The Middle East Now Runs on Netanyahu's Security-by-Strength Doctrine

Three years before becoming Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a worldview in his 1993 book, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, that would come to define both his leadership and the region around him. Rejecting the optimism of the post-Cold War peace process, he instead advanced a harder doctrine, what he called a "peace of deterrence," rooted not in reconciliation, but in power: "the only kind of peace that can endure in the Middle East is a peace that can be defended."

Today, Netanyahu, known to many simply as "Bibi," has remade Israel and the region in that vision. Threats posed by Arab autocracies have been neutralized or placated. The Oslo-era peace process that pushed for Palestinian statehood is but a distant memory. And Israel has demonstrated overwhelming military success in its longest and deadliest war to date against Iran and its "Axis of Resistance."

Braving myriad criticisms and controversies, including the initial failure to prevent Hamas' October 2023 attack that plunged the Middle East into its greatest conflict in decades, Netanyahu, now Israel's longest-serving premier, has turned disaster into opportunity.

"I always say there are leaders in history and leaders of history. Netanyahu is a leader of history," Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and founder of the Israel Advocacy Group, tells Newsweek.

Much like World War II-era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose picture adorns the Israeli premier's desk and whose words he often cites, Oren says Netanyahu "sees himself as being born to fulfill a specific role," adding, "This is the moment he's been born for, the moment we're in right now."

"After the October 7 jihadi onslaught, the prime minister said Israel would change the face of the Middle East," an Israeli official who declined to be named tells Newsweek. "No longer a promise, it is happening, decisively."

Fighting a Shadow War

Since Israel's founding in 1948, the Middle East and North Africa has been host to a number of influential figures whose legacy carried longstanding impact. From Yasser Arafat to Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muammar el-Qaddafi to Saddam Hussein, many have sought to mold the region in their favor, often in direct opposition to Israel's very existence. Perhaps the most successful leader hailed from outside the Arab world.

In 1979, as Israel's peace treaty with Egypt marked the beginning of the end of the Israeli-Arab wars and Saudi Arabia was shaken by an attempted takeover of Mecca by radicals, the most seismic development reared its head in Iran. An exiled cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, took power from a decadent and decaying Western-backed monarchy, ushering in a new epoch of upheaval.

Khomeini, despite clamping down on internal leftist elements that helped bring about the fateful Islamic Revolution in Iran, managed to successfully channel global anti-imperialist narratives to recast Shiite revolutionary theology as the vanguard of Islamic resistance to Israel and the West.

The strategy worked first in Lebanon, creating Hezbollah, which weathered a multisided civil war to emerge as a potent, asymmetrical test for the Israel Defense Forces.

Khomeini's Twelver Shiite velayat-e faqih model sparked allied movements regionwide, most notably garnering support from the Assad family rule in Syria and fueling like-minded militias in post-U.S. invasion Iraq. It extended to acolytes as far away as Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Pakistan and found a powerful ally in Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, which seized its country's capital amid civil war in 2015.

Thus, was born the Axis of Resistance, the bloc named as a response to President George W. Bush's iconic 2002 Axis of Evil speech that initially lumped in Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and was eventually expanded under then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton to include Libya, Syria and Cuba.

Tehran's concept was simple, yet innovative. Iran established strategic depth while simultaneously waging a shadow war to impose seemingly impossible costs for direct intervention against the Islamic Republic.

But Netanyahu, a former elite Sayeret Matkal commando, proved a match for this model when the unit mobilized in the immediate aftermath of Hamas' October 2023 attacks. Under Netanyahu's leadership, Israel eliminated the core leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and, ultimately, Iran, proving one step ahead on each beat following the initial setback that spelled the bloodiest day in Israel's history.

In killing Iran's top ruler, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini upon his death in 1989, Netanyahu has already emerged as the apparent victor in a long-running struggle to impose a narrative of might upon the Middle East. That the United States was drawn directly into the war only enforces Netanyahu's platform, edifying him as capable of swaying U.S. President Donald Trump to renege on electoral promises of peace.

"People have said-most recently, Kamala Harris-that Bibi dragged Trump into war, which sounds like a criticism of Netanyahu," Oren says. "But in Israel, that's precisely what he was elected to do, was to try to convince the United States to join Israel in an effort to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."

