E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps

Sacks’ statement was conditional and probabilistic: if Israel responded at a “Lindsey Graham level” (essentially “leveling” Gaza), he thought that could trigger a much wider regional war or even a world war.

1. Did the antecedent occur?
Israel’s response was extremely destructive: intensive bombardment, siege, and ground invasion, widely described as the most devastating Gaza conflict to date.(en.wikipedia.org) But “Lindsey Graham level”/“leveling Gaza” is a vague, rhetorical standard rather than a clearly defined policy, so it’s not clear whether his exact condition was met.

2. Did it cause a ‘much wider regional war’ or ‘world war’?
The war clearly regionalized:

• Ongoing cross‑border hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon and clashes in Syria and Iraq.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and multiple drone/missile strikes on Israel, prompting US‑led naval operations and Israeli strikes in Yemen.(rmsgloballtd.com)
• Direct Iran–Israel missile exchanges in 2024, with hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles launched at Israel and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets.(en.wikipedia.org)
  Analysts describe this as a multi‑front Middle Eastern crisis that has repeatedly brought the region “to the brink of all‑out war,” but also emphasize that the feared full wider Middle East war drawing in major states in open conflict has not (yet) materialized; key actors have generally tried to contain escalation.(theguardian.com) There has also been no “world war” in any conventional sense.

3. Why the outcome is ambiguous:

• The prediction uses “could,” expressing a risk rather than a firm forecast, which is hard to falsify.
• The trigger condition (“Lindsey Graham level” leveling) is not objectively defined, so we cannot say cleanly that the scenario he described did or did not occur.
• Whether today’s situation counts as a “much wider regional war” is itself disputed: some frameworks treat the multi‑theater Middle Eastern crisis as a de facto regional war, others treat it as dangerous spillover that still falls short of the wider‑war scenario he warned about.(en.wikipedia.org)

Because both the condition and the outcome are conceptually fuzzy and the claim is probabilistic, it is not possible to classify Sacks’ prediction as clearly right or clearly wrong; it remains ambiguous.

Jason predicted that Israel would not respond to the 7 October Hamas attacks with a maximal, indiscriminate, “level the place”-style operation in Gaza, but instead with a relatively restrained military campaign. The subsequent course of the war shows the opposite.

Key evidence on the scale and character of Israel’s response:

• Extent of physical destruction: Satellite-based damage assessments show that by late 2024 around two‑thirds of all structures in Gaza (≈69%) had been damaged or destroyed, with UN and World Bank–linked analyses describing tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction needs. (english.alarabiya.net) Later UN/OCHA and IOM data indicate that over 90% of all homes (≈436,000 housing units) have been destroyed or damaged, leaving the vast majority of Gaza’s population in need of emergency shelter. (dci.plo.ps) A UNOSAT/academic time‑series study similarly found damage rates above 50–60% of all buildings by early 2024, confirming pervasive bombardment across the strip. (academic.oup.com)

• Comparisons to extreme historical cases: Analyses drawing on UN satellite data and independent researchers estimate that by 2025 roughly 70–80% of structures in Gaza are damaged, and note that, on a percentage basis, Gaza’s destruction exceeds that of any single German city in World War II and even the US firebombing of Dresden. (prospectmagazine.co.uk) This is precisely the kind of “level the place” outcome Jason was suggesting Israel would avoid.

• Civilian toll and displacement: By early–mid 2025, estimates from UN‑cited figures and major news organizations put Palestinian deaths in Gaza well above 46,000–50,000, the majority women and children, with more than 1.8–1.9 million people (around 90% of the population) displaced and living amid rubble or in tent camps. (apnews.com) These outcomes have drawn sustained accusations from UN bodies, human rights groups, and international courts that Israel’s campaign amounts to collective punishment or a scorched‑earth operation; even some reporting on military doctrine explicitly describes Israel’s strategy in Gaza as a form of scorched earth, with vast destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and farmland. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given this combination of extraordinary levels of physical devastation, very high civilian casualties, near‑total displacement, and descriptions by experts as comparable to or worse (in percentage terms) than the most devastated WWII cities, Israel’s response is best characterized as at or near the maximal end of conventional military options against Gaza’s urban areas. That is the opposite of the “not going to go that hard” scenario Jason forecast.

