refinery through waters watched by American military assets. If Tehran threatens the route, officials in Beijing can call Iranian counterparts and remind them how much Iran depends on the Chinese market. Gulf governments can reinforce the message through their own Chinese relationships. If the threat turns into an attack, the warships and aircraft responding are still far more likely to be American or operated by US regional partners. Beijing gets a place in the room before the missile is fired, access to both governments during the crisis, and commercial opportunities after it ends, while someone else still has to stop the missile.

Everyone at the Table Except the Arabs?

Who benefited from Arab fragmentation after October 7? Arab governments could agree at summits on a Gaza ceasefire and opposition to Palestinian displacement, then return home to pursue policies shaped by different threats and relationships. Egypt concentrated on preventing displacement into Sinai and protecting Suez. Qatar retained its channel to Hamas. Saudi Arabia tried to contain the regional war and restore a Palestinian political track. The UAE preserved its relationship with Israel. Iraq struggled with armed groups capable of attacking American forces from Iraqi territory. When Assad fell, Damascus became another arena in which Arab governments pursued different partners and outcomes. By 2026, even Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which had spent much of the previous decade acting together on major regional questions, were backing competing forces in Yemen and Sudan and fighting over the rules governing oil production.

The Saudi-Emirati rupture became impossible to disguise in Yemen at the end of 2025. UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council forces moved into areas of southern and eastern Yemen that Riyadh regarded as central to Saudi security and to the survival of the internationally recognized Yemeni state. Saudi-backed forces counterattacked in January 2026 and rapidly reversed the STC advance. The UAE withdrew its remaining military personnel, while the political and armed networks it had cultivated over years remained part of southern Yemen. Saudi Arabia supported the territorial integrity of Yemen and worked through the Presidential Leadership Council. Abu Dhabi had spent years supporting southern actors seeking a separate political future. The Houthis watched their principal Arab adversaries spend resources contesting the structure of the territory they were supposedly defending against Houthi expansion.

The consequences appeared again when Houthi forces renewed operations along the Red Sea coast later in 2026. Saudi Arabia had to reorganize anti-Houthi forces whose commanders had different patrons and different ideas about Yemen’s future. Fighters associated with the former UAE-backed southern structures retained grievances against Saudi-supported formations. Other forces remained tied to local commanders whose authority depended on tribal or territorial relationships. Riyadh could provide money, weapons, and air power, yet commanders who had spent years competing for territory and foreign sponsorship could not instantly become a unified army because the Houthis had begun another offensive. Houthi forces captured additional positions along the Red Sea coast while Saudi Arabia tried to reconstruct a coherent military front from organizations that had spent years preparing for different political outcomes.

Sudan placed Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on opposing sides of another Arab war. Saudi Arabia maintained relations with the Sudanese Armed Forces and hosted negotiations in Jeddah aimed at ending the conflict. The UAE faced repeated accusations of supporting the Rapid Support Forces, allegations Abu Dhabi denied. Egypt aligned closely with the Sudanese military because Cairo regarded the survival of the Sudanese state and the position of the armed forces as directly connected to Egyptian security on the Nile and its southern border. Sudanese commanders could therefore deal separately with Cairo, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi while the war destroyed cities, displaced civilians, and divided the country between competing centers of armed authority.

Oil carried the Saudi-Emirati dispute into an institution that had survived Arab wars, revolutions, embargoes, and changes of government for more than half a century. Abu Dhabi had invested heavily in additional production capacity and repeatedly objected to arrangements limiting how much of that capacity it could use. Saudi Arabia had invested in spare capacity while using coordinated production to influence prices and stabilize revenue. Their disagreement had already erupted publicly in 2021 over the baseline used to calculate Emirati production limits. Subsequent compromises postponed the confrontation as the UAE continued increasing the amount of crude it could produce.

On April 28, 2026, the UAE announced that it would leave OPEC effective May 1. Abu Dhabi had belonged to the organization since 1967. Its expanding production capacity left a substantial difference between the amount of crude it could produce and the volume available under coordinated production arrangements. Saudi Arabia remained OPEC’s largest producer and retained far greater spare capacity. Abu Dhabi’s departure removed one of the organization’s most important Gulf producers and gave the UAE greater freedom to determine production according to its own investment and revenue calculations.

The Iran war made those calculations more urgent. Disruption around Hormuz threatened exports just as Saudi Arabia and the UAE were separating on production policy. Both countries had spent years developing infrastructure capable of moving some crude around the strait. Saudi Arabia could send oil westward through the East-West pipeline toward Yanbu. The UAE could send crude toward Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. During a conflict in which Tehran could threaten Hormuz, each government possessed its own route for protecting part of its exports and could make decisions according to national requirements rather than waiting for a common Gulf response.

Competition had already spread into the economic programs intended to prepare both states for the post-oil era. Saudi Arabia used government contracting requirements to encourage multinational companies to establish regional headquarters in the kingdom, directly challenging the role Dubai had spent decades developing. Riyadh invested heavily in aviation and tourism while expanding logistics and financial services. Emirati companies and sovereign institutions continued pursuing many of the same international businesses and investors. A company choosing where to establish its Gulf headquarters increasingly faced competing offers from two states whose economic models were moving into some of the same industries.

Israel encountered those divisions as Gaza made relations with Israel politically harder throughout much of the Arab world. The UAE preserved the diplomatic relationship established through the Abraham Accords. Saudi normalization stalled as the Palestinian issue returned to the center of regional diplomacy. Egypt and Jordan retained their peace treaties while dealing with domestic anger over the war. Qatar remained central to negotiations because it had access to Hamas. Israeli officials could therefore deal with each Arab government through a different relationship and under different conditions.