Israel Is ‘Here To Stay‘

The episode underscored one of Netanyahu's defining traits: his ability to shape not only Israel's actions, but those of its most important ally.

This was not new. During Trump's first term, Netanyahu had already helped secure a series of major U.S. policy shifts: the relocation of Washington's embassy to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria's Golan Heights and withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran nuclear agreement forged under former President Barack Obama.

And in a move that would formalize Israel's success in forging inroads to the Arab world, the Abraham Accords reached in 2020 normalized Israeli ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

The agreements constituted the most significant defeat for the Arab diplomatic blockade since Jordan's 1994 peace deal and Egypt's treaty 15 years earlier. They also validated Netanyahu's efforts to decouple Arab normalization from peace with the

Palestinians, whose position was complicated by Hamas' 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip following Palestinian leader Arafat's death and Israel's withdrawal from the territory.

"Netanyahu hasn't only contributed to Israel's many accomplishments, he's cultivated and encouraged them," Ruthie Blum, former adviser to Netanyahu's office, tells Newsweek. "And his vision for the Middle East has always been to foster relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which was partly achieved through the Abraham Accords."

"What enabled this was his understanding that peace doesn't require a solution to the ‘Palestinian issue,'" Blum says. "On the contrary, that will only be resolved when the rest of the Mideast accepts, if not embraces, Israel as a worthy, valuable regional power that's here to stay."

Netanyahu had hoped to shatter this embargo once and for all through a deal with Saudi Arabia. However, normalization efforts were derailed by Hamas' surprise attack and the ensuing war that erupted in Gaza and throughout the region.

While effectively succeeding in halting Netanyahu's diplomatic foray, the conflict also served as a platform to expand his legacy from one of economic innovation and strategic machinations to decisive battlefield victories that long eluded Israel since its battles with Arab states.

"Until the October 7 massacres, Netanyahu's main contribution to Israel's national security was the transformation of the Israeli system from an East-European socialist economy into a liberal free market one, and Israel's attendant development into a ‘startup nation' at the forefront of the world economies," Efraim Karsh, professor emeritus of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, tells Newsweek.

"In the security field," Karsh says, "his main achievements were the prevention of the Oslo process (viewed by the PLO as a strategic ploy to destroy Israel) from evolving into a fully fledged Palestinian state, and, of course, the relentless struggle to prevent a nuclear Iran in the face of a defeatist West and a hostile Obama administration, bent on Tehran's appeasement, exemplified most notably by the 2015 JCPOA, which effectively paved Iran's road to the bomb."

But, he adds, "it was only after October 7 that Netanyahu's strategy changed from one based on deterrence and containment to an offensive approach that seeks to forestall lethal threats well before their realization, which has brought Israel's regional prowess to its ever-highest peak."

‘Israeli Society Is Torn‘

The weight of these accomplishments bears an undeniable backlash. Much like Churchill, Netanyahu's legacy is subject to pervasive criticism on various fronts that put him at odds with two of Israel's other most iconic leaders.

"Netanyahu should be compared to Israel's two former leaders, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin," Assaf Orion, former head of the IDF's General Staff's Planning Directorate Strategic Division and now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, tells Newsweek.

"The former laid the foundations for the establishment of the state, led it to victory in the War of Independence and established its political and military power in the region in Israel's first decades," Orion says. "The latter respected the rule of law and Israel's democratic order, signed the historic peace treaty with Egypt, but under his rule, Israel became embroiled in the Lebanon War and bogged down in the mud of fighting Hezbollah for almost a generation."

Yet Orion argues that, "in contrast to Ben-Gurion and Begin, Netanyahu profoundly undermines the foundations of Israel as a state of law and undermines its institutions, unity and internal power."

Avi Shilon, a lecturer at Columbia University's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies who has written extensively on both of Israel's most influential former leaders, puts it bluntly.

"As the biographer of Israel's founding fathers, Begin and Ben-Gurion, I think that, historically speaking, Bibi will be remembered as a failure," Shilon tells Newsweek. "He tried to bypass the Palestinian issue, but October 7th put it at the center of the world's attention."