Because the real-world response closely matches what most people would colloquially describe as a “level the place” campaign, his prediction that Israel would not respond in this extreme manner must be judged wrong.

Evidence since October 7, 2023 shows that the Hamas attacks and Israel’s response have significantly derailed the trajectory of Arab–Israeli normalization, even though the Abraham Accords have not formally collapsed.

• Saudi–Israel track: Before October 7, U.S.-mediated talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia were widely reported as making substantial progress. After the Hamas attack and ensuing Gaza war, reporting describes the normalization effort as derailed; Riyadh hardened its stance, insisting on a ceasefire and concrete steps toward a Palestinian state as preconditions for normalization, while the current Israeli leadership rejects such steps, leaving talks effectively frozen. (timesofisrael.com) This is a direct reversal of the pre‑war momentum and fits Chamath’s concern that things would “go off the rails,” especially since Saudi normalization was the flagship next step of the Abraham Accords strategy.

• Strain and partial rollback among existing Abraham Accords states:
  – Bahrain recalled its ambassador in November 2023 and the Israeli ambassador left Bahrain; subsequent reporting notes a decline in economic/defense engagement and, in 2025, Israeli defense firms were excluded from the Dubai Airshow, seen by analysts as reflecting a political cooling and frayed ties between the UAE and Israel after the Gaza war. (en.wikipedia.org)
  – Analyses of the Accords five years on describe them as “degraded,” under “severe strain,” with people‑to‑people contacts and public enthusiasm in the UAE and Bahrain having largely evaporated after Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, even as governments keep the formal agreements for strategic reasons. (time.com) This is consistent with significant derailment of the earlier rapid-deepening phase.

• Continued but fragile formal ties: The UAE has kept diplomatic relations and even enabled humanitarian initiatives in Gaza, but has repeatedly warned that annexation or further Israeli actions could cross “red lines” and “severely undermine” normalization, and it has already imposed visible limits (e.g., barring Israeli defense firms from major events). (en.wikipedia.org) These moves underscore that the relationship is now contested and fragile rather than steadily advancing.

• Limited new ‘progress’ doesn’t negate the derailment: In 2025, Kazakhstan agreed to symbolically join the Abraham Accords, which boosts the framework’s prestige but builds on long‑standing diplomatic ties dating back to 1992 and is framed largely as a symbolic gesture occurring despite global criticism over Gaza. (apnews.com) Meanwhile, key expansion targets like Saudi Arabia have not normalized, and senior U.S. officials describe additional Arab normalization as aspirational and contingent on resolving the Gaza war and the Palestinian question—conditions not present pre‑October 7. (news.allianceglobal.org)

Taken together, the flagship near‑term expansion (a Saudi deal) has been knocked off course, relations with existing Arab partners have cooled and in some cases been partially rolled back at the diplomatic and societal levels, and the overall momentum of normalization has clearly shifted from rapid progress to a strained holding pattern. That outcome matches Chamath’s prediction that the October 7 attacks and Israel’s response would cause the Abraham Accords “normalization” process to go off the rails, so the prediction is best assessed as right.

Jason predicted that the October 2023 Hamas attacks would ultimately renew and strengthen many governments’ and actors’ commitment to peace processes and normalization, rather than leading them to abandon those efforts.

