• It's been a rough year for Iran and its friends in the Middle East.
• Israel has degraded Tehran's proxy forces and delivered punishing airstrikes against Iran itself.
• And Iran just lost one of its most important allies in the region: the Assad regime.

From Gaza to Beirut, Damascus to Tehran, it's been a rough year for Iran and its allies and proxy forces across the Middle East.

Israel's wars against Hamas and Hezbollah have severely degraded these two Iranian proxies, while its military confrontations with Iran itself have left the country short on critical defenses. Tehran's key ally — Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad — was just ousted by rebel forces.

A senior Biden administration official said earlier this month that Assad's fall can be traced to US support for Israel in its conflicts with Iran and its proxies and Ukraine in its defense against Russia.

"Hamas is on its back; its leaders are dead," the US official told reporters. "Iran is on its back. Hezbollah is on its back. Russia is on its back. It's just abandoned its only ally in the Middle East."

"Now, the Assad regime — Russia and Iran's main ally in the Middle East — has just collapsed," they said.

The Iranian proxies

Hamas' October 7, 2023, massacre, which killed around 1,200 people in Israel, sent shockwaves through the Middle East and triggered an immediate — and devastating — military response.

What began as an aerial bombardment later turned into an Israeli invasion of Gaza. After more than a year, Israel has eliminated Hamas' military leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, in a scorched-earth campaign that local authorities in Gaza say has killed over 45,000 Palestinians and drawn international condemnation.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said after Sinwar's killing that Israel has "decimated" the military structure of Hamas, although he acknowledged the group is still a threat in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Lebanese Hezbollah started attacking Israel shortly after October 7, and the two longtime enemies regularly exchanged cross-border fire for nearly a year, displacing tens of thousands of people as fighting steadily escalated.

In September, Israel sharply increased the pressure with its audacious pager attacks, followed by a new campaign of strikes that wiped out Hezbollah's senior leadership and weaponry. Israeli forces then invaded Lebanon before a late-November cease-fire ended the fighting, which left thousands of people dead across the country.

Brian Carter, the Middle East portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, said earlier this month that the "Israeli operations in Lebanon have defeated Hezbollah and compelled the group to end its involvement in the October 7 War."

Iran itself

In early April, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus killed multiple senior Iranian military officials, escalating what had long been a shadow war between Israel and Tehran.

Iran responded later that month by launching over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, but nearly all the projectiles were shot down in what was the first-ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil. Israel then struck Iran in retaliation.

In July, Iran accused Israel of executing the daring assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas' political wing. Haniyeh was killed at a guesthouse in Tehran — a tremendous security breach and a blow to Iran.

Iran waited months to retaliate over the killing of Haniyeh and other proxy leaders, but on October 1, it launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel — the second direct confrontation between the two bitter foes. Officials said a majority of the Iranian missiles were intercepted.

Israel then responded later that month, carrying out widespread airstrikes that nearly wiped out all of Iran's air-defense systems and degraded its ability to produce missiles. An Israeli security official told BI in the aftermath that the strikes were "powerful" and put Tehran at a "disadvantage," as they left the country vulnerable to follow-on military action.

The Assad regime

Iran long supported the Assad regime because it viewed Damascus as a crucial pillar for keeping weapons flowing to Hezbollah and projecting its influence across the region to Lebanon along the Mediterranean Sea.

But earlier this month, Syria's yearslong civil war ended in shocking fashion when rebel forces suddenly swept across the country in a lightning offensive that lasted just days and ended with their capture of Damascus. Assad and his family fled to Moscow.

US officials attributed the sudden collapse of the Assad regime to the fact that its main allies — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — were much weaker than in years past and simply couldn't intervene militarily as they had done earlier in the civil war.

President Joe Biden said after the rebels captured Damascus that the military setbacks Iran and Hezbollah have suffered fighting against Israel this year essentially made it "impossible" for them to continue to support the Assad regime.

The Houthis

One Iranian ally that has stood out among the others is the Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen that has spent over a year attacking civilian and military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Armed with a large, diverse stockpile of missiles and attack drones, the Houthis have launched more than 130 attacks on vessels transiting shipping lanes off the coast of Yemen. They have struck a number of merchant ships, sinking two of them and hijacking one. Four sailors have been killed during the campaign.