"He encouraged Trump to get out of the nuclear agreement that Obama signed with Iran, but although Trump weakened Iran militarily, which is good, he will sign another agreement, much like the Obama one," Shilon says.

Both Orion and Shilon described an era of Netanyahu leadership that has fueled a sharp decline in support for Israel within the U.S. After all, wars in Gaza and Lebanon brought unsavory images of civilian suffering; the war in Iran has hit even harder, raising gas prices and fueling the notion of Israel dragging the U.S. into unnecessary conflict on Netanyahu's whim.

Perhaps most daunting of all, Shilon pointed out, is the reality that "Israeli society is torn," a population currently entrapped in an indefinite cycle of war. Netanyahu's domestic woes, including ongoing corruption trials, do not bode well, either, in terms of historical analogs.

"The corruption surrounding him, the trial he is facing and the fact that under his term, many Israeli values and institutions have been eroded will be a stain on his legacy, too. Begin knew how to make war as well as peace, and he elevated the status of the Mizrahim [Middle Eastern Jews]," Shilon says. "Ben-Gurion contributed to building the state, to put it mildly."

He adds, "Bibi served longer than they did, but will be remembered as a good storyteller who missed every opportunity to truly strengthen Israel and secure its future."

Ultimately, he asserts, "Israel proved itself to be the strongest, but without a political solution."

It's a record yet undefined, according to Zohar Palti, former head of Israel's Mossad spy agency intelligence directorate and chief of the Israeli Defense Ministry's policy and political-military bureau.

"I would suggest holding off on drawing firm conclusions about the past two-and-a-half years," Palti, now fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tells Newsweek, "Personally, I find Israel's peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, as well as the Abraham Accords, more compelling. They are a clear product of strength."

"The real test of that strength will be whether countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and, hopefully one day Iran again, and others move toward recognition and peace with Israel," Palti says. "That, in my view, is where our true strength will ultimately be measured."

A New Security Order

Still, Netanyahu's victories in the field speak volumes, and his prescience in predicting regional developments over the past three decades has especially served to defy his detractors.

"He has consistently opposed grand ambitious plans backed by the cleverest Israeli strategic thinkers and supported by Israel's allies abroad," Shany Mor, former foreign policy director of Israel's National Security Council, tells Newsweek. "And most of the things he warned might happen did indeed come to pass."

"It drives his most obsessive critics crazy," Mor said. "He understood Arafat better than they did, understood [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan better than they did, understood the Arab Spring better than they did. His political success is their failure."

Netanyahu's efforts have, however, already laid the groundwork for a more favorable security order. "Now we face Hamas on half of Gaza, probably going to refuse disarmament plans, and Israel will be poised to launch a decisive offensive," Mor says, "And unlike in 2023, 2024 and 2025, there will be no hostages in the tunnels below Gaza, no Hezbollah to tie the IDF down with an October 7-style invasion from the north, no Assad regime to bridge Lebanon and Iran, no Russian umbrella for that bridge and no immediate strategic Iranian threat."

And yet, as pressure mounts in Washington to strike a deal and Tehran defies predictions of imminent downfall, the unprecedented joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran continues with no clear end in sight.

"Once the dream came true, reality did not match the promise," says Nimrod Novik, former senior adviser to late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and now senior fellow at the Israel Policy Forum.

"While both militaries' performance has been impressive and Iran's military capacity eroded substantially, nonetheless, quite a few of its premises proved wrong," Novik says. "The regime did not collapse; its nuclear ambitions are yet to be permanently quashed; its ballistic missile threat exists; and its commitment to violent regional proxies is still manifest. Dismissing the likelihood of Iran playing the Hormuz card and striking its neighbors across the Gulf proved wrong as well."

For the Islamic Republic, the war has become a struggle for survival. But for Netanyahu, it marks the culmination of a decades-long effort to ensure Israel would never again find itself fighting one.

"When the PM wrote A Durable Peace over 30 years ago, he made one core point: Peace comes from strength, not wishful thinking," an Israeli official tells Newsweek. "Today, that's not theory, it's reality. The jihadist axis, led by the regime in Iran, is being rolled back. Its proxies are weakened, its capabilities degraded, its reach diminished. Meanwhile, Israel is stronger than ever and new pathways to peace are opening."

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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 2:00 AM.