Two years ago, in September 2023, the former National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, offered a resoundingly hopeful outlook for the Middle East. The administration’s efforts to “depressurize and de-escalate” the Middle East had succeeded. A de facto truce was holding in Yemen, Iran-backed attacks on U.S. bases had dropped off, and the United States was able to focus on regional integration and normalization efforts rather than “crisis and conflict management”. The Middle East, Sullivan concluded, was “quieter today than it [had] been in two decades”. Sullivan’s comments did not age well. Just a few days later, a Hamas-led attack on Israel’s southern communities swiftly set the region ablaze, thrusting the Middle East back to the center of Washington’s crisis mitigation efforts.

October 7 and Its Aftermath

The Hamas-led attack on October 7 and the armed response to Israel’s ensuing retaliatory offensive in Gaza, once again, demonstrated the ongoing centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to regional volatility. Just one day after Hamas and a coterie of armed Gaza-based groups launched their multi-pronged attack on Israel, Hezbollah joined the conflict, firing rockets and artillery into the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms “in solidarity” with the Palestinian people. On October 18, in response to U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas, Iranian-backed militias began expanding their attacks with a series of coordinated attacks on U.S. facilities and assets in Syria and Iraq. A day later, on October 19, the Houthis fired cruise missiles and drones headed toward Israel; a month later, the group started targeting “Israeli-linked” maritime vessels traversing the Red Sea. By December 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed that Israel was engaged in “a multi-front war”. 

This was not the type of multi-state, territorial war that Israel faced between 1948 and 1973, when neighboring Arab states engaged in three direct military confrontations with Tel Aviv. Rather, the war’s initial outbreak in October 2023, its endurance, as well as its regional reverberations, were highly predicated on non-state armed actors’ (NSAAs) ability to exploit latent fissures. As the past two years have shown, state-powered military interventions targeting NSAAs that proliferate regional instability can reduce their fighting capabilities in the short term. However, without addressing the underlying causes of violence as well as the structural conditions that enable these NSAAs to function, they are unlikely to lead to long-term regional stability. Nowhere is this perhaps better illustrated than in Gaza.

NSAAs and the Middle East: A Long History

NSAAs have a long history in the Middle East as powerful shapers of regional trajectories and events and as “clients” of powerful state backers. Britain’s material support of NSAAs, for instance, dates back to World War I, when it supplied arms to tribes to fight against the Ottoman Empire. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union relied on regional allies to support various NSAAs as a tool for geopolitical rivalry. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, as part of its War on Terror, the United States began arming Sunni forces in Iraq to combat Al-Qaeda under the framework of the Anbar Awakening movement. As these examples illustrate, NSAAs’ emergence is highly indicative of regional sociopolitical trends.

Their activities are also deeply entwined with ongoing conflict, and most NSAAs rise or fall based on local circumstances, exploiting local grievances, attracting local recruits, and targeting local governments. In the past two decades, the rise in non-state armed actors has often coincided with the relative weakening of states. Both Libya and Yemen saw a surge in non-state armed actors following the breakdown of state authority and amidst prolonged conflict. In Iraq and Syria, power vacuums and sectarian tensions led to the emergence of a singularly brutal and repressive non-state armed actor in 2014, known as ISIL or ISIS.

At its height, ISIS—a Salafi-jihadist movement—controlled about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq. The fight against ISIS, meanwhile, included its own array of NSAAs, including the U.S.-backed Kurdish People’s Defense Unit (YPG) and its sister militia, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). As it consolidated control over northwest Syria in 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an erstwhile al-Qaida affiliate, also joined the fight by publicly announcing––and engaging in––dozens of anti-ISIS operations. Its leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, is now the president of Syria, overseeing a newly formed transitional government. 

