The Year of Mourning: Considerations for U.S. Middle East Policy Twelve Months After October 7

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I. Introductory Remarks

Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Phillips, distinguished members of the subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. This is the second opportunity I have had to come before this august body as an expert witness, and it is my honor to do so, especially alongside such esteemed colleagues. First, allow me to express my best wishes to Chairman Wilson. My thoughts are with him and his family, and I pray he has a full and speedy recovery.

The last time I appeared before this subcommittee, we discussed the deeply sobering subject of Bashar al-Assad’s horrific crimes against the Syrian people, and what more might be done to hold him accountable and assist Syrians in need. Today’s subject is similarly challenging—both as a problem for policy and as an issue that carries great emotional weight. I pledge to you that I will attempt to speak to the difficult issues before us with nuance, with respect for complexity, and with compassion and sensitivity, while sharing my unvarnished views and offering my best advice for policy and legislative recourse.

It is in the same spirit of patriotic service to our nation, irrespective of political affiliation, that compels you to represent and serve your fellow Americans here in Washington, that drives me in my research as the senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) to pursue bipartisan solutions to our national security challenges. As a policy, CNAS does not take institutional positions, so my testimony today will reflect my personal positions and perspectives, based on my professional experience.

While I have been proud to work at CNAS for over two years, I am even prouder of the work I did in this building for three and a half as a Professional Staff Member of the House Armed Services Committee. In that capacity, I worked closely with the members and staff of this committee in a bipartisan fashion to pass three National Defense Authorization Acts, in which we, together, oversaw Israel’s transition from the European Command to the Central Command area of responsibility, reauthorized support for Iron Dome, created new authorities to advance and accelerate U.S.-Israel cooperative defense innovation, and built on the Abraham Accords to support Israel’s military integration into a Middle East regional security architecture with the DEFEND Act.

I am immensely proud of the work we accomplished in those bills, and even prouder of the way we achieved it: working together, in a bipartisan way, in faithful service to the American people. I’ll always be grateful for that opportunity.

My testimony today will be guided by the spirit of comity and bipartisanship that has long undergirded the critical work of this subcommittee. I firmly believe there has, and continues to be, a bipartisan through line in American foreign policy in the Middle East, centered around:

• The continued provision of unwavering support to our close partner nation, Israel;
• The continued integration of Israel into the broader region;
• A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that delivers peace, security, dignity, justice, and self-determination to all;
• And the deterrence, containment, and, if necessary, confrontation of an Iranian regime that continues to meddle with and undermine the stability of its neighbors; supports violent proxies, partner forces, and terrorist groups; proliferates weapons to enemies of peace and adversaries of democracy and the rules-based order; threatens harm and plots against Americans; and advances the development of a nuclear program toward the creation of an Iranian nuclear weapon—a weapon which Democrats and Republicans agree that Iran must never be allowed to obtain.

In the Middle East, the events of the last 11 months have been wrenching, beginning with Hamas’s savage attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The brutal and destructive war between Israel and Hamas that followed continues to generate growing instability and deadly violence in the West Bank. The steady escalation of violence throughout the region by Iran’s proxies and partners continues to displace tens of thousands in northern Israel, hold the maritime domain under threat in the Red Sea, and risk the lives of U.S. servicemembers. The last 11 months have been a cavalcade of misery, which mercilessly continues and shows few signs of abating. This testimony summarizes U.S., Israeli, and Iranian policies and events before and after October 7. It includes recommendations for U.S. policy and encourages lawmakers to come together with the executive branch in a good faith effort to reach consensus on a bipartisan approach to advancing U.S. national security objectives and those of our partners and allies in the Middle East and beyond.

II. October 6

Iran’s Security Policy

Iran’s effort to generate an “Axis of Resistance” began in 1979 as the Islamic Republic sought to project power, reduce the U.S. military presence in the region, and influence diaspora Shia communities.¹ The network of Iran-backed proxies and partners Tehran has since fostered in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain have projected Iranian power and destabilized large swaths of the Middle East.² The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community describes this web of proxies as “a loose consortium of like-minded terrorist and militant actors” that Tehran uses to shield itself from direct military confrontation with and encourage attacks against its adversaries.³

In addition to playing a significant role in Iranian political and economic affairs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) coordinates Tehran’s support for these proxy groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and works to ensure overall regime security. The IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF) is responsible for organizing external kidnapping, assassination, and surveillance operations in addition to facilitating illicit oil sales and weapons transfers to Iranian proxies and state actors like Russia and North Korea.⁴

