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Source: https://besacenter.org/beyond-victory-how-should-israels-war-against-iran-be-assessed/
Assessing Israel's War Against Iran
(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Dr. Eado Hecht and Prof. Eitan Shamir - The true measure of success is not simply what was destroyed on the battlefield, but whether military action altered the adversary's capacity to pursue its overarching strategy. The proper measure of Israel's campaign is not whether it achieved a decisive victory over Iran. From Israel's perspective, the central question is whether its military campaigns have disrupted Iran's long-term strategy of threatening and ultimately seeking to eliminate the Jewish state. Viewed through that lens, the campaigns of June 2025 and March 2026 will ultimately be measured by whether Iran can reconstruct the strategic architecture on which its regional ambitions have long depended. Over more than two decades, Iran invested enormous political, financial, and military resources into the construction of an extensive regional military network surrounding Israel, what Israeli analysts termed the "Ring of Fire." Together with the enormous rocket and missile arsenals accumulated by Hizbullah and other proxies, Iran sought to create a volume and intensity of fire capable of overwhelming Israel's air and missile defense systems. At the same time, Iran's nuclear program was intended primarily to generate strategic immunity. Following the dramatic defeats of Hamas and then Hizbullah and the loss of its Syrian ally, according to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran responded by accelerating efforts to create a nuclear weapons arsenal and a significant expansion of its long-range missile production. The Israeli campaign of June 2025 was therefore a direct response to Iran's new efforts. The success or failure of these operations cannot be measured by whether they produced regime change or permanently eliminated every aspect of Iran's military capability. Those outcomes were neither essential nor necessarily achievable. The more realistic strategic objective was to deny Iran the integrated military architecture required to pursue its long-term strategy against Israel. Rebuilding the strategy it pursued over the previous two decades has become considerably more difficult and costly. Israel's security architects have always known that its political conflict with the nations that surround it will not end in its completely defeating them. Israel's victory lies in its survival and prosperity. The measure of Israel's strategic success in each round of fighting is whether the threat has increased or been reduced, at least temporarily. By that measure, the current war, unleashed by the Hamas offensive, has been successful so far. Israel's strategic situation has improved immensely since the day before the Hamas Oct. 7 offensive. Dr. Eado Hecht is a researcher at the BESA Center, where Prof. Eitan Shamir is director.