US Allies in the Middle East Use Emergency Powers During Iran Conflict

Global Events

Apr 9

By Paul Shaya

Senior Fellow, ISSE

As the US/Israel war against Iran and its allies continues into its second month, one thing for certain is that the Middle East after the war will look different from the Middle East before the war. One way this change is likely to manifest itself is through the use of a state of emergency to alter domestic dynamics and expand its authorities. The commander of the United States Central Command critiqued the use of emergency powers in June 2025 when he said, “The question is not whether the emergency itself was legitimate, but whether the governance environment it created was leveraged for purposes unrelated to the crisis at hand.” In this study, we have selected three countries–Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon–that have enacted a state of emergency as a result of the war and examine how they are using these powers afforded to them to enact changes in governance, including those that are not directly linked to the war. Israel is using emergency powers to pass laws that will advance the cause of the religious movement and advantage Prime Minister Netanyahu. Jordan is capitalizing on the emergency situation to double down on some of its restrictive laws to prevent anti-government sentiment from gaining traction. The Lebanese government has passed laws opposing Hizballah’s weapons and Iran’s role in Lebanon that it probably would not have been able to get broad support for under normal circumstances.

Israel:

Since the launch of the war with Iran in late February, Israel has been under a “special home front situation,” a legal designation under which a series of emergency powers are given to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and certain members of the government.

The Civil Defense Law of 1951 cites two situations involving armed conflict in which IDF forces are granted these special powers: a) Israel is under attack from a foreign entity; b) an active threat exists against its civilian population. Under this law, the Minister of Defense may declare a special home front situation if the government has not already done so. The declaration requires the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense committees to ratify this “situation”.

It is worth noting that declaring a “special home front situation” is not unusual for Israel, which has been under a continuously, formally declared "state of emergency” since its founding in 1948 [1][2].

Under the current special home front situation [3], which is intended to be tactical, time bound, and focused on public safety, the authorities bestowed to senior IDF officers include the ability to:

Issue instructions to the Israeli public necessary to safeguard life or property; examples include requiring civilians to stay in shelters or restricting studies in educational institutions.
Order the evacuation of any equipment or property being held in public shelters; essentially all shelters have to be free and clear from personal property and anyone seeking shelter shall be allowed admission.
Prevent entry or exit into certain areas to safeguard lives and property either because of an active attack or a threat of an attack.
Enter any location to perform their duties.

Separately, certain government ministers are granted additional powers:

The Minister of Labor may issue orders permitting people to work beyond regular hours and ensuring that work is carried out in essential factories or factories for essential services.
The Minister of Communications can order media and communications organizations to cease their activities or to place their systems at the service of security forces.
The Minister of Transport can order changes in the benefits applicable to air passengers because of reduced flights.
The Minister of Interior can allow local authorities to operate outside their area of jurisdiction and assist other local authorities. [4]

Beyond the formal authorities granted under the emergency framework, the legislative environment created by the conflict has had significant secondary governance effects.

The Israeli government extended the special home front emergency status until 26 March and has since announced a series of eased civilian restrictions [5], allowing parts of the economy to resume limited activity. Typically, during emergency status, educational activities are limited, large gatherings are forbidden, and government functions from a legislative perspective are focused exclusively on the war effort. Apparently, however, the Speaker of the Knesset had different ideas regarding what the government should and should not be able to do and on 12 March determined that the Knesset could once again consider all bills brought up for debate without limitations.

Some of the most contentious bills currently on the table include splitting the role of the Attorney General – a legislative proposal to divide the currently unified position into three separate roles: legal adviser to the government, head of the public prosecution, and government litigator, establishing a political commission of inquiry into 7 October, introducing the death penalty only for Palestinian “terrorists” (passed on 30 March) [6], and advancing the Communications Law. The Israeli public, which normally has visibility into Knesset deliberations through press coverage, is almost certainly going to be placed at a distinct disadvantage because the media is understandably focusing its coverage on the war. Expert witnesses, academic, and civil society groups whose input would typically inform legislative deliberation are likewise less likely to participate under wartime conditions or during periods when Israel is involved in significant security operations. Opposition figures in Israel have expressed concern that these issues will serve to distract Knesset members from focusing on matters directly related to the war, such as allocating emergency funds and making decisions around civilian defense measures. [7]

