Lessons From the Israeli–Iranian Rivalry – Adopting Wide-Ranging Influence as Part of the Israeli Defense Force’s Strategy in the 2000s

Until the surprise Hamas attack on Israeli civilians in October 2023, which resulted in over a thousand casualties, Israel had relatively successfully maintained a deterrent effect by using disproportionately harsh force in its counterattacks. This Israel Defense Force’s so-called Dahiya Doctrine explains the bombing campaign in Gaza and may potentially lead to a wider conflict in the region. Did the doctrine lead Israel into a trap laid by Hamas?

Israel’s foreign and security policy situation has changed radically during the 2000s. Israel and Iran have been competing in secret over the past few decades with increasing intensity. This rivalry or conflict is part of a wider conflict in the Middle East that has been called a grey area competition or a new regional cold war². More broadly, its main elements can be seen on one side as a bloc led by Iran with some states and several non-state actors. On the other side is a Saudi-led bloc, with which Israel has partially managed to draw closer in recent years. Mainly, these two geopolitical blocs compete fiercely for regional hegemony in the Middle East³.

In the case of Israel, the aim is to minimize external and internal threats. Since Israel was originally founded as a Jewish state and the status of the Palestinian population inside and outside its sovereign territory is still unresolved, the state has a long history as an enemy of the Muslim-majority countries in the region. This has made it very difficult to project soft power onto countries in the near region. For this reason, the country’s geopolitical strategy has mostly been based on overlapping security interests with its neighbouring states, which have made it possible to agree on various loose strategic partnerships in the name of protection against common security threats. The intertwined threat scenarios and their exploitation on an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle has resonated to some extent, and Israel has moved closer in foreign policy to several states previously hostile to it⁴.

As a state, Iran has been one of the most significant threats to Israel, as to many other countries in the Middle East, ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979 changed the ideology of the country’s ruling leadership towards fundamentalist Shiite Islamism. Israel’s unique geopolitical situation and historically frequent security threats have required a security strategy of its own and continuous security policy experimentation, the end of which has so far become a lower-intensity hybrid influencing, maintaining deterrence and kinetic attacks on a limited scale. Especially during this millennium, the strategy of the Israel Defense Forces has undergone several changes of direction, which are the subject of this article.

For about twenty years, Israel’s military-strategic and broader security policy turnaround has been remarkable compared to the past. The rapidly changing security architecture in the Middle East, Iran’s growing influence in the vicinity of Israel, and competition between the two states in a grey area have forced Israel to change the modus operandi and culture of its security policy. Israel and its Defense Forces have succeeded in incorporating this into their operations and broader policies toward a more continuous, but lower-intensity military deterrence and use of force, as well as the application of grey-area operations. At the same time, Israel has had to protect itself as hostile actors have begun to use a wide range of tools in their own activities.

This paradigm shift and its practical implications can be used as an example of the effectiveness or, alternatively, the ineffectiveness of a chosen security strategy. The purpose of this text is to deal closely with the implications of the hybrid intensive influencing and grey area campaign waged by Iran and its partners on Israel’s defense policy, particularly through the changed doctrines of the Israel Defense Forces. The research literature on the subject and writings published by individuals influential in Israel’s defense policy are examined. It is not intended to consider the legitimacy of the operations carried out by the parties or the broader strategy, or the related understandably open moral questions.

The text is based on public sources, but attempts have been made to take account of the secrecy of the subject. The unorthodox methods utilized by Israel, Iran, and more generally in the Middle East are carried out in the grey area of legality and are thus innately hidden from the general public or they are left unverified by national regimes. This means that a large part of influence operations and their attempts remain in the dark.

Wide-ranging Influencing, Hybrid Warfare and Grey Areas

A term coined in Finnish security policy research called wide-ranging influencing includes hybrid influencing but also covers the open use of military force between the parties. The concept combines non-military hyped influence, pressure, and military means, or the threat thereof. Within the meaning of the term, this activity can often be long-lasting and is aimed at the large-scale weakening of the defenses of the target, most often the state or society, as well as the consumption of power resources.⁵

In an international context, hybrid threat researcher Frank G. Hoffman calls this similar idea, which combines all forms of action on the war-peace continuum to influence the enemy, a full spectrum approach. This term reflects the means used by Russia in this millennium.⁶

In international research literature, this range of tools located between war and peace is often referred to as either grey zone or hybrid warfare. These two terms are often used inconsistently, interchangeably, and sometimes interchangeably, depending on the user and context. Sometimes, by definition, they are distinguished. According to Hoffman, both terms try to describe an ambiguous, aggressive political and military activity that falls below the threshold of actual war. NATO and the U.S. administration’s definitions of hybrid warfare differ in that the former covers a combination of military and non-military modalities that are planned. In the United States, on the other hand, the traditional definition of hybrid warfare has been narrower and more in line with the general international understanding of grey area operations. Grey area operations, on the other hand, have traditionally been seen as using less violent means to influence the enemy.⁷ Regardless of definition and context, large-scale influencing, grey area operations, and hybrid warfare are often associated with asymmetry of action and difficulty in attribution. In the context of hybrid warfare, attribution refers to the undisputable identification of the culprit.

