KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The fall of Bashar al-Assad was initially seen as a major victory for Israel, disrupting the “Axis of Resistance.” Israel targeted and destroyed a significant portion of Syria’s military capabilities. Expanded Israeli territorial control included more of the Golan Heights and parts of southern Syria. Yet the picture was quick to change.
- Türkiye assumed de facto control over post-Assad Syria, with Erdoğan’s administration heavily involved in governance and in drafting the new Syrian constitution. Türkiye’s influence extended to issuing Syrian identification documents and shaping citizenship dynamics, marginalising Kurdish groups. Turkish ambitions are reflected in rhetoric linking Damascus and Jerusalem as part of Ottoman-era claims.
- Israel experiences “buyer’s remorse” after the ousting of Assad. Israel faces a stronger adversary in a Türkiye-aligned Syria rather than a weakened Assad regime.
- Israel’s Nagel Report warned of potential Israeli-Turkish conflict due to Ankara’s regional ambitions, which mirror Tel Aviv’s Greater Israel project. However, an imminent war is highly, highly unlikely.
- Regime change roulette: With the major caveat of “as things stand”, and perhaps counterintuitively, a regime change in Tel Aviv seems more probable than a regime change in Tehran under Trump 2.0.
- Türkiye’s NATO membership makes a direct conflict with Israel exceedingly complex. Israel’s attempts to cast Türkiye as a new adversary of the West may not align with NATO’s strategic reliance on Türkiye.
- Despite sustained Western support, Israel’s geopolitical narrative has struggled against mounting international legal and public opinion pressures, not to mention the incapacity of its military to deliver.
- Both Israel and Türkiye are playing high-stakes geopolitical games, but any large-scale and direct military clash remains improbable.
Editorial note: This forms part of a cluster of four interrelated GeoTrends analyses; one on the recent historical background of Turkish-Israeli relations as a lens for understanding Syria, and one on the ascendancy of Saudi Arabia’s and generally the Gulf Arab States’ importance as a result of recent geopolitical developments, by Dimitris B. Peponis; one on the fall of Syria minus the Israeli and Turkish vector, by Sotiris Mitralexis, as well as this one below on Türkiye and Israel’s post-Assad predicament:
Table of contents:
- Act One: The way-too-short-term illusion of Israeli victory
- Act Two: Türkiye enters the chat — Israeli “buyer’s remorse”
- Act Three: The spectre of an Israeli-Turkish war, its PR side, and the NATO vector
- Act Four: The geopolitical Apprentice re-enters the stage—Trump 2.0 and the regime change roulette
- Act Five: Türkiye’s appetite and Israel’s international isolation minus “the West”
Act One: The way-too-short-term illusion of Israeli victory: Just after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, Israel was universally touted as being among the great victors—if not the greatest beneficiary—emerging from these developments. Within the span of a month, this assessment had to be severely revisited—both inside Israel and worldwide.
Let us start from how things seemed in early December 2024. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was initially seen as significantly disrupting the “Axis of Resistance,” a coalition comprising Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and other allied groups opposing Western and Israeli dominance in the Middle East. Syria’s strategic position was crucial for Iran, serving as a conduit for supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon with weapons and support; Syria was an important ally, providing a land corridor to Lebanon and acting as a logistical backbone for Iran’s support to Hezbollah (yet, and crucially, without escalating actions since 7 October 2023, unlike Hezbollah’s activities against Israel.) With Assad’s ouster, this vital supply route has been severed, compelling Iran to reassess its regional strategies. Thus, Assad’s removal was initially seen as a substantial blow to Iran’s regional influence and, hence, as a considerable gain for Israel.
Moreover, and following Assad’s flight to Moscow and the regime’s fall, Israel made sure that Syria’s armed forces would not pose a threat to Israel in the future, irrespective of which faction controls Damascus. The IDF conducted hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, focusing on strategic military assets and destroying them for good. Israeli forces targeted and destroyed a significant portion of Syria’s air defence capabilities, including missile systems and radar installations, and the IDF aimed to eliminate stockpiles of advanced weaponry, such as cruise and Scud missiles, tanks, and attack helicopters.
Furthermore, the Israeli navy conducted operations against Syrian naval facilities, resulting in the destruction of several warships and coastal defence installations. According to reports, these operations resulted in the destruction of approximately 70-80% of the former Syrian Army’s strategic military capabilities. In this respect, the Syrian state is no more as such, as it cannot possibly defend itself against a state actor in the foreseeable future, let alone turn on the offensive: among forms of war, its weaponry currently suffices only for a civil war.