There is substantial evidence that, despite the devastating war and public anger, key regional and global actors have indeed doubled down on diplomatic frameworks for a peace process and conditional normalization, instead of walking away from them:

• Saudi Arabia and broader Arab diplomacy: Since the Gaza war began, Saudi leaders have repeatedly re‑emphasized that a two‑state solution is the only acceptable framework and that any Saudi–Israel normalization is contingent on “credible, irreversible” progress toward Palestinian statehood. Saudi Arabia also formed a global alliance on the margins of the 2024 UN General Assembly to push for a two‑state solution and implementation of relevant UN resolutions, rather than shelving the issue. (atlanticcouncil.org)
• Multilateral push for a political framework (New York Declaration): In 2025, Saudi Arabia and France co‑chaired a major conference that produced the New York Declaration, a phased roadmap toward a two‑state solution, signed by all 22 Arab League members, the EU, and many other states. It calls for Hamas’s disarmament, a ceasefire, hostage release, and concrete steps toward Palestinian statehood—explicitly framing the war as something to be resolved via a renewed peace process. (dw.com)
• Moves toward recognition of Palestine as a tool to restart a peace track: Several Western states, such as Belgium (in coordination with France, the UK, Australia, Canada, and Saudi Arabia), have moved toward or announced recognition of a Palestinian state specifically to support a two‑state solution and increase diplomatic pressure for a negotiated settlement, not to abandon the idea of peace. (reuters.com)
• Formalized ceasefire and reconstruction framework tied to a broader peace process: The 2025 Gaza peace plan—a multilateral agreement between Israel and Hamas negotiated with extensive involvement from the US and Arab states—and its endorsement by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 created an International Stabilization Force, a Board of Peace, and a Palestinian governance committee in Gaza. This is explicitly framed as part of an Israeli–Palestinian peace process rather than a purely military outcome, showing renewed institutional investment in a diplomatic track. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Normalization frameworks strained but not abandoned: Academic and policy analyses of the Abraham Accords note that the Gaza war severely damaged public opinion and slowed new economic projects, tourism, and joint ventures. Yet, no existing normalization agreements (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan) were revoked; governments officially reaffirmed their commitment to the accords, even as some cooperation was delayed and symbolically downgraded. This indicates stress and backlash, but not a collapse of normalization; instead, the lesson drawn in these analyses is that sustainable prosperity requires coupling economic normalization with more robust conflict‑management and peace mechanisms. (ariel.ac.il)

Taken together, the behavior of governments and major diplomatic actors since late 2023 fits Jason’s core claim: rather than abandoning normalization and peace initiatives, they have generally preserved existing normalization, tied future normalization more tightly to a political settlement, and launched new, explicit frameworks (alliances, declarations, UN resolutions, and recognition moves) aimed at a negotiated two‑state outcome. While the path has been extraordinarily violent and public opinion in many societies is more polarized, the institutional and diplomatic commitment to some form of peace process has, if anything, been intensified rather than discarded. Hence, the prediction is best categorized as right, albeit with the caveat that this renewed commitment has coincided with, and been driven by, an exceptionally destructive war.

As of November 30, 2025, there has been no comprehensive regional peace or "larger" normalization deal in the Middle East of the type Sacks was referring to (e.g., a Saudi–Israel grand bargain plus broader regional normalization).

Key facts:

• Saudi–Israel normalization has not happened. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly reaffirmed that it will not normalize relations with Israel without concrete steps toward an independent Palestinian state and a halt to the Gaza war, and negotiations have stalled over precisely this point.(congress.gov) In 2025, the Saudi foreign minister again stated publicly that normalization can only come through establishing a Palestinian state.(middleeastmonitor.com)
• The Gaza peace plan agreed in October 2025 is a multilateral ceasefire and demilitarization framework between Israel and Hamas focused on ending the Gaza war. It includes a conditional pathway toward Palestinian self‑determination and possible recognition of Palestinian statehood, but it is not a broad regional normalization or final-status peace, and implementation and durability remain uncertain.(en.wikipedia.org)
• The Abraham Accords have seen only limited expansion since 2023 (e.g., Kazakhstan symbolically acceding in 2025, despite already having relations with Israel), while the core Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Gaza/West Bank issues remain unresolved and widely recognized by regional leaders as the key barrier to any lasting, comprehensive Middle East peace.(britannica.com)

Logically, Sacks’s prediction is of the form: “Until the Palestinian question is substantively addressed, a larger regional deal will not occur.” To falsify it, we would need to see a genuine, comprehensive regional peace/normalization deal achieved without such a substantive resolution. That has not happened so far, so the prediction has not been shown wrong.