Israeli forces fought Hamas without an Arab army entering Gaza on Hamas’s behalf. Egypt reinforced the Sinai border and worked to prevent displacement across it. Jordan concentrated on protecting its own borders and managing domestic political pressure. Qatar carried messages in negotiations. The UAE kept diplomatic channels open. Saudi Arabia pressed for a Palestinian political process while keeping normalization off the table under the conditions created by the war. Arab capitals exerted pressure through the instruments each government considered compatible with its own interests.

The argument over Gaza’s political future exposed another problem. Reconstruction would require billions of dollars from Arab and international donors. Egypt had security concerns connected to the border. Qatar had relationships with Hamas and experience financing Gaza. The UAE had developed its own Palestinian contacts and wanted influence over reconstruction. Saudi Arabia could provide major financial resources but wanted a political outcome capable of surviving beyond another temporary ceasefire. Israel retained military control over crucial decisions on access and security. Palestinian political institutions remained divided. Every discussion about who would govern Gaza therefore opened another negotiation over which Arab government would pay, which Palestinian actors would participate, and what Israel would permit.

Syria opened another field after Assad fell. Türkiye entered the post-Assad period with troops near the border, relationships built through years of support for Syrian opposition forces, and direct military leverage over developments in the north. Damascus needed security assistance and economic investment while trying to consolidate authority across territory fragmented by years of war. Ankara could offer training and commercial access while pressing the new Syrian authorities over the future of the SDF. Gulf governments could provide reconstruction money, but geography gave Türkiye an instrument they could not duplicate.

The SDF negotiations forced Damascus to deal simultaneously with Türkiye and Washington. Ankara wanted Kurdish armed structures near its border dismantled. Washington wanted to preserve forces that had fought ISIS and prevent a security vacuum in northeastern Syria. Damascus wanted control over territory and state institutions. Gulf governments interested in Syrian reconstruction had to decide how much money to commit before those questions were settled. Türkiye could apply pressure directly across the border while Arab capitals negotiated from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Iran had spent years using divisions inside Arab states to create relationships with organizations possessing armed power beyond effective central control. Hezbollah accumulated weapons and political influence in Lebanon. Iran-backed Iraqi organizations entered parliament and state institutions while retaining armed structures. Iranian assistance allowed the Houthis to develop increasingly sophisticated missiles and drones. Assad’s Syria had provided access connecting Iran to Lebanon until the government collapsed.

October 7 activated several of those relationships. Hezbollah attacked Israel from Lebanese territory. Iraqi groups attacked American positions. The Houthis targeted commercial shipping and launched weapons toward Israel. Beirut lacked the power to determine Hezbollah’s military decisions. Baghdad faced pressure from Washington over attacks conducted by groups operating inside Iraq. Yemen’s internationally recognized government had no authority over the territory from which Houthi missiles were launched. Israeli and American retaliation could strike Arab territory after armed organizations made decisions outside the effective control of the governments formally responsible for those states.

Israeli operations subsequently killed senior Hezbollah commanders and destroyed large amounts of its military infrastructure. Assad’s fall disrupted the Syrian environment Iran had used to supply Lebanon. Tehran consequently relied more heavily on relationships that remained useful in Iraq and Yemen. Iraqi organizations had political and economic interests requiring them to consider their position inside the Iraqi state. The Houthis possessed territory, domestic security structures, taxation, and their own political ambitions, giving them greater freedom to use Iranian assistance for objectives rooted in Yemen.

The Saudi-Emirati dispute made that freedom especially valuable to the Houthis. Saudi Arabia had spent years trying to negotiate its way out of the Yemen war while Abu Dhabi cultivated southern forces with a different view of Yemen’s future. When the Houthi threat again required military action, Riyadh inherited an anti-Houthi camp shaped by years of competing sponsorship. Every disagreement over southern independence or control of local territory consumed political attention and military resources that could otherwise have been directed against Houthi forces.

Houthi operations also imposed costs on Egypt without requiring the group to attack Egyptian territory. Shipping companies redirected vessels away from the Red Sea, cutting traffic through the Suez Canal and depriving Egypt of badly needed foreign currency. Cairo could condemn the attacks and support restored navigation, but Egyptian policy toward Yemen differed from Saudi policy because Egypt had little appetite for another direct military campaign there. A weapon launched from Yemen could therefore impose economic costs on Egypt while forcing Saudi Arabia to bear much of the military response.

China entered these fractures through commercial relationships. Saudi Arabia could ask Beijing to press Tehran because China remained one of Iran’s essential oil customers. The UAE could develop its own Chinese partnerships independently of Riyadh. Egypt could seek Chinese investment while maintaining American military cooperation. Beijing could communicate with the Houthis about Chinese shipping without accepting responsibility for Saudi security. Each capital had its own reason for dealing with China and its own terms for doing so.

Washington also dealt with Arab governments through separate channels. Qatar handled negotiations involving Hamas. Egypt participated in ceasefire diplomacy and controlled a crucial border. Saudi Arabia discussed its own security requirements with the Trump administration. The UAE pursued separate defense and technology negotiations. Iraq faced American pressure over armed groups operating from its territory. Washington could negotiate each problem with the government holding the relevant access or capability.

