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The new article, “The Stability-Instability Paradox and the Evolving Balance of Terror in the Middle East” by Thomas Juneau, anchors our special issue, October 7 Legacies: Regional War, Global Crisis. The collection features investigations of Israeli politics ahead of the late October elections, the regional and global crises triggered by the Iran War, the clerical hold on power in Tehran, and the Palestinian struggle for autonomy. Fifteen of the 17 articles are outside our paywall and free to read. Also available is our Fall 2026 double issue, featuring incisive analyses of regional developments, as well as our special issue commemorating a quarter century since the 9/11 attacks. If you find this newsletter useful, please forward it to others you believe will benefit. You can register to receive our weekly updates here. And please follow us on the social media platforms X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Juneau argues that the Iran War has squandered the advantages that Israel and the United States had gained over Iran since the October 7 attacks, especially through direct military actions in 2024 and 2025 that essentially destroyed the country’s air defenses:
Tehran’s retaliation failed to cause more than limited damage inside Israel, while the Axis [of Resistance, including Hamas and Hezbollah] clearly failed in its mission of deterring Israeli and American attacks. It seemed, moreover, that in future rounds of violence, Israel could exacerbate this growing imbalance of pain.
The analysis shows that by the end of the June 2025 war against the Islamic Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had effectively overturned what Juneau terms the post-Cold War “balance of terror.” For decades, Iran had managed to deter direct attacks against the militarily superior US-Israel alliance:
The dominant pillar of Tehran’s strategy was support for nonstate armed groups throughout the Middle East in what became known as the Axis of Resistance, chiefly Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a range of militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and, prior to the fall of the Assad regime in 2024, various armed groups in Syria. The second pillar was drone and missile programs. By 2023, Iran had built a capacity to indigenously produce large quantities of such weaponry, able to reach any point in the Middle East.
While there was no doubt that Israel and the United States had the ability to inflict significant pain on the Islamic Republic, the dominant perception on the American and Israeli side was that should either or both attack Iran directly, retaliation—through Axis members on Israel and on American assets in the region, and through Iran’s own missile and drone capabilities—would be too costly. Tehran’s leadership, for its part, broadly shared this conclusion.
However, Netanyahu’s post-October 7 strategy unbalanced this balance of terror, as it substantially weakened the major nonstate threats, allowing him to take a more aggressive posture. Israel thus “shifted its approach from coexistence—albeit an uneasy and volatile one—to pursuing, if not necessarily achieving, total victory,” Juneau writes. “In the two and a half years that followed, Israel steadily escalated its use of violence against its adversaries, first against Hamas and Hezbollah and then, in April 2024, directly against Iran.”
Tehran’s weakness was exacerbated by the street demonstrations that began in late 2025. However, Juneau contends, the Iran War gave the Islamic Republic an opening to shift its deterrence strategy toward aggressive campaigns against sites of major interest to the United States and its regional and global allies.
Tehran assessed, correctly, that one of its preferred tools, retaliation through its proxies, was far less effective than it had hoped. Other tools that it had long kept in reserve, especially closing the strait but also direct strikes on GCC states, proved highly effective. Iran’s military assets—cruise and ballistic missiles, drones, naval mines, and small attack craft—allow it to operate a guerrilla force at sea. It cannot defeat the American military, but it can harass shipping in the Gulf by focusing on asymmetric warfare.
The article shows that even if the United States and Israel were to renew their strikes in late 2026, the Islamic Republic would still be able to threaten global shipping.
Juneau prefers a longer-term process of regime change in Iran. He lays out a potential path for Washington to “manage this new normal” and weaken or even topple the Islamic Republic without restarting the counterproductive war. His remedies include preventing Tehran from fully reconstituting its military and rebuilding its economy; restocking Gulf defenses; diversifying supply chains to reduce the importance of the Strait of Hormuz; and countering the nonstate actors that are still central to Iran’s defense, such as Yemen’s Houthi movement. Most important, he writes, “Given the absence of a viable opposition in exile and the reality that opposition inside the country has been systematically repressed, Washington and its allies should start the patient work of supporting civil society and encouraging the notoriously fractured expatriate community to unite.”
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