Why did Hamas attack Israel on October 7? The core argument of this article is that at the most overarching level, Hamas had gradually come to view the structural strategic conditions in the Middle East as a realistic opportunity to militarily defeat Israel and to bring about its collapse. The article outlines the contours of the evolution of the strategic landscape in the Palestinian arena and the region in the years that preceded the war. Building on an original analysis of the prewar dynamics that shaped the Israel-Hamas conflict, and drawing of Hamas documents seized by Israel during the war, the article explains the shifting balance of power between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and between Israel and the Axis of Resistance prior to the war. Having become strategically tethered to the Axis, Hamas apparently intended to detonate, as it were, this strategic infrastructure and plunge Israel in an existential war.

Under what conditions can relatively weak actors force stronger opponents to accept limiting "rules of the game" rather than employ their overwhelming advantages? The concept of rules of the game has become an organizing principle informing the thinking, strategic behavior, and vocabulary of the Iran-led "Axis of Resistance" in the Middle East, thereby shaping the actions of Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen's Houthis, Iran, and the resistance forces in Iraq and Syria. Although these actors attempted to subject Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States to rules, they fared differently. This article juxtaposes these case studies, exploring and explaining variation in outcome. It argues that rules of the game largely depend on the balance of vulnerability, meaning on the weaker actor's ability to harden its military capabilities while exacerbating its opponent's military and/or civilian vulnerabilities.

In the eight years since Saudi Arabia launched its military offensive against Yemen's Houthi rebel movement Ansar Allah, much attention has been devoted to Iran's and Hizbullah's military assistance to the Houthis. Also important is Hizbullah's conceptual influence on the Houthis, and the Houthis' efforts to emulate Hizbullah. The Houthis' strategic behaviour and communications indicate that they have attempted to succeed against Saudi Arabia in the same way that Hizbullah has succeeded against Israel: to harness their long-range missiles as a means of subjecting their stronger opponents to limitations and 'rules of the game'. So far, the Houthis have been far less successful than Hizbullah. Nevertheless, the Houthis have become an integral part of the Iran-led 'axis of resistance'.

Although coercion literature has traditionally focused on two-actor dyads, coercion in three-actor settings is a prevalent yet understudied strategy in International Relations. Such cases of “triangular coercion” represent a phenomenon whereby a coercer who lacks direct leverage over a resilient target coerces a third party who does possess leverage over the target, and to whom the target is vulnerable, and manipulates it into a clash of interests with the target. By forcing an otherwise uninvolved intermediary to align with the coercer, a coercer can alter the balance of vulnerability vis-à-vis its otherwise resilient target and enhance its susceptibility to coercion, albeit by extension. Existing scholarship tackles triangular coercion from different angles and mostly focuses on actor typology. This article seeks to promote our understanding of this strategy by proposing a conceptual model that distills its logic into the abstract components of vulnerability, resilience, and leverage. To demonstrate the dynamics of triangular coercion, the article draws on three empirical cases: Israel’s failed attempts to force Lebanon to rein in Hezbollah in the 1990s, Nazi Germany’s successful manipulation of Britain and France into coercing Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the Soviet Union’s success at forcing the United States to coerce Israel in 1973.

Can intelligence serve as a coercive instrument in international relations? While coercion literature mostly addresses military and economic means, this article argues that coercion can also include the deliberate public disclosure of intelligence. Intelligence can be employed to threaten adversaries, reduce their latitude, and force them to adjust their plans and operations. Additionally, intelligence disclosure can be used to mobilize domestic and international audiences and make others align with a certain narrative and alter their policies accordingly. Still, coercive disclosure can fail or succeed only partially against a determined opponent or a target that is resilient to public and international pressure. To demonstrate the workings of coercive disclosure, we analyze Israel's campaign, beginning in 2017, against the Lebanese Hezbollah's missile manufacturing program and Turkey's coercive campaign vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia and the United States following Jamal Khashoggi's assassination in 2018.

In late 2022, Israel and Lebanon signed a US-brokered maritime agreement establishing their permanent maritime boundary and exclusive economic zones, and regulating their rights to gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. Preceding the agreement was a sustained coercive-diplomacy campaign by Hezbollah. Between June and October, the organization conveyed overt and covert threats, and it pursued actions that were unprecedented in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict: openly threatening to target Israel's entire gas production and risk all-out war if Israel proceeded with its plan to unilaterally extract gas from the contested Karish gas field. A textbook case of coercive diplomacy, Hezbollah's maneuver was calculated and deliberate, which reflects the group's strategic expertise. Drawing on open-source materials and public statements in Arabic and Hebrew, this article analyzes Hezbollah's coercive-diplomacy campaign and examines its implications for escalation scenarios between Israel and its central military opponent.

What are the sources of deterrence stability and under what conditions can weak actors deter stronger adversaries? To deter a superior adversary, the weak actor must convince it that if conflict breaks out, the weak actor would be capable of rendering its opponent's strategic capabilities tactical and its own tactical capabilities strategic. The deterrence relationship that has evolved between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah in the decade since—and as a result of—the 2006 Lebanon War (a.k.a. the Second Lebanon War or the July War) confirms this observation. A comparison of these two actors’ deterrence behavior in the years preceding the war and in its aftermath shows that one of the leading explanations for the ongoing stability along the Israeli-Lebanese border is that Israel and Hezbollah have learned to apply deterrence in a manner that meets the prerequisites of rational deterrence theory.