Russia preserved relationships through the same political geography. Gulf governments continued dealing with Moscow over energy and investment even when Russian and Gulf interests diverged elsewhere. Egypt retained its own Russian relationship. Post-Assad Syria had to decide how to handle Russian military facilities left from the previous government. Moscow could negotiate separately with Damascus over its presence while maintaining economic and diplomatic channels with Arab governments elsewhere.

Qatar acquired extraordinary diplomatic relevance because it had maintained a relationship with Hamas that other Arab governments had either rejected or could not reproduce. Once hostage negotiations became central to the Gaza war, American and Israeli officials needed a government capable of reaching Hamas leaders. Doha’s access became valuable precisely because Arab policy toward Hamas had never been unified. Egypt retained its own mediation role through geography and longstanding intelligence channels, allowing Cairo and Doha to occupy different positions inside the same negotiations.

Türkiye could work through another set of relationships. Ankara could press Damascus over the SDF while expanding cooperation with Saudi Arabia. It could maintain strong political rhetoric over Gaza while trading with different regional partners. Turkish defense companies could seek Gulf customers while the Turkish military increased its role in Syria. Arab governments that once coordinated against Turkish support for political Islam had repaired relations with Ankara according to their own bilateral calculations.

The Saudi-UAE divide then intersected with these outside relationships. Riyadh could work more closely with Türkiye and Pakistan on security while Abu Dhabi pursued its own network. Saudi Arabia could remain central to OPEC after the UAE left. Abu Dhabi could use additional production capacity according to its own commercial calculations. Their competition over investment could encourage each to offer foreign companies better terms or stronger incentives. Outside governments and corporations could negotiate with one Gulf capital while using opportunities in the other as leverage.

A Chinese company choosing between projects in Saudi Arabia and the UAE could seek concessions from both. A Western multinational deciding where to establish its regional headquarters could compare Saudi government contracts against the commercial advantages of remaining in Dubai. An oil buyer could negotiate with producers whose approaches to output were becoming less coordinated. A Yemeni commander could seek support from a patron whose preferred political future differed from that of another Arab government. A Sudanese armed actor could search for money or diplomatic protection among governments pursuing different outcomes in Khartoum.

The Palestinian issue offered outside actors another route into Arab politics. Iran could invoke Gaza while supporting armed organizations that Arab governments regarded as threats. Türkiye could use strong public support for the Palestinian cause to expand its political profile. China could call for a ceasefire and Palestinian statehood without carrying responsibility for the negotiations or military costs surrounding Gaza. Russia could use the war to attack American policy and court Arab public opinion while continuing its own relationships across the region.

Arab publics were also watching governments pursue policies that often diverged from the anger visible on the street. Demonstrations over Gaza placed pressure on governments that wanted to preserve relations with Washington or existing treaties with Israel. Iranian and Turkish media could exploit that gap. Islamist movements could argue that Arab governments had failed Palestinians. Russia and China could point to American support for Israel when challenging Washington’s claims about international law. Each narrative became easier to circulate when Arab governments themselves could offer no common political response capable of producing a different outcome in Gaza.

By the autumn of 2026, an Emirati tanker could leave a country that had exited OPEC while a Saudi tanker departed from a state still trying to coordinate production through it. Across the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi-backed Yemeni forces were fighting Houthis after years in which Saudi Arabia and the UAE had cultivated different Yemeni partners. Across the Red Sea, Sudanese forces continued fighting as Cairo, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi approached the conflict through different relationships. Farther north, Türkiye had acquired substantial influence in post-Assad Syria, Israel continued determining military conditions around Gaza, and Iran retained armed partners in Iraq and Yemen.

At an Arab summit, representatives from those governments could still occupy the same conference hall and approve language on Gaza, Syria, Sudan, or regional security. Once the meeting ended, their delegations returned to separate negotiations. One government called Washington for weapons, another called Beijing about investment or Iran, another dealt with Türkiye over Syria, another mediated with Hamas, and another backed an armed partner whose objectives conflicted with the government supported by its neighbor. The communiqué belonged to everyone for a few hours. The leverage created by the disagreements belonged to whoever picked up the individual phone calls afterward.

From October 7 to the Culture War

Did Hamas win the culture war in the West after October 7? Before Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, protesters in Western cities were already using the language of genocide, decolonization, resistance, and settler colonialism. On October 8, as Israeli authorities were still identifying bodies and searching communities attacked the previous day, demonstrators gathered in Times Square in support of the Palestinian cause. Thirty-four Harvard student organizations signed a statement declaring the Israeli government “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Students for Justice in Palestine chapters began organizing demonstrations. In Britain, demonstrations followed within days. Israel had begun airstrikes against Gaza, but the ground campaign, prolonged siege, destruction of entire neighborhoods, and enormous Palestinian civilian death toll that would later dominate opposition to Israel had yet to occur.

The word “genocide” appeared during those opening days. Activists used it at demonstrations and across social media well before South Africa filed its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in December 2023. The accusation subsequently became ubiquitous as the Gaza campaign produced extensive civilian casualties and destruction. By the time international lawyers were arguing over the Genocide Convention, activists had already spent months using the word as an established description of Israeli conduct. The ICJ’s later provisional measures entered political arguments as confirmation even though the court had issued no final ruling finding Israel responsible for genocide.

