The Changing Calculus of Power in the Middle East

The United States enters 2025 as the beneficiary of changes in the Middle East. Sometimes we unintentionally contributed to those changes, but we never foresaw them, and we did not promote them.

As of 2020, or even early 2024, one could have made a good case that Iran had the most successful foreign policy of the last few decades. It had achieved whole or partial dominance over Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and through its proxies was able to attack the United States and Israel with near impunity. Both American and Israeli responses to such attacks were against the proxies. Neither Israel nor—except for the killing of Ghassam Soleimani—the United States hit Iran directly in response to its malign activities. In the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Houthi attacks on the U.S. Navy with Iran-supplied weapons elicited U.S. attacks in Yemen, but once again Iran was immune. Meanwhile, Iran slowly but steadily advanced its nuclear weapons program, installing more and more advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium to levels (sixty percent) no state had ever achieved without then building a nuclear weapon.

Today the situation is very different. Israel has badly damaged Hamas and Hezbollah and greatly reduced Iranian influence in the Levant. While doing so, Israel repeatedly rejected the Biden administration’s bad advice, which sought not victories but restraint and what it defined as stability. Iran’s inability to help either of those proxies certainly contributed to the decision of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Beirut airport’s early January detention of Iranian flights said to contain weapons or cash suggests Iran’s and Hezbollah’s weakened situation in Lebanon. Previously, Hezbollah’s control of the Beirut port and airport was unchallengeable. Moreover, Hezbollah had blocked the presidential election in Lebanon for two years but had to give way and allow it in January 2024.

The question for the Trump administration is how to build on these developments. Its predecessor attempted a combination of supporting and restraining Israel and a great reluctance to punish Iran for attacks on U.S. forces that it inspired, paid for, and armed. In addition, the Biden administration several times tried to restrain France, Germany, and the U.K.—parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA—from moving to condemn Iran in the IAEA’s board for its continuing nuclear program and refusal to cooperate with the IAEA.

What the United States should do now is take advantage of the recent changes, rather than sitting by passively to see what develops from them. Such an active policy would address Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its proxies, its internal situation, and a possible alliance among the U.S.’s regional allies.

First, it was critical that President Trump reiterate what his predecessors have been pledging for decades: the United States will not permit Iran to get a nuclear weapon and will use all national power elements to prevent this. Now, Trump must carefully avoid the trap Iran is setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare him in years’ long talks while Iran’s program grows clandestinely, all the while creating for him the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, he has properly returned to severe economic sanctions that will deprive Iran of resources. To this, he should add a push for tough IAEA demands against Iran (with sanctions should it fail to comply) and should make it clear that he will not obstruct an Israeli decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites. If Iran’s rulers truly want a negotiation that would end all sanctions and accept that it would also end their nuclear weapons program, we should require them to take immediate and concrete steps showing they have abandoned that nuclear goal.

Second, while Israel has successfully decimated (though certainly not eliminated) Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis continue to use Iranian weapons to threaten international commerce and attack the U.S. Navy. While attacks have been paused for a few weeks during the ceasefire in Gaza they may well restart. If they do Trump should not only step up attacks on the Houthis and efforts to interdict weapons supply shipments to them (as CENTCOM has requested) but should also make it clear to Iran that if any U.S. Navy ship is damaged or if these weapons hurt or kill any Americans, an immediate military response against Iran will follow. We should understand that the attacks will continue to threaten us until Iran pays a price for them.

Third, the United States has a chance now to keep Iran and its allies well off balance. We should work with the governments of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Oman when possible, and using military force when necessary, interdict the resupply of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to the extent possible. The reimposition of economic sanctions should help punish Iran for its regional misconduct and make resources for such activities scarcer. Because the only ultimate solution to the problem of the Islamic Republic is its demise, the United States and allies should mount a pressure campaign on behalf of the Iranian people, who want the regime’s end more fervently than any foreigner. This would include political warfare, human rights challenges to the regime, and the use of international organizations and NGOs to spotlight its repressive activities.

The U.S.’s regional allies, including Israel, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, all suffer from Iranian subversion and aggression. Their willingness to resist Iran will vary as they judge our own—that is, as they estimate their own risks and the United States’s reliability as an ally. If they judge that the United States has now decided to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program and keep on damaging and weakening Iran’s proxies, their own policies will adjust. And the kind of common effort visible when CENTCOM led regional cooperation to stop Iran’s missiles from reaching Israel in April 2024 will be easier and more frequent.

Great miscalculations by Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, both killed by Israel, and Israel’s forceful and uncompromising assertion of its right to self-defense together produced the changes in the Middle East last year. But further progress in the region cannot solely depend on Israel; it will also require decisions in Washington. If we do not follow up by increasing the pressure on Iran and its proxies, they will recover lost ground. If we press forward, the ground they have lost can be gone forever and can be the basis for deeper, longer-term changes in the region.

Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.