Thirdly, and crucially, Israel invaded Syria and occupied significant portions of the formerly sovereign country. Israel already occupied the Golan Heights, a strategically significant plateau that it captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed in 1981, a move not recognised by most of the international community. Following the collapse of the Assad regime, Israel expanded its military presence by seizing the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) buffer zone in the Golan Heights. And Israeli forces advanced into southern Syrian villages, including Khan Arnabah and al-Baath, and took control of the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, enhancing their strategic vantage point over Damascus. Israel is not in any mood for leaving the newly occupied territories: Israeli PM Netanyahu and other officials defined the length of the occupation ranging from “for the foreseeable future” (IDF) to “for eternity” (PM Netanyahu), depending on the particular region commented upon.
These three developments were added to the ongoing Israeli global PR campaign to frame its military conduct as near-omnipotent, despite the failure of key military objectives to materialise. These include the eradication of Hamas (with outgoing Secretary Blinken assessing that “Hamas has recruited almost as many new fighters as it has lost,”, i.e., back to square one), a failed ground invasion of Lebanon ending in a ceasefire, a defanging of Hezbollah that remains to be seen, stopping the Houthis (Ansar Allah movement) from blocking the Red Sea and from attacking Israel proper, guaranteeing the domestic security of Israel and the impenetrability of the Iron Dome, the full return of settlers to Northern Israel, and so on—not to mention regime change in Tehran or the return of the hostages, which had to be forced on Netanyahu by Trump’s Mideast envoy (replete with “salty English”) after many months of failed U.S. diplomacy under Biden, and to the lament of top Israeli ministers, some of whom boast having repeatedly foiled hostage deals in the past.
Indeed, all these objectives have failed in varying degrees, and the forced ceasefire just before the U.S. presidential inauguration—a time-honoured Israeli tradition—exacerbates this grim picture. Most importantly, Israel’s military and defence capacity is contingent on the active support and engagement of other countries, notably the U.S., and would be unimaginable without it. Case in point, Israel’s defence from the April 2024 Iranian strikes (“Operation True Promise”) necessitated the active involvement of the United States, the United Kingdom, Jordan, and France, with intelligence support allegedly provided by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—and yet, in contrast to troves of cheap drones thrown in for saturation, the Iranian few hypersonic missiles indeed hit their targets inside Israel. Imagining a future conflagration without such a litany of countries being actively involved on the side of Israel paints a grim picture.
In the context of a pattern of disparity between realities on the ground and their portrayal by the media, i.e., lured by PR campaigns, many commentators (in my native Greece, for instance) lose sight of these basic realities concerning Israeli military failures—as they did back in 2022 apropos of the Ukraine war, when they paid attention to the analyses of the likes of the “Institute for the Study of War” (ISW) and delighted to believe in propaganda items like the “Ghost of Kyiv,” or that the Russian military desperately needed chips from dishwashers and washing machines to fix military hardware due to a sanctions-induced shortage of everything since Russian industry is in tatters, as President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen had famously declared, or that Ukrainian grandmas would shoot down Russian drones by throwing pickle jars at them. Be that as it may, however, and in contrast to psychological operations, actually existing reality has a tendency to exhibit resilience over the years.
Yet even in terms of Israel’s short-term gains in Syria after the country’s collapse, the situation proved swift to acquire significantly different hues. For Israel, it is one thing to have a Syria governed by a weak Bashar al-Assad and quite a different reality to encounter a Syria that is de facto governed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the head of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) İbrahim Kalın, and Turkish FM Hakan Fidan.
Act Two: Türkiye enters the chat—Israeli “buyer’s remorse”
Initially seeing the liquidation of the Syrian node in the “Axis of Resistance” as a decisive victory, Israel is now staring at the reality unfolding before it: rather than having a weak Assad as its neighbour, it now has Türkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, MİT director İbrahim Kalın, and FM Hakan Fidan as the actual de facto rulers of Syria, replete with an Ottoman revanchism explicitly targeting Jerusalem. Consider the following: shortly after the fall of Damascus, Ibrahim Kalin, the head of Türkiye’s secret service MİT (and Erdoğan’s senior advisor as well as a key figure in the Adalet ve Kalkınma party) was seen meeting with al-Jolani, indeed being personally chauffeured by Syria’s new de facto leader through various locations in Damascus, and paying respects at the historic Umayyad Mosque. The head of Türkiye’s MİT having the new ruler of Damascus as his personal driver in Syria’s capital signals a proximity between the “new Syria” and Türkiye’s state apparatus that cannot possibly be pleasing to Israel in the long term.