Students for Justice in Palestine already had chapters across American universities on October 6. Jewish Voice for Peace had spent years organizing against Zionism. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns had operated on campuses and inside professional organizations long before the Hamas attack. Settler-colonial interpretations of Israel had become familiar within parts of Western academia. Amnesty International had accused Israel of apartheid in 2022, following similar accusations from Human Rights Watch and the Israeli organization B’Tselem. Activists entering the streets after October 7 therefore already possessed organizations, terminology, literature, social-media networks, and an established account of Israel as a colonial or apartheid state.

Hamas called its attack “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Its statements connected the assault to Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian prisoners, Israeli occupation, and previous Israeli actions. Hamas officials presented the killings and kidnappings as an eruption produced by decades of Israeli policy. Western activists used many of the same historical reference points without adopting Hamas’s Islamist ideology. Occupation, blockade, settlements, displacement, and 1948 appeared repeatedly in explanations offered for why October 7 had occurred.

Some statements went beyond explanation. Protesters described the attack as resistance. Others called it decolonization. Images of paragliders, one of the methods Hamas terrorists used to enter Israel, appeared in activist graphics. Within days, the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter posted an image of a paraglider accompanied by support for the Palestinian cause and later deleted it. Similar imagery appeared elsewhere. A method used by Hamas attackers to reach Israeli communities had been converted into a Western political symbol before Israel launched its ground invasion.

Hamas terrorists carried cameras during the assault. Hamas channels distributed footage of breached barriers, attacks on Israeli positions, captured soldiers, seized equipment, and hostages. Telegram allowed the organization to distribute material without depending on Western broadcasters. Videos then moved onto X, TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms through reposting. Hamas could show the collapse of Israeli defenses through carefully selected combat footage while footage of murdered civilians, bodies at the Nova music festival, burned homes, abducted families, and wounded survivors circulated through Israeli and international sources.

Western organizations split over how to describe what had happened. Political leaders across the US and Europe condemned Hamas. Progressive organizations faced internal fights over statements that attributed the attack to occupation. University administrations encountered demands to condemn Hamas by name and competing demands to condemn Israeli retaliation. Employees challenged corporate statements. Writers and academics signed rival letters. Arguments that had previously centered on settlements, the peace process, and Palestinian rights shifted within days to whether the murder of civilians could be understood as anticolonial violence.

Israel began ground operations later in October. Images from Gaza then changed the scale of the mobilization. Palestinian civilians pulled from rubble, damaged hospitals, mass displacement, children with severe injuries, funerals, aid shortages, and destroyed neighborhoods appeared continuously on Western television and social media. Demonstrations grew larger. Politicians who had strongly supported Israel after October 7 faced pressure over civilian casualties. Humanitarian organizations issued increasingly severe warnings. Activists who had mobilized on October 8 were joined by people whose opposition developed after weeks or months of Israeli military operations.

Hamas fighters rarely appeared in the photographs that generated the greatest international reaction. A destroyed apartment building showed the building and the people killed or injured inside it. An Israeli claim that fighters or military infrastructure had been present required additional evidence. Arguments over tunnels, command facilities, weapons storage, human shields, targeting intelligence, proportionality, and precautions took longer to explain than an image of a dead child took to circulate. Restrictions on independent foreign media access to Gaza made immediate verification still more difficult.

Hamas-run authorities provided much of the casualty data emerging from Gaza. International organizations used Gaza Health Ministry figures while acknowledging the conditions under which the information was being collected. Israel challenged aspects of those figures and emphasized the number of Hamas fighters it said it had killed. Disputes over the civilian-to-combatant ratio continued throughout the war. The headline number of Palestinian deaths nevertheless appeared constantly in news reports, speeches, demonstrations, and social-media posts, often without the methodological arguments surrounding combatant identification.

The South African genocide case gave the accusation an international legal venue in December 2023. Activists who had already been using the term could now cite proceedings before the world’s principal judicial organ. The ICJ ordered provisional measures in January 2024 and issued additional orders as conditions in Gaza deteriorated. Political campaigns routinely compressed the difference between allegations submitted to the court, provisional measures intended to protect rights while litigation continued, and a final judgment on whether genocide had occurred.

Columbia University’s encampment in April 2024 became a model for protests elsewhere. Students erected tents, demanded divestment, and occupied Hamilton Hall. Police entered the campus and arrested protesters. Encampments appeared at universities throughout the United States and spread to institutions in Europe and Canada. University administrators negotiated over investment disclosure, disciplinary measures, protest rules, and encampment removal while congressional committees investigated antisemitism on campuses.

“From the river to the sea” appeared repeatedly at those demonstrations. “Globalize the intifada” appeared on signs and in chants. The inverted red triangle used in Hamas propaganda videos later appeared in graffiti and protest imagery. Hamas and Hezbollah symbols appeared at some demonstrations even though many participants rejected both organizations. Other protesters explicitly condemned Hamas while demanding an end to Israeli military operations. People with fundamentally different views of October 7 could march in the same demonstration under demands for a ceasefire or an end to American military assistance to Israel.

Zionism increasingly became an explicit target. Campus resolutions and activist statements moved beyond criticism of Netanyahu, settlements, or particular military operations and described Zionism itself as racism, settler colonialism, or an ideology requiring dismantlement. Arguments over 1967 borders consequently coexisted with arguments over Israel’s establishment in 1948. The political dispute reached the question of whether a Jewish state should exist in any borders.

Jewish students encountered demands in some activist environments to separate Jewish identity from Zionism. Zionist student organizations faced exclusion campaigns. Israeli speakers encountered disruptions. Academic groups debated boycotts of Israeli institutions. Protesters demonstrated outside Jewish communal organizations because of their support for Israel. Synagogues and Jewish schools increased security as threats and antisemitic incidents rose.