In international research, it has often been customary to examine the activities of Iran and its proxy actors through the grey area strategies or hybrid threats they use.⁸ As such, wide-ranging influencing provides an appropriate framework for the academic scrutiny of the rivalry between Iran and Israel. Shadow warfare between countries and their proxy actors has been relatively continuous for several decades, and the risk of escalation has been consistently high. This is already demonstrated in practice by several series of events between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah that have escalated into full-scale armed conflicts.

Iran Aims for an Alternate Geopolitical Situation

Before Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, the country was one of Israel’s closest regional security partners. After the revolution, governments slowly drifted into decades of grey area competition that continues to this day.⁹

As late as the 1990s, the two states did not see each other as each other’s most significant threats because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a threat to both states. However, the Israeli intelligence community and defense forces became concerned about Iran’s long-range missile development program and its nascent nuclear program. After the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, these countries other’s most important security threats. The failure of Israel’s peace process in Palestine and the escalation of violence with non-state actors in the region, as well as Iran’s support for these actors, further widened the gap between the two countries.¹⁰

From an Israeli perspective, Iran is seen as a radical and revolutionary actor seeking regional hegemony. By exploiting anti-Israel sentiments, Iran is trying to seek leadership in the Muslim world.¹¹ According to a strategic assessment by the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 2009, the pursuit of Iranian hegemony is the greatest strategic challenge facing the region. According to the assessment, Iran’s threat scenarios consisted of four main elements: theological-ideological goals, the nuclear weapons project, support for terrorism, and the country’s attempts to sabotage the more pragmatic Arab regimes in the region.¹²

From an Iranian perspective, however, the situation looks different. Although Iran is considered a revolutionary state, internally the country strives to maintain the status quo. The regime has become more focused on its survival than on taking the Islamic coup outwards. More than forty years have passed since the revolution, and although the regime continues to emphasize religious and revolutionary rhetoric, Iranian society has in many ways moved forward. From the outside, it seems that Iran is trying to shape and sabotage the international order for its gain, but in Tehran, the country is seen as besieged by enemies. In particular, the influence of the United States in the region appears to be an existential threat to it, and these concerns have not eased, even though Iran’s ability to influence its region has increased significantly in recent decades. In the Iranian academy, domestic activities have been described through the school of defensive realism.¹³

After the revolution, Iran had alienated almost every superpower and potential regional ally. This made it much more difficult to procure materials and gain political support. The experience of conventional warfare in the Iraq–Iran War of 1980–1988 and the findings of Iraq’s failed defense in two wars against the United States in 1991 and 2003 brought about changes in Iran’s strategic thinking. In the conclusions of the country’s leadership, hostile actors must be stopped already outside Iran’s borders. Given the country’s limited resources, this in turn meant that Iran, together with its regional partners, had to develop asymmetric capabilities that were not limited to conventional warfare.

This way of thinking crystallized into a strategy that Rouzbeh Parsi, a researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, calls the mosaic approach to defensive warfare. Defence does not rely on the strike capability of the Air Force and Navy, as is typical of modern warfare, but instead focuses on decentralized, multi-layered and small-scale warfare.

This, in turn, is supported by modern hybrid warfare and political goals that extend beyond the actual territory to be defended. Through the civil wars in Syria and Iraq during the 2010s, this defensive mosaic doctrine has also been successfully translated into an increasingly offensive strategy with the help of local actors.¹⁴

At the operational level, operations have been carried out in such a way that traditional armed warfare and defense are carried out by the Iranian Armed Forces, i.e. Artesh. Separate from the regular armed forces of the state is the religious-ideological Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which partly overlaps with the regular armed forces. The Revolutionary Guard also has its own naval and air force. In addition, the Guard includes the Basij, a paramilitary People’s Army to be mobilized in an emergency, and the Quds Special Operations Force. Named after Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic), the Quds Force combines the Special Operations Headquarters and the Reconnaissance Community of a typical Western defensive organizational structure under a single organization. It is responsible for cyber, intelligence, foreign operations, unconventional warfare, and other methods of grey area influencing.¹⁵

In addition, the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force have developed their own cyber expertise since the 2009 and 2010 cyber-attacks carried out by Israel and the United States. Quds has reportedly carried out DDoS attacks on U.S. banking systems, military internet services, and infiltrated Saudi oil company’s Aramco online services, disrupting Saudi oil production, among others.¹⁶ In 2019 and 2020, Iranian Revolutionary Guard cyber forces attempted to sabotage Israel’s water and waste network management system. If successful, it could have caused severe water shortages throughout Israel.¹⁷

Abroad, in grey area operations, Tehran tends to use indirect means of influence and foreign non-state proxy actors. These include Shiite organizations such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi Movement, and Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah. Iran has a history of using these actors to make it difficult to unequivocally attribute actions and perpetrators and to avoid direct conflict with the target.18 Despite Iran’s strong influence, proxy actors are not entirely under the control of Teheran, but are also, to varying degrees, independent actors deeply rooted in their local societies and politics¹⁹.

