War as a tool of constant pressure: Israel subjects the Middle East in exchange for its security

BeirutAfter decades of conflicts, interventions and containment policies, Israel is militarily safer today than many of its neighbours, but the region is more unstable than ever. In southern Lebanon, Israeli bombings continue despite the ceasefire announced in April under American mediation. On the ground, the agreement has not led to a stable situation. The Israeli army continues to carry out operations in border areas, while the Lebanese government denounces repeated attacks, destruction of homes and the blocking of the return of displaced persons. Lebanese authorities speak of thousands of incidents since the truce came into force.

Israel maintains that these actions are in response to the application of UN Security Council resolution 1701 and the need to prevent Hezbollah from reorganizing in southern Lebanon. Benjamin Netanyahu insists that the security of northern Israel cannot depend on diplomatic commitments that are not fulfilled on the ground and advocates a policy of continued preventive intervention.

Change the balance without provoking an open warIn this context, the Palestinian front remains the most persistent core of the conflict. In Gaza, the ceasefire has not eliminated destruction or intermittent violence, and in the West Bank, the occupation persists within a framework of growing tension, with regular military operations, settlement expansion, and a dynamic of low-intensity confrontation that is prolonged over time.

Hezbollah, for its part, maintains that "there will be no real ceasefire as long as Israeli operations in Lebanese territory continue," and links the Lebanese front to the regional balance between Washington and Tehran.

For analyst Yousef Haydar, from the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) in Beirut, this situation “cannot be interpreted as a transition towards peace, but as a permanent exception”. According to Haydar, southern Lebanon lives in an “intermediate state” in which “the ceasefire does not stop the violence, but rather maintains it intermittently”.

Change the balance without provoking an open war

The talks between the United States and Iran on a possible memorandum of understanding are entering a particularly sensitive phase. According to diplomatic leaks, the draft under discussion is not limited to nuclear issues or economic sanctions, but also includes indirect references to the stabilization of various regional fronts, including the Lebanese.

The process is developing under a logic that, according to Haydar, can be described as controlled escalation: a combination of military pressure, simultaneous negotiation, and calibrated actions aimed at changing the balance without provoking an open war. In this context, war does not disappear, but is used as a tool for prolonged negotiation.

In the last few hours, signals have grown that a preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran could be close. But Tehran maintains that substantial differences persist over sanctions, nuclear supervision, and, above all, the regional role of Iran and its allies. Iran considers the Lebanese front an inseparable part of any global agreement. Israel rejects this interpretation. Netanyahu has reiterated that no international understanding will limit Israel's freedom of military action, and that security will not be delegated to multilateral mechanisms.

In parallel, the debate on the future of Lebanon appears indirectly in the negotiation drafts. Some leaks point to the creation of "pilot zones" in the south of the country under the supervision of the Lebanese army, with limited international support. Nevertheless, the implementation of these types of mechanisms depends on a political balance that does not yet exist.

Syria and Iraq, the other hotbeds of instability

Further east, Syria is going through a transition phase after the fall of the old regime in 2024 and the rise to power of Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new government is trying to rebuild institutions and regain regional legitimacy, but territorial control remains uneven.

Israel maintains positions in the Golan Heights and in the buffer zone established after the 1974 agreement, and has intensified incursions into Quneitra province and various rural areas of Daraa. These operations include the destruction of military infrastructure, constant aerial surveillance, and tactical movements aimed at preventing the reorganization of armed actors considered hostile.

Damascus denounces these actions as violations of sovereignty, but Israel justifies them as preventive security measures. In practice, southern Syria functions as a militarily controlled space, where the state has limited capacity for effective control.

In Iraq, fragmentation takes another form. More than two decades after the United States invasion, the country maintains formal institutions, but not a monopoly on force. Armed militias, parallel political structures, and actors with regional ties operate within the state system. The result is an unstable equilibrium sustained more by external containment than by central authority.

Across the region, the same situation is repeated: violence does not disappear, but is maintained continuously and at different levels of intensity, in a context crossed by Israeli military action on various fronts.

"Domination without settlement"

In this context, the United States - Iran axis appears as the main attempt at partial reorganization of the regional system. But even in case of an agreement, its impact will depend on actors operating outside the formal negotiation framework. Israel, in particular, maintains a security doctrine based on freedom of military action, which introduces a constant separation between diplomacy and reality on the ground. The dominant logic is not conflict resolution, but continuous management.

A recent analysis by the Brookings Institution describes this dynamic as a form of “domination without settlement”: military control without political solution, weakening of the adversary without reconstruction of the environment, and absence of a clear post-war horizon.

The result is a system in which negotiation advances while violence continues in other low-intensity forms. Thus, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran there are no open wars, but neither is there stability. There are military operations, incomplete agreements, and states with fragmented sovereignty.

In Beirut, this scenario is perceived as a prolongation of the conflict by other means, and reconstruction is subordinated to the evolution of regional negotiations and the continuation of military pressure on the south of the country. The civilian population remains trapped between recurrent displacements and a normalization that fails to consolidate. The Middle East has not entered a post-war phase, but a phase of permanent instability management.