A conspiratorial perspective might look at Speaker Amir Ohana’s decision to open up the Knesset for all bills as pre-meditated with something in mind, but there was no indication that was true… until early in the morning on 24 March, when the Knesset passed a controversial law giving Israel’s rabbinic courts expanded powers to arbitrate civil matters. The bill, called the Religious Courts Arbitration Bill, was initiated by several ultra-Orthodox parties to allow rabbinic courts to act as arbitrators as long as all parties consent. Israeli political and civil society leaders cite concerns about women’s rights and its negative impact on democracy, arguing that the law lacks basic safeguards and judicial oversight. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said “Today… is the day the status quo died. There is no longer any status quo on matters of religion and state.” [8] A central concern is that women, who cannot serve as rabbinical judges under religious law, are going to be structurally disadvantaged and that in family disputes, women may be pressured to submit to the ruling of these courts.

What was the motivation for moving this law forward before the end of March even though the war was ongoing? Israel’s Knesset had been debating its 2026 state budget for months and under Israeli law had to pass it by the end of March or Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government would have collapsed and early elections would have been called; on 30 March, the Knesset passed the 2026 state budget with a narrow 62-55 vote. During the first reading [9] of the budget bill in January, ultra-right parties Shas and United Torah Judaism had threatened to vote against the budget unless they received certain concessions. It appears that this bill might be the concession they were looking for and one that Prime Minister Netanyahu was willing to make to stave off early elections. The fact that it was passed during a war time emergency suggests its supporters suspected it would not survive public scrutiny. Even ultranationalist Avigdor Liberman [10], head of the rightwing party Yisrael Beiteinu, slammed the timing of the bill’s passage, saying passing such a law when “millions of citizens are running to shelters several times a day” was “absolute madness and moral bankruptcy.”

The sequence of events– emergency declaration, procedural opening of the legislative agenda, and passage of controversial legislation under reduced scrutiny – illustrates a pattern observable in other jurisdictions: the use of emergency conditions as a window for institutional changes that face greater resistance under ordinary legislative conditions. This dynamic is not unique to Israel; ISSE has documented analogous patterns across the globe.

Jordan:

The Jordanian government has to do a delicate dance between its need to support US policy in the region and its population’s frustration with the Kingdom’s alignment with the U.S. – Israel axis. Jordan has maintained a peace treaty with Israel since 1994 and has no intention of changing that, but there has been palpable anger and frustration with Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 HAMAS attacks and its handling of the Palestinian situation more broadly. Thus, when tensions broke out with Iran, even though most Jordanians do not feel any affinity toward the Islamic Republic, the broader dynamics of the war directly intersected with longstanding grievances over regional policy.

The monarchy is aware that some of its decisions are not popular with the average Jordanian citizen and as a result has gradually expanded restrictions on civic freedoms to prevent widespread demonstrations against the government. The war in Iran has added greater urgency to the government’s desire to control the narrative.

According to Sean Yom, an associate professor at Temple University, Jordan has taken extra measures since the start of the war to tamp down anti-government sentiment. Amman has instituted shelter in place orders that restrict public gatherings, banned unauthorized dissemination of pictures and information documenting Jordan’s “defensive efforts”, shut down websites critical of the government, and muzzled journalists. [11] The Jordanian government likely is using its expanded authorities under the Cybercrimes Law that was enacted on 13 August 2023 [12]. This law introduced harsh penalties for overly broad and vaguely defined offenses such as “spreading fake news,” “provoking strife,” “threatening societal peace,” and “contempt for religions,” which have been used to criminalize forms of expression protected under international law—Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) guarantee the right to free expression, including freedom of opinion and the right to seek and impart information [13].

Taken together, these measures represent a contraction of civic space across multiple domains – assembly, expression, freedom of press, and access to information – and implicate Jordan’s obligations under Articles 19 and 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Jordan is a party, that says whether grounded in emergency authority or ordinary law, any such restrictions must be necessary and proportionate to the situation at hand. The pattern raises questions about the durability of prior liberalization efforts in Jordan and illustrates a dynamic of interest to ISSE: the use of security driven justifications to restrict political participation in ways that may persist beyond the immediate crisis. Whether these measures are formally grounded in emergency legislation or enacted through ordinary legal authorities, their cumulative effect is functionally analogous to a state of exception, a point that warrants closer examination as the war continues.

