Israel, Iran, and the dangers of strategic collapse

What should Israel fear more: the rule of an Iranian regime projecting force across the region, or the possibility that the regime may weaken so badly that order at the frontier dissolves? And when military pressure is applied to a hostile state, what counts as success if the result is not a clearer balance of power but a murkier landscape, one in which armed groups, smugglers, and neighbouring powers test the cracks? These questions should stand at the centre of Israel’s strategic thinking.

From Jerusalem’s perspective, there are obvious reasons to seek a weakening of Iran’s military threat and its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. That is an existential threat to the world’s only Jewish state. Yet a hostile state and a partially ungoverned one do not present the same problem. A regime, however repressive, still maintains checkpoints, border systems, security hierarchies, and chains of command. Once those weaken, the threat alters. It may become less centralised, but not necessarily less dangerous.

Israel seeks to degrade Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure while........

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