As things stand, the new Syrian leadership functions as a de facto extension of Ankara’s will, exemplified by its subservience to President Erdoğan’s top lieutenants. Türkiye now wields unprecedented power, overseeing the issuance of critical identification documents such as ID cards, passports and driver’s licences according to Turkish media, effectively controlling the very fabric of Syrian citizenship. This arrangement raises concerns regarding selective citizenship rights—whereby favoured groups (e.g., anti-Assad Turkmen and Uighur fighters) could benefit, while marginalised communities, particularly Kurds, may find themselves without Syrian civil recognition. Additionally, plans for an exclusive Türkiye-Syria Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of dubious legality further illustrate Ankara’s territorial ambitions. Whether or not these actions adhere to international legal norms, their geopolitical consequences are indisputable. As summed up by M.K. Bhadrakumar, formerly India’s Ambassador to Ankara, Türkiye’s concerns “have four main templates: one, ensure Turkey’s border security with Syria; two, create conditions for the return of Syrian refugees from Turkey; three, push Syrian Kurdish forces away from the border regions; and, four, counter the covert European and U.S.-Israeli support for an independent Kurdish state” of late memory.
Meanwhile, the speed with which the Russian Federation, formerly Assad’s main defender, seems to have found a mighty modus vivendi with the leaders of “new Syria,” presumably with the blessings if not the urging of Ankara, as well as with Erdoğan’s Türkiye itself, is astounding, indeed normalisation galore—as a close reading of President Putin’s end-of-year marathon showcases. The Russian President had no ill words aimed at Türkiye—but plenty of them for Israel.
The fact that Syria, and Türkiye, will not be perpetually acquiescent with Israel occupying significant portions of Syrian territory is the least of Israel’s concerns. The status of Jerusalem itself has been put on the table in significant ways—and not for Turkish “domestic political consumption,” as a relative paucity in analytical capacity could lead one to believe. On 1 January 2025, Istanbul witnessed a major demonstration, ostensibly in order to express solidarity with Palestinians and to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza. Organised by the National Will Platform—a coalition of over 300 civil society organisations—the protest drew hundreds of thousands to the Galata bridge and the surrounding Eminönü and Karaköy districts. The slogan on the demonstration’s posters read “There’s a sun on the rise: Yesterday Ayasofya, today the Emevi Mosque [i.e., Damascus], tomorrow Aqsa [i.e., Jerusalem].” Bilal Erdoğan, son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the assembly, stating, “As we liberated the Hagia Sophia, we will do the same with [the] Al-Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem],” noting that “all the values of the West died in Gaza.” Both Damascus and Jerusalem comprise former Ottoman territories.
These are indeed serious developments, no mere rhetoric—yet it is a strategy premised on “patience”, which “delivers victory,” as President Erdoğan repeatedly underscores when asked about the Al-Aqsa mosque by supporters. And it is a positioning that reflects and mirrors Israel’s “Greater Israel” project, as expounded by top far-right Netanyahu ministers, an astounding number of Israeli officials, intellectuals, and the Israeli media. Indeed, the irony of geography and history lies in the natural interconnectedness between Damascus, the prime strategic city, and Jerusalem: under Bashar al-Assad, this natural interconnectedness posed no actual security threat to Israel. Now Türkiye has returned to Damascus, and considers the status of Jerusalem as unfinished business; in an era that finds itself de facto without functional international law, a truly effective United Nations Security Council (UNSC), or at least any normative U.S.-led “rules-based order” and Pax Americana, in other words in an era after Gaza and the Western coalition’s acquiescence to it, anything can be perceived as fair game, and reality is now malleable by force coupled with strategic nuance.
Israel is experiencing severe “buyer’s remorse.” Ultra-pro-Israeli think-tanks already opine that “we might one day look back nostalgically at the days of Bashar al-Assad compared to what could come next.” Or, to quote the Nagel Report to which we will come shortly, “the threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat.”
Act Three: The spectre of an Israeli-Turkish war, its PR side, and the NATO vector
As the Jerusalem Post headline has it, “Israel must prepare for potential war with Turkey, Nagel Committee warns.” Yet reality is significantly more complicated.
