VI. The window: three years of accelerated execution

The period following October 7 is marked by a decisive characteristic: its pace is vastly disproportionate to the preparation time such events would have required had they been improvised.

On September 17, 2024, thousands of pagers held by Hezbollah operatives exploded simultaneously in Lebanon, followed the next day by walkie-talkies. The operation entailed setting up shell companies and subverting a supply chain over the course of several years. Ten days later, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a strike on the underground headquarters in Dahiyeh, following the elimination of the movement’s core chain of command. The level of Israeli intelligence penetration revealed by these operations is not something achieved in just eleven months.

On December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in just twelve days - after having held power for thirteen years - in the face of an offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and backed by Turkey. While Israel was not the instigator, it was the primary beneficiary: the fall of Damascus severed the territorial link between Iran and Lebanon, cut off Hezbollah’s supply lines, and turned the movement’s tactical weakening into a strategic collapse.

One point requires clarification here: between 2013 and 2018, Israel armed and funded at least a dozen opposition factions in southern Syria - specifically in the Quneitra-Daraa area - providing assault rifles, machine guns, mortars, and vehicles, as well as monthly stipends of around seventy-five dollars; foreign weapons were substituted for Israeli equipment to mask the origin.

Reports from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) noted signs of this as early as 2013, and outgoing Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot acknowledged it in January 2019, following years during which the official narrative had been limited to humanitarian aid [24]. It is also established that neither the Al-Nusra Front nor its successor, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, conducted operations against Israel - even when the former held the Quneitra crossing in 2014. While this non-belligerence is a fact, it is argued that this does not prove collusion.

Nevertheless, what has unfolded since December 2024 is of a different nature and is anything but secret: hundreds of Israeli strikes targetting the capabilities of the former Syrian army, the occupation of the buffer zone and the summit of Mount Hermon, followed by US-mediated negotiations, an intelligence-sharing mechanism, and the meeting in Jordan in the summer of 2026 between the Syrian Foreign Minister and a delegation led by the head of the Mossad…

For some, the aim was to remind the self-proclaimed Syrian president who holds the cards in the region!

Then there is Iran. After the twelve-day war of June 2025 - which targeted commanders and scientists without striking the system’s leadership - the operation of February 28, 2026, crossed a critical threshold. Jointly planned by the Mossad and the CIA and executed by the Israeli Air Force with US support - and with the stated goal of regime change - it destroyed the Supreme Leader’s residence and killed Sayed Ali Khamenei, along with 75 others, including several family members [25].

More than forty Iranian officials perished in the wave of strikes: Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Revolutionary Guards; Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh; Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council; and Mohammad Shirazi, head of the Supreme Leader’s military office [26]. Tehran confirmed the news on March 1 and declared forty days of national mourning.

In thirty months, the “ring of fire” had been broken... but for how long?

VII. The U.S. Cost: Regional Victory, Global Overextension

This is where the assessment ceases to be merely regional. The US commitment alongside Israel was presented as a display of power. In material terms, however, it primarily demonstrated an insufficient depth of inventory - a demonstration that played out in the public eye.

The figures are known because the Pentagon had to present them to Congress. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that stockpiles of Patriot interceptors fell from approximately 2,300 pre-war to fewer than 827, and THAAD stocks from 452 to 278 [27]. In August 2026, Reuters reported that virtually all stocks of ATACMS and long-range precision missiles had been expended during the war against Iran [28]. The Pentagon’s emergency funding request for fiscal year 2026 totals $67 billion, with $18.2 billion allocated solely to replenishing Patriot, Tomahawk, and THAAD inventories [29].

The problem is not budgetary; it is industrial. A return to pre-war inventory levels is not expected until 2029 for THAAD and Patriot systems, and 2030 for Tomahawks [30]. These systems were not designed for mass production: Lockheed Martin historically produced 96 THAAD interceptors annually, and the seven-year, $35 billion contract signed in June 2026 to quadruple this rate will require several years to ramp up production [31]. Compounding this is an unsustainable cost-exchange ratio: a $15 million interceptor used against a drone costing a few tens of thousands of dollars.