Al-Sharaa’s rise to power, which coincided with HTS’ voluntary dissolution, is merely the latest example of an NSAA’s transformation. Indeed, various contemporary political movements and structures across the Middle East can trace their origins back to armed groups before being integrated into a political system. After Israel’s establishment, the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization responsible for the deadly King David Hotel bombings in 1946, transitioned into the Herut, a right-wing political party that won fourteen seats in Israel’s first elections. Its head, Menachem Begin, served as Israel’s prime minister from 1977 to 1983.

Another example is Fatah, currently led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which was established as a national liberation movement in 1957; combat operations, according to its founders, were deemed a necessary precedent to “Filastin’s liberation”, based on the notion that “freedom is taken, not granted”. Almost 40 years later, Fatah, as the dominant member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), for the first time engaged with Israel in direct peace negotiations, following the PLO’s renunciation of violence and Israeli recognition of the organization as the political representative of the Palestinian people. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has operated as a hybrid organization inside Lebanon since 1992, with both a military and political wing. Its party, the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, currently holds 13 seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament.      

What’s in a Name: Fraught Terminology

The characterization of NSAAs is, of course, highly dependent on the socio-political normative perceptions of the cause for which armed force is being used, as well as the actions taken by an NSAA—and their targets. Depending on the group’s organizational structure, ideology, use of violence, and its relationship with domestic and international actors, other descriptors might be used too. For instance, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), an Iran-backed armed group, has been described as a paramilitary organization, a terrorist group, and a militia.

NSAAs, which are also described as violent non-state actors (VNSAs), organized armed groups, or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), rarely self-identify in such terms. The above-mentioned Palestine Liberation Organization, as the name suggests, viewed itself as a liberation movement, dedicated to the “complete restoration of our lost homeland”. In 1987, conversely, the U.S. designated the PLO and its affiliated groups as terrorist organizations, deeming its covenant as well as the group’s implication in the murder of U.S. citizens a threat to the “interests of the United States”.

Other nations did not take the same stance. Almost ten years prior, in 1974, the Arab League and the UN General Assembly had politically recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and allowed it to participate in UN activities under observer status. More recently, the European Union, in contrast to Washington, has taken a differentiated approach to Hezbollah’s military and political wings, only designating the former a terrorist organization. 

When it comes to NSAAs, diverging regional and international approaches and engagement tend to be more of a feature than a bug. This divergence, in part, can be explained by the hybrid nature of many NSAA across the Middle East. To a varied extent, NSAAs in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have come to play governing and political roles in their countries, undermining neat dichotomies between state and non-state actors. NSAAs’ hybridity also challenges assumptions that bureaucratic institutionalization inherently leads to restraint and the adoption of non-violent principles.

Hezbollah is perhaps one of the best-known contemporary examples of a hybrid actor, having expanded from an Iranian-backed ideological movement to an established political organization characterized by bureaucratic state-like structures, including a semi-public Foreign Relations Department, a significant geographic presence that depends on Shia support in southern Lebanon, and an extensive welfare infrastructure. In 2023, on the eve of the latest Israel-Hamas War, Hezbollah was considered the world’s most powerful non-state actor, often described as “a state within a state”.

In Iraq, the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), comprising dozens of separate armed groups, is another hybrid actor. Its transformation from a “rag-tag army” to an auxiliary state force in 2019 has coincided with an expansion of formidable political and economic influence inside Iraq, raising concerns over the institutionalization of Iranian influence and undermining of Iraqi sovereignty.

Iran is by no means the only state backer of NSAAs in the Middle East. In Syria, a dizzying array of competing armed groups emerged during the Syrian civil war and following the rise of ISIS, backed by different nation-state actors, including France, Jordan, the UK, Turkey, Iran, the United States, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, who all sought different strategic objectives.