The Houthis have said their campaign is in support of Palestinians in Gaza, although US officials often dismiss this claim since the rebels have targeted vessels sailing under many different flags. These attacks have caused a significant decline in activity along a key global trade route, forcing shipping companies to make longer and more costly trips around Africa.

A Western naval coalition, led by the US Navy, has so far been unable to defeat or deter the Houthis. American forces routinely intercept inbound missiles and drones and carry out strikes against the rebels in Yemen.

Though degraded, the Houthis still retain the ability to attack ships. Just this month alone, the rebels have targeted US warships and commercial ships with missiles and drones on multiple occasions. The vessels all emerged unscathed after the attacks, but the incidents underscore the enduring threat that shows no signs of stopping.

President-elect Donald Trump has a new game plan for Herschel Walker, his longtime friend, ally and former football star.

Three years after Trump handpicked Walker to run for the Senate in his home state of Georgia in a crucial, combative, expensive and high-profile Senate race, the president-elect is now selecting his friend to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of the Bahamas.

"Herschel has spent decades serving as an ambassador to our nation’s youth, our men and women in the military, and athletes at home and abroad," Trump said in a statement Tuesday night on social media, as he pointed to Walker's resume, which includes serving as co-chair of the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition during Trump's first term in the White House.

HERSCHEL WALKER PROVES THAT IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

Walker is a former professional and college football star running back who won a Heisman Trophy and helped propel the University of Georgia to a national championship.

His friendship with the former and future president goes back to his days playing for the Trump-owned New Jersey Generals USFL football team in the 1980s. Walker also was a major Trump supporter and surrogate in the 2020 presidential election.

HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON THE TRUMP TRANSITION

In August 2021, Walker launched a Republican Senate campaign in Georgia after months of support and encouragement from Trump to run for office.

Walker, a first-time politician, was dogged during his Senate run by controversial statements and damaging revelations about his personal life and business career.

The race between Walker and Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock ended up being one of the most closely watched Senate battles in the 2022 midterms. The contest went into overtime, with Walker ending up narrowly losing to Warnock in a runoff election in December of that year.

MEET TRUMP'S CABINET AND OTHER TOP ADMINISTRATION PICKS

This year, Walker joined Trump on the campaign trail in Georgia days before Election Day, as the former president carried the key southeastern battleground state after narrowly losing it to President Biden four years ago.

Walker becomes the third Republican who lost a recent Senate race in Georgia to be nominated by Trump for a post in his second administration.

Former Sen. David Perdue, who lost his seat to Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff in the 2020 cycle, was selected by Trump to serve as ambassador to China, and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost to Warnock in the 2020 cycle, was picked by Trump to run the Small Business Administration.

Trump's naming of Walker as ambassador to the Bahamas is the second time this month the former football star made headlines.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

This past weekend, Walker graduated from the University of Georgia, 42 years after he last attended the school.

• Israel's potent air defenses are increasingly threatened by low-flying drones.
• Two retired Israeli generals say it needs new defenses against this "low sky" layer.
• Israel pioneered targeting air defenses with drones in a stunning victory four decades ago.

Israel's air and missile defense system is arguably the best in the world, having proven this year it can down Iranian ballistic missiles and Hamas-fired rockets. Its Iron Dome is the epitome of this success and is only one of many systems. But while these can protect Israeli cities, they have an increasingly glaring problem — they can't protect themselves from low-flying drones, two retired Israeli brigadier generals warn.

"We have to defend our air defense," wrote Eran Ortal and Ran Kochav in a blog for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Defense at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, Israel.

Ortal and Kochav fear that enemy drones could knock out air defense systems such as the vaunted Iron Dome, enabling ballistic missiles, manned aircraft and artillery rockets to strike Israel without being intercepted. "The Israeli Air Force does continue to rule the skies, but under the noses of the advanced fighter jets, a new air layer has been created."

The authors call this the "low sky" layer. "The enemy has found a loophole here. The Air Force (and, within it, the air defense corps) is required to defend against the combined and coordinated threats of missiles, unmanned aircraft systems and rockets."

Over the past year, Israel's air and missile system has achieved remarkable success against a range of projectiles launched by Iran, Hamas and other Iranian proxies, including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, artillery rockets and mortar shells. For example, Israel — with the assistance of the US, Britain and other nations — reportedly intercepted 99% of some 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and large attack drones launched by Iran in April 2024.