The most visible consequence is a redeployment. Washington has withdrawn THAAD launchers and Patriot batteries from Korea to send them to the Middle East, precisely as North Korea’s ballistic missile arsenal continues to grow [32]. A power that strips one theatre to bolster another is not an expanding power; it is a power making forced trade-offs - trade-offs that are visible to all.

This is particularly evident from Beijing. A January 2026 Heritage Foundation report estimates that high-end interceptors - SM-3, SM-6, PAC-3 MSE, THAAD - would be exhausted within days of sustained combat against the People’s Liberation Army (with some systems running out after just two or three major salvos), and that aggregate vertical launch inventories, estimated at 17,000 munitions, would be insufficient for even a single full reload of the fleet [33]. The resulting strategic argument centres on a specific window of time: the three-to-four-year period required for US restocking coincides exactly with the moment the gap between China’s offensive arsenal and US defensive stockpiles will be at its widest [34]. This assessment is now openly articulated in US strategic literature, implying that it is being voiced elsewhere, too.

There remains a third cost - one harder to quantify than stockpile numbers, yet also measured, and by US instruments at that.

The collapse of the US standing in regional public opinion was recorded almost in real time. By chance, Arab Barometer was conducting a survey in Tunisia during the three weeks surrounding October 7; favourable views of the United States there plummeted from 40% to 10% in less than a month. Subsequent waves confirmed the trend elsewhere - a loss of 23 points in Jordan, 19 in Mauritania, 15 in Lebanon, and 7 in Iraq [35].

What distinguishes this episode from a mere fleeting reaction is that the shift has persisted. Surveys conducted in eight countries between August and November 2025 reveal a lasting change: China, Russia, and Iran are now viewed more favourably than the United States in the majority of the countries polled, with the widest gap appearing precisely in the area where Washington’s pre-eminence was once grounded. When asked which country respects international law, 25% of Egyptians named the United States, compared to 58% for China; regarding the maintenance of regional security, US policy was preferred by 6% of Egyptians, 9% of Jordanians, and 22% of Iraqis [36].

There remains a question that analysis cannot sidestep, as it is framed in identical terms across the region: the issue of a US policy so closely aligned with Israeli interests that it appears subordinate to them. Three distinct elements are conflated here, and they are not of the same nature.

The perception is widespread and quantifiable: 86% of Egyptians and Jordanians, 84% of respondents in the Palestinian Territories, 78% in Lebanon, and 69% in Tunisia believe that the United States sides with Israel against the Palestinians. As for material alignment, it is observable and requires no interpretation: the financing, the delivery of munitions, the repeated use of the veto in the Security Council, and even the joint planning by the Mossad and the CIA of the operation on February 28, 2026.

Subordination, on the other hand, is a hypothesis - and the only one of the three that can be tested and subsequently dismissed. The events of the summer of 2026 appear to contradict it. The memorandum of understanding concluded with Tehran in June was signed against the explicit advice of the Israeli government. On July 15, the US Vice President publicly accused elements of that government of funding an influence campaign aimed at derailing the negotiations; such an accusation is unprecedented coming from a sitting Vice President, and Netanyahu travelled to Washington at the end of the month to explain the situation [37]. A power acting under a diktat does not sign an agreement that its alleged master opposes, nor does it publicly denounce influence operations conducted on its own soil.

However, the situation is more complex than it appears. What these episodes reveal is less dramatic but more troubling: not subordination, but a partial capture of the agenda - a process contested even within the US executive branch, and one from which Washington cannot extricate itself without incurring domestic political costs. While this formulation is less satisfying than the “diktat” theory, it has the advantage of being consistent with the known facts, including those that complicate the picture.

It does nothing to diminish the strategic cost, however, as that cost depends not on the accuracy of the hypothesis but on its perception. Whether US policy is dictated or merely captured makes no difference to the conclusions drawn by 86% of Egyptians, nor to the decisions their governments make in response. Openly working with Washington has become a risk for leaders who, while authoritarian, remain sensitive to public sentiment; Gulf capitals had warned against the February offensive - warnings that went unheeded - and subsequently suffered retaliatory strikes; some are now considering withdrawing their investments from American institutions. Here, perception is the strategic factor, and that is why an article that devoted its Section V to the construction of legitimacy must take this fully into account.

