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When thembsmbsYour browser does not support the element.By Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent, The Economist Gaza war began in late 2023 even some Israeli generals thought it would be finished within two or three months. Few observers thought it would drag on for more than a year. Fewer still predicted the swift decapitation of Hizbullah, the Shia militia based in Lebanon, or the back-and-forth bombardment between Iran and Israel. During 2024, assumptions that had seemed to govern the region for decades collapsed within months.War will continue to shape the Middle East in the coming year. Even the best-case scenario is a bleak one: that the regional conflict grinds to a halt, but the destruction and displacement it caused remains a problem for many years. The fighting may not end, though. Instead it could expand and shatter a fragile detente in the Gulf. Which way the region goes will depend largely on three cantankerous old men: Ali Khamenei, Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.The first two have been consistent. Mr Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, is nervous about direct conflict with Israel but also willing to risk it for the first time in Iran’s history. The ballistic-missile barrage he approved in October is unlikely to be the last. As for Mr Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he is determined to strike harder not just at Iran’s proxies but at Iran itself. The wild card is Mr Trump.Optimists hope that he will not want a war hanging over the start of his presidency. If pushed towards a ceasefire, Mr Netanyahu would be unlikely to defy Mr Trump. The prime minister cannot ignore him the way he did Joe Biden. But that will be cold comfort for Palestinians and Lebanese.By some accounts more than 10% of Gaza’s 2m people have already fled, often paying huge sums of money to reach Egypt. That exodus will continue in 2025. Those who remain in Gaza will spend much of the year huddled in tents and makeshift shelters. Reconstruction will be slow, if it begins at all. Mr Netanyahu will continue to dismiss talk of post-war arrangements in Gaza.Mr Trump may be more attentive to Lebanon, if only because he now has a Lebanese son-in-law. But there, too, even if the war ends, many of its 1m displaced people (one-fifth of the population) have no homes to return to. Their prolonged displacement will aggravate sectarian tensions in a country that always worries about renewed civil strife.And all of that assumes that the conflict comes to an end. Those hoping Mr Trump will improve the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza may be disappointed. History suggests he will not pressure the Israeli prime minister. Mr Trump showed little concern for the plight of the Palestinians during his first term. Israel’s right-wing government will probably move ahead with its de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank. In Lebanon, the Israeli army is keen to end the fighting, but that will require a complicated diplomatic agreement in which Hizbullah agrees to pull back from the border. Without such an agreement, mission creep will remain a risk. Instead of leaving, Israeli troops may push deeper into Lebanon.The big question is whether the fighting will spread further. There is already a heated debate in Iran about whether to build a nuclear weapon. If the country can no longer deter Israel through conventional means, goes the thinking, then perhaps it needs the bomb. Mr Netanyahu would like American help to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mr Trump will be pulled between a hawkish wing of his party, which supports such a step, and an isolationist wing that wants to avoid getting too involved with another war in the Middle East.There will be some other unlikely voices urging restraint. Mr Netanyahu, among all the regional leaders, has the strongest relationship with the incoming Trump administration, with Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, probably a close second. , as he is known, will urge Mr Trump to rein in the regional war and avoid a conflict with Iran.Though Iran remains a bitter rival to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom has rethought its hostility towards the Islamic republic. Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, says his mandate is to “protect Vision 2030”, his country’s ambitious plan to overhaul and modernise its oil-based economy. Officials in other Gulf countries take a similar view. At the start of Mr Trump’s first term, they pushed him to confront Iran; now they will push him to avoid confrontation.For eight years, Arab-Israeli normalisation has been the focus of American policy in the Middle East. will continue talking with America about such a deal, but he is unlikely to agree to one. He may now prefer to wait until others in the neighbourhood make a move: Bashar al-Assad, the blood-soaked Syrian dictator, might wonder if a quiet outreach to Israel will improve his standing in the West.Other Arab states will be little more than bystanders. Economic problems will continue to fester across the region. Egypt, for example, managed to avoid a balance-of-payments crisis in 2024 only by securing an enormous investment from the United Arab Emirates—but its currency, already devalued four times since 2022, will probably sink again. (The dramatic reduction of shipping coming through the Suez canal, once a valuable source of revenue for Egypt, has not helped.) And Tunisia’s economy will stagnate further now that Kais Saied, its erratic president, has won a second term in office.Ultimately America, Iran and Israel will determine what happens next in the Middle East. Arab states will be watching nervously.
