Blow after blow to the power of Iran and its proxy militias set the stage for US-Israel attacks

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : Israel continues to occupy parts of southern Lebanon and to carry out near-daily airstrikes.
51% : After Oct. 7, the group launched rockets across the border to Israel, seeking to aid its ally Hamas.
46% : Blow after blow to the power of Iran and its proxy militias set the stage for US-Israel attacksBy ADAM GELLER and ABBY SEWELLAssociated PressThe Associated Press As Israel unleashed a sweeping military response to the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas, it aimed punch after punch at the power of Iran, the militant group's longtime sponsor, and its other proxies and allies in the region.
45% : "Certainly the Oct. 7 events were a turning point in this long conflict between Iran and Israel," said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an expert on Iranian politics at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
45% : Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said Israel's actions since 2023 may give such groups pause.
41% : Israel has since killed more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry, which is under Gaza's Hamas government and which does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
41% : " Since Israel and the U.S. launched a barrage of strikes on Iran Saturday, Tehran's allies and proxies in the region have had a minimal role in the response.
39% : In Lebanon, the powerful militant group Hezbollah had long been considered Iran's first line of defense in case of a war with Israel.
39% : The toll on Iran escalated last June when Israel launched a surprise offensive aimed at decimating Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program while Iran and the U.S. were in negotiations for a nuclear deal.
37% : Israel inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah, killing Nasrallah and other top leaders and destroying much of the militant group's arsenal, before a U.S.-negotiated ceasefire nominally halted that conflict last November.
37% : Yemen's Houthi rebels, also sponsored by Iran, joined the expanding conflict, firing rockets at vessels in the Red Sea and targeting Israel.
36% : It was the first time in more than a year that Hezbollah has claimed a strike against Israel.
35% : Israel promptly retaliated with strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
33% : The result has been a rapid and systematic degradation of Iran's clout across the Middle East over the past 2½ years, a seismic change that led directly to this weekend's devastating attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel.
30% : "I think it provided Israel with the argument or justification to deliver a strong blow.
21% : Israel left the status quo behind As the conflict expanded, leaders of Iran and its proxies failed to recognize that Israel had abandoned the long-tense status quo and was trying to engineer a fundamental shift, Mansour said.

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