This cost eventually took its toll domestically. In February 2026, for the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 2001, US sympathies no longer leaned toward Israel. In April, Pew found that nearly six in ten Americans held an unfavourable view of Israel - with the share of “very unfavourable” opinions having nearly tripled since 2022, and 57% of Republicans under the age of fifty now sharing this view [38]. Here lies the final link in the chain of events this article has traced from the outset. Legitimacy was the limiting factor in 2023; it was generated, then expended; today, it is eroding even among the guarantor itself.

One irony remains that this article cannot leave unsaid. This colossal support did not shield Israeli territory. The missile defense shield functioned with varying degrees of success, but at an unfavourable and unsustainable exchange cost; moreover, it was powerless against the other form of attrition: the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait - which crippled a port without a single missile ever striking it - and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which thirty months of air superiority failed to reopen. US support succeeded in unblocking neither of these two choke points. Israeli military censorship - which strictly applies to impact sites in accordance with standard operational practice - contributed to obscuring public perception of this vulnerability, though there is no evidence to suggest it conceals a human toll substantially different from the one officially reported.

VIII. What the sequence establishes, and what it does not

A theory is circulating widely across the region and on social media: that the October 7 attack was orchestrated by Israel and the details passed to Hamas via intelligence channels, specifically to create the political conditions for the sequence of events just described. The unfolding of that sequence appears to lend the theory weight. Some dispute this claim on methodological grounds - arguments that deserve to be laid out rather than merely asserted.

The first problem is that the “conspiracy” theory and the “strategic opportunism” theory predict exactly the same events; they are observationally equivalent. Consequently, the way the sequence played out does not allow us to choose between them: a chain of events coming to pass proves that the beneficiary was prepared for it, not that they triggered it. Yet, the preparation is indeed a proven fact - pagers, infiltration of Hezbollah, and the long-term targeting of the Supreme Leader. A military apparatus spending twenty years devising contingency plans against encirclement is simply doing its job! The Emirati warning from September 2023 does not alter this dynamic: here, too, self-serving political inertia and complicity yield the same observable outcome. It shifts the focus by a degree - from institutional blindness to inertia at the highest level - without crossing the line separating inaction from active orchestration.

The second problem is the cost, which now applies to two actors. October 7 shattered Israel’s deterrence doctrine, cost the Chief of Staff his job, destroyed the credibility of its intelligence services, and imposed two years of operational constraints linked to the hostage crisis. As for the US patron, it emerges from this period with its arsenals depleted for the next four years, its Pacific deterrence capabilities publicly called into question, its standing in regional public opinion at an all-time low, its Gulf partners reassessing the political cost of open cooperation, and its own electorate turning against the very relationship that made all this possible. If this was the price paid for a plan, it was a price whose total no one could gauge and whose distribution no one could control - and a portion of which is being paid in theatres the plan never even mentioned.

The third problem is logical. The assertion that “there is no chance involved in this area” is not an empirical finding but an axiom - and an unfalsifiable one at that: if nothing can happen by accident, no observation can ever contradict the thesis, placing it beyond the realm of proof.

There is a way to phrase this that preserves the core intuition without incurring the analytical cost: the vice-like grip was real, its breaking had been meticulously planned long in advance, and October 7 provided the domestic and international legitimacy without which none of those plans could be executed - a legitimacy that, as Section V demonstrated, was subsequently sustained and, in places, manufactured. This is precisely the limiting factor Netanyahu himself had identified. The attack may not have created the project; it removed the only constraint holding it back.

IX. Military Success, Political Failure

The outcome remains to be assessed, and this is where analysis must resist the allure of operational performance.

The model applied to Iran rested on a specific hypothesis: that the simultaneous decapitation of the political, military, and religious leadership would deliver a shock sufficient to trigger either the regime’s collapse or its strategic capitulation. This hypothesis did not hold true. An interim leadership council was formed the very next day, and Sayed Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father [39]. Institutionally, the system held firm.

