Perhaps lost in the aftermath of recent headlines about both Israel and the United States’ tactical and operational attacks on Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities is this strategic truth: the balance of power is decisively shifting across the Middle East. Consider, for instance, that for the first time since its founding in 1948, Israel can now viably be seen as the dominant nation-state power within and across the region, perhaps with even more immediate regional capability at its disposal than its ally, the United States. With the success of its recent air and drone-based attacks, which was preceded by a decimation of Iranian air defense capabilities from which Iran will not quickly recover, Israel has now publicly demonstrated to every global nation-state that it has both the military capability and strategic will to use its power across the region in support of its national security objectives. Both this capability and will can only reinforce the perception of competitor nation-states that Israel will also use every other means of its national power (e.g. diplomatic, informational, economic, etc.) in concert with its growing military capability to advance its strategic policy ends. In short, Israel will now credibly be seen by both regional neighbors and global competitors as the dominant regional power with whom to contend if such nation-states wish to strategically advance their interests in the Middle East. This is, to be sure, a sea change on par with other historical inflexion points in the region’s recent history, including the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, the 1978 Camp David Accords, and even the 9/11 attacks on America. What other lessons does this shift portend?

First, all-domain operations (ADO) are now proven to be a militarily viable joint operational doctrine. The crux of ADO is the simultaneous and continuous synchronization of military power across all domains of war (so air, space, sea, cyberspace, and land) to converge a specific set of military capabilities at a precise time and location on a battlefield to achieve a competitive advantage over one’s enemies. With both the Israeli and American attacks on Iran, both nations have fully demonstrated that ADO can and will work as a joint operational military doctrine, particularly when such allies work in tandem with one another, a concept on which ADO is predicated. In short, mastery and employment of ADO in interoperable military operations with allies and partner nations will produce decisive military results and can set the conditions for derivative achievement of strategic policy ends for both individual nation-states and alliances. Consider that though most details of both sets of recent attacks against Iran remain understandably classified, there is no credible way that either Israel or America could have achieved either nation’s immediate tactical and operational military objectives without at least coordinating and informing the other of their ADO-based plans, yielding an immense strategic advantage for both nations.

Second, this now must give pause to other nation-state competitors who lack ADO military commitment or capability before making any ad bellum decision to initiate an attack against either Israel or the United States. This should, in turn, yield a general diminution of military combat in and across the region, to be sure, particularly when combined with the strategic reality that Iran will likely no longer have the sponsor capability to support the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, especially as it has lost its foothold in Syria. Nonetheless, global competitors must now credibly assess whether they have the combined military capabilities to not only deter against ADO but also to defeat it and to do so on a global scale. Such demonstrated military capability on the parts of both Israel and the United States should, at a minimum, interdict the decision-making cycle of potential aggressors prior to going to war, both in the Near and Middle East and perhaps the globe.

Third, Israel can now lay claim to the moniker of dominant regional power. By way of contrast, while Turkey retains its status as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization signatory, NATO status also acts as a type of hedge against any regional ambitions which Turkey might wish to exercise in its growing military and diplomatic influence. However, its regional reach is, at this point, confined to its influence in Syria, genuinely attenuated by both countries’ shared land border. It has neither the military nor certainly the intelligence capabilities of Israel. As well, with Saudi Arabia following a trajectory of internal domestic stabilization, economic growth, improving governance, and infrastructure advancement, it likely has no regional appetite to challenge Israel for dominance in the region, despite the military retrenchment of its Iranian rival. Indeed, the Abraham Accords appear due for a likely resurrection as a geo-political initiative between both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Finally, one must assess the reduction of strategic reach which is now Russia’s fate, as its loss of basing capabilities in Syria, its ongoing war in Ukraine, and its inability to militarily and economically react on behalf of Iran (its political ally in the so-called BRICS agglomeration), effectively means that Russia is neutralized as even a potential regional power, though its nuclear capability must never be dismissed. In short, no other power in either the Near or Middle East has the full array of instruments of national power which Israel now enjoys, and all other neighbors will have to at least count that power into their strategic calculus in achieving their national policy ends.

Fourth, however, is a cautionary note: Iranian domestic political instability is likely increasing at an alarming rate. Combined with the ongoing economic impact of United States led sanctions, Israel has demonstrated immense capability within Iran’s borders. It has shown that it has the human, signals, and electronic intelligence assets in place to effectively target Iranian military and nuclear assets with seeming impunity, especially the leadership of the much-vaunted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has heretofore been loyal to the mullahcracy. Moreover, such assets remain in place, ready at a moment’s notice to further target Iranian political leadership should Israel deem it in its best interests to do so, a fact which cannot be lost on both such leaders and on Iran’s domestic populace. Finally, there is a strong recent history of the Iranian people agitating for greater economic and social autonomy, and the weakness of the state’s apparatus cannot but embolden such popular sentiment. Added together with the regional and even global isolation which is now Iran’s fate, there is increasing evidence that other national actors within Iran may decide to challenge the mullahs for control of the country.

What of the immediate future? Three possible outcomes seem to present themselves.

First, the greatest risk to both regional and even global security, of course, remains Iran’s ability to constrict the straits of Hormuz, the six-mile-wide sea lane through which much of the region’s petroleum travels to worldwide markets. However, Iran will have to know that if they undertake to choke off this strategic waterway, both Israel and certainly the United States will take decisive military action to neutralize that threat and to secure the straits. Just as both nations determined that Iran could not possess nuclear military capability, both would also likely determine that Iran must not be allowed to threaten the global economic order through such a move. Moreover, if Iran were to fail in such an attempt, it might further weaken the domestic political standing and power of the mullahcracy to a tipping point where internally driven regime change becomes inevitable.

Second, however, Israel seems likely not to advance its military attacks against Iran beyond its recent successful air campaigns. In tandem with the prior point of delicately maintaining a type of domestic political stability in Iran, Israel simply has no strategic interest in prosecuting the attacks beyond their current successes. Iran is now regionally neutralized, its proxies are hamstrung, Israel enjoys intelligence impunity and air superiority within its borders, and with United States assistance, its potential nuclear threat is minimized. Whether the regime fails or not, Israel strategically gains nothing further by advancing beyond its current levels of military attack. Third and finally, neither Russia nor the People’s Republic of China will decisively come to Iran’s aid, notwithstanding each nation’s public commitments as part of the BRICS cluster. That consortium of nations seems now likely limited to intra-national political, economic, and monetary agreements but nothing more, certainly not attaining the status of a military-based commitment to collective security. Moreover, with Russia militarily tied down in Ukraine and its economy starved of foreign capital and investment and with the PRC focusing all its instruments of national power on securing its strategic interests across the South and East China Seas, Iran will remain militarily isolated. Combined with what must be renewed internal assessments by both Russia and the PRC of the power of ADO as a joint operational military concept, they will have little to no appetite to contest either Israel or the United States across the region, or perhaps further. Rather, the balance of power is rapidly shifting across the Near and Middle East, and at this point, it appears that there will be no immediate threat to Israel’s status, particularly when paired with a forceful and robust military threat presented from the United States.