Actors in the grey area, such as Iran, are continuously looking for the threshold below which action will not trigger escalating counterreactions. Action often takes place with a low frequency, both geographically and temporally. This makes it possible to change the situation in one’s favor, especially against stronger players, without the opponent’s decision-makers reacting strongly to events. In this way, it is possible to approach the goal and at the same time, minimize the risk arising from the operation as much as possible.

This goal should preferably be achieved without the outbreak of outright war. According to Michael Eisenstadt, a researcher at the Washington Institute, in the case of Iran, this goal is Iran’s territorial hegemony in the Middle East, the removal of US influence in the region, and the destruction of Israel. The broad uses of warfare and the range of means outside it discussed above have been refined for this very end.²⁰

For Israel, of course, this poses an existential threat. From the country’s point of view, it is almost impossible to compromise or negotiate with Tehran. This premise is well illustrated by the words of Ephraim Kam, former assistant director of Israel’s military intelligence production and analysis department. According to him, Israeli intelligence does not fully understand how much religious ideology influences the post-Iranian state system and how heavily decision-making is guided by fanatical ideology, or whether the state leadership rationally calculates the relationship between risk and benefit in its actions. The resulting fog, coupled with uncertainties surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, such as Iran’s ability to produce a viable nuclear weapon in the near future, poses a fundamental and at the same time highly unpredictable threat to Israel.²¹

Hybrid Threat Scenarios, Grey Area Operations and
the Changing Strategies of the Israel Defense Forces in the 2000s

In the 1990s, Israel’s clashes with Hezbollah and Hamas began to prove increasingly challenging. By the new millennium, conflicts with enemies had fundamentally changed. The occupation of southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and the invasions of the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, and 2014 showed that the country was no longer able to achieve military victories in the traditional sense, with the enemy transforming increasingly asymmetrical, complex, and ambiguous in nature.²²

In particular, the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah highlighted these developments very strongly and forced Israel’s state and military leadership to rethink its national defense strategy in a security environment in which hostile actors were increasingly using means that threatened Israeli civil society outside its own borders. During the 2006 hostilities, rocket attacks, particularly on the civilian population of northern Israel, caused unprecedented human and economic damage on the home front. Preventing long-range influence in the core areas of Israel did not produce success during the conflict. This attracted the attention of the Israel Armed Forces and an attempt to think more systematically about changes in strategic culture.²³

As a result of the war, the military leadership and government were forced to resign. In the years following the conflict, the new military leadership created the Meridor Commission (2007) and the Winograd Commission (2008) to investigate the military and political reasons for the failure of the war. In addition, these commissions will reassess the inability of the Israeli Defense Forces’ organizational models and doctrines to meet the challenges of Hezbollah’s new form of warfare.²⁴

Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, Aman²⁵ came under heavy criticism for being completely unprepared for the new phenomena of asymmetric warfare. Intelligence errors are seen as having resulted in the Israeli Defense Forces failing to neutralize Hezbollah’s rocket threat. Similarly, a lack of intelligence about Hezbollah’s military strike capability led to the Iranian-supplied C-802 anti-ship missile severely damaging the Israeli Navy’s Sa’ar 5-class corvette. A number of failures at the tactical level revealed the critical need for military intelligence leadership to integrate more closely with the intelligence of the various branches of the armed forces, and in particular with civilian²⁶ intelligence.²⁷

Information about the risk to Israeli population centers and Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ year-by-year increasing long-range strike capability have become a problem in Israel’s defense decision-making. Attempts have been made to remedy the problem with one of the most effective air defences in the world. However, even that hasn’t proven to be an infallible way to escape damage due to the asymmetry of the price of long-range attack, compared to defense. The cost of one Katyusha rocket used by Hezbollah is estimated at around USD 300, while the cost of an Iron Dome missile is calculated in tens of thousands of dollars.²⁸
Consequently, through trial and error, Israel’s defense policy has evolved during the 2000s into doctrines or principles combining different forms of warfare and influence. Their purpose is to respond more effectively to modern multidisciplinary influencing. In general, Israel’s state defense strategy has been described as becoming more of a hybrid doctrine in the 2000s, with a stronger emphasis on holistic defense throughout state organizations²⁹. In particular, the terms of Gadi Eisenkot (2015–2019) and Aviv Kohavi (2019–2023) as Chiefs of Staff marked changes, or at least intentions of it, in the operating methods of the Israel Defense Forces.