ADL recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2023, with most occurring after October 7. The total climbed to 9,354 in 2024 and remained at 6,274 in 2025. Assaults reached a record level in 2025. A large share of incidents included references to Israel or Zionism. Political arguments over the Israeli government were increasingly occurring alongside harassment directed at Jews and Jewish institutions thousands of miles from Gaza.

On May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two Israeli Embassy staff members, were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington after attending an event. On June 1, 2025, an attacker threw Molotov cocktails at participants in a Boulder, Colorado, event connected to Israeli hostages. The attacker shouted “Free Palestine.” One of the victims later died from her injuries. Political violence associated with the Gaza conflict had reached people attending events in Washington and Colorado.

October 7 itself became the subject of sustained revision and denial. Some initial atrocity reports proved inaccurate or could not be substantiated, giving critics legitimate grounds to challenge those specific claims. Online activists then used those errors to question other killings documented through Hamas footage, surveillance video, survivor testimony, forensic evidence, and recovered bodies. Arguments over reports involving babies expanded into arguments over whether Israeli authorities had systematically fabricated atrocities.

Reports of sexual violence produced another prolonged dispute. Survivors, witnesses, investigators, journalists, and UN officials examined allegations involving rape and sexual assault during the Hamas attack and captivity. Activists challenged individual accounts and the quality of particular evidence. Social-media arguments frequently moved from questioning a specific claim to questioning whether sexual violence had occurred at all. The dispute became entangled with older political arguments over whether Western institutions automatically believed Israeli victims while discounting Palestinian ones.

Hamas used hostages throughout the information campaign. Videos showed captives delivering statements under conditions controlled by their captors. Releases were timed around negotiations and military developments. Hamas announced hostage deaths and blamed Israeli strikes. Israeli hostage families traveled throughout the United States and Europe seeking political pressure for their relatives’ release. “KIDNAPPED” posters appeared on walls and lampposts in Western cities.

Videos of people tearing those posters down became a recurring feature of the first year after October 7. The posters did not advocate an Israeli military operation. They displayed photographs and names of kidnapped civilians. Their removal nevertheless became part of the political conflict, with people filmed ripping them down sometimes arguing that the posters constituted Israeli propaganda. Employers, universities, and online activists then fought over the identities and consequences for people shown in the videos.

Polling recorded changes that extended far beyond protest movements. Younger Americans became considerably more sympathetic to Palestinians and more critical of Israel than older Americans. Democratic support for the Israeli government fell substantially during the war. By 2026, American polling showed a marked deterioration in favorable attitudes toward Israelis themselves compared with the period before October 7. Favorability toward Palestinians rose or remained stronger among younger and Democratic respondents.

Hamas did not receive the same movement in public opinion. Large majorities of Americans continued to view it unfavorably. Western governments continued treating Hamas as a terrorist organization. Politicians advocating Palestinian statehood generally excluded Hamas from the government they said should eventually rule Palestinian territory. Western voters could therefore reject Hamas while adopting positions on Israel that would have occupied a far narrower political space before October 7.

Michigan’s 2024 Democratic presidential primary turned Gaza into an electoral organizing issue. The “uncommitted” campaign urged voters to withhold support from President Biden over his administration’s Israel policy. More than 100,000 voters selected uncommitted. Organizers then took the campaign into Democratic Party politics and the presidential election. Arab-American and Muslim voters in Michigan became a focus of national campaign strategy as anger over Gaza damaged the relationship between parts of those communities and the Democratic administration.

The fight continued after Trump returned to office. His administration investigated universities over antisemitism, threatened federal funding, and pursued immigration actions involving some foreign students associated with pro-Palestinian activism. Supporters cited harassment of Jewish students and years of weak university enforcement. Civil-liberties groups challenged the administration’s methods. Pro-Palestinian activists presented federal intervention as political repression. Universities that had initially struggled to control encampments now faced pressure from Washington over how they had handled them.

Britain formally recognized a Palestinian state in September 2025. The British government explicitly excluded Hamas from any future Palestinian government and continued demanding the release of hostages. France and other Western governments moved toward or adopted recognition as pressure over Gaza and Israeli settlement policy increased. European governments debated arms exports, settlement trade, and other measures directed at Israel.

Recognition did not require Hamas to become politically acceptable. Hamas could remain a terrorist organization while the diplomatic environment moved toward an outcome it had long claimed armed struggle could force back onto the international agenda. Before October 7, Saudi-Israeli normalization had dominated discussion of a possible regional realignment. Three years later, Western governments were again devoting substantial diplomatic capital to Palestinian statehood and demanding a political arrangement addressing Palestinian national claims.

The Israeli government spent those years answering accusations that had expanded beyond the conduct of individual military operations. Israeli officials defended the legitimacy of the Gaza campaign, disputed genocide allegations, challenged casualty claims, attacked international institutions, and accused Western critics of applying standards to Israel that they did not apply elsewhere. They also faced criticism from Israelis, former officials, hostage families, and Jewish organizations abroad, especially over the duration of the war and the government’s priorities.

Hamas entered October 7 as an Islamist terrorist organization governing an isolated enclave under blockade. It emerged from the subsequent war militarily devastated, with much of Gaza destroyed and many of its commanders dead. Western governments still rejected Hamas itself. On Western campuses, however, arguments over Israeli settlements had expanded into arguments over Zionism. At demonstrations, slogans about a ceasefire appeared beside calls for an intifada. Governments that had spent the period before October 7 discussing Israeli-Arab normalization were recognizing a Palestinian state. Polls that once showed a wide American preference for Israel showed younger voters and Democrats moving decisively toward the Palestinian cause.