Let us start from the news items. The Nagel Report, officially titled “Commission for the Evaluation of the Defence Establishment Budget and the Balance of Power,” was commissioned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2023 and delivered on the 6 January 2025. Led by former National Security Adviser Professor Jacob Nagel, the committee was tasked with assessing Israel’s security needs and budget allocations for the next decade.
Crucially, the report warns of a possible confrontation with Türkiye, citing Ankara’s regional ambitions and its support for groups opposing Israeli interests. It recommends that Israel prepare for such a scenario by enhancing its military capabilities and strategic planning “over the next five years”—which is simply too much time by today’s geopolitical standards. Apart from the Jerusalem conundrum, back in November 2024 Turkish President Erdoğan had announced the severance of all diplomatic relations with Israel, further straining bilateral ties, and the Nagel Report’s warning about a potential conflict with Türkiye reflects these deteriorating relations. Following the fall of Syria, to opine that the new Israeli-Turkish dynamics are ominous would be the epitome of the understatement. To quote the report, “One cannot forget the origins of the [Syrian] rebels and their leaders. … Israel could find itself confronting a new threat that would emerge in Syria—one no less serious than its predecessor, that would take the form of an extremist Sunni power that would not accept the existence of Israel. Moreover, because the Sunni rebels will have the power of the state … their threat could be greater [even] than that of Iran. … The problem will intensify if the Syrian regime will in practice become a ‘Turkish’ proxy, as a substantive part of Turkey’s dream to restore its former Ottoman crown. The presence of Turkish emissaries or Turkish forces in Syria could intensify the danger of a direct Turkish-Israeli confrontation.”
Beyond this grand bellicose rhetoric by both Türkiye (Jerusalem) and Israel (Greater Israel), however, and among the many dangers and challenges caused by the fall of Syria—formerly a sovereign state; now a contested area—three stand out. Firstly, Israel and Türkiye have just acquired almost de facto borders between them within the former Syrian territory—and borders-in-flux to boot. While it is true that Assad’s overthrow suited both countries splendidly, with Erdoğan’s belligerent rhetoric against Israel for more than a year eventually morphing into a military invasion of a Muslim-majority country, the day after might prove to be less amicable between the two states, and causes of potential friction within the former Syria abound; in fact, Türkiye has already subtly telegraphed its desire to see the Israeli army out of Syrian territory, or at least, and for starters, contained within territories that do not form part of Türkiye’s concerns.
The second question focuses on the attitude of the new Syrian powers-that-be vis-à-vis Israel. The situation shall remain in flux for the foreseeable future, with power in Damascus not being consolidated, but contested between an acronymical alphabet soup of factions—and radical militant Islam is not known for its amicable disposition towards Israel, particularly during a grand-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, regardless of the current al-Jolani optics and the future viability of his leadership.
A third question regards Iraq. Israel and PM Netanyahu have repeatedly stated that “Iran is next”—something more akin to wishful thinking than to foreseeable reality, given the vast difference in global importance, crucial alliances, and leverage between Syria and Iran—and this passes through the territory of Iraq. Movements toward commotion are already observable in this direction, and Iran has already signalled that it would not allow such developments to come to pass without a fight.
According to our assessment, these three items stand out as possible sources of conflagrations. Returning to the Nagel Report in order to assess the possibility of an actual Turkish-Israeli war, our assessment is that this is not forthcoming anytime soon. Furthermore, it should be noted that while Türkiye did indeed “come suddenly one night” in Syria, it did so by proxy.
Firstly, even if we take Türkiye’s Jerusalem aspirations at face value and to the tee, these do not circumscribe an imminent Turkish war against Israel, but a bet on Israel’s medium-term implosion premised on patience—whether this is a realistic assessment is decisively beyond the scope of the present analysis. Thus, a Turkish invasion of Israel remains highly unlikely. At the same time, Israel’s military capabilities certainly do not suffice for an attack (pre-emptive, defensive, or whatnot) against Türkiye. The Nagel Report’s “five-year” framing is quite telling here.
Secondly, let us understand what this phrase, “Turkish-Israeli war,” actually means. Türkiye is a NATO country, and the alliance’s second-biggest army; Israel is a “non-NATO ally.” What would happen in the event of a serious conflagration, NATO-wise? For reasons pertaining to basic geopolitics, Türkiye is absolutely indispensable to NATO—hence, also, its free pass for playing a “double game” geopolitically while consistently remaining everybody’s interlocutor. In many ways, its non-Russian alignment is indispensable for Anglo-Saxon primacy for a number of centuries, not since NATO’s post-WWII establishment. Türkiye’s geographical importance to the West in relation to Russia is anchored in its strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and this unique position has made Türkiye a pivotal player in geopolitical contests, particularly in the context of Western-Russian relations. No scenario spells “nightmare” for the United States and the Western alliance (NATO-EU-G7-Five Eyes) more clearly than the possibility, however distant, of a Turkish-Israeli war. Both Türkiye and Israel are acutely aware of the fact that they would be hard-pressed to find clear-cut friends and allies in the “West” during a war between them.
