For decades, the phrase “from the Nile to the Euphrates” has occupied a peculiar place in Middle Eastern political imagination, drifting between symbolism, fear and accusation depending on who is speaking and from where. To some, it is little more than a slogan lifted from religious or historical references and stretched far beyond its original meaning, while to others, it has long functioned as shorthand for a perceived long-term strategic ambition hidden behind the language of security, survival, and necessity.

By Nadia Ahmad
The recent war between Israel and Iran has inevitably brought this debate back into circulation with renewed intensity. The military confrontation altered the regional balance in ways that would have seemed improbable only a few years ago, with Iranian military infrastructure suffering significant damage and Tehran’s regional network of allies emerging weakened, fragmented and under pressure.

The strategic environment that had constrained Israeli freedom of action for decades suddenly appeared less rigid, more fluid, and open to interpretation, and it is precisely in such moments of transition that older fears and older narratives tend to resurface with greater force.

The question being asked in political circles from Beirut to Brussels is therefore no longer confined to academic debate or television analysis: did the war merely weaken Iran, or did it also bring Israel closer to a regional order that its critics continue to describe as a modern version of “Greater Israel”?

The answer depends largely on what one means by the term, because if it refers to a literal territorial empire stretching physically from Egypt to Iraq. The evidence remains thin, there is no official Israeli government programme outlining such borders, and many within Israel itself regard the idea as either political mythology or a deliberate misreading of religious symbolism.

Yet the Middle East has never been a region where political impact is measured solely by official documents, and perceptions often exert a force that can rival formal policy.

Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that the phrase means very different things to different audiences. For many Israelis, it belongs to the political fringes, something distant from mainstream strategic thinking, while for many Arabs, it has long since moved beyond theology and entered the language of geopolitics, shaped by generations of conflict in which military victories and defeats were not seen as isolated events but as chapters in a longer historical trajectory.

The wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the repeated conflicts in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and the gradual fragmentation of several Arab states after 2011 have, for many observers in the region, formed a continuous narrative of shifting power, even if the interpretation of that narrative remains deeply contested.

Whether one accepts that interpretation or rejects it entirely is almost secondary, because political myths do not need consensus to be influential; they only need belief among enough actors to shape expectations, and in the Middle East, expectations often become political facts long before they become strategic realities.

The Iran war entered precisely this psychological and geopolitical landscape, where Iran had for years positioned itself as the central pillar of regional resistance to Israeli power, building influence through alliances, proxy networks and strategic partnerships that stretched from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, creating what many analysts described as a ring of pressure around Israel.

That ring now appears significantly weakened. The war exposed vulnerabilities in Iranian deterrence and forced a reassessment within Tehran about the durability of its regional strategy, while simultaneously reinforcing Israel’s image as a state capable not only of defending itself but of actively shaping the environment around it.

This distinction is crucial because states primarily seek security, regional powers seek influence, but hegemons ultimately shape the rules by which others operate. The current debate is increasingly about whether Israel’s position is shifting closer to that third category, not through territorial expansion but through the accumulation of strategic leverage.

Because geopolitics in the twenty-first century is rarely about planting flags or redrawing maps, and modern power does not travel in armoured columns; it moves instead through intelligence networks, missile defence systems, cyber capabilities, energy corridors and diplomatic alignments, which is why the question of “Greater Israel” today is less about geography and more about hierarchy.

It is about who sets the escalation thresholds, whose security doctrines become regional constraints, and whose red lines gradually acquire broader, almost unofficial recognition.

To Israel’s north, Syria illustrates this transformation in its most visible form. Years of war and fragmentation have fundamentally altered the country’s role in the regional system, and the exile of President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow marked not only a personal political endpoint but also the symbolic end of an era in which

Damascus functioned as a central pillar of the Iranian-led regional axis. For decades, Syria provided the geographical and strategic bridge connecting Tehran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, forming a continuous arc of influence that shaped Israeli planning and regional calculations alike.

With Assad now in Moscow, that axis has been disrupted in ways that continue to reshape strategic thinking across the region. From the perspective of those who fear the emergence of a “Greater Israel” dynamic, the weakening of the Syrian state removed one of the key structural barriers limiting Israeli reach and freedom of action in the Levant.

From the Israeli perspective, however, what collapsed was not a stabilising regional order but a hostile military environment that had constrained Israeli security for generations. In both interpretations, the outcome is the same: the strategic map of the Levant has changed, and it has changed quickly.

Israeli aircraft now operate over Syrian skies with a level of freedom that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago. That shift alone reflects a broader regional reality in which traditional state structures have weakened while military asymmetries have widened.

Lebanon presents a similar yet distinct case, in which Hezbollah remains a powerful political and military actor. Still, it no longer carries the same aura of strategic inevitability that accompanied earlier conflicts. Years of economic collapse, internal paralysis and repeated confrontation have altered both Lebanon’s internal balance and its position within the wider regional equation.

Further east, Iran faces the difficult task of rebuilding deterrence after its most serious confrontation in modern history. This process will inevitably shape its regional posture in the years ahead.

For Israeli planners, these developments are not interpreted as isolated victories but as part of a broader strategic opening, one that does not necessarily point toward territorial expansion but rather toward the consolidation of a long-term security architecture in which Israel retains clear military and technological superiority over any regional coalition that might emerge.

That does not require Israeli tanks to appear on the banks of the Euphrates or settlements on the Nile, and it is precisely here that the concept of empire becomes less relevant than the concept of influence.

Modern power rarely announces itself; it accumulates through systems, dependencies and deterrence structures that gradually redefine what is possible for others in the region. Seen in this light, the question becomes less about borders and more about hierarchy: who determines the security framework of the Middle East, who possesses escalation dominance, and whose strategic calculations become unavoidable reference points for everyone else.

The aftermath of the Iran war suggests that Israel may have strengthened its position in all three categories, not in a formal imperial sense but in a structural one that is harder to measure yet often more durable than territorial control. Critics argue that this is precisely what the “Greater Israel” concept has always implied—not a fixed map but a shifting balance of power that steadily tilts in one direction over time.

Supporters of Israel reject this framing entirely, insisting that Israeli policy remains rooted in security imperatives within a region defined by instability and repeated existential threats, and that what appears as expansion to some is simply survival to others.

This tension is central to how Europe will interpret the new Middle East emerging from the war in Iran. For years, European policy tended to assume a gradual movement toward a multipolar regional balance involving Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, each constrained by the others.

The post-war environment, however, points toward a more asymmetrical configuration in which one military actor holds disproportionate advantages in intelligence, technology, airpower and external alliances, particularly with the United States.

Some in Europe may see this as a stabilising development after decades of regional volatility. In contrast, others will view such asymmetry as inherently unstable, likely to generate new cycles of resistance rather than lasting equilibrium. History offers evidence for both interpretations, and the Middle East has repeatedly shown that moments of apparent strategic clarity often precede new and unexpected forms of fragmentation.

Perhaps that is why the old phrase refuses to disappear. “From the Nile to the Euphrates” survives not because it reflects an operational map or an explicit state policy, but because it captures something deeper and more persistent: an anxiety about power, its direction, and its consequences in a region where the line between security and dominance has never been easy to define.

The Iran war did not resolve that anxiety, and if anything, it has intensified it, reopening questions that many thought had been settled long ago.

 As the smoke of the conflict slowly disperses, one uncomfortable reality remains: the debate was never solely about borders, and it may never have been. It has always been about who ultimately shapes the Middle East that emerges after the wars end, and that question, far more than any map, is what continues to define the region’s future.