However, Israel has struggled against small exploding drones launched by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon. More than a hundred Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded by these UAVs, including 67 who were wounded when a drone hit a building in northern Israel in October. Still, the situation is a far cry from the Ukraine war, where hordes of small drones have rendered battlefield maneuver almost impossible.

Nonetheless, Ortal and Kochav worry that Israeli air defenses were designed in the pre-drone era, when the threat to Israel came from aircraft and ballistic missiles, a critique that also applies to Western- and Russian-made systems. "This array was built over the years under the premise of Israeli air superiority. The air defense itself was not supposed to be hunted."

"The enemy is able to penetrate deep into Israel and engage the air defense system in one lane while other aircraft take advantage of the diversion and penetrate in another, more covert lane. It can identify targets and strike immediately using armed or suicide UAS. Above all, it strives to locate, endanger, and destroy key elements of the air defense system itself."

Israel relies on a multilayer defense system, with long-range Arrow interceptors targeting ballistic missiles above the Earth's atmosphere, the medium-range David's Sling handling ballistic and cruise missiles about 10 miles high, and the short-range Iron Dome stopping cruise missiles, short-range rockets and artillery and mortar shells at low altitude. All depend on the production and reloading of missiles adequate to the threat.

The problem is that these three systems can't protect each other. "The degree of mutual assistance and protection between the layers is relatively limited," Ortal and Kochav wrote. To optimize the allocation of a limited supply of interceptor missiles, "each tier was designed to deal with a specific type of missile or rocket. Iron Dome can't really assist Arrow batteries or support their missions. This limitation is equally true among the other layers."

Nor are Israel's air defenses built for survivability, such as creating decoy missile batteries and radars to protect the real ones or frequently relocating systems. "The degree of mobility, protection and hiding ability of the Israeli air defense system is inadequate. Unlike similar systems in the world, our air defense system was not built with synchronization as a critical goal."

Their solution? The creation of a fourth layer focused on point protection of the radar, missile launchers and troops that operate them against rockets and drones that have penetrated the first three layers. Air defenses must be camouflaged and should be mobile enough to change location before the enemy can target them.

Ironically, Israel itself was one of the pioneers of using drones to suppress air defenses. Stung by heavy losses from Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel used drones in during the 1982 Lebanon War. By using unmanned aerial vehicles that mimicked manned aircraft, Israel lured Syrian air defense radars into coming online so they could be destroyed by anti-radiation missiles. The Israeli Air Force destroyed 29 out of 30 anti-aircraft missile batteries in the Bekaa Valley without loss and downed more than 60 Syrian aircraft.

Israel's Air Force became so dominant that the ground forces discarded their tactical anti-aircraft weapons (though the IDF recently reactivated the M61 Vulcan gatling cannon for counter-UAV defense on the northern border). Meanwhile, the IDF's air defense corps switched its focus from anti-aircraft to missile defense.

"The working assumption was, and remains to this day, that Israel's Air Force rules the skies," wrote Ortal and Kochav. "The job of air defense, therefore, is to focus on missiles and rockets. This assumption is no longer valid."

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Twenty years ago, a cave diver found thousands of fossils in a blue hole on Great Abaco Island.
• The fossils reveal the island's Ice Age history, with pristine specimens of now-extinct species.
• Hurricane Dorian nearly destroyed researchers' collections, and the blue holes' future is uncertain.

Nestled in The Bahamas on Great Abaco Island is a blue hole, Sawmill Sink, that's filled with a trove of well-preserved fossils that show how much the island has changed since the last Ice Age.

For over a decade, starting in 2005, researchers dove to retrieve the scientific treasure. "This was probably the most important site I'd ever had a chance to get involved with," David Steadman, a curator emeritus with the Florida Museum of Natural History, told Business Insider.

But the excavations stopped about five years ago when a devastating hurricane wreaked havoc on the island, the fossil collection, and the researchers' plans to protect the pristine blue holes.

The researchers collected thousands of Sawmill Sink's fossils before the hurricane. But the rest remain in its underwater depths, perhaps forever.

Thousands of years ago, a sinkhole flooded as sea levels rose.

About 190 miles east of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, lies the island of Great Abaco.

"The really dramatic thing about The Bahamas in general, and Abaco in particular, is how much the land area changes during ice ages," Steadman said.

Thousands of years ago, Abaco was 10 times as big as today, but as sea levels rose following the last Ice Age, water flooded the island, shrinking its shores.