This interconnected web of nonstate actors and allies also allows Tehran to skirt international sanctions by employing a flotilla of covert oil tankers, funneling money through shell companies, and coordinating with proxy groups to conduct business with other sanctioned entities.⁵

Since their formations in 1987 and 1982, respectively, Hamas and Hezbollah have both received a steady and significant flow of Iranian funds and weapons to fuel their terrorist activities in the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, and further abroad. Experts assess that Hamas today receives $70 million–$100 million per year and that Hezbollah received an estimated $700 million annually from Tehran.⁶ While the support that these proxies receive from Iran is significant, it is also important to note that Tehran’s relationship with each of these groups is particular and nuanced. While Tehran encourages Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansar Allah (literal translation: “Supporters of God,” commonly known as the Houthis) to engage in terrorist and governance projects by supplying them with thousands of rockets, fostering their domestic weapons manufacturing capabilities, and providing training to key leaders, these proxies should not be viewed as extensions of the regime established solely to carry out Tehran’s bidding.⁷ For example, while Hezbollah also receives a significant amount of support from Iran, it acts largely as an independent, self-sufficient entity that coordinates directly with Tehran on occasion—for example, to engage in international arms, oil, and drug smuggling operations or to carry out complex external operations like the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires—it also invests significant resources in a shadow governance project in Lebanon.⁸ The Houthis have a much looser, unstructured relationship with Tehran.⁹

Aside from its long history of supporting both Sunni and Shia nonstate actors across the region, Iran also regularly engages with a variety of other allies to further sow discord with the West and pursue its own strategic objectives. In 2023, China purchased more than 90 percent of Iranian crude oil exports, transported by a “dark fleet” of tankers responsible for moving billions of dollars in illicit oil every year.¹⁰ Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted closer strategic cooperation between Moscow and Tehran; Iran began supplying Russian troops with thousands of battlefield drones in return for delivery of advanced Russian fighter jets and air defense technology.¹¹ U.S. Navy vessels have intercepted several shipments of Iranian weapons bound for the Houthis in Yemen, often containing both Iranian and Russian-spec missiles.¹²

Growing trade and cooperation between Iran and North Korea, including a recent visit by a North Korean delegation to Tehran, has also raised fears that the two states could share advanced missile and even nuclear technology.¹³ Since the United States’ 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iranian nuclear program has continued apace as Tehran continues to resist monitoring measures, significantly decreasing the country's estimated breakout time down to just a few weeks.¹⁴ Following a failed attempt at reviving the nuclear deal in 2021 and 2022, intelligence officials noted that Iran has not officially resumed its weaponization program, but the country’s development of nuclear technology is accelerating at “a worrisome pace,” according to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns.¹⁵

Israel’s Security Policy

Prior to the events of October 7, Israel has for the past decade engaged in a shadow war with Iran and its proxies. During this Miarechet Beyn Ha’milchamot (MABAM), or “Campaign Between the Wars,” Israel escalated strikes on the Iranian threat network, which surrounds Israel, from occasional to periodic to regular intervals.¹⁶

The targets of Israel’s strikes were often shipments of advanced weapons that originated in Iran, transiting Syria, on their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon. As the IRGC-QF sought to export the capability to produce advanced rockets and precision missiles to its proxies by building production facilities in Syria and Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prioritized these targets and the Iranian personnel managing them. While the IDF struck often, Iran has persisted in its efforts, and is effective in both supplying and divesting to its partners the capability to produce their own rockets, precision missiles, and one-way attack drones. Hezbollah is now estimated to have an arsenal of 150,000 projectiles, ranging from mortars to precision-guided missiles.¹⁷

Beginning with the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David in 2000 and the onset of the Second Intifada, Israel has operated under a loose, ill-defined national security paradigm that nominally seeks to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by imposing a unilaterally defined peace on the Palestinian Territories. This paradigm, informed by an ideologically extreme and strategically detached vision of a one-state solution, collapsed on October 7, 2023. After the collapse of the peace process and the wave of terror and violence that followed, the overriding narrative in Israel was that Israelis lacked a partner for peace. This notion had a formative role in the cohering of the last Israeli national security paradigm, which embraced conflict management over conflict resolution.