Because of the continuous existential threat, the Israel Defense Forces have a special position in Israeli society compared to the West. It does not wait for political guidance but offers strategic goals and operational approaches leading to them, allowing the leadership to choose from the options it presents.

The Israeli state leadership has no counterweight to weighing the Israeli Defense Forces’ own analyses and conclusions.³⁰ The basic pillars of Israel’s defence strategy are difficult to define. Traditionally, the principles of defence policy have not been prepared or made available but are based on certain oral traditions. Former national security adviser and major general Yaakov Amidror points out that Israel has not had an official doctrine since 1953. The closest to this has been the so-called Eisenkot Document³¹ from 2015, which attempted to define the principles of the Israel Defense Forces.³²

The Eisenkot documentary discusses key lessons in a new kind of warfare. It argues that Israel must refocus on inter-agency integration in the grey area competition that occurs during so-called interwar campaigns. Iran poses a strategic-level threat to Israel and therefore also deserves a strategic-level response. However, Israel’s way of competing with Iran is tactical and operational. Relevant actors moving towards a new defence strategy include the Prime Minister’s Office, cyber surveillance authorities, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy (so-called Hasbara Ministry), Israel Defense Forces, Aman and Mossad.³³

The Eisenkot documentary focuses especially on the so-called interwar campaign. Although the 2015 strategy paper did not receive official approval from the Israeli government, it nevertheless greatly influenced Israel’s military build-up and forms of deployment and is considered the closest to the announcement of military principles that Israel has received for decades.³⁴

Low-intensity Remote Influencing: Mabam

The interwar campaign refers specifically to Israel’s practice of containing Iranian influence in Syrian and Lebanese territory.³⁵ In English research literature, this phenomenon is known as Inter-War Campaigns or Campaign Between Wars (ICW or CBW) or, alternatively, by its transliterated Hebrew acronym mabam (מב”ם). The terms have been used variously to explain individual operations or strategy as a whole.³⁶ The phenomenon has been used variously in the literature as strategy and doctrine and, despite the research, the theoretical framework of the subject remains relatively vague.

The idea of an interwar campaign began to take shape in the first years of the 2010s. The new concept was based on a more holistic approach to Israel’s recurring conflicts. The approach was based on a more aggressive, proactive, and continuous way of waging war than before. According to David Simon-Tov and Ofer Fridman, researchers at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, the campaign is based on all possible dimensions of warfare: kinetic, cognitive, technological, electronic, diplomatic, military, and legal means would be incorporated into all possible ways of using military force.³⁷

The Mabam doctrine uses geopolitical and military conditions favourable to itself to create preemptive and ongoing frictional campaigns designed to compete with geopolitical adversaries for strategic goals. However, all of this must occur below the threshold of a more serious conflict or full-blown state of war.³⁸

Gadi Eisenkot, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (2015–2019), and his colleague Colonel Gabi Siboni describe the strategy in a slightly different way from their academic colleagues. According to them, the goals of the strategy are very straightforward: to delay the war and hold back enemies at a constant pace. This is done by disrupting the build-up of their forces and destroying their equipment and resources. The aim is also to increase the legitimacy of Israel’s use of force while undermining the legitimacy of the enemy’s actions by exposing their secret military activities in violation of international law. The aim is also to create an optimal operating environment for the Israel Defense Forces should war eventually come.³⁹

However, the framework of the strategy is not entirely clear. Simon-Tov and Fridman, for example, incorporate technological and electronic means into this strategy. Likewise, they consider Israeli state strategic-cognitive communication, better known as hasbara, to be part of interwar campaigns.⁴⁰ However, some scholars disagree on what the doctrine entails. Itamar Lifshitz and Erez Seri-Levy stress that alleged secret special operations, such as targeting Iranian scientists, military personnel, and infrastructure, are not explicitly part of this new model but serve as a kind of definitional counterpoint to that strategy.⁴¹

The change from the previous one is the continuity of operations. Earlier post-independence defensive thinking accepted the cyclical nature of conflict escalation. Scholars Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir call these previously regular conflicts with hostile actors mowing the grass. The basis of this strategy was that, due to the asymmetric resources of Israel and the surrounding Arab countries and the categorical hostility of the latter, it would not be possible to maintain peace forever. However, maintaining a superior army, accepting large-scale use of force at certain intervals, and destroying the enemy’s operational capability, at least temporarily, would make it possible to prolong the peaceful periods between actual conflicts.