The Israel-Hamas conflict inside Gaza is also marked by competing NSAAs and state supporters, seemingly based on the old proverb: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Though there is no evidence suggesting Iran had prior knowledge of the October 7 attack, Iran has long worked to militarily and operationally strengthen groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel, for its part, turned to arming local anti-Hamas groups to displace Hamas from the Gaza Strip while avoiding support for real governing alternatives. Among these groups was a Rafah-based armed group called the “Popular Forces” led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a member of the Bedouin Tarabin tribe whose past smuggling and crime previously led to friction with Hamas. In 2015, Abu Shabab was arrested by Hamas and imprisoned; in October 2023, he reportedly managed to escape prison amidst Israeli airstrikes. His recent death surprised no one; in a statement, Abu Shabab’s tribe reportedly denounced him and promised not to “allow any other member of the tribe to participate in militias that serve the occupation.”

Indeed, NSAAs can prove to be tough clients; material support for NSAAs does not always confer direct and lasting influence over actions. The Houthis, for instance, are not true Iranian proxies. Even though the group benefits from Iranian support, Iran lacks substantial control over Houthi behavior, making them a highly unpredictable actor while also enabling Iran to conveniently deflect responsibility. As Shabnam Dadparvar and Amin Parto recently argued, when state support is (intended to be) covert, the goal is typically to maintain “plausible deniability”, allowing the power to avoid direct attribution while pursuing its strategic interests. State-NSAA alliances can also change based on geopolitical events, diminishing relationships with foreign partners. When Hamas refused to back the Assad government in the Syrian civil war, Iran responded by temporarily cutting off funding to the group in 2012. A year later, the downfall of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamad Morsi led to strained relations between Hamas and Egypt, which violently suppressed Hamas’ parent organization. More recently, Israel’s weakening of Hezbollah’s capabilities contributed to the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024; in turn, Hezbollah saw a decade-long alliance collapse.

Holding NSAAs Accountable: Few Good Options

Despite their “actorness”, unlike governments, traditional policy tools to hold NSAAs accountable are few and far between. The international laws that enshrine wartime behavior were drawn up for states. NSAAs also do not necessarily feel responsible for the welfare of their own national populations and, in several instances, have demonstrated that concerns over citizens’ welfare are of limited influence on their behavior. Hamas’ former leader Yayha Sinwar, for instance, reportedly claimed that the civilian death toll in Gaza resulting from Israel’s deadly retaliatory campaign, which has now surpassed 70,000, was a “necessary sacrifice” to “infuse life into the veins of this nation [Palestine]”. According to Palestinian American humanitarian activist Ahmed Fouah Alkhatib, devastating Israeli-imposed restrictions on humanitarian aid and assistance, which led to “widespread starvation” in the strip, similarly played into Hamas’ hands, strengthening Hamas’ ceasefire demands, generating justified international outcry, and further worsening Israel’s international standing. Meanwhile, aid restrictions had less impact on Hamas. As Alex de Waal, an authority on famine, noted, “the people who starve last are the men with guns”.

The Houthis have similarly made cynical use of Palestinian solidarity. Their attacks on the Red Sea were partly motivated by a desire to divert Yemeni public attention away from repressive governance policies, poor provision of services, and an egregious record of aid obstruction and diversion in Yemen. Their attacks against maritime targets in the Red Sea, which have been paused following the latest ceasefire in Gaza, only made matters worse. While ostensibly aimed at lifting Israel’s blockade on Gaza, the Houthis’ attacks on one of the world’s busiest maritime chokepoints also impacted aid deliveries to Yemen, where an estimated 19.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

In addition to military support from their state backers, new, low-cost technologies have made NSAAs more effective militarily. The Houthis, for instance, are certainly no longer, or not just, a “ragtag group of rebels”. The Houthis have managed to hone the tactics of irregular warfare, as is particularly evident in the group’s drone warfare strategy. Between October 2023 and June 2024, ACLED records show that the Houthis relied on drones to target international shipping in the Red Sea more than 40 percent of the time. Drones have significantly raised the maritime threat––and at a low cost to the Houthis who can manufacture one-war attack drones in large quantities by exploiting low-cost technology for around $2,000. The increased proliferation of cheap, makeshift drones, which have also been employed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iraqi-based NSAAs, is a testament to the economic asymmetry that has become part and parcel of regional counter-drone efforts. Indeed, the cost of shooting a locally-manufactured drone down is substantially higher than launching an attack: around $2.1 million a shot. As the former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante put it to Congress in May 2024, “That’s not a good cost equation.”