However, because the statement is open‑ended (it makes a claim about what will or won’t happen until some future condition is met), we also cannot prove it definitively correct—a large regional deal could still occur in the future without a full political resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Therefore, the only defensible status today is "inconclusive (too early)": events since October 2023 are consistent with Sacks’s prediction, but they do not yet settle it either way.

As of November 30, 2025, Hamas has clearly not been eliminated. Reporting indicates that while Israel has killed many Hamas leaders and fighters and significantly degraded its capabilities, Hamas as an organization and armed movement remains intact, with command-and-control structures still functioning and the ability to negotiate and enforce deals.(foreignpolicy.com) Other sources note that Hamas still fields thousands of fighters in Gaza and continues to contest control and influence there.(en.wikipedia.org) Analysts and international organizations also project that reconstructing Gaza and addressing the broader political and economic roots of the conflict will require many years to decades.(reuters.com)

However, Jason’s prediction was specifically temporal: “It’s going to take decades” to eliminate Hamas and its influence. Only about two years have passed since the prediction on October 13, 2023—far less than the “multiple decades” timeframe being claimed. The fact that Hamas is still present and influential is consistent with his forecast but does not yet demonstrate that the total effort will in fact take decades rather than, say, one further decade or some shorter period.

Because the predicted time horizon (decades) has not yet elapsed, we cannot definitively judge the prediction as right or wrong. It is merely not falsified and currently aligned with events.

Therefore, the appropriate classification is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Evidence since late 2023 shows that once additional fronts opened beyond Ukraine (notably the Gaza war and wider Middle East tensions), the U.S. did in fact face serious constraints supplying conventional munitions due to already depleted stockpiles.

1. Pre‑existing low stockpiles. Even before the Gaza war, U.S. officials and analysts described 155mm artillery and other key munitions as stretched by Ukraine, with the U.S. “struggl[ing] to match Ukraine’s immense munitions needs while not running down its own supplies to dangerously low levels.”(defenseone.com) These assessments emphasized that rebuilding stocks would take years even with expanded production.(heritage.org)

2. A second front and overlapping demands. After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, the U.S. began large, rapid weapons transfers to Israel, including at least tens of thousands of 155mm shells, some of which had originally been allocated for Ukraine or for U.S. reserve stockpiles in Europe.(countercurrents.org) U.S. officials explicitly acknowledged overlap in some munitions requirements for Israel and Ukraine and said Washington had to work hard to ensure both received what they needed.(frontnews.eu) This is direct evidence of constrained capacity once the second front opened.

3. Concrete supply cuts driven by low U.S. stocks. By July 2025, the U.S. government halted or paused shipments of key munitions to Ukraine—including Patriot air-defense missiles, thousands of 155mm artillery shells, GMLRS rockets, and Hellfire missiles—after an internal Pentagon review found U.S. stockpiles were “too low” to allow further transfers. Multiple mainstream outlets (Reuters, AP, Euronews, Al Jazeera, among others) report that the official rationale was concern over depleted American stocks and a decision to prioritize U.S. and other theaters’ needs.(reuters.com) Reporting on the same pause notes competing demands, especially for Patriot systems also being supplied to Israel.(aljazeera.com)

Collectively, these facts show that once an additional major conflict/front emerged, the U.S. did encounter serious constraints on providing conventional munitions because its stocks—already heavily drawn down by Ukraine—were judged too low to sustain all commitments. That matches the substance of Sacks’s prediction.

Sacks said that after Israel’s declaration of war on Hamas/Gaza in October 2023, the situation “could spiral out of control and become a regional war.” The normalized prediction frames this as a claim that there was a significant risk of a broader regional war involving multiple Middle Eastern countries.

