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The Iran War Is a Disaster for Gaza

How the crisis leaves Gaza’s 2 million people more friendless, isolated, and vulnerable than ever before.

A charity organization distributes meals to displaced Palestinians during the holy month of Ramadan, as food shortages continue amid Israeli attacks and ongoing restrictions on the entry of aid, in Beit Lahia, Gaza, on March 8, 2026.

The widening US-Israeli war with Iran is already reshaping the political and military contours of the Middle East. Much of the focus has been on the risk of regional escalation and the implications for Gulf security. But the war’s impact may be just as immediate and consequential for Gaza, where two million people are already living under conditions that leave no room to absorb new pressures. The crisis is complicating an already volatile situation for a place with no functioning governance, no open borders, no powerful supporters, and a humanitarian infrastructure that was already failing before the strikes on Tehran.

The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei removed the last remaining Middle East actor who, however cynically, saw Gaza as core to his agenda. For years, Iran helped arm and fund Hamas, not out of absolute alignment with the movement or out of solidarity with Palestinians, but because maintaining that front gave Tehran leverage in the wider region. As long as Iran had both the capacity and willingness to escalate—whether directly against Israel or through allied groups—Israel had to factor in the risk of a broader, multi-front confrontation, a calculation that, until 2023, imposed at least some constraints on its actions in Gaza.

Those constraints are now gone. The Iranian leadership has been significantly degraded. The country’s missile and air defense infrastructure, which underpinned its regional deterrence, has been badly damaged. And with Khamenei dead and his successor, his relatively unknown son Motjaba, taking charge amid such turmoil, Iran’s political house will be consumed for the foreseeable future by an internal power struggle between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the clerical establishment, and whatever remains of civilian governance. Amid so many domestic crises, it seems highly unlikely that Gaza will be much of a priority, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Hamas is already dealing with the consequences of the assault on Iran. For years, Iran has been a financial backer and a logistical and strategic anchor for Hamas through the wider “axis of resistance,” providing funding, weapons, and a broader deterrent environment in which escalation against Gaza carried the risk of retaliation elsewhere in the region.

With Iran’s military infrastructure degraded and its leadership preoccupied with internal succession, that support network is effectively frozen for the time being. Any money or arms that Iran had been supplying will be cut off for now, and Israel has no reason to fear Iranian reprisal if it escalates in Gaza. The news that the Houthis will resume attacks on the US and Israel in the Red Sea does not substantially change this calculation. Those attacks redirect Israeli and American military attention toward maritime security and the northern theater, which means Gaza recedes further both from the operational map and from the attention of the outside world.

It is difficult to see the timing of the initial US-Israeli strikes as incidental—or as unconnected from the situation in Gaza. For months, Israeli and US officials had signaled that an attack on Iran would depend on a particular alignment of political and military conditions in the Middle East, suggesting the operation was shaped by broader strategic calculations beyond its stated objectives. Gaza provided both the cover and the justification for these moves.

The Gaza war created a political environment in which large-scale Israeli military operations were already normalized, and where actions framed under the rubric of existential self-defense faced far less international resistance than they would have before October 2023. That rhetoric had been tested to its limits and held. Striking Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure under that same framework was not a sudden escalation, but the continuation of a doctrine whose permissable radius has steadily expanded since 2023.

The regional architecture right now was, from Israel’s perspective, as favorable as it will ever be. Hezbollah, which is in open war with Israel as of this writing, has been significantly degraded after multiple campaigns since 2024. Hamas is militarily weakened and politically isolated. The Houthis, while still active, have been absorbed into a separate American military front. In sum, Iran’s “axis of resistance” had been dismantled piece by piece, leaving Tehran more exposed and less able to threaten meaningful retaliation through intermediaries than at any point in the past two decades.

Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has advocated confrontation with Iran for decades, the timing is also useful in domestic political terms. Escalation........

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