On October 8, 2023, none of those later Israeli operations had happened. The ground invasion had not begun. Gaza had not endured three years of warfare. The enormous casualty figures had not accumulated. The South African case did not exist. No ICJ provisional measures had been issued. The 2024 campus encampments had not been erected. Protesters were already in the streets, Harvard organizations had already assigned responsibility to Israel, activists were already describing the Hamas assault as resistance or decolonization, and genocide accusations were already entering the public argument. The culture war did not begin with the destruction of Gaza. October 7 revealed how much of its intellectual and organizational infrastructure was already waiting for a trigger.

Losing the Next War

So where do Israel and Jewish communities in the United States and Europe go from here? On October 8, 2023, thirty-four Harvard student organizations blamed Israel for the violence of the previous day while Israeli authorities were still identifying bodies. Students for Justice in Palestine chapters organized demonstrations. Jewish Voice for Peace joined protests. Activists were already using “resistance,” “decolonization,” and “genocide.” Israeli ground forces entered Gaza later that month. By then, arguments about October 7 had already moved through American universities using concepts developed years before Hamas crossed the border.

Students for Justice in Palestine had established chapters across American universities long before October 7. BDS organizers had spent years campaigning before student governments and academic associations. Jewish Voice for Peace had built relationships with progressive organizations and supplied Jewish activists to anti-Zionist campaigns. Amnesty International published its apartheid report in 2022 after Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem had made similar accusations. University courses and academic publications had already applied settler-colonial theory to Zionism and Israel. Students encountering October 7 through those organizations received the massacre inside an account beginning with 1948 and Palestinian displacement.

Hamas called its attack “Al-Aqsa Flood” and invoked Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, Palestinian prisoners, and Israeli rule over Palestinians. Western activists repeated arguments about occupation and dispossession almost immediately. On October 10, the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter posted an image of a paraglider, three days after Hamas terrorists used paragliders during the attack, and later removed it. Other activists condemned the killing of civilians while describing October 7 as the product of Israeli policies extending across decades.

Israeli officials released Hamas body-camera footage and evidence recovered from the attacked communities. Survivors described murders and kidnappings. Images from the Nova festival circulated internationally. Families of those abducted placed their relatives’ faces on posters around Western cities. Hamas released its own videos. Activists who assigned responsibility to Israel incorporated the Israeli evidence into an argument that began earlier than October 7: Hamas had committed the violence, they argued, and Israeli dispossession had produced Hamas and the conditions in which the violence occurred.

Early atrocity reporting also contained claims that later required correction or qualification. Critics seized on those corrections and used them to question broader Israeli accounts. Israeli advocates responded with forensic evidence, survivor testimony, additional video, and investigations. Hours of television coverage and thousands of social-media exchanges followed individual disputes. SJP continued recruiting. BDS campaigns continued organizing. Jewish Voice for Peace continued supplying an anti-Zionist Jewish presence at demonstrations.

Activists were already using “genocide” before Israeli ground forces entered Gaza. South Africa filed its ICJ case in December 2023. Israeli operations during the following months produced casualty reports, satellite images, photographs of destroyed neighborhoods, humanitarian warnings, and statements from Israeli politicians that South Africa and other critics later cited. Israeli lawyers explained genocidal intent, military targeting, Hamas’s operations from civilian areas, humanitarian measures, and the legal meaning of the ICJ’s provisional orders. Protesters kept “genocide” on banners and placards. Student governments incorporated it into resolutions. Politicians repeated it in speeches.

By the time lawyers debated the exact meaning of an ICJ ruling, the word had already spent months attached to images of dead children and destroyed buildings. A lawyer could establish that a particular news report misstated the court’s order. The corrected wording then entered social media beside hundreds of thousands of posts retaining the original accusation. The following Gaza strike supplied another photograph and another round of posts before the previous dispute ended.

“Globalize the Intifada” spread through demonstrations in the United States and Europe. Jewish organizations responded by invoking the suicide bombings and civilian deaths of the Second Intifada. Activists responded with the Arabic meaning of intifada as uprising. Television programs debated the phrase. University administrators debated its status under campus speech rules. Protesters continued chanting it.

On May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered after leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. On June 1, Mohamed Soliman attacked participants at a Boulder gathering connected to Israeli hostages with Molotov cocktails while shouting “Free Palestine.” Karen Diamond later died from injuries suffered in the attack. Prosecutors and investigators could examine weapons, preparation, targets, statements, digital records, and the perpetrators’ conduct.

ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024 and 6,274 in 2025, with assaults reaching a record level in 2025. Threats against synagogues generated police reports and preserved communications. Attacks on Jewish institutions generated security footage. Arrests and prosecutions identified defendants and alleged conduct. Each file gave Jewish organizations evidence tied to identifiable people and identifiable acts.

Pro-Israel organizations frequently applied language developed around those cases to campus protests containing very different conduct. Students who had condemned Hamas produced their own statements when they were described as Hamas supporters. Jewish participants in anti-Israel demonstrations appeared in media coverage challenging allegations that the protests were inherently antisemitic. SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace then incorporated those disputes into their argument that accusations of antisemitism were being used against opposition to Israeli policy.