Thirdly, if the above is the case, and if Israel has no intention of confronting Türkiye while the latter’s aspirations for Jerusalem are of a more long-term nature and perhaps primarily aimed at the guardianship of Al-Aqsa in a future configuration that would be very different to today’s, then why does the Nagel Report speak of a Turkish-Israeli war, with PM Netanyahu echoing it? (Netanyahu: “We are witnessing fundamental changes in the Middle East. Iran has long been our greatest threat, but new forces are entering the arena, and we must be prepared for the unexpected. This report provides us with a roadmap to secure Israel’s future.”)
According to our assessment, presently, or for starters, this is an attempt at a PR campaign for Western public and governmental opinion. Among other factors, during previous decades and years Netanyahu has achieved, or helped, in framing the Islamic Republic of Iran as nothing less than “pure evil” in the West’s eyes. Now a new seminal adversary of Israel arises: Türkiye. And Israel is attempting to portray it as the new pure evil for Western audiences, an enemy of “the West”, building on the narrative of Islam as “the enemy of Western civilisation” and of Israel as the bastion against it. An expulsion of Türkiye from NATO would be optimal for Israel—yet it would also be absolutely impossible, for all the reasons briefly hinted at in the previous paragraph and many more. A relative enmity towards Türkiye on the West’s part, and in the West’s eyes, would also be desirable for Israel in the present juncture. Yet, as regards the Western alliance’s interests and Realpolitik, Türkiye is not Iran—far from it. Israel is overplaying its hand here—and Türkiye is acutely aware of its own leverage, hence its high-risk (and high-gain) games.
Act Four: The geopolitical apprentice re-enters the stage—Trump 2.0 and the regime change roulette
In the background of all this, divining the intentions of Donald J. Trump’s incoming U.S. administration is both imperative and challenging—as President Trump is prone to sending mixed signals and regularly manoeuvring in “art of the deal” stratagems. Yet one thing is for sure: President Trump has no appetite whatsoever for dragging the United States into a major war. Inter alia, because he is acutely aware that the United States can claim having started innumerable wars after WWII, but not one decisive victory except, perhaps, the 1990-1991 Gulf War. While Iran is not Iraq, the Ukraine war is not faring well for the Biden Administration (to find refuge in an understatement), and Afghanistan ended in abject, humiliating failure, with Afghans falling from the sky as American military planes took off from Kabul airport on 16 August 2021. However eventful 2025 might prove, our assessment is that President Trump will resist dragging the U.S. into a major war as much as is humanly possible according to the circumstances.
(Whether this is due to cynical Realpolitik or a deep moral pacifist quality of disposition is a question for biographers, not analysts of international relations: the fact remains.)
Looking at the surface of news items endows one with limited wisdom. Therein, one sees Trump warning that “all hell will break loose” in Gaza if the hostages are not returned before he enters office; Trump has consistently campaigned on a more-Zionist-than-thou platform, promising Israel (and U.S. Christian Zionists) a bit more than God did in the Old Testament; both U.S. Christian Zionists and Israeli settlers are ecstatic about Trump; incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio opposes a Gaza ceasefire and has called for Israel to “destroy every element” of Hamas; once upon a time, Trump’s incoming Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has expressed fervent anti-Erdoğan sentiments; and so on.
Yet let us dig a bit deeper—with the explicit caveat that all attempts to divine the future at the present juncture are by definition highly speculative due to the sheer amount of known unknowns and unknown unknowns (to quote Donald Rumsfeld’s magisterial formulation).
And let us resist conflating Trump’s stance vis-à-vis the state of Israel to Trump’s stance vis-à-vis the Netanyahu cabinet. If Trump arrives at the conclusion that Benjamin Netanyahu is not helping Israel help itself and is not helping Trump and the U.S. help Israel and its medium-term viability, then there is a variety of options.