The metaphor of lawn mowing is therefore based on the idea that grass is allowed to grow and then mowed all at once.⁴² The strategy, which alternates between peace and intensive military action, changed, especially after the 2006 war in Lebanon. Israel’s dealings with Hamas in Gaza still largely follow this pattern but are seen as contrasting to the new Mabam doctrine, as Israel has not waged large-scale war in Lebanon or Syria since 2006.⁴³

The civil wars in Syria and Iraq⁴⁴ in the 2010s caused significant strategic changes northeast of Israel’s borders. The threat of the terrorist organization ISIS and the role of Iran and the Shiite paramilitaries it supports in defeating the terrorist organization significantly strengthened Iran’s influence in the region. The new geopolitical situation in Syria and Iraq facilitated Tehran’s long-range influence in Israel’s immediate vicinity. Chaotic civil wars opened up a direct land route for the Quds forces to reach the Israeli border. Iranian-backed religious, state, and non-state groups scattered along the Iraq–Syria–Lebanon axis posed a heightened threat to Israel by facilitating the delivery of Iranian advanced weapons systems to areas near Israel’s northern border. From there, Iran and its regional allies will be able to threaten residential areas in northern Israel with less use of resources.⁴⁵

The doctrine began to form during the early 2010s. Mabam operations began in their current form in 2013 when SA-17 surface-to-air missiles en route from the Iranian state to Hezbollah and Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missiles were destroyed during transport on Syrian territory in several air raids. Similar operations continued in the following years with varying degrees of low-intensity precision strikes.⁴⁶ Over the decade, the frequency of strikes has only increased, and by 2021 thousands of air strikes had already been carried out by Israel on Syrian territory⁴⁷. In its report, the Israeli research institute Alma mentions at least 32 precision strikes carried out by the air force on Syrian territory during 2022⁴⁸.

Long-range influence on the Air Force outside a state of war is not a completely new phenomenon in Israel’s military tradition. In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq with an airstrike, ending the country’s nuclear program. However, the main difference is the continuity and scale of operations.

It, like everything else, is about using limited resources. One essential question around the strategy has been how much the new emphasis is away from the resources of the more traditional use of kinetic force and how much emphasis should be placed on different forms of defence. Are the resources to be concentrated on kinetic and broader influence contradictory or mutually reinforcing?⁴⁹ The doctrine has also been criticized for its inconsistency and unclear guidelines, and for whether the expected outcome of the doctrine will only be partially achieved by the actions described above⁵⁰.

Deterrence: The Dahiya Doctrine

One of Israel’s ways of maintaining a deterrent effect in grey area conflicts is by allowing it to use disproportionately harsh force when countering attacks, relying on the firepower of air force and artillery. This principle has become the so-called Dahiya doctrine. This doctrine is mostly directed at Hezbollah and Hamas.

The name comes from Beirut’s eponymous Shia-majority suburb, which housed a major Hezbollah stronghold in the 2006 war. Israeli air forces bombed the area almost to ruins in the first days of the war. After the conflict in 2008, Gadi Eisenkot, commander of the Northern Military Region and future Israeli chief of staff, described the guidelines for the new doctrine in an interview with one of Israel’s largest daily newspapers. In an interview, he said that what happened in 2006 in a suburb of Beirut would happen to all villages from which rockets were fired into Israel. From Israel’s perspective, the areas from which military operations are conducted are not civilian areas but military bases.⁵¹

Doctrine is an asymmetric response to asymmetric warfare. Deterrence is realized in the Dahiya doctrine through the threat of punishment⁵². In the past, the modus operandi of the Israeli Defense Forces had focused on the suppression of conventional, clear threat scenarios. Israel’s opponents had learned that they could take advantage of the will of the Israeli military leadership to avoid urban warfare and the indiscriminate use of destructive force, which would claim civilian casualties and thus provoke international criticism. Adapting to this observation, Israel’s opponents learned to use remote ballistic influence on Israel’s civilian population by using their own civilians as shields. This would put Israel in an inescapable dilemma, where she would lose, however, it was to respond. The Dahiya doctrine bypasses the obscurity of the enemy image typical of large-scale influence by severely punishing an actor who uses asymmetric warfare.⁵³

In tautological terms, deterrence works until it doesn’t work. So far, the mutual deterrent effect caused by Israel and Hezbollah rockets has worked relatively successfully and has kept the Lebanon and Israel border relatively peaceful, even when Israel has assassinated high-ranking commanders of Hezbollah.⁵⁴

At the time of writing, there have been small-scale battles between Hezbollah and Israel over Israel’s ground operation in Gaza. However, the situation has not escalated into an actual war on Israel’s northern border, but the same deterrent effect has not worked with Hamas. At the time of writing, the ground operation in Gaza is already the fifth in order since 2008.

Consequences of the New Strategy
– Hamas’ Attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the Threat of Iranian Proxy Actors

The security architecture surrounding Israel has changed significantly over the past few decades. Despite Israel’s success in drawing closer to many countries in the region, several actors hostile to Israel and Iran have increasingly adopted policies of wide-ranging influence. The multidimensional nature of the new kind of warfare has brought new challenges. Increased potential attack vectors in the physical and digital operating environments have meant a more diverse range of threats and concurrently an imperative to be prepared for them.

