When Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched their military aggression against Iran on 28th February, they appeared convinced that the war would be swift. Netanyahu reportedly assured Washington that the campaign would deliver a decisive strategic victory—one capable of reordering the Middle East and restoring Israel’s battered deterrence.

Whether Netanyahu himself believed that promise is another matter.

For decades, influential circles within Israel’s strategic establishment have not necessarily sought stability, but rather “creative destruction.” The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

This idea did not emerge overnight. It was articulated most clearly in a 1996 policy paper titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of US neoconservative strategists, including Richard Perle.

The document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not merely military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favor.

The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

In many ways, the subsequent decades seemed to validate that theory—at least from Tel Aviv’s perspective.

The Middle East Reordered

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was widely considered a catastrophe for Washington. Hundreds of thousands died, trillions of dollars were spent, and the United States became entangled in one of the most destabilising occupations in modern history.

Yet the war removed Saddam Hussein’s government, dismantled the Baath Party, and destroyed what had once been the strongest Arab army in the region.

For Israel, the strategic consequences were significant.

Iraq, historically one of the few Arab states capable of confronting Israel militarily, ceased to exist as a coherent regional power. Years of instability followed, leaving Baghdad with a fragile political system struggling to maintain national cohesion.

Syria, another central concern in Israeli strategic thinking, would later descend into its own devastating war beginning in 2011. Libya collapsed earlier after NATO’s intervention in 2011 as well. Across the region, once-formidable Arab nationalist states fractured into weakened or internally divided systems.

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From Israel’s vantage point, the theory of regional fragmentation appeared to be paying dividends.

Without strong Arab states capable of projecting military power, several Gulf governments began reconsidering........

© Middle East Monitor