Why Israel’s new military strategy would terrify the country’s founders
For Israel, winning in the Middle East is still hard to do. American military intervention may only increase the risks
President Donald Trump addresses the nation regarding the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, as seen on a television screen in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on June 21. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP
The Israeli and American air campaigns against Iran reflect two dramatic, intertwined historical developments.
The first is Israel’s shift from brief periodic wars, generally forced upon it by adversaries, to a preference for continuous warfare punctuated by intense engagements. The second has been the shift away from what American analysts referred to as “Beginismo” — that is, an insistence on unilateral action and autonomy summed up by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s declaration, in 1981, that “as far as defense of Israel is concerned, it is our problem. We will never ask any nation to send its soldiers to defend us.”
This commitment did not originate with Begin; it was also that of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The fact that these political foes converged on the belief that Israel should, in war, stand alone was a powerful sign of the consensus that underpinned it.
Not anymore. And these two shifts — away from short wars, and toward wars that rely on the engagement of powerful allies, primarily the United States — raise major new questions about the future of both Israel and the U.S. role in the Middle East.
In the past, Israel’s reliance on a reserve army, and the strains that prolonged conflict would impose on an economy starved of workers, made it seem essential that the country only engage in short wars. Plus, a short war that ended in a clear-cut victory for Israel would have the virtue of demonstrating military superiority so starkly that unruly neighbors would be deterred from yet another round in the ring.
But as Israel matured and gained strength, a strange thing happened: It stopped winning wars.
The Israel Defense Forces were forced to withdraw under fire from Lebanon in 2000. Then, Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon ended indecisively. Successive engagements with Hamas in Gaza typically ended in something like a draw.
So, slowly, Israel’s military doctrine began to evolve. “The Campaign between the Wars” became the new bumper sticker. Rather than reject the prospect of a forever war, this new concept embraced it. To be sure, there would still be major blowups, the thinking went. But between them, Israel would continue to attack.
Doing so would both deter enemies from getting into bigger wars with Israel and weaken them, so that when war did come they would be less able to resist.
To aid in that effort, the IDF established a new organization, known as the Depth Corps, which was meant to develop the technologies, tactics and covert action capabilities required to wage the campaign between the wars. As part of that campaign, Israel struck hundreds of targets in Syria and even a few in Iraq, as well as Houthi targets in Yemen.
But the long-running conflict with Iran remained a shadow war. Iran poured resources into strengthening Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based proxy militia that served as a putative deterrent to an Israeli attack against Tehran, as well as other regional proxies, including the Houthis and Hamas.
And Israel fought back covertly. But its military strategy was still mired in the old ways, and Iran seemed like too big an enemy for such a small state to successfully attack directly. Yet plans for an attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure were discussed plenty of times, including in a 2012 proposal that would have utilized most of the Israeli Air Force, alongside commandos who would blow the doors off the deeply buried installation at Fordo and destroy the target from within, finally transporting the enriched uranium back to Israel.
This shadow war pulsed at a steady state until the Hamas attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023.
The complex regional dynamics set in motion by that assault spurred the implementation of all the programs Israel had been developing since the early 2010s. Israel shattered Hezbollah and established a sphere of influence in Syria, while also pulverizing Gaza — a series of events that left Israel looking a whole lot like the regional hegemon, albeit while facing substantial protests from its citizens over the course of war.
With quasi-hegemony comes an embrace of a true new military strategy, after years of subtle pivots. Now, the question is how durable Israel’s position is.
Military superiority can take it a long way. But will its expanding military commitments and the demands of the campaign between the wars be sustainable — especially given brewing discontent amid the ranks of reservists?
The answer: Perhaps, but only if Israel can figure out how to translate its military dominance into lasting diplomatic agreements that preserve its security without the risks and costs of a forever war.
Right now, that shift is a distant concept. There are strong signs that Israel’s campaign against Iran will keep going: The IDF chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, recently told the media that the real threat to Israel was Iran’s missile inventory. This threat, he said, was existential and therefore had to be eliminated at all costs.
Thus, its seems Israel plans to continue its air campaign in Iran until all its missiles, production facilities and launchers have been destroyed — truly a forever war. Between that engagement and ongoing operations in Gaza, there is a real, profoundly serious question about whether Israel can maintain continuous campaigning given political, demographic and economic trends on the home front — and what happens if it can’t.
Which brings us to the shift to reliance on the U.S.
From Begin and Ben-Gurion’s perspective, the Holocaust etched in stone the unreliability of non-Jews. It showed conclusively that Jews could depend only on each other. In one Israeli interpretation, “never again” meant never again depending on others in a crisis.
Plus, Israeli leaders knew that if the U.S. got involved as a co-combatant in its wars, its help would come with strings attached. And Israel has wanted to conduct its combat operations without Washington looking over its shoulder or constraining its freedom of maneuver.
It’s possible that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu figured out how to break the code on how to invoke U.S. military involvement without also inviting unwelcome limits on his approach to warfighting, or his war aims.
He has done this by leveraging the ways in which American politics have made it difficult for the U.S. to say no to Israel, whether in attacking a country of 90 million that has not attacked the U.S. in decades, or providing essential diplomatic top cover to Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and providing the munitions vital to it. Whether this is healthy for either state over the long run is open to question.
Also open to question is whether it can last, period. Ample survey data indicate that young Americans are disenchanted with Israel, and with the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Thus far, this has not seriously affected congressional behavior, because this age cohort isn’t where the votes are or the money is.
But over time, and probably sooner than we think, the balance will shift. And when it does, Israel may find it has less leverage in the Middle East than it did before these new strategic shifts — and Menachem Begin’s words may come back to haunt it.