Abaco is made of limestone. So when the island floods, groundwater flows through the porous rock, causing caves to collapse into sinkholes, which then fill with water forming blue holes — like Sawmill Sink.

Sawmill Sink dips 150 feet below sea level and has a vast network of underground passages that extend for miles.

In 2005, diver Brian Kakuk descended into some of those passages and spotted a wealth of bones that opened a door to the island's ancient past.

Tortoise shells and crocodile skulls caught a cave diver’s attention.

Some of the bones belonged to tortoises and crocodiles. These animals no longer live on Abaco, so their bones offer a peek into a vastly different time.

What makes Sawmill Sink unique is how well it's preserved the island's natural history.

"The conditions there are in part what saved this site from being either looted or somehow vandalized through time because it was just too difficult a place for cave divers to get access," Steadman said.

It's dark with narrow crevices and passages in the limestone that are a tight fit for anyone to shimmy through. There are stalactites and stalagmites from when the cave was above the water, with ribbony helictites and hollow tubes known as soda straws jutting out from the walls.

At the hole's surface, a float of freshwater extends down 30 feet. Below that lies 20 feet of a toxic brew of hydrogen sulfide and freshwater that stinks of rotten eggs and burns the skin.

Under the opaque and corrosive layer was saltwater, devoid of oxygen and UV light, just right for preserving the fossils.

Kakuk, an experienced diver, made sure his skin was covered and used scuba equipment like rebreathers to safely navigate the dangers.

Some fossils were so well-preserved that experts could pinpoint their age.

Once Kakuk found the bones, he got in touch with geologist Nancy Albury.

Albury was a cave diver, too. Her interest in caving and background in geology helped her quickly realize how special Sawmill Sink was.

One of the first blue hole fossils Albury saw was a tortoise that turned out to be of an unknown species, Chelonoidis alburyorum, that's now extinct.

It's pretty clear how their remains ended up in the blue hole. "If something like a tortoise fell in, it would be a one-way trip," Steadman said.

The hole's vertical walls would be impossible for the animal to climb out of.

The experts dated the crocodile and tortoise fossils to between 1,000 and 5,000 years old, after the sinkhole flooded.

Below these fossils were more bones that showed Abaco's rich wildlife before it sank beneath the sea.

The fossils show the island’s past boasted huge biodiversity.

Back when sea levels were lower thousands of years ago, Sawmill Sink was a dry, cave-like sinkhole where a rich, diverse collection of animals lived from roosting barn owls to crocodiles.

Many of these animals were present as far back as 15,000 years ago. With the fossils, the scientists could see which animals adapted to the climate shifts during the Ice Age.

Many species couldn’t survive one deadly predator: humans.

Many of the blue hole's fossilized animals are now extinct on the island.

As scientists sifted through the bones from the sinkhole, they started to find patterns in when the animals disappeared.

They learned that 17 bird species didn't survive the rising sea levels 10,000 years ago.

But other bird species, along with reptiles and mammals did survive until about 1,000 years ago when humans landed on the island and wiped them out.

The Lucayan people, part of the Taíno culture, may have arrived on Great Abaco from Hispaniola and Jamaica as early as 720 CE.

Archaeological evidence suggests that these new residents ate the large tortoises that lived on the land.

The hutia, a rodent similar to the capybara but smaller, was another common food source. Like the tortoise, it disappeared from Abaco.

Even animals that humans may not have eaten were affected by their presence.

One species of bird, the Bahaman caracara, went extinct, probably because its diet was similar to the humans' and there was too much competition. Additionally, some bats died out when residents started clearing their habitats.

'Very smart' crocodiles may have stalked humans, who killed them in return.

At the same time, humans might not have been at the top of the island's food chain.

"The crocodiles, we know, were stalking the tortoises," Albury said, "possibly the humans as well."

This species, the Cuban crocodile, is now critically endangered, with only a small population left in Cuba.

"They're very aggressive, very smart crocodiles," Albury said. Unlike some species, they live in freshwater and hunt on land.

"It would've made it a pretty interesting place in The Bahamas at one time," Albury said.

Eventually, the crocodiles disappeared from the island. The Lacayan people did, too, after Christopher Columbus mistakenly found his way to The Bahamas.

The fossils found a home in a new natural history museum.

For years, Albury, Steadman, Kakuk, and others were involved in a long campaign to turn Abaco Island's blue holes into an underwater national park.

Development and pollution threatened the sinkholes, which had remained undisturbed for so long.

