After Israel abandoned a Gaza ceasefire plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved just last month, Donald Trump’s envoy to the region declared that the conflict will be over by the end of the year. Washington and Tel Aviv are clearly driving the process. Two open-access articles in Middle East Policy help to explain why Saudi Arabia and Iran, key regional powers, failed after the October 7 attacks to force an end to the war—ceding ground to Israel and, more important, to the United States to determine the outcome on their terms.
As Middle East Policy prepares to launch both its fall journal and a special virtual issue marking two years since October 7, we invite readers to take a sneak peek of the Early View of recently published articles. In addition, you can find our special issue on the Israel-Iran War, as well as a number of free-to-read pieces, including Guy Ziv’s examination of the political power of Israeli reservists, Yigal Levy’s investigation of Israel’s dehumanization of Gazans, and Thomas Juneau’s review of Iran’s “annus horribilis” of 2024.
In her open-access analysis, Banafsheh Keynoush reminds us of a previous model to force an end to an Israeli war: the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. After the October 7 attacks and Israeli reprisals, she writes, Iran had “an opportunity to negotiate for temporary peace by working with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to demand Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.” Why was it not able to achieve this, allowing Netanyahu to inflict devastating blows on Hamas and giving Washington the upper hand on a ceasefire process?
Keynoush, whose study of the June Israel-Iran war will appear in Middle East Policy’s Fall 2025 issue, argues that Tehran and Riyadh could not overcome their differences to exert the influence required to halt the fighting. One of the major disagreements was over the end game of the long-running conflict with Israel. The kingdom, having advanced a peace initiative more than two decades earlier, maintained its insistence on a two-state solution. While this increased tensions with Washington and Tel Aviv, which had sought normalization with Riyadh, it did not bring the Saudis any closer to the Iranians. Officials in the Islamic Republic, by contrast, “continued to believe that a single-state solution was the only path forward, with one government that would ensure the return of Palestinian refugees.”
So despite the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia had, just months before the Hamas attacks, restored diplomatic relations, this “did not lead to trust,” Keynoush observes. Tehran continued to support its allies in the Axis of Resistance, and Riyadh’s balancing between Israel and Iran meant “the regional order continued to revolve around American preferences.”
In a separate open-access piece in the Summer 2025 issue, Chen Kertcher and Gadi Hitman take a more structural tack in explaining Saudi and Iranian actions since October 7. The authors advance a theory of middle powers, which in the Middle East include those two states plus Israel and Turkey, arguing that they “adopt limited balancing to curtail immediate and proximate threats.” Kertcher and Hitman first use the case study of the Syria civil war to explore the limited balancing of the four middle powers, then use the insights to explore their actions during the Gaza war.
The article contends there is a threefold logic to the limited balancing of middle powers:
First, there is a prolonged but limited military operation that will not put pressure on its military capacity, which is usually needed to curtail other auxiliary threats. In this context, the protracted war that Israel is waging in Lebanon is unusual because the intensive military operations may increase Israel’s dependency on foreign powers for armaments. Second, the middle power manipulates various global and regional states or nonstate proxies to promote its interests. Third, the middle power increases its domestic capabilities or at least maintains the stability of the government and its material power.
In the Syria case, the authors show, Iran tried to strengthen allies but in a way that would not provoke major reactions from regional and global powers, especially Turkey and Israel. Saudi Arabia backed Sunni groups that opposed the Assad regime, but it would not ally with regional states or external intervenors. And when Damascus held its ground, Riyadh took steps to welcome Assad back into the Arab fold.
Kertcher and Hitman contend that this theory can advance our understanding of the moves since October 7. It explains why Saudi Arabia has maintained its insistence on a two-state solution and pledged to continue sending billions of dollars in aid to Palestinians, but it has not taken concrete steps to confront Israel, even as the brutality of the Gaza war continues. Iran, for its part, encouraged Hezbollah to wage low-grade but persistent attacks on northern Israel. However, until Tel Aviv directly attacked, Iran held back on deploying its own forces or aerial capabilities. Indeed, only Israel appears to have altered its approach after October 7—and, of course, this may be leading Iran to overhaul how it pursues its interests.
Middle East Policy continues to offer a range of vitally important articles outside of its paywall. Our special issue, The Israel-Iran War, is still available at no charge through September 25. The Summer 2025 journal can be found through this link, and you can read an Early View of our Fall 2025 installment here.
Middle East Policy’s 2025 articles outside the paywall
Free to read for the next three months
Military Reservists and the Resistance to Netanyahu’s Legal Overhaul
Guy Ziv
Free to read for a limited time
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason
Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce
Open access
Dehumanization of Disregard: The Case of Gaza
Yagil Levy
After Assad: How Russia Is Losing the Middle East
Namig Abbasov | Emil A. Souleimanov
The Development and Political Effects Of a Pan-Arab Corporate Elite
Hannes Baumann | Alice Hooper
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau
Myth Busting in a Post-Assad Syria
Rob Geist Pinfold
Turkey’s Long Game in Syria: Moving beyond Ascendance
Şaban Kardaş
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Conflict?
Banafsheh Keynoush
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher | Gadi Hitman
Demographic Change and Social Cohesion In Post-Islamic State Iraq
Omran Omer Ali | Nazar Ameen Mohammed | Aurélie Broeckerhoff
Out of Proportion: Israel’s Paradox In China’s Middle Eastern Policy
Yitzhak Shichor
Lessons from the Syria-Hezbollah Criminal Syndicate, 1985–2005
Iftah Burman | Yehuda Blanga
Antinomies of Alignment Redux: The United Arab Emirates and the United States
Fred H. Lawson | Matteo Legrenzi
The Role of Postage Stamps in Palestinian National Identity and History
Ido Zelkovitz | Yehiel Limor