Lebanon:

Hizballah, which came into being in 1982, is a disruptive force within Lebanon as well as effectively an extension of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp in Lebanon and is answerable to the regime in Tehran. In its nearly five decades of operation, it has exploited weaknesses in Lebanese state institutions to establish control over significant levers of governance, security, and social services to the point that it was acting as a de facto state actor. This situation began to turn after Hizballah’s fateful decision to enter the war against Israel in October 2023, claiming it was supporting its Palestinian brethren. This focused Israel’s military and intelligence might on Lebanon and on Hizballah, leading to the fall 2024 war that resulted in the death of Hizballah’s long-serving Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah’s death in September 2024 combined with the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria in December effectively constrained Hizballah’s influence in Lebanon. Thus, in January 2025 Lebanon was finally able to elect President Joseph Aoun after a two-year gap during which Hizballah refused to allow anyone not supportive of its agenda into the presidential palace. Aoun then appointed Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to form a reform-minded government with its core objective to reclaim state authority and institute reforms after decades of corruption that would help bring Lebanon back from the brink.

On 2 March, the Lebanese government in the person of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam [14] took the extraordinary step to outlaw all Hizballah military and security operations following the militia’s decision a day earlier to use its weapons to drag Lebanon into the war with Israel in support of Iran. Frustration had been mounting across the Lebanese political spectrum since November 2024 when Hizballah signed a ceasefire agreement with Israel that effectively committed the group to surrendering its weapons to the Lebanese Armed Forces. The intent behind the ceasefire agreement was for the Lebanese government to have control over decisions of peace and war and to be the only legitimate force that could possess weapons in the country.

The Prime Minister then went on to say that Hizballah for the first time in the group’s history is only allowed to function as a political party in Lebanon from this point forward. He also called upon the security services to prevent any attacks from Lebanon against Israel, citing Lebanon’s commitment to the cease fire agreement signed in November 2024 [15].

Of course, everyone was fully aware of the challenges of implementing this groundbreaking decision by the government. As expected, Hizballah has not surrendered its weapons and is now threatening to overthrow the government and anyone who opposes it; although, for the first time in nearly a half century, Hizballah may not actually be able to follow through on its threat. Meanwhile, it continues to strike out at Israel, which has responded with overwhelming force, destroying large swaths of southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, all Hizballah strongholds. It has become increasingly clear to all in Lebanon that Hizballah’s actions are clearly not in the interest of the Lebanese but rather in service of Iran, which supports Hizballah’s military operations against Israel.

Again, the Lebanese government took another bold step to claw back its sovereignty when Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Youssef Raggi, announced on 24 March that Lebanon has informed the Iranian Charge D’Affaire in Lebanon, Mohammed Ridha Shibani, that he is no longer welcome in the country and had until 29 March to depart. Lebanon also recalled its Ambassador in Tehran for consultations. This decision was based on Iran’s continued interference in Lebanon’s domestic affairs through its support for Hizballah’s war against Israel [16]. That same day, Iran responded to what it perceived as an unjust decision on the part of the Lebanese by launching a missile at Beirut, making it the 13th Arab country that Iran has targeted since the start of the war between the US and Israel on one side and Iran and its regional allies [17] on the other. It is important to note that a missile strike against a state in response to the expulsion of a diplomat has no legitimate basis under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which limits the lawful use of force to self-defense against an armed attack, and constitutes a direct violation of Article 2(4)’s prohibition on the use of force against the territorial integrity of another state. Not surprising, Hizballah’s ally and Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri outwardly opposed the government’s decision and prevented the Ambassadors' departure.

Lebanon’s challenge remains the fact that until the central government can get control over Hizballah and its weapons, it is a militia that remains a state within a state. Thus, Hizballah, which is at war with Israel, is using this to further justify its dominance both from a security and political perspective in Lebanon, imposing its will more robustly than it has done in decades prior. Hizballah understands that it has been weakened considerably and like an animal who is cornered, the militia is going to pull out all the stops to inflict as much damage as possible on the central government, which itself is taking extraordinary measures to rein in this armed militia.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.