What has the Israeli Defense Forces’ doctrinal experiment in the face of wide-ranging challenges ultimately meant? Implementing new doctrines in practice is more difficult than in theory. Inertial forces are relatively high when changing the fundamental principles of a military organization the size of Israel Defense Forces in a different direction, The violence that began at the end of 2023 and is still ongoing and its escalation in Gaza and, to some extent, in areas close to Israel may give some indication of this.

The surprise Hamas attack on bases and kibbutzim near Gaza on October 7, 2023, which claimed more than a thousand Israeli casualties, came as almost complete surprise to the Israeli Defense Forces. The success of Hamas’ surprise attack was seen as a shocking failure by the Israeli intelligence community. The reasons why this happened have been much speculated. Many speculations have attributed this failure to excessive self-confidence, an inability to understand Hamas’ objectives, or intelligence reliance on technological data collection.⁵⁵ However, these estimates remain largely speculative before a fundamental study of the subject. Information leaked by the time of writing from within the Israeli intelligence community reveals inconsistencies, particularly in the command of Unit 8200, which is responsible for signals intelligence in the military⁵⁶.

Israel’s polarized domestic politics has created its own challenges as well⁵⁷. Five elections in three years tell a story of their own, in addition to which the country has seen comparatively widespread civil unrest, especially regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal reforms that have been seen as undemocratic.

Government reforms have been seen as so radical that some Air Force reserve pilots have refused refresher exercises, which in turn has led to a decline in the Air Force’s operational capability⁵⁸. Fractured domestic cohesion and polarized politics make the country particularly vulnerable to the influence of hostile actors.⁵⁹

At the time of writing, the bombing campaign in Gaza is likely a practical manifestation of the Dahiya doctrine⁶⁰. Efraim Inbar, a long-time researcher of strategy and security, opined that the surprise attack in October was a very heavy blow to the credibility of Israel’s deterrence⁶¹.

The significance of the crumbled credibility may be evident, for example, in the heightened wide-ranging influence exerted by Israel’s opponents at the time of writing. Houthi rebels have launched attacks from Yemen against Israel’s sea routes⁶². On the northern border of Israel, there have again been border clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces. A full-scale war with Hezbollah is no longer entirely unlikely, according to analysts⁶³.

The article was originally published in Finnish, in June 2024, in a publication edited by Professor Marko Palokangas: Sodan usvaa III. Varautuminen, valmius ja nykyaikainen sodankäynti [Fog of War III. Preparedness and modern warfare]. XXX Finnish National Defence University, Department of Warfare, Series 2: Research Reports No. 32.

References:

• 1. The author (b. 1993) holds a Master of Science in World Politics and a Bachelor of Political History specializing in smaller regional rivalries and conflicts in South America and the Middle East. During 2022, the writer did a university internship at the Finnish Defense Attaché Office in Tel Aviv.
• 2. Steinberg, Guido: Hamas, Israel, and the “Cold War” in the Gulf. Internationale Politik Quarterly, 18.10.2023. [https://ip-quarterly.com/en/hamas-israel-and-cold-war-gulf], read 15.2.2023.
• 3. See: Iran and Saudi Arabia Battle for Supremacy in the Middle East. World Politics Review, 1.8.2023. [https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/israel-iran-saudi-arabia-battle-for-supremacy-in-the-middle-east/], read 23.5.2023; How has the Saudi-Iran divide affected the Middle East? Al Jazeera, 7.4.2023. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/7/how-has-the-saudi-iran-divide-affected-the-middle-east], read 23.8.2023
• 4. Israel has already succeeded in developing a common defence policy with several former enemies, such as Jordan and Egypt. The détente of geopolitical strategy in recent years crystallized in the so-called “de-escalation” promoted by the United States in the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
• 5. Finnish Government Defence Report. Government publications 2021:78, Helsinki 2021, p. 17.
• 6. Hoffman, Frank G.: Examining Complex Forms of Conflict: Gray Zone and Hybrid Challenges. PRISM, 7(4), 2018, pp. 30–47.
• 7. Hoffman (2018), pp. 30–47.
• 8. See: Eisenstadt, Michael: Iran’s Gray Zone Strategy. PRISM, 9(2), 2021, pp 76–97; Matlaga, Michael: Case Study: Israel’s Competition with Iran, 1991–2015. By Other Means Part II: Adapting to Compete in the Gray Zone. Kathleen Hicks & Melissa Dalton (eds.). CSIS Reports, Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington, DC 2019, pp.72–76 [https://www.csis.org/analysis/other-means-part-ii-adapting-compete-gray-zone], read 2.3.2024; Parsi, Rouzbeh: Iran’s hybrid warfare capabilities. Hybrid Warfare. Security and Asymmetric Conflict in International Relations. Mikael Weissmann, Niklas Nilsson, Björn Palmertz & Per Thunholm (eds.). I.B. TAURIS, London 2021, pp. 232–239.
• 9. Matlaga (2019), p. 72.
• 10. Kaye, Dalia Dassa; Alireza Nader & Parisa Roshan: Israel and Iran. A Dangerous Rivalry. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA 2011, pp. 17–25.
• 11. Kaye et al. (2011), pp. 17–25.
• 12 Etzion, Eran: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Situation Assessment for 2008–2009. Strategic Assessment, 12(1), 2009, pp. 52–53.
• 13. Parsi (2021), p. 233.
• 14. Same, p. 234 and 236–237.
• 15. See: More on the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Uskowi, Nader: Temperature Rising. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Wars in the Middle East. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated 2018; Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Council on Foreign Relations, 2024. [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards], read 2.2.2024.
• 16. Uskowi (2023), p. 143.
• 17. Freilich, Charles D.; Matthew S. Cohen & Gabi Siboni: Israel and the Cyber Threat. How the Startup Nation Be- came a Global Cyber Power. Oxford University Press, New York, NY 2023, pp. 120–125.
• 18. Eisenstadt, Michael: Iran’s Gray Zone Strategy. PRISM, 9(2), 2021, p. 82.
• 19. Parsi (2021), pp. 234–236.
• 20. Eisenstadt (2021), p. 78.
• 21. Kam, Ephraim: Iran and the Iranian Nuclear Project as a Challenge for Israeli Intelligence. Israel’s Silent De- fender. An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence. Amos Gilboa & Ephraim Lapid (eds.). Gefen Books, Springfield 2016, pp. 165–169.
• 22. Samaan, Jean-Loup: ‘Decisive Victory’ and Israel’s Quest for a New Military Strategy. Middle East Policy, 30(3), 2023, pp. 3–15; Adamsky, Dmitry: From Israel with Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Intra-war Coercion and Brute Force. Security Studies, 26(1), 2017, pp. 167–168.
• 23. Rubin, Uzi: The Rocket Campaign against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War. Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 71. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University 2007, pp. 3–16; Adamsky (2017), pp. 167–168.
• 24. Khalidi, Ahmad Samih: Introduction: On the Limitations of Military Doctrine. Journal of Palestine Studies, 45(2), 2016, pp. 127; Samaan, Jean-Loup. From War to Deterrence? Israel-Hezbollah Conflict Since 2006. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2014, pp. 12–14.
• 25. An intelligence body under the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. International research often refers to IDI or Aman in Hebrew.
• 26. The two most significant so-called civilian intelligence organizations in Israel are the Shabak/Shin Bet and the Mossad. The Shin Bet is responsible for domestic and counterintelligence, while the Mossad is responsible for foreign intelligence.
• 27. Gilboa, Amos: Intelligence and the Lebanese Arena. Israel’s Silent Defender. An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence. Amos Gilboa & Ephraim Lapid (eds.). Gefen Books, Springfield 2016, pp. 118–120; Asher, Daniel: From Lebanon to the Gaza Strip: IDF Combat Intelligence in Operation Cast Lead. Israel’s Silent De- fender. An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence. Amos Gilboa & Ephraim Lapid (eds.). Gefen Books, Springfield 2016, pp. 122–123.
• 28. Same: (2023), pp. 5–7.
• 29. Barak, Oren; Amit Sheniak & Assaf Shapira: The Shift to Defence in Israel’s Hybrid Military Strategy. Journal of Strategic Studies, 46(2), 2023, pp. 345–377.
• 30. Adamsky (2017), p. 175.
• 31. English translation of the public version of the document at:  / [https://www.inss.org.il/he/wp- content/uploads/sites/2/2017/04/IDF-Strategy.pdf], read 5.3.2024.