The policies that flowed from this paradigm sought to unilaterally impose a peace on Palestinians using the asymmetric power of the Israeli state.¹⁸ Israel began construction of a separation barrier in 2002, which was meant to stop the infiltration of suicide bombers from the West Bank into Israel, but which also imposed a physical border that included Israel’s settlement blocs, separated Palestinian communities from each other, and made travel within the West Bank onerous for its Palestinian inhabitants.¹⁹ While Israel withdrew its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005, settlement expansion in the West Bank grew precipitously during Israel’s last national security paradigm period, as did settler violence against Palestinians, reaching record levels in the last four years.²⁰

For the last decade, beginning with a previous government led by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel adopted a policy meant to contain and pacify Hamas, which took control of Gaza in a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007. In this policy of “buying quiet,” Israel coordinated with Qatar to enable the flow of billions of dollars into Gaza in an effort to keep Hamas contented and otherwise occupied with its management of the Gaza Strip.²¹ Israel’s policy toward Hamas in Gaza was in part rooted in a latticework of intelligence assessments and assumptions, known in Israel as conceptzia. This conceptzia held that Hamas was deterred from launching a major conflict with Israel and was satisfied with the status quo. While Israel’s government has not yet begun a commission of inquiry to assess its failures leading up to October 7, evidence strongly suggests that Israel’s political, military, and intelligence leaders continued to hold fast to its conceptzia on Hamas, even in the face of mounting intelligence and warnings that it was wrong or no longer accurate.²²

Israel’s most recent national security paradigm is not the first in Israel’s history that asserted a conflict management approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Ben Gurion Doctrine, which characterized Israel’s approach to national security for roughly Israel’s first three decades, also took a conflict management approach, assessing that peace with Israel’s neighbors was desirable but not likely for the foreseeable future.²³ However, Israel’s recently collapsed national security paradigm differed from former Prime Minister Ben Gurion’s in critical ways. While Israel’s original security paradigm held peace with its Arab neighbors as its elusive goal, the more recent one generated security policies that seemed designed to forestall an Israeli-Palestinian peace process resulting in a two-state solution. In 2004, a senior Israeli official described Israel’s disengagement from Gaza as a means to freeze the peace process and prevent the formation of a Palestinian state.²⁴ The IDF’s military activities in the West Bank, meant to target terrorists, have also targeted and weakened the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) institutions of governance and security, reducing the influence and capacity of the PA to serve as the recognized representative of the Palestinian people.²⁵ Similarly, the Israeli government’s policy of “buying quiet” from Hamas assisted in preserving Hamas’s control of Gaza, creating a de facto counterweight to the PA and sowing division in Palestinian leadership that further complicated efforts to negotiate a two-state solution.²⁶

The United States’ Middle East Security Policy

Prior to Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, the Biden administration’s policy in the Middle East was primarily focused on achieving Israel’s continued integration into the region by building on the success of the Abraham Accords signed in 2020. In July 2022, President Biden and then–Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid adopted the Joint Declaration on the U.S.-Israel Partnership, known as the Jerusalem Declaration. The Jerusalem Declaration affirmed continued U.S. security assistance for Israel, the pursuit of normalization of Israel’s relations with its neighbors, and the intention to hold conversations on improving Israeli-Palestinian relations, and pledged that Iran will never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.²⁷ While State Department–led diplomatic efforts centered on building regional cooperation through the Negev Forum, the White House was reportedly focused on the negotiation of a landmark trilateral agreement that would normalize Israeli-Saudi relations in exchange for a host of U.S. security concessions for Saudi Arabia. The agreement had the potential to advance to some degree the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution.

Following the August 2022 breakdown of U.S.-Iran negotiations to return Iran to compliance with the JCPOA, U.S. attention turned toward the expansion of sanctions on Iranian entities in response to the regime’s violent crackdown on internal protests following the brutal beating and death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, by regime forces, for refusing to wear a hijab. Additional sanctions would follow as Iran began to provide Russia loitering munitions for use in its illegal war of aggression in Ukraine. In 2023, the Biden administration reportedly attempted to indirectly negotiate a reduction of tensions with Iran, using Oman as an intermediary, to reduce the risk of regional escalation and to press Iran into “pausing” its enrichment of uranium.²⁸ In September 2023, the United States successfully negotiated the release of five Americans wrongfully detained in Iran in exchange for Iranian prisoners and the return of previously frozen Iranian funds, though the funds remain frozen in Qatar.²⁹