Two days after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told local leaders in southern Israel: “We will change the face of the Middle East.”
At the time, the declaration sounded like a statement of resolve in the aftermath of a national catastrophe. Hamas had breached Israel’s border defenses, murdered approximately 1,200 people, and taken 251 hostages. Hezbollah was opening a second front from Lebanon, while Iran’s network of armed allies threatened to turn the attack into a wider regional war.
Before October 7, Israel’s security doctrine sought to deter and contain Iranian proxies and avoid the costs of prolonged regional warfare on multiple fronts. I critiqued this approach in my May 2024 report, “Restoring deterrence: destabilizing the Iranian regime,” where I advocated holding the Iranian regime to account for the actions of its terrorist proxies.
The entire defense and security establishment shared the assumption that Hamas could be contained, that deterrence could substitute for a political solution, and that Israel could manage its adversaries through periodic military operations. This conceptzia (rigid assumption) was shattered by the trauma of October 7.
Netanyahu’s response was to promise a fundamental change: not merely to restore the situation that existed before October 7, but to alter the strategic conditions that had made the massacre possible.
Nearly three years later, the regional landscape has changed dramatically. Hamas has suffered extensive military losses. Hezbollah has lost its senior leadership and much of its military infrastructure. Israel has confronted Iran directly, striking targets deep inside the Islamic Republic.
The fall of Bashar al-Assad has weakened Iran’s regional position and disrupted its former strategic corridor through Syria. Israel has also established forward security positions in Lebanon and Gaza intended to prevent hostile forces from rebuilding their capabilities near its borders.
From containment to the dismantling of threats
Israel would now preemptively act against threats before they are manifested by destroying the capabilities of Iran’s proxies, disrupting their supply networks, eliminating commanders, and acting against threats before they could be used again.
The consequences have been visible on several fronts.
In Gaza, Israel dismantled substantial elements of Hamas’s organized military infrastructure, including tunnel networks, command facilities, and weapons installations. In Lebanon, the killing of Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah commanders, using an elaborate beeper attack coupled with extensive strikes against their military infrastructure, has been an enormous blow to Hezbollah.
The direct exchanges of 2024 culminated in the June 2025 war, when Israeli forces established air dominance over Iran’s airspace and attacked Iranian military, missile, air defense, and nuclear-related targets. Subsequent American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities underscored the deepening of the alliance between Jerusalem and Washington that Netanyahu had achieved.
The strategic message was unmistakable: geographical distance, military infrastructure, and the protection provided by regional proxies could no longer be assumed to shield Israel’s adversaries from direct attack.
It was unprecedented for Israel to repeatedly launch airstrikes more than 1,700 km. away from Israel on Houthi-controlled ports in Yemen – primarily Hodeidah Port, alongside Ras Isa and Salif – in response to Houthi drone and missile attacks targeting Israeli territory and Red Sea shipping.
These developments, which demonstrate a substantial transformation in Israel’s operational reach and ability to project power across the region, led me to co-author the report, “Israel 2048: A blueprint for a rising asymmetric geopolitical power.”
For Israel’s new security doctrine to be sustainable, it must consolidate its defense industrial base. After rebuffing former US president Joe Biden, Israel entered Rafah; Biden then retaliated by withholding critical munitions to Israel.
Netanyahu’s response was to turn the crisis into an enormous opportunity, turning Israel into a defense-tech nation by investing in Israel’s arms industry with the aim of becoming an independent weapons-production system and phasing out reliance on US military assistance.
Lebanon and Syria
These developments have shifted the regional balance. Until September 2024, Israel was besieged by Iran’s “Ring of Fire.” Israel began to roll its Iranian encirclement initially with the beeper attack on Hezbollah.
Then, a few months later, the Netanyahu government seized the opportunity of the Assad regime’s collapse in December 2024: Israel carried out hundreds of air and naval strikes and ground incursions across Syria, targeting research and suspected chemical weapons stocks, strategic missile systems, and arsenals that included Scuds, cruise missiles, sea-to-sea missiles, drones, rocket launchers, and weapons/ammunition depots.
Israel further struck fighter jets, attack helicopters, military airfields, radar installations, tanks, and 15 naval vessels docked at the ports of al-Bayda and Latakia. In the process, Israel destroyed an estimated 70% to 80% of Syria’s remaining strategic military assets.
Furthermore, Israel’s ground forces moved past the 1974 disengagement buffer zone into southwestern Syria, to establish a buffer zone at the summit of Mount Hermon. This deprived Tehran of a longstanding partner and an important route for supplying Hezbollah.
This led to other opportunities for Netanyahu’s government, including the possibilities for regional intelligence-sharing, missile defense, and security cooperation with Arab governments concerned about Iranian military power.
Saudi normalization remains a diplomatic objective, in which Israel can offer the Saudi kingdom operational support against the Houthis that can be converted into enduring strategic gains.
As part of CENTCOM, Israel can coordinate with Saudi Arabia to shore up its defenses against Iran and the Houthis – as opposed to Turkey or Pakistan, which, as part of the Mecca Accords with Saudi Arabia, failed to come to its defense. It is a matter of time till this translates into a diplomatic initiative between Riyadh and Jerusalem.
Buffer zones and the new geography of Israeli security
Another important feature of the post-October 7 strategy has been the emphasis on forward defense.
In Gaza and southern Lebanon, as well as in the Syrian separation zone, Israel has sought to create a buffer to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah from reconstituting their capabilities, while providing Israel warning time and intelligence access that would shield its communities from Hamas and Hezbollah attacks.
In July 2026, Netanyahu rebuffed the Trump administration’s pressure to withdraw from the security zone in southern Lebanon, and reaffirmed that Israeli forces would remain for as long as he considered necessary to protect northern communities. This was quite a feat and cannot be taken for granted.
It resulted in Israel advancing past the Litani River and capturing the strategic Beaufort Castle near Nabatieh, only to uncover an extensive Hezbollah tunnel network near the border containing fortified military hardware, in which missiles and drones were stored.
The next phase must be strategic, not simply military
Operational success entails Israel continuing to destroy targets, eliminate commanders, and disrupt supply networks, which will give it freedom of action. Ironically, those calling for Israel to have a long-term strategy and continue to degrade the capabilities of adversaries are the same who conspiratorially claim that this is Netanyahu’s personal war to extend his term in office.
For Israel’s operational achievements to continue and strategically ensure Israel’s security remains enhanced in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel must continue to degrade the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, so that they can be replaced with other factions that are not radicalized.
In Gaza, that means a credible framework that prevents Hamas from reconstituting its military capabilities and establishes workable governance.
In Lebanon, it means a security arrangement that prevents Hezbollah from rebuilding its offensive infrastructure near Israel’s border.
With Iran, it means maintaining the ability to prevent the restoration of acute threats while avoiding an indefinite cycle of escalating conflict.
It is a matter of time until there is another round of military strikes against Iran, which retains its missile infrastructure and is working to restore its nuclear capabilities. The intentions of Syria’s new leadership remain uncertain, and Israel cannot afford to presume enduring quiet on the northern front.
Similarly, it is a matter of time till the Houthis launch rockets and drones at Israel as Iran replenishes its missile infrastructure.
The task now is for Netanyahu to make the gains endure: to translate military reach into deterrence, forward defense into secure borders, battlefield leverage into regional cooperation.
It is precisely Netanyahu’s revolution of Israel’s security doctrine, and Israel’s increased power projection, that serve as a pathway to a lasting regional framework that includes Israel and its Arab neighbors. This will be achieved by Israel leveraging its military strength to recast the Middle East’s strategic landscape.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London. Follow him at @BarakSeener