What the US-Israel war on Iran will not change in the Middle East

Mohamed Elmenshawy is a Washington based political commentator.

In every major Middle Eastern war, the same illusion returns: the belief that bombs can rewrite history. The US-Israel war on Iran is rapidly and forcefully redrawing the map of the Middle East in ways previously unseen. Yet there are enduring realities that wars and bombs, no matter how precise, cannot erase or alter.

Experts and analysts have not stopped predicting what the region will look like once the fighting ends. Some insist that this war will reshape the Middle East, topple regional axes and produce a new regional order. Part of this is true; historically, major wars leave deep fractures and transformations in maps, systems and demographics. But there is also a methodological illusion that accompanies every war: the belief that it can wipe everything away and produce a blank page on which a new beginning of history can be written, even though history itself repeatedly disproves such illusions.

Across its long history, civilisations and peoples, the Middle East has proven itself exceptional in its ability to absorb massive shocks and reconstitute itself. It has witnessed the Islamic conquests, the Mongol invasions, the Crusades, European colonialism, the Cold War, waves of extremism and civil wars. Despite all this, the Middle East has remained resistant to change except when change has been organic and gradual.

Today, as signs emerge of the approaching end of the US-Israel war on Iran, the question most often absent seems to be: What will not change?

Since human civilisation first took root in this part of the world, geography has ruled its destiny. The Strait of Hormuz still controls the passage of nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil. The Suez Canal remains one of the most vital arteries of international trade. The Fertile Crescent still links Asia to Europe. This geography is destiny, not choice, and no military force can alter it.

Iran will remain a state overlooking the Strait of Hormuz even after the war ends. Yemen will remain the southern gateway to the Bab al-Mandeb, one of the world’s most vital waterways. Egypt will continue to control the Suez Canal. In some cases, war may change who governs these locations, but it cannot change what they represent geographically. As long as this geography endures, so too will the struggle over who controls it.

Perhaps the greatest illusion exposed by the war on Iran is the belief that destroying the “axis of resistance” would remove the Palestinian issue from the regional agenda. This is a structural illusion that confuses the instrument with the essence. Iran invested in the Palestinian cause and used it ideologically and strategically, but it neither created the cause nor possesses the key to ending it.