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After Oct. 7, Israel Rewrote the Rules of the Middle East
(RealClearWorld) Erfan Fard - The most consequential results of Oct. 7 may be the transformation of Israel's national-security doctrine and the gradual destruction of the regional architecture the Islamic Republic of Iran spent decades constructing around the Jewish state. Oct. 7 exposed the catastrophic cost of deterrence without destruction, containment without elimination, and intelligence superiority without the political willingness to act upon it. Israel can no longer afford to manage existential threats on its borders. It must dismantle the military and terrorist infrastructure that produces them. That shift is changing the balance of power across the Middle East. Israel learned on Oct. 7 that a terrorist organization cannot safely be treated as a containable security problem simply because it appears deterred today. An adversary permitted to retain its command structure, weapons, tunnels, financing and external patron may require only an opportunity to convert latent capability into strategic surprise. The emerging Israeli doctrine has consequently moved from periodic containment toward systematic degradation of the threat network. U.S.-Israeli cooperation in the 12-day and 40-day wars changed the equation by demonstrating that the architecture Tehran constructed outside its borders cannot necessarily protect the regime at its center. Oct. 7 was intended to demonstrate the power of the terrorist architecture surrounding Israel. Instead, it triggered the campaign that began dismantling that architecture.