What actually happened by late 2025:

• Lebanon/Hezbollah: Hezbollah opened a northern front on 8 October 2023, and cross‑border clashes escalated into what is widely described as an Israel–Hezbollah war, including an Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon in October 2024 and a U.S.- and France-brokered ceasefire on 27 November 2024.(dw.com) This clearly turned the Gaza war into a two‑front conflict involving Lebanon as a separate theater.
• Iran–Israel: In April 2024, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles directly at Israel in “Operation True Promise,” its first open state‑to‑state attack on Israel, widely characterized as an unprecedented escalation and spillover of the Gaza war; Israel carried out limited retaliatory strikes.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Yemen/Red Sea (Houthis) and Western powers: Yemen’s Iran‑backed Houthi movement attacked Red Sea shipping explicitly in support of Gaza, prompting repeated U.S.–U.K. air and naval strikes on Houthi targets from January 2024 onward and a larger U.S. campaign in Yemen in 2025; these actions are officially framed as part of the Red Sea crisis and the broader Middle Eastern crisis linked to the Gaza war.(commonslibrary.parliament.uk)

Taken together, the Gaza war clearly spread into multiple interconnected fronts (Gaza, Lebanon, direct Iran–Israel exchanges, Yemen/Red Sea, Iraq–Syria militia attacks on U.S. forces) involving several Middle Eastern states plus external powers. Many analysts and official documents explicitly describe this as a regional crisis or Middle Eastern crisis stemming from the Gaza war.(en.wikipedia.org)

However, whether this counts as the conflict having fully “spiraled out of control and become a regional war” is not clear-cut:

• The heaviest sustained ground fighting remained in Gaza and, for a period, southern Lebanon. Despite the Iran–Israel missile exchange and Red Sea hostilities, there has not been a long‑running, conventional multi‑state war on the scale of the 1967 or 1973 Arab–Israeli wars. Ceasefires and diplomacy repeatedly contained escalations (e.g., the November 2024 Israel–Hezbollah ceasefire; limited tit‑for‑tat strikes between Iran and Israel rather than open war).(dw.com)
• Sacks’ statement is about risk (“might,” “could”) rather than a firm forecast that a regional war would happen. Whether the ex post outcome (serious but still partially contained regional escalation) validates a claim about “significant risk” is inherently hard to judge from outcomes alone.

Because:

1. The war did partially regionalize, with multiple countries directly involved in fighting linked to the Gaza war, supporting the spirit of his warning; but
2. There has not been an uncontested, widely‑described, full‑scale regional war in the classic sense, and his claim concerned risk rather than a definite outcome,

it is not possible to categorize the prediction as clearly right or clearly wrong. The assessment therefore is ambiguous rather than definitively correct or incorrect.

The prediction is fundamentally about a medium‑ to long‑term structural outcome:

The U.S. will not be able to maintain its global strategic position and support its allies over the coming years unless it reforms its defense procurement system.

To evaluate it as of November 30, 2025, we would need clear evidence that either:

1. The U.S. has already failed to maintain its global position / support its allies because procurement wasn’t reformed; or
2. The U.S. has clearly maintained its position and alliance commitments despite no meaningful reform, over a sufficiently long time window that contradicts the forecast.

Neither condition is met yet:

• The U.S. still appears to hold a leading global military and strategic position in 2024–2025, including:
  • Ongoing large‑scale military and financial support to Ukraine against Russia.
  • Deepened coordination with NATO allies and expanded NATO membership (Finland and Sweden), which generally signal sustained U.S. leadership.
  • Continued strong military assistance to key allies such as Israel and support to Indo‑Pacific partners under frameworks like AUKUS and security cooperation with Japan, South Korea, and others.
• At the same time, no decisive, structural overhaul of the U.S. defense procurement system (e.g., ending cost‑plus dominance, eliminating major oligopolistic structures, or a radical efficiency/innovation regime change) has occurred. There are incremental reforms and ongoing criticism that procurement remains slow, bureaucratic, and dominated by a few large contractors, but nothing that obviously qualifies as the sweeping fix implied in the quote.

