The missiles of February 28 will not, on their own, settle anything. Joint American and Israeli strikes against Iranian targets have a familiar sequence of escalation, condemnation, and uneasy quiet. But the strike may matter less for what it destroyed than for what it revealed.
Western diplomacy in the region operated for decades on a stable set of assumptions. Israel was Washington’s closest ally, but its role was understood narrowly – a partner to be protected and occasionally restrained. The central task was managing Arab-Israeli tensions while keeping the Gulf monarchies onside.
Israeli strategists pushed back against that reading for years. The fault line that mattered, they insisted, ran not between Jerusalem and the Arab capitals but between those with a stake in a functioning regional order and those who had built their power by undermining one. Iran was not a conventional adversary seeking territory or recognition: It was a state that had made instability its primary instrument – cultivating proxy networks from Lebanon to Yemen, raising the cost of stability for adversaries without ever quite forcing a direct confrontation.
That argument was long met with skepticism in Washington; it is now receiving a more serious hearing.
Part of what has changed is the broader frame. American strategic attention has shifted decisively toward the Indo-Pacific, where the contest with China will likely define the coming decades. A Middle East in which Iranian pressure continuously destabilizes governments and invites outside powers into the vacuum is a distraction Washington can no longer absorb.
China’s advance into the region has been methodical and largely quiet. Beijing deepened economic ties from the Gulf to the Levant, keeping its relationship with Tehran intact as Western sanctions tightened. Last year, it brokered a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement – a pointed demonstration of how much ground it has gained. Stabilizing the Middle East has become, for Washington, less of a regional objective than a condition for the larger strategic great-power contest.
Israel normalizes relations with Arab neighbours
This is where Israel’s position looks genuinely different, because it is one of the very few actors in the region with both the military capability and the political willingness to confront Iran’s network directly. The normalization of security ties with several Arab states – formalized by the Abraham Accords – has begun to alter the region’s strategic geometry in ways even its architects may not have anticipated. Some officials, speaking privately, tender an analogy to the 1991 Gulf War. The difference this time is that Israel does not stand at the coalition’s edge: It sits at its center.
History rarely announces itself definitively in the moment. The events of February 28 may yet be overtaken by a ceasefire or the next regional emergency. But there is a growing sense among those watching closely that the region’s strategic architecture, largely unchanged since the end of the Cold War, is being renegotiated in real time – and that last month’s strikes may be remembered as its opening gambit.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), where he leads its activities in Europe.