The Middle East is going through a phase of apparent de-escalation, but not necessarily stabilization. Washington is simultaneously trying to manage two of the region’s most consequential fronts.
In Gaza, the Trump administration is seeking to preserve a path toward Hamas’ disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal despite disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how and when that should happen.
With Iran, President Donald Trump is signaling that, at least for now, he is prepared to avoid resuming large-scale military operations and accept the results of what he has described as a “partial negotiation”: restoring stability to commercial flows through the Strait of Hormuz, while acknowledging that this leaves Iran’s nuclear program outside the talks.
Overlapping files. The Gaza and Iran dossiers are diplomatically separate only on the surface. Taken together, they point to a broader problem: Washington is struggling to contain individual crises because, strategically, they have become increasingly difficult to disentangle.
- Netanyahu spoke in recent hours with U.S. envoy Jared Kushner and committed to giving Trump’s 15-point Gaza plan a chance, after publicly rejecting key elements of the proposal during Sunday’s cabinet meeting. At roughly the same time, Trump was describing to U.S. media his “chess game” with Tehran — a confrontation in which Israel is itself directly involved.
- At the heart of the disagreement with Israel is sequencing. The plan developed by Trump’s Board of Peace envisages Hamas gradually handing over its weapons to a new committee tasked with administering postwar Gaza while Israel begins withdrawing from the large portion of the Strip it still controls.
- Netanyahu insists on the reverse order. “The Israel Defense Forces will not withdraw until Hamas is actually disarmed,” he said, stressing that disarmament must cover both heavy and light weapons. “We are talking about real disarmament, not a sham.”
Washington is relaxed — for now. Washington, however, is treating the disagreement as manageable rather than as a fundamental rupture with Israel. The United States says it is “not concerned” by Netanyahu’s public opposition: the administration understands his domestic political needs as long as Israel continues to meet Washington’s demands, particularly on limiting attacks in Gaza.
- U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz similarly described the dispute as one of “sequence and timing,” arguing that Washington and Jerusalem still share the same ultimate objective.
- The gap between Washington and Tel Aviv remains an important variable for a plan that nonetheless appears to have few credible alternatives. After Netanyahu’s objections became public, Trump shared on Truth Social a Financial Times opinion piece by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that, in substance, backed his Gaza proposal.
- Clinton had originally published the article in June, before Trump announced what he would later describe as a finalized agreement, arguing that “the world may not like Trump’s Gaza plan — but there is no alternative” and that, despite her long-standing political opposition to him, she considered it the most viable option.
- Trump did not directly address Israel’s rejection. But the combination of his public signaling and Kushner’s private engagement appears to have produced the intended effect.
Room for maneuver. On the ground, there are rare signs of movement. The IDF has begun a gradual return toward the Yellow Line in Gaza while halting attacks in the Strip.
- But the dynamic most directly involving Israel is also giving Trump room to slow another countdown: the one toward a possible renewed confrontation with Iran.
- “We’re keeping a low profile. We’re only having a partial negotiation with them. We’re just watching Iran, which is dealing with extremely high inflation and a lack of funds,” Trump told Axios.
- Only a week earlier, the president had been close to ordering the resumption of large-scale military operations. In his latest remarks, however, Trump issued no new military threat, suggesting instead that Washington may allow economic pressure on Tehran to intensify.
- “It’s going to be fine. It’s always fine. It’s like a chess game,” Trump said of the confrontation.
But that chessboard is getting larger. “The Middle East is entering a new phase,” says Giuseppe Dentice, an analyst at the Mediterranean Observatory (OSMED) of the San Pio V Institute for Political Studies. “Rather than a collection of separate crises, the different theaters of instability are increasingly merging into a single strategic space.”
- From this perspective, the diplomatic maneuvering over Gaza and Washington’s tactical restraint toward Iran are part of a deeper regional transformation. The Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Levant and eastern Mediterranean are becoming elements of the same security system, with consequences extending far beyond the Middle East itself.
Iran’s broader pressure strategy. At the center of that transformation is Iran’s changing posture, Dentice says.
- The latest resumption of hostilities has made the shift particularly visible. Tehran’s strategy, he argues, is no longer limited to preserving deterrence against Israel — including through Hamas — and the United States, or to threatening maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
- It increasingly rests on the ability to exert pressure across the wider corridor linking the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, leveraging the network of regional partners and non-state actors Iran has developed over decades.
- “The Red Sea is no longer simply a consequence of the 2023 Gaza war, but has now become one of the main fronts of strategic competition with Iran,” Dentice says.
The latest Houthi attacks in Yemen reinforce that assessment. Col. Majid al-Nuzaili, a spokesman for Yemeni government forces, said four soldiers and three civilians were killed and another 30 people wounded in drone and missile strikes targeting both military and civilian sites, including energy infrastructure. Government forces said they intercepted 11 drones.