Exhibit A. The 7th of January found President Trump sharing a two-minute video on his Truth Social platform describing Benjamin Netanyahu as manipulating U.S. foreign policy and orchestrating “endless wars” in the Middle East, with the U.S. embarking into invasions that were catastrophic for both the U.S. itself and the countries invaded. This was an excerpt from Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs’ October 2024 Cambridge Union address, and the two-minute video culminates in uncharacteristically characterising Netanyahu as (and I quote) “a deep, dark son of a bitch.” President Trump wanted his followers to hearken to this analysis, a development that has been widely discussed. This was not an anti-Israel move; this was a clear anti-Netanyahu move.
Exhibit B. President Trump might have many plans for the Islamic Republic of Iran; but, in stark contrast to Netanyahu’s explicit strategy, a regime change in Tehran is not amongst them, as he has repeatedly and explicitly said. This is a core Trumpian pronouncement. (Needless to say, if a regime change in Tehran was an easy objective, it would have materialised since 1979…) From this lens, the disparity between Netanyahu’s core aims and Trump’s proposed aims and methods could not have been greater, as the latter is the negation of the former.
Exhibit C. For a host of reasons, including domestic political pressures, coalition balances, Netanyahu’s personal political future in Israel, his domestic and international legal challenges, and possibly also long-held ideological positions, there is only one way for the Netanyahu government: forward—in Gaza, in the West Bank, in all active and presently inactive military fronts, in the Greater Israel project, in eventually “striking the head of the Iranian octopus.” A comprehensive peace plan would spell catastrophe for the current Israeli leadership. And this “forward” is emphatically contingent on one thing: large-scale U.S. military intervention. The reader is asked to ponder the following: if large-scale U.S. military intervention is a sine qua non for the current Israeli leadership, and not embarking in large-scale U.S. military interventions is a sine qua non for President Trump, what is more likely to change—President Trump, or the current Israeli leadership?
Exhibit D. Trump’s reaction to Türkiye’s Syrian gains was decisively pro-Erdoğan. Trump said President Erdoğan is his friend, someone he likes and respects, and highlighted Türkiye’s crucial role in Syria, while having previously hailed Türkiye’s regional role as a major power, noting that Ankara would play a key role in the future of Syria following the ouster of Assad regime.
Taking all these together and carefully analysing them, two conclusions are drawn. The easy one is that the incoming U.S. administration is not turning anti-Türkiye anytime soon. And the strikingly counter-intuitive one is that regime change in Israel is much more probable than regime change in Tehran under Trump 2.0. If the Trump administration genuinely desires to be pro-Israel, but the Israeli leadership’s definition of a pro-Israel U.S. is incommensurable with President Trump’s core strategy in international affairs, then President Trump requires a different Israeli leadership in place that will be more in tune with his view of world affairs—a feat he is currently trying to bring about in Germany, with incoming cabinet member Elon Musk’s emphatic support for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) aiming at both the general public and Germany’s hapless industrialists.
Given the year that 2025 is destined to be, all the above is speculative by definition—yet, hopefully, not superficial or facile.
Act Five: Türkiye’s appetite and Israel’s international isolation minus “the West”
All this is happening at a time when Israel faces profound isolation in the international community. It is still supported by the United States and the Five Eyes countries, NATO, and most of the EU, yet the international community is measured in terms of United Nations resolutions and votes, not in terms of Western discourse. Crucially, referring to international isolation we are not referring to the reports of various non-state international organizations—e.g., the 179 pp. report by Human Rights Watch, the 296 pp. report by Amnesty International, and so on—but to the intergovernmental and international institutional framework as reflected, for example, in the resolutions of the vast majority of the world’s states in the United Nations, the Netanyahu arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the imminent ruling on genocide at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), with the latter’s outcome and its follow-up largely determining the future of the international system as we know it after WWII in terms of the UN and international law nexus.
No, a direct, large-scale Turkish-Israeli war is not in the cards for the immediate future—for the simple reason that it currently seems practically impossible, taking into account Israel’s and the IDF’s overextension and limits of military capability, Türkiye’s patience in its balancing act, and the nuances in a war between a NATO country and a “non-NATO ally.”
Yet as things stand, the future looks increasingly auspicious for Türkiye and increasingly grim for Israel, despite its PR campaign convincing many commentators otherwise. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv should perhaps be more worried about regime change eventualities than Tehran under Trump 2.0. However, the “as things stand” clause is a major caveat in the annus horribilis 2025 that has just commenced, as the global configuration is in flux like never before after the two previous world wars. Bumpy road ahead.
* Sotiris Mitralexis holds a doctorate in political science and international relations; he works at University College London as a research fellow.