Introduction
The Middle East is entering a potentially consequential period of political and strategic realignment. The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the continuing weakness of the Lebanese state, the regional role of Iran, and the transformation of Israeli threat perceptions since 7 October 2023 are creating both opportunities and significant risks. Syria and Lebanon face a common underlying problem: the state does not yet possess an uncontested monopoly over the use of force.
In Syria, the new leadership under President Ahmed al-Sharaa is attempting to reunify the country, integrate competing armed formations, rebuild state institutions, and attract the investment necessary for reconstruction. In Lebanon, the government confronts the far more entrenched problem of Hezbollah’s autonomous military power and its relationship with Tehran. In both cases, reconstruction and state-building cannot be separated from security.
A stronger state could become a foundation for regional stability; it could also generate new strategic challenges for Israel if its military institutions and political ideology develop in a confrontational direction. The central challenge for Israel, the United States, European governments, and the Arab states is to help create stronger, more predictable states without allowing reconstruction to reproduce the conditions of future conflict.
Syria: Reconstruction as an Opportunity and a Risk
Syria stands at a crossroads. President Ahmed al-Sharaa is trying to re-unite the country and restore the authority of the state after years of civil war, repression and fragmentation. His first task is to control the guns.
This entails bringing militias and other armed groups under a single national command and disbanding those unwilling to comply, thus restoring a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The problem was made all too apparent during the Assad era. A country split between rival armed power bases cannot offer lasting security, attract serious investment or build a viable economy.
Ordinary Syrians want to return to some semblance of normality. No serious money will be put into a country where an armed conflict can break out at any time. Tourism will not flourish in an unsafe environment. Weapons out of state control make it easier to sustain crime. Rebuilding requires roads, electricity, schools and hospitals, and it also requires something less tangible and just as important: predictability.
The problem is that al-Sharaa does not yet have the power to order this himself. Syria is still volatile militarily and economically, and the process of integrating former militias and armed groups is far from finished. Incorporating Kurdish-led forces into a national security structure is more than a matter of military organization. It is a test of whether Damascus can build a state that commands authority and loyalty across Syria’s deep political, ethnic and sectarian divisions.
That is why al-Sharaa wants Turkey, the US and the Arab states to help stabilise Syria, ease economic constraints and attract the resources needed for reconstruction. He needs foreign support to cement Syrian sovereignty and rebuild the country’s military and security institutions.
This puts Syria straight up against Israel. Israel has ample reason to worry about a strengthened Syrian state on its northern border. Syria is coming out of a devastating war, and its new rulers are an unknown quantity. Jerusalem is particularly concerned about the rebuilding of Syrian military power and the continuing presence of forces and ideologies hostile to Israel. Damascus, for its part, wants Israel to withdraw from territory it considers Syrian and accept a restored security arrangement along the border.
In principle these interests are compatible. Syria needs stability for reconstruction. Israel also needs a stable government in Syria that can control its territory and prevent armed groups from using Syrian soil to threaten Israel. But history and ideology make it extraordinarily difficult to reconcile in practice.
The problem is Israeli suspicion and the political narrative that helped justify the Syrian revolt. For segments of the Syrian opposition, particularly Islamist and revolutionary currents, Assad was depicted as a leader who advocated resistance to Israel but in the end preserved his regime and acquiesced in the continuing reality of Israeli control of the Golan Heights. In this narrative, resistance to Assad and resistance to Israel were intertwined: first the dictator had to be overthrown, and then the struggle for Palestine would continue. The Palestinian issue is emotionally and politically charged in Syria and the rest of the Arab world.
This history presents a serious dilemma for al-Sharaa. He needs Western and Arab support, sanctions to be lifted, foreign investment, and an end to the permanent war. Pragmatism is favoured by economic incentives. But he cannot move too fast toward accommodation with Israel without alienating constituencies for whom Palestine and resistance remain central to political legitimacy.
The composition of the new regime makes matters even more complicated. It is comprised of pragmatic figures who understand the importance of opening Syria to the West, and more ideological Islamist elements whose political outlook was forged in years of armed struggle. Pragmatism may be preferred, because the economic incentives are so strong. The government that can bring investment and better living conditions has so much more to offer Syrians than the government that promises another war.
However, the political pragmatism at the top doesn’t necessarily tell us where Syria is headed in the long run. The institutions that will decide the future of Syria, especially the military, the security services and the education system, are extremely important. They are being influenced by people who have a more Islamist and conservative point of view. Rebuilding the army is not just a technical exercise. The consequences of recruitment, the culture of the military, public religious ceremonies, the ideological presentation of the armed forces are important. A conservative Islamist identity for the new state will make a fundamental reconciliation with Israel extremely difficult.