- Yemen’s Saba news agency reported that some of the intercepted drones had been heading toward a solar power plant supplying the port city. The Houthis, for their part, said they had targeted Saudi troops and weapons depots at the port.
Pressure produces a response. Military confrontation, critical infrastructure and economic security are now overlapping across the Middle Eastern theater.
- And that pressure is beginning to produce a response. Regional capitals and European partners increasingly share a set of practical interests: protecting maritime routes, strengthening air and missile defenses, securing energy infrastructure and safeguarding freedom of navigation.
- This trend is being reinforced by a parallel development in formal defense coordination among key regional actors. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed a joint defense agreement including a mutual-defense clause under which an attack on one would be considered an attack on all three. The deal was announced during a meeting in Mecca in recent days between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
- The agreement reflects a broader acceleration in security alignment among states exposed to the same arc of regional instability, where disruptions linked to the confrontation involving the United States, Iran and Israel have increasingly affected maritime traffic and regional trade flows.
Efforts to build collective-security frameworks in the Middle East are nothing new — from the Arab League’s 1950 defense treaty to Cold War initiatives such as the Baghdad Pact and CENTO, and more recent U.S.-backed maritime coalitions. But the latest arrangement signals a renewed attempt by regional powers to take greater responsibility for shaping their own security architecture.
- Rather than representing a break with existing U.S.-led structures, the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani pact appears to extend a longer-term trend toward greater burden-sharing within a security order still largely anchored by the United States, while deepening intra-regional military and industrial cooperation.
- Dentice sees the beginnings of something pragmatic: a functional coalition organized around shared vulnerabilities rather than a common political project.
The logic behind this alignment, he argues, is structural rather than ideological. A convergence of this kind could become an increasingly important feature of the Middle East’s emerging balance of power. These states are increasingly exposed to the same set of risks, pushing actors that remain competitors — or even rivals — in other contexts toward more ad hoc forms of security coordination.
Diplomacy without stabilization. What is changing most fundamentally is the geography of risk — and that requires corresponding responses.
- The Red Sea crisis, escalation in Yemen and renewed pressure on maritime routes have reinforced a dynamic in which the region’s main chokepoints are no longer isolated theaters but interconnected nodes within a single strategic system. Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal are increasingly bound together by the same security and energy dynamics.
- In this configuration, disruption in one area can rapidly propagate along the entire chain. Tensions in the Gulf affect maritime traffic and energy flows. Instability in Yemen and around Bab el-Mandeb threatens access to the Red Sea. Pressure on Red Sea shipping then reverberates through Suez, turning regional confrontation into a broader economic-security challenge for Europe and beyond.
The Gaza negotiations fit into this wider picture, as do emerging contacts between Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Taken together, these diplomatic channels can help prevent multiple crises from escalating simultaneously — an especially important objective while the confrontation with Iran remains unresolved.
- According to Dentice, the fragility of existing understandings, volatility in the West Bank and persistence of regional rivalries show that the system is absorbing pressure rather than releasing it through effective safety valves.
- Washington may be trying to slow escalation with Iran while simultaneously managing negotiations over Gaza, but neither track addresses the structural drivers of instability.
- The result is not linear escalation, but a networked system of vulnerability in which maritime chokepoints, energy corridors and regional conflicts are becoming structurally interdependent.
The crisis moves north. The recent attack on the Egyptian port of Damietta makes that evolution particularly significant.
- Between 2023 and 2025, missiles launched from Yemen had already reached southern Sinai. But pressure extending as far as Egypt’s Mediterranean coast would mark a qualitative shift: confirmation that the geography of regional confrontation is moving north along the Hormuz–Bab el-Mandeb–Suez axis.
- “If this dynamic consolidates, the Mediterranean would cease to be the northern boundary of the crisis and become its natural strategic extension,” Dentice says.
This is the most consequential turning point for Europe. For years, European — and especially Italian — strategic debates have used the concept of the “Wider Mediterranean” to describe an interconnected geopolitical space extending beyond the Mediterranean basin itself.
- The current crisis is making the substance of that concept increasingly tangible. “The Wider Mediterranean is no longer merely an analytical category,” Dentice says. “It is a space where security, energy, trade and competition between regional and global powers converge.”
The implications go beyond Israel, Gaza and Iran. If Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea, Suez and increasingly the eastern Mediterranean are becoming parts of a single strategic system, Europe can no longer treat these crises as separate foreign-policy files.
- Washington may be able to contain escalation on individual fronts. The growing difficulty is that those fronts are becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
- The stability of the Red Sea and Suez is no longer merely a Middle Eastern concern. It is now a core strategic interest for Europe — and for Italy.
(Photo: @CENTCOM)
