Israel’s Iran strike provides a historic chance for Middle East realignment
Israel’s stunning strikes on Iran—bigger, bolder, and more strategic than what has preceded them—are much more than a military response to a potential nuclear threat. They present the opportunity for a regional remake, having hit the Middle East’s greatest obstacle to sustainable peace, security, and prosperity.
Though it will be difficult for Israel’s critics to concede this, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delivered the Middle East an inflection point to reshape the regional order around normalization and integration, based on a shared commitment to economic modernization, political moderation, and religious tolerance.
For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its theocracy have cast a disruptive shadow across the Middle East. They’ve done that through nuclear brinkmanship, ideological extremism, and exporting revolution through Iran’s network of proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq.
Israel’s latest strikes are not just about defending its borders and ensuring its existence. They are also about removing whatever remaining ability Iran has to disrupt Arab-Israeli reconciliation.
For too long, Tehran has been allowed to play arsonist to any real peace process—from the Camp David Accords to the Abraham Accords. It was no accident that Hamas struck Israel on October 7, 2023, just as negotiations toward Saudi-Israeli normalization were near completion.
Seizing the opportunity
This week may advance an alignment that has been emerging between a number of forward-looking countries in the region that understand the enormous dividends regional integration can bring and know that Israel needs to be included in that integration. We at the Atlantic Council have been calling this group the N7—Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and (pre-civil war) Sudan, a combination of Abraham Accords countries and those that had previously normalized relations with Israel.
To support this regional alignment, the Atlantic Council launched its N7 Initiative in partnership with the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation in 2021. This initiative aims to broaden and deepen collaboration among these countries by supporting initiatives that unlock the economic, political, and security benefits of integration. Since its founding, the N7 Initiative has engaged more than twenty-five countries and hundreds of world leaders while advancing new policy initiatives and partnerships. Even this week, the N7 Initiative is hosting a bipartisan group of US representatives in the Middle East.
The N7 began as an aspiration, daring to imagine an integrated region that was fundamentally different than what had existed before. Violent spoilers, led by Iran and its proxies, sought to upend those aspirations. But when Iran directly attacked Israel twice last year, the United States worked with its partners, including several N7 governments, on joint air defenses. In the end, Israel’s military action may hasten more open economic and security alignments. Over time, this could open the way for regional equivalents to the European Union or even NATO, which I wrote about here in November 2023.
If that sounds far-fetched, think about how Europe during the post–World War II years put an end to centuries of conflict by bringing together combatants in institutions, first in the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor to the European Union, and then NATO. “I would be one of the first people that would endorse a Middle East NATO,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II said in a June 2022 interview with CNBC.
Thus, the Trump administration has a historic opportunity, if it thinks more like an architect than a firefighter and if it acts more with political resolve than with restraint. The Abraham Accords, executed in the first Trump administration, showed what could happen when Iran and its proxies were weakened. Imagine what a second Trump administration could achieve if Iran’s revolutionary regime is more existentially endangered.
I recently spoke with an individual who is close to the Trump administration and had recently traveled to Iran. He compared the atmosphere on the streets and the mood among those he met to those of perestroika in the latter days of the Soviet Union. It was a period when all the Soviet institutions of repression remained in place, and no one was predicting Soviet collapse, but the Soviet public was paying less attention to their repressors, who in turn were acting with less confidence.
This individual’s conclusion was that the right set of circumstances could destabilize the regime and confound conventional analysts. The Iranians he spoke with talked about everything from democratic change to the return of monarchical rule.
Connecting the dots
On December 18 of last year, under the headline “The stage is set for Trump’s global leadership moment,” I wrote: “Connect the dots across the factors that brought about the collapse of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last week and you’ll see glaring new evidence of Russian and Iranian weaknesses. These dramatic vulnerabilities provide President-elect Donald Trump with a historic opportunity of global consequence early in his second term.”
Iranian proxy Hamas’s attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, had seemed to underscore profound Israeli security, military, and intelligence vulnerabilities. A series of events that followed—most dramatically the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024—dramatically turned the tables, setting the stage for Israel’s most recent strikes.
History will remember this moment less for the Israeli strikes themselves and more for what follows. The violence may continue for some time to come, and it’s unclear what impact this week’s events will have on Gaza. When the dust settles, however, the most important matter will be whether Israel has catalyzed a reordering of the Middle East.
That would be an inflection point for the ages.
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X: @FredKempe.
This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.
Further reading
Fri, Jun 13, 2025
Unknowns, knowns, and early predictions about Israel’s strikes against Iran
New Atlanticist By William F. Wechsler
How long Israel’s campaign against Iran will go on is unknown. But even amid the uncertainty, don’t lose sight of what is already known—or at least what can already be surmised with high confidence.
Thu, Jun 12, 2025
Experts react: Israel just attacked Iran’s military and nuclear sites. What’s next?
New Atlanticist By
Our experts shed light on Israel’s major attack against Iran targeting its nuclear facilities and its implications for the region.
Fri, Jun 13, 2025
After Israel’s strikes on Iran, these four questions could determine the Middle East’s future
New Atlanticist By Jonathan Panikoff
The trajectory of the Middle East could be determined by how just a few critical questions are answered the coming days and weeks.
Image: An Iranian worshipper holds up a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a protest to condemn Israeli attacks on Iran, after Friday prayer ceremonies in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 13, 2025. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)NO USE FRANCE