Ideology may be forced to concede to economic necessity, but it is not abolished by it. Syria is too weak to fight Israel today. Still, it may hold an outlook that sees confrontation with Israel as a historical or religious imperative. Voices are already being raised for a more militant posture, even at great cost. Strategically disastrous confrontations have sometimes been presented as heroic resistance in the region.
In the immediate interests of Syria, restraint is the rational policy. Reconstruction is based on security. Foreign capital needs confidence. It will be necessary to cooperate with Western and Arab governments to ease economic restrictions. None of this is compatible with a sustained confrontation.
A more united Syria could restore order, revive its economy, attract investment, relieve pressure on refugees and contribute to a more stable Middle East. Syria and its neighbours would be better off with a government that could control its territory and armed forces than the fragmented order that preceded it.
The October 2026 Israeli elections could influence the approach from Jerusalem, but a change of government will not, on its own, resolve the underlying strategic dilemma. Much will depend on what kind of coalition is formed, the security situation in Syria, the ideological direction of Syria’s new institutions, and Washington and Ankara’s ability to help forge credible security arrangements.
The real challenge is to move beyond the simplistic dichotomy of deterrence vs. accommodation. Syria needs sovereignty and reconstruction. Israel needs safety. Both countries need a quieter, more predictable border.
The window of opportunity is narrow. Reconstruction of Syria can be a foundation for stability in the region. It could also create a more powerful state whose ideology and strategic interests place it once again in confrontation with Israel. What happens next depends on the outcome of either one of these two scenarios.
The Key to Lebanon Lies Still in Teheran
Tehran has been anxious to prevent another pillar of its regional network from collapsing, after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Lebanon is therefore of considerable strategic importance to Iran’s regional interests. Hezbollah continues to be one of Tehran’s most important allies and instruments of regional influence.
Formally, the Lebanese state has a monopoly on the country’s sovereign authority, but its ability to monopolise the use of force has been limited. Lebanon has undergone decades of political division, sectarian rivalry, foreign intervention, and competing centers of armed power.
Its political system has survived less by resolving these differences than by accommodating them: different communities and political factions have learnt to co-exist through bargaining, power sharing, compromise and distribution of state resources. The result is a system in which some continuity of politics can be achieved, but which is prone to paralysis and occasional violence.
To understand Lebanon today one must understand it not as a state that works and has normal political argument, but as one where competing communal and political actors have sometimes had considerable coercive power outside formal state institutions.
During the civil war and in its wake, Lebanon had armed formations that were tied to different sectarian and political communities. They were Christian, Druze, Sunni, Shia and Palestinian actors. Most were eventually disarmed or incorporated into the postwar political order. The main exception is Hezbollah.
It has built up a much bigger military capacity than other Lebanese factions and has received extensive financial, military and ideological backing from Teheran. Hezbollah has become a Lebanese political force and a pillar of Iran’s regional strategy.
The Lebanese government faces a fundamental dilemma. It calls, in principle, for a state monopoly of all weapons. But it has been unable to impose this principle on Hezbollah without risking a broader confrontation in the country. The current international campaign to bolster the Lebanese military rests on the premise that the state cannot be genuinely sovereign unless its armed forces can assume responsibility for security across the country. The European Union is aiming to advise and train the Lebanese armed forces, ostensibly to increase their capacity to confront the challenge posed by Hezbollah’s independent military power.
The problem is exacerbated by Iran’s continued engagement. As long as Tehran sees Hezbollah as an essential part of its regional deterrence and influence, it will have little incentive to let it voluntarily give up its military capabilities. Israel’s strategic calculus has also shifted dramatically since 7 October 2023.
A heavily armed Hezbollah force just across the northern border may have been an uncomfortable but manageable reality until now; it is now being filtered through the prism of the Hamas attack and the potential for coordinated action by multiple Iranian-backed organisations. Just think about a joint Hamas-Hezbollah attack on October 7th and the massacres in the north of Israel and the horrors in the south of Israel.
The present army chiefs are not going to accept this. Israeli planners find it hard to rule out the prospect of Hezbollah trying a major cross-border attack in concert with other forces. A northern attack on a scale similar or even greater than the 7 October attack has become a central element in Israeli threat perception.
This helps explain the ongoing cycle of confrontation. For Israel, the intact Hezbollah military infrastructure is a strategic vulnerability; for Hezbollah its weapons are vital for deterrence and its relationship with Iran; for Iran, Hezbollah is a key component of its overall regional strategy; and the Lebanese state cannot impose a final resolution on its own. This produces a structural deadlock in which each actor has an incentive to resist the conditions that would produce a durable resolution.