CAMERA publishes corrections to news coverage. HonestReporting challenges reporting about Israel. StandWithUs distributes educational material. ADL publishes incident data and commentary. Israeli ministries and embassies release videos, maps, intercepted communications, military evidence, and rebuttals. Jewish advocacy conferences devote sessions to misinformation. Donors finance monitoring projects and social-media campaigns. The institutional response still assumes that correcting enough false claims will eventually change the larger argument.

A viral photograph mislabeled as Gaza may receive millions of views before researchers locate the original image. Copies survive through screenshots. Translations carry it into additional platforms. Video compilations preserve it after deletion of the original post. A correction establishes the photograph’s provenance. The audience that first saw it beside an accusation of deliberate Israeli killing has already received the photograph together with an explanation of what it supposedly represents.

Disputes over casualty figures follow the same daily rhythm. Israeli researchers challenge Gaza Health Ministry figures, demographic breakdowns, or classifications of combatants. Journalists and humanitarian organizations defend particular methodologies. Advocacy organizations publish competing calculations. Social-media accounts argue over percentages. Another strike produces another set of images while the numerical argument continues.

Students for Justice in Palestine spends its time recruiting students into an account of Palestinian history and then giving those students political work to perform. BDS organizers turn that account into campaigns before university investment committees and professional associations. Jewish Voice for Peace places Jewish activists inside the same political coalition. Within Our Lifetime repeatedly brings supporters into New York streets and has promoted “Globalize the Intifada.” People who enter those organizations acquire friends, mentors, terminology, political objectives, event calendars, and repeated opportunities to participate.

A pro-Israel student receiving a fact sheet about Hamas tunnels enters a campus where SJP may have spent years recruiting students and cultivating faculty relationships. The fact sheet can accurately describe the tunnel network. SJP offers an explanation of why Gaza reached October 7, a community organized around that explanation, and a political program for acting on it. The two sides are investing in different parts of the person’s political experience.

Qatar Foundation began developing Education City in the 1990s. Weill Cornell opened in Qatar in 2001, Carnegie Mellon followed in 2004, Georgetown in 2005, and Northwestern in 2008. US disclosure records have documented billions of dollars in Qatari gifts and contracts to American universities over time. Professors, administrators, researchers, students, and alumni have participated in those relationships for years.

Section 117 disclosures identify financial relationships and reported amounts. Contracts can identify obligations attached to individual arrangements. Governance documents can identify who controls programs. Research agreements can identify what particular funding supports. Correspondence can connect money to individual institutional decisions when such evidence exists. Those records permit serious scrutiny of Qatari influence at the level where influence can actually be established.

Al Jazeera began broadcasting in 1996. Al Jazeera English launched a decade later. Doha maintained access to Hamas while cultivating successive American administrations. The United States developed Al Udeid into its principal regional air hub. After October 7, American and Israeli officials used Qatar’s access to Hamas during hostage negotiations. Qatar entered the crisis with decades of relationships across universities, diplomacy, media, and Washington policymaking.

Major Jewish organizations frequently place money into a far smaller communications circuit. The same pro-Israel personalities appear at Jewish conferences, on Jewish podcasts, at Israel advocacy events, and before donor audiences. Their clips move through accounts run by Israeli diplomats, Jewish organizations, Zionist activists, and strongly pro-Israel media personalities. A successful appearance at one Jewish conference produces an invitation to another. Photographs from those appearances become part of the speaker’s promotional material.

Some Arab, Muslim, Iranian, and ex-Muslim personalities promoted by pro-Israel organizations have built much of their Western visibility through this circuit. Jewish organizations introduce them as voices from communities that pro-Israel institutions struggle to reach. Israeli officials meet them. Advocacy groups feature them on panels. Donors hear them describe attitudes inside Arab or Muslim societies. Pro-Israel accounts drive substantial engagement with their English-language content.

The organizations paying those speakers can obtain their audience geography from platform analytics. They can examine the proportion of engagement coming from Arabic-language accounts. They can track citations in Arab media. They can examine appearances on Arabic-language television and invitations from Arab civic institutions. They can map reposts through Muslim organizations in the United States and Europe. A person presented to donors as influential among Arabs or Muslims can therefore be evaluated through actual Arab and Muslim audiences.

A recurring speaker can acquire prestige through repeated exposure inside the same Jewish institutional network. One organization sees the person at another organization’s conference and extends an invitation. Donors encounter the same face at several events. Israeli officials see the person circulating through pro-Israel social media and agree to a meeting. Photographs from that meeting raise the person’s value for the next conference. The speaker’s profile grows inside the network that is also paying for the appearances.

Speaking fees add another incentive. Fellowships supply institutional titles. Donor introductions create additional opportunities. Followers acquired through pro-Israel appearances increase visible social-media numbers. The resulting profile can then be presented to another Jewish organization as proof of influence. Audience data from the Arab or Muslim constituencies invoked in the speaker’s biography receive far less attention.

Jewish influencers can acquire visibility through the same circulation pattern. A post receives thousands of likes from committed pro-Israel followers. Advocacy organizations repost it. Israeli officials share it. A conference invites the creator. Clips from the conference return to the original audience. The impression count rises at each stage. The same material may barely enter SJP networks, Arab-American organizations, Muslim civic groups, progressive political organizations, or European constituencies moving against Israel.

Qatar Foundation has maintained university relationships for decades. SJP chapters recruit another class of students every autumn. BDS campaigns return to student governments and professional associations after individual votes are lost. Al Jazeera broadcasts into its audiences every day. A Jewish donor organization that pays an influencer because other Jewish donor organizations have already paid that influencer is financing circulation inside its own social environment.

