In the first book of Kings, God tells Elijah to go to Aram—a territory roughly contiguous with modern-day Syria—and anoint Hazael its king. Second Kings describes Hazael’s invasion of the Land of Israel, where his army fought against Judea, Israel, and the Philistines—destroying the Philistine city of Gath. While archaeologists have long had other evidence about Hazael, who reigned in the latter half of the 9th century BCE, they recently made another discovery about his military exploits. Nathan Steinmeyer writes:

Recent excavations by Bar-Ilan University, led by Aren Maeir, have shed new light on the destruction of biblical Gath, the Philistine city famously home to Goliath. The team, which has been digging at Gath (modern Tell es-Safi) for 25 seasons, has repeatedly uncovered evidence of large-scale destruction across the entire tell. This destruction is firmly connected to the 9th-century BCE. campaign of Hazael.

Until recently, however, the team did not have a clear picture of exactly how the city fell. But during the 2021 season, new evidence emerged that might explain the city’s final demise—a nearly 30-foot-long break in the city’s massive fortification system. According to the archaeologists, this gap likely represents the very section where the Arameans broke through the walls of the Philistine city after a long siege. This, Maeir believes, may be “the earliest known, on-the-ground evidence of a siege anywhere in the world.”

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.