Thus, I see no end to violence in Lebanon until external powers are willing to commit sustained political, and perhaps financial and security, resources to create the conditions for a stronger Lebanese state. The US wields a lot of leverage but faces competing priorities in the region and little appetite to take on the direct responsibility to resolve Lebanon’s internal political and military contradictions. The present impasse with Iran and the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz further complicate American calculations and leave them with little appetite to get involved in the Lebanese mud.
Though France and other European states may be better positioned institutionally to help Lebanon, European governments also face distinct limits on their ability to force Hezbollah, Iran or Israel to agree to a comprehensive settlement. This is a tragic and deeply problematic result. Lebanon needs external assistance to prop up the state, but no external actor seems willing or able to bear the enormous political burden of restructuring the country’s security order.
Israel and Lebanon will pay the cost. Communities in northern Israel face the constant threat of renewed cross-border violence, while Lebanese in southern Lebanon have been repeatedly displaced, destroyed and lived in insecurity. Lebanon suffers when a non-state armed actor can drag the country into regional conflicts that the government has little control over. Hezbollah’s military collaboration with Iran comes at the direct expense of Lebanese sovereignty, and Israeli security.
In this regard, Israeli and Lebanese efforts to establish direct or indirect political relations are important and should be encouraged. Both sides have an interest in establishing lines of communication, negotiating security arrangements, restoring normality along the border and strengthening the authority of the Lebanese state.
A U.S.-brokered effort to link Israeli withdrawal from parts of southern Lebanon with deployment of Lebanese forces and progress on disarming Hezbollah has faced serious obstacles to implementation. Direct talks between Israel and Lebanon are vital for improved communication and mutual understanding.
Jerusalem and Beirut should keep looking for ways to lower the risk of miscalculation, strengthening the Lebanese state and decoupling Lebanon’s national interests from the strategic calculations of outside powers. The goal, ultimately, is a Lebanon where it is the government — not a militia or a foreign patron — that decides when to go to war and when to make peace.
Israel and Lebanon need international support. The crux of the matter remains Hezbollah’s relationship with Iran. Until that relationship is altered or sufficiently checked, all diplomatic gains between Jerusalem and Beirut will remain fragile and reversible. The task, therefore, is to build better Israeli-Lebanese relations and to build the political and security conditions for these relations to survive the pressures created by Hezbollah, Iran and the broader regional conflict. Most of the keys are still in Iran.
Conclusion
Syria and Lebanon differ in form but share a common structure in their strategic dilemmas. The essential question in each country is the capacity of the state to restore enough authority to control territory, weapons and decisions affecting the nation. The opportunity in Syria is a relatively new one: reconstruction could generate institutions capable of restoring order, attracting investment, and creating a more predictable regional environment. The reconstruction of political and military institutions also has the potential of creating a stronger state whose ideological orientation may again turn hostile to Israel.
In Lebanon, the challenge is more deeply rooted because Hezbollah’s military autonomy is closely linked to Iran’s regional strategy and the Lebanese state lacks the capacity to impose a decisive settlement on its own.
The answer is neither naïve optimism nor permanent reliance on military deterrence. Reconstruction and security should be seen as mutually reinforcing enterprises. Israel should understand that good and predictable neighbours may ultimately bring more security than patchy territories controlled by non-state armed actors.
Syria and Lebanon, for their part, need to understand that sovereignty is not limited to formal institutions. Sovereignty is about effective state control over armed power and a political order able to protect citizens and, at the same time, limit the capacity of external patrons to decide national policy. The US, Europe, Turkey and the Arab states can help, but outside actors cannot be a substitute for legitimate and effective domestic institutions forever.
Syrian reconstruction could provide a basis for regional stabilisation and the recovery of Lebanon could be part of a wider effort to restore state sovereignty and reduce the risk of renewed war. Neither will happen automatically. They will require sustained diplomacy, international investment, credible security arrangements, institutional reform, and political leaders willing to subordinate short-term ideological or strategic gains to longer-term stability. The core strategic goal in both Syria and Lebanon is the same: stronger states, fewer autonomous armed actors, more predictable borders, and political systems that have the capacity and the incentives to choose diplomacy over renewed conflict.
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor is a prolific scholar of politics, law, and ethics. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and has held senior positions at UCL, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Lund University, University of Hull, University of Haifa, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins University. Raphael is a former Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden and Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has founded interdisciplinary research centres and has served on international advisory boards. His publications include numerous books and articles in the fields of Political Science, Philosophy, History, Ethics, Education and Law on tolerance, democracy, human rights, peace and conflict resolution, including most recently Confronting the internet's Dark Side (2015), Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism (2021) and Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2026), all published by Cambridge University Press.
