The geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in 2025 presents an unprecedentedly complex situation: Israel’s air strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility in June triggered a regional nuclear security crisis; the Houthi armed forces’ hypersonic missile strike on Ben Gurion Airport in May shattered Israel’s myth of “absolute homeland security”; and the United States’ announcement in November to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia completely shook the regional military balance that had been maintained for decades. Against the backdrop of Israel’s increasingly aggressive “offensive defense” strategy, Middle Eastern Islamic countries have gradually abandoned fragmented confrontation models and formed a systematic response framework combining military containment, diplomatic checks and balances, economic pressure, and alliance building. Based on the latest regional developments from 2024 to 2025, this paper analyzes the operational logic and practical effects of this strategic system and explores its future evolution direction.
I. Military Countermeasures: The Dual Evolution of Asymmetric Tactical Breakthroughs and Technological Checks and Balances
Israel has long maintained a “generational advantage” relying on cutting-edge equipment such as F-35 stealth fighters and the Iron Dome air defense system. However, multiple conflicts in 2025 show that Islamic countries have achieved effective breakthroughs in this advantage through asymmetric tactical innovation and technological upgrading. This breakthrough is concentrated in two dimensions: the construction of precision strike capabilities targeting Israel’s homeland security and the systematic consumption of its “qualitative military advantage.”
The Houthi armed forces’ military operation in May 2025 is of landmark significance. The “Fateh-1” hypersonic missile they launched successfully hit Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, causing Israel’s civil aviation system to be paralyzed for several hours and millions of people to enter emergency shelter. This operation shattered Israel’s perception of “absolute homeland security” and exposed the fatal weakness of the Iron Dome system in the face of hypersonic weapons. German media revealed afterwards that in the face of compound attacks by Iran and its allies, the interception rate of the Iron Dome system dropped sharply from the claimed 90% to 65%, and the defense cost reached as high as 285 million US dollars per night. Long-term consumption is sufficient to bankrupt Israel’s economy. More notably, the “missile + UAV” saturation attack mode adopted by the Houthi armed forces, a combined strategy of consuming interceptor missiles with low-cost UAVs and conducting precision strikes with hypersonic missiles, has become a standard tactic for Islamic countries to counter Israel. In the Lebanon-Israel border conflict in 2025, Hezbollah launched 320 rockets in a single day combined with UAV raids, forcing the Israeli military to defend 23 towns simultaneously.
In the field of high-end military technology, Islamic countries have achieved checks and balances through a dual-track model of “technology introduction + independent research and development.” After the attack on the Natanz nuclear facility, Iran accelerated the upgrading of ballistic missile technology. The multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) system it deployed can release multiple independently targeted warheads, making Israel’s air defense network difficult to deal with. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, broke through technological blockades through U.S. arms sales. After obtaining the status of “Major Non-NATO Ally” in November, it will not only purchase F-35 fighter jets but also sign a joint defense agreement with Pakistan. While gaining a nuclear deterrence umbrella, it has built a “Sunni technological alliance.” This technological check and balance has broken the principle of “Israel’s generational weapons advantage” that the United States has maintained for a long time. The Netanyahu government bluntly stated that “this will trigger an arms race in the Middle East,” which actually reflects the loosening of Israel’s military hegemony.
Another significant change in military strategy is the shift from “single-point confrontation” to “multi-front coordination.” Israel fell into the predicament of “seven-front warfare” in 2025: ground offensive and defensive operations in the Gaza Strip, border harassment by Hezbollah, long-range strikes by the Houthi armed forces, missile deterrence by Iran, proxy conflicts in Syria, popular resistance in the West Bank, and implicit containment by Gulf countries. This multi-front containment has dispersed the strength of the Israel Defense Forces. Data in 2025 shows that about 15% of its reservists have been lost due to long-term mobilization, and the equipment wear rate has increased by 40% compared with 2023. Through the implicit coordination between the “Axis of Resistance” (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Houthi armed forces) and the “Sunni Alliance” (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan), Islamic countries have successfully built a strategic encirclement posture against Israel.
