Three Years After October 7: How the Middle East's Power Map Has Changed

Three years after the October 7, 2023 attack and Israel's war in Gaza, the entire Middle East is mired in conflict, economic instability and the collapse of a balance of power that had held for decades.

The network of allies Iran built and maintained over the years — long a pillar of Tehran's regional strength — has been battered and severely weakened. Yemen's Houthis are a notable exception, having managed to hold on to their power.

Israel has gained some advantages. Many leaders of Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestine's Hamas have been killed; Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was also assassinated in February. Israel now occupies most of Gaza, where it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the strip to rubble.

But the military campaigns have also come at a cost for Israel: the country has been isolated from its traditional allies and has become unpopular around the world, including in the United States. The prospect of further normalization deals with Arab states appears highly unlikely, at least in the short term.

Instead, Israel continues to carry out strikes across the region, crossing previously accepted limits — such as the 2025 attack on Qatar's Doha — leading many governments worldwide to view Israel as the main source of instability in the Middle East.

America is no longer the security guarantor

"Before October 7, the entire US Middle East policy was based on normalizing Israel's presence in the region through the so-called Abraham Accords," said HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), referring to normalization deals with several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates. "Israel's response to the October 7 attack put an end to that."

Instead of a stable Middle East with Israel at its center, the US went to war with Iran this year, and then watched Tehran target American allies across the Gulf, shattering the sense of safety provided by Washington's security umbrella.

Drones and missiles struck Qatar's Ras Laffan gas hub, causing fires near Dubai airport and at the UAE's Fujairah oil zone. In September, the Houthis advanced along Yemen's Red Sea coast, seizing the port of Mocha and nearby islands. Those gains tightened their grip on the Bab al-Mandeb strait, threatening the lifeline for global trade and energy — which has become all the more important as the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.

"Faith in the US as the sole security guarantor has been eroded," Hellyer added.

"That is why many countries in the region are talking to other outside players, while continuing — and in some cases deepening — their relations with the US, as well as initiatives like the Mecca Security Treaty," he said, referring to the defense agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed in August, under which an attack on one is considered an attack on all.

Alliances upended

Along with the loss of faith in the US, the lineup of allies and adversaries in the region has shifted sharply. Much of Iran's network — most notably Hezbollah, whose prestige long served as a deterrent against Israel — appears to have collapsed under Israeli pressure.

That has fueled the Israeli military's offensives: it sent troops into Lebanon in October 2024 and again in March 2026, and seized Syrian territory during the brief power vacuum after President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in 2024.

"The Middle East was always multi-aligned. But now it is even more so," said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, referring to the added leverage gained by outside players — such as Turkey in Syria and China in negotiations to end the war with Iran.

"Ironically, since October 7, it is Israel that has emerged as the revisionist power challenging the order, while Iran has almost become a status-quo power," she said, reflecting a reversal of fortunes between the two, with Tehran seemingly more focused on regaining what it has lost over the past three years than on pushing further.

Vakil nonetheless cautioned against overstating Israel's influence or treating it as a regional superpower. "Israel may present itself as the superior military force in the Middle East, but real power is usually measured by the ability to create stability — something Israel has not shown it can or is willing to do," she said.

Chokepoints blocked

While Israel and the US hoped the February strikes would quickly topple Iran's government, they opened a new front instead. Tehran now holds economic leverage over Israel, the US and their partners through the Strait of Hormuz — which borders Iran and normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil and gas — and through Bab al-Mandeb, which its Houthi allies are threatening.

Whatever Tehran's intentions, the economic impact has been uneven. The West, with emergency reserves, record US oil output and supplies from countries such as Norway, has so far avoided the turmoil of the 1970s oil crisis, when American drivers queued for gasoline — even though the current disruption is larger. In April, the International Monetary Fund nudged its 2026 global growth forecast down only slightly, from 3.3 percent to 3.1 percent.

By contrast, Gulf exporters have suffered far more. In the same assessment, the IMF cut Saudi Arabia's growth forecast from 4.5 percent to 3.1 percent, and swung Qatar's from growth of 6.1 percent to a contraction of 8.6 percent.

"What is notable is that in many ways, the decline in Western demand for Gulf oil increases the extent to which Israel becomes a burden on the US," Israeli political economist Shir Hever told Al Jazeera, referring to the diplomatic alliance between the two countries that has long been sustained by Israel's strategic position in the oil-rich region.

"There is a line of thinking in Israel that the current crises could push the Gulf states closer to Israel," he said, noting the irony that Israel is the main aggressor in the conflicts since October 7. "However, that seems rather unlikely."