Israel adopts superpower mindset in Middle East as it upgrades war doctrine - opinionIsrael will apply its updated defense doctrine, its regional superpower prism, of preventively downgrading enemy capabilities and preempting enemy threats.Jerusalem Post, Jul 18 2025
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Over the past 20 months, Israel has necessarily moved to a better balance between diplomacy and the use of force to scuttle enemy threats. It has shifted to thinking like a superpower; to becoming a force that acts proactively to assert both dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away.
Thus, Israel must and will continue to make fierce, overwhelming, and surprising strikes against enemy assets and strongholds from Khan Yunis to Isfahan. It needs to keep its enemies off base with beeper blasts and bunker-busting airstrikes.
Israel wants to be feared, militarily dominant – and yes, even “hegemonic” – not loved. Jerusalem knows that its neighbors will seek true reconciliation with it only when it is strong.
Thus, Israel can no longer accept policies that emphasize “quiet for quiet” and prioritize “restraint,” because this allows the enemy to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly call periods of “stability.”
In this new era, Israel intends to project its strength to definitively neutralize adversaries, and in so doing, to lead the region – to gather a coalition of truly peace-seeking nations. Israel intends to truly “stabilize” the region, but not through reliance on hackneyed diplomatic templates and failed formulas that ooze weakness.
ALL THIS is based on a clear strategic prism that stems from a realistic understanding of the region. Israelis and their leaders understand that the set of rules by which the worst actors in the Middle East operate are ideological, attritional, and genocidal – not accommodational or transactional.
More:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-861430
