Middle Eastern crisis (2023–present)

The Middle Eastern crisis is a series of interrelated wars, conflicts, and heightened instability in the Middle East that began in 2023 after the 7 October attacks on Israel, which followed a period of rising tensions and increased violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the attacks killed about 1,200 people in Israel and saw about 250 more taken hostage. Israel responded by declaring war and embarking on a bombing campaign, and later invasion, of the Gaza Strip as a part of the war in Gaza that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians.

Shortly after the Gaza war began, several Iran-backed militias in the Axis of Resistance joined the conflict against Israel. In Lebanon, Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, igniting a fourteen-month conflict that escalated in October 2024 to an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon and largely ended with a ceasefire at the end of November. The weakening of Hezbollah and fall of the Assad regime led to the end of the Lebanese political crisis and the election of Aoun to the Lebanese Presidency. In the Red Sea, the Yemen-based Houthis attacked shipping vessels in solidarity with Hamas, drawing international rebuke—including a series of airstrikes against Houthi positions carried out by the United States and the United Kingdom—which ended with the U.S.–Houthi ceasefire in May 2025. Iraqi militias led by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq also carried out attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, but mostly halted in December 2024.

Three times during the crisis, Iran and Israel engaged in direct confrontations. The two exchanged attacks on each other's territory in April and October 2024, and June 2025, the latter of which initiated an undeclared war. In November 2024, Syrian opposition groups began an offensive that reignited the Syrian civil war, culminating in the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December and the establishment of a transitional government in the place of the former Ba'athist government. On the same day, Israeli forces invaded Syria, with the Israeli government declaring the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria to be void.

The diplomatic and political impacts of the crisis have been wide-ranging. The scale of destruction in Gaza has led to the diplomatic isolation of Israel and the pause of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Conversely, the crisis has been said to have severely decreased the regional strength and influence of Iran and its allies. Israel faces accusations of genocide, including from South Africa in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice; the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for alleged war crimes.