On October 6, 2026, AFP journalists covering attacks on Palestinian olive farmers near Aqraba reported being attacked by Israeli settlers. October 7 brought the third anniversary of the Hamas massacre. International audiences therefore encountered commemorations of murdered Israelis beside fresh reporting about Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

During successive olive harvests, videos have shown settlers attacking Palestinians and damaging property. Western governments have imposed sanctions connected to settler violence. European officials have cited West Bank violence and settlement expansion in diplomatic disputes with Jerusalem. Activists reproduce those government actions beside footage from Palestinian villages.

Israeli police can turn such footage into arrests. Prosecutors can turn evidence into indictments. Courts can produce judgments. IDF investigators can examine the conduct of soldiers present during attacks. Government agencies can enforce orders against unauthorized outposts. Foreign journalists covering the next incident can then cite the resulting Israeli record.

Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir regularly give those journalists additional material. Their ministerial titles accompany remarks about settlements, Palestinians, Gaza, annexation, and Israeli territorial claims. International outlets translate the quotations. European politicians cite them. Campus organizers place them into presentations about Zionism and Israeli policy. Israeli diplomats then devote interviews and briefings to explaining coalition politics and the formal status of individual proposals.

An anti-Zionist presentation can place a Smotrich quotation beside footage from a West Bank village. The presenter can move from settlement expansion after 1967 to Palestinian displacement in 1948 and then to Zionism itself. Another Israeli government graphic about Hamas weaponry in Gaza enters a debate whose subject has already moved to the legitimacy of the Israeli state.

American Jewish institutions then encounter that debate in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Protesters have demonstrated outside Jewish institutions over Gaza. Campus activists pressure Jewish student organizations over Israeli policies. Synagogues hosting Israeli officials or Israel-related events attract demonstrations. Local Jewish organizations issue statements about decisions taken by ministers in Jerusalem and thereby place themselves directly inside disputes over those decisions.

Jewish Voice for Peace offers anti-Zionist Jews an established organizational home. Liberal Zionist organizations attract Jews who support Israel and oppose significant parts of Israeli policy. Orthodox institutions generally maintain stronger identification with Israeli security policy and Israeli governments. Younger Jews encounter all of these organizations through the same environment that delivers Gaza footage, October 7 footage, videos of settler attacks, antisemitic incidents, and campus protests.

Hamas publishes material in Arabic and distributes content through Telegram and other channels. Iranian media and aligned accounts amplify Gaza imagery and accusations against Israel. English-language activists select and translate parts of that material. Larger Western accounts repost it. Each transfer can strip away another part of the original attribution.

Arabic-language researchers can record the original publication and identify the accounts that first carry it into English. Persian-language researchers can follow Iranian amplification. Researchers working in French and German can record the framing used as the claim enters European debate. Account histories can reveal which translators repeatedly connect the same networks. Financial records and organizational affiliations can then be examined when the same intermediaries appear repeatedly.

Israeli ministries already employ Arabic speakers and regional specialists. Jewish organizations already finance research and advocacy. A team following a Hamas claim from its Arabic origin through Western activist networks could identify the people who give that claim reach and legitimacy. The resulting research would provide names, organizations, relationships, transmission routes, and recurring audiences long after the first factual correction had been published.

The same evidence can govern funding decisions. A Jewish organization paying an Arab or Muslim personality for outreach can require platform analytics showing the geographic and linguistic composition of the audience. Arabic media appearances can be documented. Engagement from regional journalists can be measured. Invitations from Muslim civic organizations can be recorded. A speaker whose reach concentrates among pro-Israel Jews can be funded for that audience and evaluated according to that audience.

Campus programs can be measured through the students who actually attend them. Hillel membership records can distinguish established participants from students entering for the first time. Repeat attendance can show whether newcomers return. Partnerships with other campus organizations can show which constituencies participate. Follow-up activity can show whether relationships continue after a single event.

In autumn 2027, first-year university students will have been born around 2008 and 2009. The Second Intifada ended before their births. Israel withdrew from Gaza before their births. Their teenage political memories will include October 7, the Gaza war, campus encampments, genocide accusations, “Globalize the Intifada,” West Bank violence, and years of algorithmically distributed images from the conflict.

SJP chapters will recruit during orientation. BDS organizers will bring students into existing campaigns. Jewish Voice for Peace will recruit Jewish students already questioning Zionism. Hillel and pro-Israel organizations will encounter many of those students during the same opening weeks. One side may hand them a carefully sourced correction to a false claim. The other may invite them to a meeting that becomes a weekly political community.

The next Jewish organization considering another contract with a familiar pro-Israel influencer can ask for the audience data before signing it. The next organization booking an Arab or Muslim personality can examine Arabic-language reach before paying the speaking fee. The next Israeli ministry responding to a viral falsehood can preserve the correction and assign researchers to follow the accounts that keep circulating the claim. The next settler attack can end with arrests, indictments, and published enforcement records that Israeli diplomats can place before foreign governments.

The money currently circulating among conferences, influencers, repetitive fact-checking campaigns, and speakers celebrated primarily by existing supporters can finance researchers working every day in Arabic, Persian, French, and other relevant information environments. Those researchers can follow Hamas publications from their original channels, identify the people who carry them into Western politics, examine the institutions that legitimize them, and place the evidence before policymakers and journalists before the next anniversary produces another round of familiar talking points.