• 32. Amidror, Yaakov: Israel’s National Security Doctrine. Scholarship, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, 18.7.2021. [https://jiss.org.il/en/amidror-israels-national-security-doctrine/] read 9.12.2024.
• 33. Matlaga (2019), p. 72.
• 34. Amidror (2021).
• 35. Goldenberg, Ilan; Nicholas A. Heras, Kaleigh Thomas & Jennie Matuschak: Countering Iran in the Gray Zone. What the United States Should Learn from Israel’s Operations in Syria. Center for a New American Security, 2020, pp. 6–10. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24223], read 29.2.2024; Eisenkot, Gadi & Gabi Siboni: The Campaign Between Wars: How Israel Rethought Its Strategy to Counter Iran’s Malign Regional Influence. Policy Analysis / PolicyWatch 3174, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2019. [https://www.washingtoninsti- tute.org/policy-analysis/campaign-between-wars-how-israel-rethought-its-strategy-counter-irans-malign], read 24.5.2023.
• 36. Ks. pohdintaa doktriinin nimityksestä: Lifshitz, Itamar & Erez Seri-Levy: Israel’s inter-war campaigns doctrine: From opportunism to principle. Journal of Strategic Studies, 46(2), 2023, pp. 295.
• 37. Siman-Tov, David & Ofer Fridman: A Rose by Any Other Name? Strategic Communications in Israel. De- fence Strategic Communications, 8(1), 2020, p. 30.
• 38. Lifshitz & Seri-Levy (2023), p. 295
• 39. Eisenkot & Siboni (2019).
• 40. Simon-Tov & Fridman (2020), p. 30. See also: Magen, Clila & Eytan Gilboa: Communicating from Within the Shadows: The Israel Security Agency and the Media. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 27(3), 2014.
• 41. Lifshitz & Seri-Levy (2023), p. 300.
• 42. Inbar, Efraim & Eitan Shamir: ‘Mowing the Grass’: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable. Conflict. Journal of Strategic Studies, 37(1), 2014, pp. 66–69.
• 43. Lifshitz & Seri-Levy (2023), p. 294.
• 44. See Iraq’s role between Israel and the United States and Iran: Boltuc, Silvia: Iraq’s Role in the New U.S./Israel – Iran Confrontation in the Middle East. The Defence Horizon Journal, 2023. [https://tdhj.org/blog/post/iraq-us-israel-iran-confrontation/], read 10.3.2024.
• 45. Uskowi, Nader. (2018), pp. 4–7 ja 77.
• 46. Lifshitz & Seri-Levy (2023), pp. 300–301.
• 47. Israel’s war-between-wars campaign in Syria most precise operation – report. The Jerusalem Post, 9.12.2021. [https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/israels-war-between-wars-campaign-most-precise-operation-in-syria- 688267], read 2.12.2023
• 48. Sapir, Teddy & Tal Beeri: Special Report: The MABAM (CBW) in Syria – 2022, Review and Analysis. Alma, 2023. [https://israel-alma.org/2023/02/14/special-report-the-mabam-cbw-in-syria-2022/], read 5.3.2024.
• 49. Ortal, Eran: The Fly on the Elephant’s Back: The Campaign between Wars in Israel’s Security Doctrine. Strategic Assessment, 24(2), 2021, p. 109.
• 50. Spyer, Jonathan: Israel’s Strategy in Syria Is Less Coherent Than it Seems. Policy Paper, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, 2020. [https://jiss.org.il/en/spyer-israels-strategy-in-syria-is-less-coherent-than-it- seems/], read 9.1.2024.
• 51. Same (2014), pp. 16–17.
• 52. Sobelman, Daniel: Learning to Deter: Deterrence Failure and Success in the Israel-Hezbollah Conflict, 2006–16. International Security, 41(3), 2016, pp. 176–177.
• 53. Adamsky (2017), pp. 182–183.
• 54. Same, p. 196.
• 55. Davis, Jessica, Tricia Bacon & Emily Hardin: Experts React: Assessing the Israeli Intelligence and Potential Policy Failure, Center for Strategic & International Studies, 25.10.2023. [https://www.csis.org/analysis/ex- perts-react-assessing-israeli-intelligence-and-potential-policy-failure], luettu 7.3.2024; Reuven, Nir: The Limits on Technological Superiority. BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,234. Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. 20.11.2023 [https://besacenter.org/the-limits-on-technological-superiority/], read 7.3.2024.
• 56. Beaumont, Peter: Israeli intelligence leak details extent of warnings over Hamas attack. The Guardian, 28.11.2023. [https://theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training- for-attack-reports-say], read 10.3.2024.
• 57. Porat Iddo: Political Polarisation and the Constitutional Crisis in Israel. Israel Law Review, 56(3), 2023, pp. 369–384.
• 58. Pilots said to tell Gallant they won’t fly sorties if Israel not democratic. The Times of Israel, 16.8.2023. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/pilots-said-to-tell-gallant-they-wont-fly-sorties-if-israel-not-democratic/], read 21.2.2024.
• 59. Sandler, Shmuel: Domestic Politics = International Politics: The US-Israel Relationship. BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,213, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. [https://besacenter.org/domestic-politics-international-politics-the-us-israel-relationship/], read 6.3.2024.
• 60. Roger, Paul: Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic – with a clear aim. The Guardian, 5.12.2023. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/israel-disproportionate-force- tactic-infrastructure-economy-civilian-casualties], read 6.3.2024.
• 61. Inbar, Efraim: An Israeli Perspective on the Gaza War and Its Broader Implications. Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. [https://jiss.org.il/en/inbar-an-israeli-perspective-on-the-gaza-war/], read 12.2.2024.
• 62. Gupta, Gaya: Who Are the Houthis and Why Is the U.S. Attacking Them? The New York Times, 11.1.2024. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/world/middleeast/houthi-yemen-red-sea-attacks.html], read 8.3.2024.
• 63. Cook, Steven A.: War Between Israel and Hezbollah Is Becoming Inevitable. Argument, Foreign Policy, 29.2.2024. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/29/israel-hezbollah-war-inevitable/], read 8.3.2024.