Subsequent developments fall into a different category: some would argue that while there was no collapse, a slow process of disintegration is underway. The new Supreme Leader has not appeared in public for about six months. Inflation for essential consumer goods exceeds 100%. Allegations of factional infighting have reportedly intensified regarding the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the United States - a move condemned on August 2, 2026, by the office of the Assembly of Experts, which denounced what it termed rumours of capitulation [40].

The result, according to these claims, is a regime that is weakened, challenged, and impoverished, yet still standing - and now deprived of most of the regional proxies that had provided the justification for the operation.

One capability, however, survived the decapitation - and it is no minor one. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed since February 28, 2026. A regime whose Supreme Leader was killed, whose Revolutionary Guard commander and Defense Minister were eliminated on the same day, and which lost over forty officials in a single wave of strikes, has managed - for six months - to retain the power to halt the flow of one-fifth of the world’s oil. Neither Israeli air superiority nor US naval power has succeeded in stripping it of this capability. This is the most precise measure of the gap between the military outcome and the political outcome: one can destroy the leadership without diminishing the capacity to cause harm - and it was precisely this reduction that decapitation was intended to achieve.

The Israeli record is no less ambiguous. Three years later, no state commission of inquiry into October 7 has been established. Netanyahu initially cited the ongoing war, then challenged the legitimacy of the Supreme Court - which was tasked with appointing the commission’s chair - before pushing through a first reading on July 6, 2026, of a law creating a commission whose six members would be appointed by the Knesset.

This vote was boycotted by the opposition, who denounced a body whose conclusions would be pre-written by the very people it was meant to question [41]. An independent civilian commission published its own findings in May 2026, highlighting fundamental failures attributable to leaders in both the coalition and the opposition over the preceding decade [42]. Bereaved families, organized under the “October Council,” continue to demand a genuine inquiry; the title of their report - Failure 2026 - makes it clear that they do not consider the issue resolved [43].

A state that claims to have won the most comprehensive regional war in its history, yet proves incapable of investigating its own foundational failure, has not restored its security. It has traded external vulnerability for an internal crisis of legitimacy.

Notes

[24] Elizabeth Tsurkov, enquête publiée par Foreign Policy en 2018, pour le détail du soutien matériel et financier ; rapports trimestriels de la FNUOD au Conseil de sécurité, à partir de 2013, pour les observations de terrain. Déclarations de Gadi Eisenkot, The Times of Israel, janvier 2019. Les groupes les plus cités sont Fursan al-Joulan et le Liwa Omar bin al-Khattab.

[25] Frappes conjointes israélo-états-uniennes du 28 février 2026 ; mort d’Ali Khamenei confirmée par les médias d’État iraniens le 1er mars. Voir CNN et Bloomberg, 28 février 2026.

[26] Liste des responsables tués communiquée par l’armée israélienne et reprise par NBC News, mars 2026.

[27] «Six Reasons Why the United States Is Low on Munitions», Mark F. Cancian & Chris H. Park, Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 31, 2026; estimations établies à partir des documents budgétaires transmis au Congrès, 2026.

[28] «US has used ‘virtually all’ of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources say», Erin Banco, Mike Stone & Jonathan Landay, Reuters, August 4, 2026, sur l’épuisement des stocks d’ATACMS et de PrSM.

[29] Demande de financement d’urgence du Pentagone pour l’exercice 2026, «Pentagon Seeks $18.2 Billion in War Funds for Interceptors», Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg, July 31, 2026.

[30] Estimations du CSIS sur les délais de reconstitution des inventaires.

[31] «$35 Billion THAAD Seven-Year Procurement Award Propels Acceleration of Critical Missile Defense Interceptor Production», Contrat Lockheed Martin de sept ans signé en juin 2026, visant à porter la production annuelle d’intercepteurs THAAD de 96 à 400 unités.

[32] The Soufan Center, «Depleted U.S. Stockpiles Raise Strategic Risks» note du 28 août 2026, sur le redéploiement de lanceurs THAAD et de batteries Patriot depuis la péninsule coréenne.