The Middle East: What’s New is Old

Over the past year, talk has once again turned to a “New Middle East” in the wake of the weakening of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”. In Lebanon, Hezbollah, the erstwhile most powerful group of the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance”, emerged heavily battered and leaderless from its 14-month-long war with Israel last year. While it had played a crucial role in supporting the Syrian government throughout the civil war, its newly weakened status left it unable to help defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a lightning-fast ousting by opposition forces led by HTS in December 2024.

Meanwhile, targeted Israeli strikes in October 2024 and June 2025 on air defense systems and Iranian military leadership significantly degraded the patron of the “Shiite Crescent”, enabling the United States to subsequently target key nuclear infrastructure sites unencumbered. U.S. President Donald Trump, always partial to vainglorious statements, swiftly declared Iran’s nuclear program “obliterated”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly claimed a “historic victory” against Iran, even as analysis suggested that the country’s nuclear program—and its commitment to a “nuclear hedging” strategy—had survived. Indeed, the mirage of force-induced change in the Middle East is grounded in a more complicated reality. The situation in Gaza serves as a stark illustration of this fact.  

“Prolonged warfare”, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu argued, never benefited a country. This is a lesson Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to ignore. Even after the most recent U.S.-mediated ceasefire, billed as a “peace plan” in typical Trumpian fashion, Israel has continued to conduct strikes on the strip, killing at least 360 Palestinians. Life for Palestinians in Gaza, as the Guardian recently noted, is marked by a dangerous illusion that the ceasefire has created any return to normalcy or safety. Hamas, meanwhile, remains standing, even if it no longer poses a military threat to Israel. Two months after the truce, Hamas has been able to reassert control over almost half of Gaza, likely aided by the uncertainty of the truce’s persistence and the implementation of additional envisioned phases.

Israel, in this sense, might have won the battle but lost the war. Indeed, social science research has repeatedly found that the most salient fact about ideologically driven armed groups is how hard they are to eliminate; military pressure rarely provides a panacea. In the wake of October 7, and with the decimation of its leadership ranks and loss of military infrastructure, Hamas increasingly pivoted to low-level guerrilla warfare. Israeli restrictions on aid equally failed to drive Hamas to defeat and secure the release of Israeli hostages––another of Israel’s initial war aims. Netanyahu’s dogmatic commitment to destroy Hamas, as such, served no broader strategic purpose.

The road to a more durable solution lies in a firm Israeli political commitment to Palestinian self-determination that would involve the gradual military decommissioning of Hamas. This is not an implausible prospect, though it does require concessions on both sides and continued involvement of powerful external guarantors such as the United States and key Arab League members. Since last year, including in conversations with U.S. mediators, Hamas has reportedly indicated openness to decommissioning some of the group’s military capabilities while also agreeing to the exile of limited senior figures and ceding governing power to an independent body of Palestinian technocrats. More recently, Hamas said that its disarmament would be contingent on the establishment of an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state”, a goal supported by a majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Convincing Hamas to make verifiable concessions on its weaponry will therefore require ending Israel’s decade-long occupation that strips Hamas of its claim that no meaningful political progress exists.

The “pathway for hope,” in Gaza––and more broadly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict––lies in context-driven actions that produce an end to the repeated cycles of violence that have afflicted Israeli and Palestinian societies and that have impaired Palestinian sovereignty and livelihood for too long. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach that effectively addresses the disparate tensions arising from NSAAs, as well as all their underlying ideological and geopolitical drivers and societal resonance. But given the conflict’s regional reverberations, it’s a necessary start.