The goal was two-fold: to keep the blue holes' environment stable to preserve the fossils and keep the source of freshwater pristine, Steadman said.

Albury started curating a branch of the National Museum of The Bahamas/Antiquities, Monuments and Museum Corporation on Abacao to help store the group's growing collection of fossils.

The museum opened in January 2018, with exhibits on the blue holes, the island's wildlife, and the Lacayan people.

By September 2019, the museum was completely destroyed.

Hurricane Dorian devastated Abaco.

In early September 2019, Hurricane Dorian stalled over The Bahamas, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes.

It was one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic.

"Our house blew up with us in it," Albury said. "Literally, the roof exploded with us sitting there."

The museum she had spent years curating was destroyed, too. Walls had toppled, and water had flooded the museum and Albury's lab.

"It was the first and only natural history museum in The Bahamas, and two years later it was gone, just destroyed," she said.

After the hurricane, the museum’s collection was underwater.

About a week after the storm, Steadman came to the island to help Albury and Kakuk assess what remained of the museum's collection.

"We scraped up and collected all that we could collect," Albury said.

"It was still really hot and wet and stormy," Steadman said — not exactly an ideal environment for fragile fossils.

"All day long you're dealing with trying to recover the collections, and then in the evening, you're just trying to live and get by and figure out what you're going to do next," Albury said.

There was no running water or electricity. Albury had lost her home, her clothing, and any place to cook or store food and water.

Fortunately, she found her catalog of the collection, which she'd stored in plastic bags and boxes. Most of her electronic backups were destroyed, but a company managed to recover her photographs of the fossils from a water-logged hard drive.

These records helped them figure out what they still had and what was missing. Amazingly, much of the collection survived, between 80% and 90%, according to Albury's estimates.

Steadman packed up bins of fossils and took them to the University of Florida's climate-controlled storage.

The blue holes' future is in limbo.

In the five years since Hurricane Dorian, the island's infrastructure has taken a long time to recover.

Albury and her husband have only recently finished rebuilding their marina business, but she has no plans to reopen the museum.

"I'm approaching 70 in a couple of months, and I am tired," she said.

Neither she nor Kakuk dives at Sawmill Sink anymore. Plans to turn the blue holes into a national park, too, have stalled.

"People have bigger fish to fry, just surviving and getting their lives back together," Steadman said, though he's hopeful that as conditions improve on Abaco the government will start looking into the proposal again.

And there's plenty more to be found in the blue holes. "Each little piece tells you more of the story," Albury said.

She thinks the research should continue, even though she and Steadman are both retired.

"It was a great story, and it still is, and there's still more to be told about it, I think," she said.

• PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered $5 million to anyone in Gaza who handed over hostages to Israel.
• He also offered safe passage out of the war-torn territory to those Palestinians who cooperate.
• In Israel, there is mounting pressure on Netanyahu to free those remaining in captivity in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that Palestinians in Gaza who turn over Israeli hostages will be offered $5 million as a reward, as well as an exit route out of the war-torn territory.

During Hamas' terror attack across the Israeli border on October 7, 2023, 251 Israeli and foreign hostages were taken, according to Israeli figures.

To date, some 117 of them have been freed or released, and 37 were brought back dead, leaving close to 100 that are thought to still be in Gaza.

It's unclear exactly how many of those hostages remain alive, as well as their precise whereabouts.

But there is intense and growing pressure within Israel, led by the families of the hostages, to bring the captives home. Negotiations have been at a standstill for months.

Netanyahu said Tuesday, while touring a section of the Gaza Strip, that Israel is doing everything it can to locate and return the hostages, per The Times of Israel.

He added, "Whoever dares to harm our hostages — he is a marked man. We will pursue you, and we will get you."

The $5 million pledge builds on earlier reports of a generous but unspecified reward from Israel to those who cooperate.

The New York Times reported that Netanyahu also offered a "safe way out for himself and his family" to whoever returns hostages to Israel.

Leaving Gaza remains a major challenge for Palestinians.

Exiting through Israel requires an Israel-issued permit, and according to reporting by several media outlets, departure via Egypt often involves exorbitant fees.

However, remaining in Gaza amid Israel's invasion remains incredibly dangerous.

The Israel Defense Forces has sought to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, but with that has come devastating destruction.

Humanitarian groups, such as the Red Cross, have put the death toll at more than 43,000 Palestinians, with over 100,000 people injured.