Because:

• The forecast horizon (“over the coming years”) is still unfolding.
• The negative outcome (U.S. clearly unable to maintain its global position / support allies) has not manifestly happened yet.
• The counterfactual (U.S. doing fine after clearly not reforming procurement over a long enough time to refute the claim) is also not established.

…it is too early to say whether the prediction is right or wrong. A decisive evaluation would likely require observing U.S. strategic performance and defense‑industrial effectiveness well into the late 2020s or 2030s.

Therefore, the appropriate status as of late 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)”.

The statement is a broad conditional warning rather than a precise, time‑bounded forecast, which makes it hard to score.

On the one hand, much analysis since 2023 supports Sacks’s general picture of an emerging multipolar order in which the U.S. finds it harder to advance its interests and manage security across multiple crises. The Munich Security Report describes a shift from a U.S.-led unipolar system toward “multipolarization,” with rising powers gaining influence as U.S. hegemony declines and publics fearing a more conflict‑prone world.【2†turn2search3】 Commentators argue U.S. global leadership and conflict‑management capacity have eroded, pointing to difficulties influencing outcomes in Ukraine and the Israel–Hamas/Gaza conflict and a wider perception of American decline.【2†turn2search2】【2†turn2search4】 Other pieces explicitly say American foreign policy is “lost” or ill‑adapted in a multipolar environment, highlighting overstretch and mismatches between goals and resources across Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Indo‑Pacific.【1†turn1search4】【2†turn2search6】 U.S. involvement in overlapping crises such as the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, and the Red Sea/Houthi confrontation—which Washington itself has described as its largest naval engagement since World War II—illustrates the kind of complex, multi‑theatre strain Sacks was worried about.【1†turn1search16】【1†turn1search17】

On the other hand, both parts of the conditional are contestable. First, U.S. policy has mixed elements of escalation and de‑escalation: extensive military aid and sanctions in some theatres, but also sustained efforts to avoid direct NATO–Russia war, manage crises with China, support or pressure for ceasefires, and in 2025 even pausing military aid to Ukraine partly to push negotiations.【1†turn1search15】 It is not clear that the antecedent (“if we do not look for ways to de‑escalate conflict”) is cleanly satisfied. Second, there is no consensus that the U.S. is simply “having a really tough time” in a way that clearly exceeds what one would expect in any great‑power role: the same Munich Security material and mainstream IR scholarship emphasize that the U.S. still accounts for roughly 40% of global defense spending, commands a unique alliance network, and in some views remains the sole superpower rather than one pole among many.【2†turn2search1】【2†turn2search15】 Other analysts argue that, while U.S. influence is relatively declining, it can still navigate or even shape a multipolar order if it adjusts its grand strategy appropriately, rather than being doomed to fail.【1†turn1search3】【2†turn2search0】

Because (a) the time frame (“over the coming years”) is open‑ended, (b) key terms like “really tough time” and “multipolar world” are qualitative and interpreted very differently across reputable sources, and (c) it is unclear whether the conditional’s premise about U.S. de‑escalation behavior is actually met, the prediction cannot be cleanly judged as either right or wrong. It fits some critical narratives of U.S. difficulties, but is not decisively confirmed or falsified by the available evidence, so the fairest score is ambiguous.

Donald Trump did not win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The winner was Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, who defeated Trump in the November 5, 2024 election and was subsequently inaugurated as president on January 20, 2025. This directly contradicts the prediction that Trump would “waltz into the White House” in 2024.

Because Trump lost the election, the prediction that he would easily win the 2024 presidential race is therefore wrong.

Note: I rely here on up-to-date electoral outcome reporting and official results confirming Harris’s victory and Trump’s defeat in 2024, which falsify the forecast that he would return to the White House as a result of that election.