[33] Heritage Foundation, rapport de janvier 2026 sur la profondeur des stocks d’intercepteurs américains face à un conflit de haute intensité dans l’Indo-Pacifique. «TIDALWAVE: Strategic Exploitation and Sustaininent in a U.S.-China Conflict», Robert Greenway & Anna Gustafso, The Heritage Foundation, January 16, 2026.

[34] Argument développé notamment par David Axe dans The Strategist, mars 2026. «Opportunity for China: US depletes interceptor stocks in Middle East», David Axe, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 6 Mar 2026.

[35] Arab Barometer, vague 2023-2024. L’enquête tunisienne était en cours de terrain au moment de l’attaque, ce qui fournit une mesure avant/après rare : 40 % d’opinions favorables aux États-Unis avant le 7 octobre, 10 % au 27 octobre 2023. Pour les autres pays, comparaison avec les enquêtes antérieures au 7 octobre. Voir la synthèse du Middle East Council on Global Affairs, 12 décembre 2024.

[36] « America Has Lost the Arab World », Amaney A. Jamal et Michael Robbins, Foreign Affairs, 7 avril 2026, à partir d’enquêtes Arab Barometer conduites en Égypte, en Irak, en Jordanie, au Liban, au Maroc, dans les Territoires palestiniens, en Syrie et en Tunisie entre août et novembre 2025 — soit après la guerre de douze jours de juin 2025 et avant l’opération de février 2026. Sauf indication contraire, les chiffres cités dans les trois paragraphes qui suivent proviennent de cette source. Les auteurs codirigent Arab Barometer, ce qui donne à l’article valeur de présentation de données autant que de commentaire.

[37] Déclarations de J. D. Vance dans «The Joe Rogan Experience», 15 juillet 2026 ; couverture par The Times of Israel et Al Jazeera le 16 juillet 2026. Sur l’entrevue avec Netanyahou à Blair House, Axios, 30 juillet 2026. Le mémorandum d’entente états-uno-iranien de juin 2026, sur lequel la section IX revient, s’est effondré quelques semaines après sa signature.

[38] «Israelis No Longer Ahead in Americans’ Middle East Sympathies», sondage Gallup du 27 février 2026 : pour la première fois depuis le début de la série en 2001, les sympathies US ne penchent plus du côté israélien. Les chiffres précis de la répartition varient d’une reprise de presse à l’autre et ne sont pas retenus ici. Pew Research Center, enquête d’avril 2026, pour les opinions défavorables à Israël et leur ventilation par âge au sein de l’électorat républicain.

[39] Constitution du Conseil de direction intérimaire le 1er mars 2026, en application de l’article 111 de la Constitution de la République islamique.

[40] Communiqué du bureau de l’Assemblée des experts du 2 août 2026. Ces éléments proviennent pour partie de sources liées au Conseil national de la résistance iranienne, organisation d’opposition en exil dont les publications sont partisanes ; leur contenu factuel demande recoupement, en particulier sur les indicateurs économiques.

[41] «En Israël, le Parlement adopte en première lecture la création d’une commission d’enquête sur le 7-Octobre», franceinfo, 6 juillet 2026.

[42] Conclusions de la commission d’enquête civile indépendante, présentées en mai 2026 sous la direction d’Ofer Rosenbaum.

[43] «???? ?????? ???????

???? ???? ????? ????????», août 2026. Lire cette étude antérieure, en anglais, qui a influencé le rapport : «The Use of the Terms “Failure” and “Responsibility” Following the October 7 Attack and their Impact on the Discourse Space between the Political and Military Echelons» (Confession et évasion – l’utilisation des termes «échec» et «responsabilité» à la suite de l’attaque du 7 octobre et de leur impact sur l’espace de discours entre l’échelon politique et l’échelon militaire), par Carmit Padan & Kobi Michael, Décember 2025.

(Concluded)

Courtesy Voltairenet; Translation Roger Lagassé

https://www.voltairenet.org/article224950.html