II. Diplomatic Game: Building International Consensus Centered on the Palestine-Israel Issue
Facing Israel’s military advantage, Middle Eastern Islamic countries have taken the diplomatic battlefield as the core of their strategic breakthrough, with the issue of Palestinian statehood as the axis, and have achieved diplomatic isolation of Israel through the building of international consensus. A series of diplomatic actions in 2025 show that this strategy has achieved substantial progress, which is mainly reflected in three aspects: the improvement of discourse power within the UN framework, the strengthening of regional diplomatic alliances, and the precise separation of U.S.-Israel relations.
The United Nations and multilateral mechanisms have become the main positions for diplomatic checks and balances. In August 2025, 31 Arab and Islamic countries including Egypt and Algeria, together with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council, issued a statement strongly condemning Netanyahu’s “Greater Israel” remarks, clearly stating that Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories, and calling on the international community to stop its “genocide.” This joint statement marks the high unity of Islamic countries’ positions on the Palestine-Israel issue and breaks the “counter-terrorism narrative” that Israel has long constructed. More breakthroughs came with UN Security Council Resolution 2803 adopted in November, which authorized the establishment of an international stabilization force to supervise the transition in Gaza. Although China and Russia abstained, the implicit Palestinian statehood framework in the resolution gained majority support, showing that the United States can no longer provide political asylum for Israel alone. The attitude change of the European Union is also crucial. Due to Israel’s continuous promotion of settlement construction, Germany suspended military equipment exports to Israel, and France, Canada and other countries successively recognized the State of Palestine, forming a “diplomatic encirclement” against Israel.
The construction of regional diplomatic alliances presents the characteristic of “combining hardness and softness.” Saudi Arabia plays a key hub role in this process. Crown Prince Mohammed skillfully used the United States’ economic demands to exchange a 1 trillion US dollar investment in the United States for F-35 arms sales, while clearly taking “the path of Palestinian statehood” as a prerequisite for the normalization of Saudi-Israel relations. This strategy of “exchanging economy for politics” accurately hit the soft spot of the United States, forcing the Trump administration to seek a balance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and having to require Saudi Arabia to deploy F-35s in western regions far away from Israel. At the same time, Saudi Arabia’s defense agreement with Pakistan has built a “Sunni nuclear deterrence system.” Qatar has consolidated the anti-Israel consensus by hosting the Arab-Islamic Summit. After Israel’s air strike on Doha in September 2025, Qatar quickly convened an emergency meeting to promote Islamic countries to take unified countermeasures. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has also launched a “coordination mechanism for anti-Israel sanctions” to promote member states to reduce indirect trade with Israel. In 2025, Israel’s export volume to the Middle East region decreased by 18% year-on-year, highlighting the economic effects of diplomatic isolation.
The strategy of separating U.S.-Israel relations demonstrates sophisticated diplomatic wisdom. Islamic countries have made full use of the United States’ strategic shift to the East and economic predicament to divide the U.S.-Israel alliance through “interest binding.” Saudi Arabia’s commitment of 1 trillion US dollars in investment in the United States accurately meets the Trump administration’s need to ease the national debt pressure, enabling it to break through the U.S.’s special protection policy for Israel on arms sales issues. Qatar has consolidated energy cooperation with Europe through liquefied natural gas exports, weakening the U.S.’s discourse power on Middle East issues. More importantly, Islamic countries have skillfully used the political divisions within the United States. In 2025, Democratic members of Congress jointly put forward a proposal to link U.S. aid to Israel with “stopping settlement expansion,” which was supported by more than 40% of the members. This internal restraint has made the U.S. government’s unconditional support for Israel face increasing domestic pressure. The “precision cutting” of U.S.-Israel relations has fundamentally shaken the strategic foundation of Israel’s regional hegemony.
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