Beginner’s Guide: How Oct 7 changed the Middle East

Hamas’s October 7 attack triggered a regional unravelling that had been decades in the making. This piece traces how Iran built the Axis of Resistance after the 1979 Revolution through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and allied militias, and how Israel, backed by a far more permissive Trump White House, systematically targeted that network. From Soleimani’s killing to covert strikes deep inside hostile territory, the balance of deterrence has shifted. The Axis stands weakened, its leadership disrupted, its aura punctured. Yet the forces that created it remain. The Middle East rarely offers clean endings. The war has changed the region, not concluded it.