Israel’s recent strikes on Iranian territory have been widely framed as an act of deterrence or yet another episode in a protracted regional rivalry.
Such interpretations overlook the deeper motivations behind Israel’s actions.
As a global humanities scholar who specializes in Middle Eastern politics, I believe the world is watching the convergence of a domestic political crisis and a profound strategic shift as Israel evolves into a more aggressive entity in a fragmented international order.
Political survival
At the centre of Israel’s current strategic turn lies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a beleaguered leader fighting for political survival, but also considered a calculating, opportunistic operator with a particular vision of the Middle East.
At home, Netanyahu, confronting an unprecedented convergence of challenges — multiple corruption indictments, mass protests against what many consider a self-serving judicial overhaul and a fragile governing coalition — has leaned into military escalation as both a defensive reflex and a political instrument. He’s seemingly deploying it to both mute dissent at home and assert control abroad.
But Netanyahu’s ambitions appear to extend beyond his immediate political survival. He seems to be striving for a legacy-defining “1967 moment” — a transformative reordering of the regional landscape in the Middle East that sidelines the Palestinian issue and entrenches Israeli supremacy.
This dual imperative — domestic survival and amassing power in the region — likely shapes Netanyahu’s recent actions, including the strike on Iran, the expanded occupation of Syrian territory, the October 2024 attack on Lebanon and the ongoing assaults on Gaza and the West Bank.
By describing each military campaign as a reluctant necessity — forced upon him by Iran, Hamas or even his coalition hardliners — Netanyahu maintains public support as he consolidates power. His government has used war-time conditions to suppress public protest, push forward its radical constitutional agenda and advance his geopolitical vision.
The result is a volatile but calculated strategy that is likely to mark Netanyahu’s tenure, though with significant repercussions for regional stability.
Israel’s grand strategy
While Netanyahu’s actions could serve his immediate political ends, they also reflect a longer-term shift in Israeli grand strategy. Following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel intensified a long-standing pattern of pre-emptive strikes and campaigns to neutralize its adversaries. This strategy has been pursued at an unprecedented scale in Gaza, but often without a clearly articulated political endgame.
This pattern echoes a regional policy doctrine Netanyahu laid out in his 1993 book A Place Among the Nations when he asserted “the only peace that will endure in the region is the peace of deterrence.”
This policy advocates the projection of overwhelming Israeli power, the emasculation of regional challengers and efforts to radically reorder the Middle East.
Netanyahu’s doctrine, a more aggressive revision of Israel’s earlier pre-emptive security traditions, stands in sharp contrast to the approach pursued by the Oslo Accords-era leadership of the 1990s and 2000s — figures such as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and later Ehud Barak.
They emphasized diplomacy over coercive leverage and perpetual confrontation. They sought genuine political settlements and a negotiated co-existence with Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states. This strategy — rooted in compromise and limited reconciliation — has now been decisively eclipsed by Netanyahu’s highly militarized approach and his vision for achieving strategic power in the Middle East.
This approach underpins all of Israel’s modern-day actions — from its reoccupation of parts of Lebanon to its growing military footprint in Syrian territory, the obliteration of Gaza, its aggression against Iran and the increasing calls for Iranian regime change from the current Israeli cabinet.
From buffer to power projection
Nowhere is this clearer than in Israel’s expanding operations across its northern front. In Syria, Israel seized upon the post-Bashar al-Assad vacuum to entrench military control over at least 12 square kilometres of new terrain, constructing infrastructure and outposts far beyond prior ceasefire lines.
This had less to do with protecting minority populations or deterring Iranian proxies — as officials claimed — and more with establishing long-term buffer zones and projecting dominance into a fragile post-war Syria.
A similar pattern is evident in Lebanon. Following months of border escalation, Israel has sought not only to undermine Hezbollah’s capacity but to create no-go zones controlled by the Israeli military along the frontier. These operations reflect older strategic instincts but are now integrated in the ongoing process of Israel’s northern border redesign.
Finally, Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran reflects a doctrine to move beyond containment toward strategic dismantlement of the Iranian regime’s regional power and to erode its ability to control its own territory.
The escalation is the outcome of Israel’s pursuit of a favourable regional moment — the weakening of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” following the Abraham Accords of 2020 aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations — and months of war in Lebanon and Syria.
From ‘western ally’ to regional challenger
A constellation of domestic and international changes has enabled Israel’s transformation.
These include a shift in Israeli political culture encouraged by Netanyahu’s rejection of efforts to pursue some sort of regional co-existence and co-operation; the far right’s growing influence in government; and the ongoing disruption of the international order amid Donald Trump’s second presidency in the United States that gave Israel more room to manoeuvre.
This constellation has eroded the few constraints the liberal international order had in the past imposed on Israel’s pursuit of its regional policies amid an era of expansionism, permanent conflict and the aggressive management — not resolution — of the Palestinian issue.
Israel is now heading down the same path as Russia and Turkey, capitalizing on vast disparities in military and intelligence capabilities among regional powers to its advantage, disregarding international norms, undermining diplomacy and preferring transactional alliances instead of long-term peace processes.
The U.S. has facilitated this transformation. Former president Joe Biden and now Trump have made very little effort to constrain Netanyahu.
Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” plan, along with his isolationist rhetoric, have effectively left regional decision-making to Israel while he continues to underwrite Israeli military dominance and its use of overwhelming force to reshape its regional environment.
Read more: Why Israel and the U.S. are sure to encounter the limits of air power in Iran
Netanyahu’s reluctance to accept the current ceasefire as a definitive end to hostilities with Iran reveals his and his cabinet’s regional revisionist reflexes.
Broader regional destabilization lies ahead as Israel seeks to destroy threats with immense military power without any strategic foresight.
Spyros A. Sofos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
