Surrounded but Unbroken: Israel Redraws the Region

Israel did not step into 2025 seeking a new grand strategy; it was forced into one by the Middle East’s accelerating collapse.

A cascade of overlapping crises — Hamas’s October 7th, 2023 massacre, Hezbollah’s northern escalation, Iran’s explosive drone and nuclear buildup, rising maritime tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the structural collapse of Lebanon and Syria — compelled Jerusalem to widen its strategic aperture.

And in doing so, Israel revived the framework that shaped its early statecraft: the Periphery Doctrine.

Forged in the 1950s by David Ben-Gurion and intelligence chief Isser Harel, the doctrine responded to a strategic reality in which the Arab League had effectively ring-fenced the young state with near-total hostility.

Nevertheless, Ben-Gurion understood the arithmetic of survival with brutal clarity: a tiny state of two million could never outgun the combined might of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.

The Jewish State responded by building outward — partnering with the Shah’s Iran, Turkey’s secular generals, Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, and the Barzani-led Kurdish movement in northern Iraq.

If the inner ring was hostile, the outer ring would counterbalance it.

And for decades, it did.

Interlinked intelligence pipelines — anchored by a CIA-funded hub in Israel —, early-warning networks, and far-flung alliances formed the silent scaffolding of Israel’s endurance.

But by the 1990s, that doctrine receded into memory.

Peace with Egypt and Jordan, the optimism of the Oslo era, and the prevailing belief in both Washington and Jerusalem that the region was drifting toward stability made peripheral alliances appear increasingly unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s ideological shift, Iran’s 1979 rupture, and Ethiopia’s cascading crises only reinforced the exhaustion of the old periphery.

Still, Israel clung to the belief that it could stabilize its own neighborhood.

By 2025, that illusion was shattered.

The region looked closer to the fractured Middle East of 1955 than the hopeful one imagined in 1995.

Take Syria: the country has been transformed into something wholly unrecognizable.

After Bashar al-Assad’s fall, the new strongman’s bloc—Ahmad al-Sharaa and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham machine—has shattered Syria even further, leaving its minorities with zero trust in the new order.

As the West pretends otherwise, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Kurds remember exactly what the regime-aligned militias unleashed the second they grabbed power: Christians chased out of their towns and churches set on fire, Alawite districts pounded and abandoned under fire, and Druze communities terrorized in sectarian attacks that the new rulers now brazenly pretend never happened.

Meanwhile, Lebanon has become functionally bankrupt and is effectively governed by Hezbollah — a terrorist army with more firepower than several national militaries.

That collapse feeds directly into the next reality: Hezbollah still fields an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets (even after Israel’s 2023–2024 offensive), and its financial networks remain largely untouched, sustained by drug trafficking across the Lebanon–Syria border and deep criminal ties in the “Triple Frontier” of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

Meanwhile, Turkey continues to zigzag between NATO collaboration and aggressive regional revisionism, never abandoning its neo-Ottoman strategic aspirations.

That volatility is mirrored — and amplified — by Iran, which now churns out more than 4,000 combat drones a year, hoards over 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, and leans on a $25-billion Russian bailout to keep its nuclear engine roaring.

Ergo, the Middle East’s geopolitical architecture did not stabilize; it collapsed into fragmentation.

Faced with this vacuum, Israel returned to the instinct that defined its early statecraft: when the center collapses, work from the edges.

Arising from this strategic unraveling, the Eastern Mediterranean stands as the clearest example of how Israel is recalibrating its regional posture. What was once a peripheral theatre has become the laboratory for doing things differently.

Israel’s partnerships with Greece and Cyprus — once largely symbolic — have evolved into a genuine strategic triad. Joint naval patrols now monitor Iranian trafficking lanes moving out of Syria. Israeli and Hellenic pilots conduct advanced air exercises that mirror real combat conditions. Meanwhile, Cypriot facilities quietly host Israeli UAV and SIGINT platforms that track Russian and Iranian movements around Latakia and Tartus.

This military cooperation feeds directly into the economic dimension: Israel is positioning itself to channel its offshore natural gas toward Europe through Cyprus and Greece — a corridor that could deliver up to 10 billion cubic metres annually once the EastMed undersea linkage via Cyprus and Crete to mainland Greece is completed.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, energy, intelligence, and security now intertwine into a single strategic architecture.

Thereby, the region that once served as Israel’s cultural periphery has shifted into a functional early-warning belt — the outer ring absorbing the shock of a collapsing Middle East.

This becomes clearest to the north, where Azerbaijan has become indispensable.

After consolidating its borders in 2023, Baku offered Israel something it had lacked since 1979: a northern intelligence aperture into Iran’s most vulnerable flank. Israeli technology helped Azerbaijan build a world-class drone-warfare arsenal, but Azeri geography is the real prize — direct access to a sensitive Iranian frontier. So when Tehran rails about “Zionist bases” near Tabriz, it is not posturing; it is confessing geostrategic fear.

Parallel to this, the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria have re-emerged as critical nodes. Though lacking sovereignty, Kurdish groups have become dependable trackers of Iranian proxy movements, Quds Force logistics, and UAV transfers along the Deir ez-Zor corridor.

In a Middle East where states decay faster than alliances, reliable non-state actors matter more than flags.

The same logic applies to Israel’s southward pivot. Emerging ties with Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda now form a maritime shield in the Red Sea basin.

With Houthi missile ranges pushing deeper into the southern Red Sea and Iran probing new naval deployments, East African states help stabilize the Bab al-Mandab choke point — the passageway through which nearly a fifth of Israel’s global trade flows.

Ironically, Ethiopia played this role in the 1960s; in 2025, the mission is updated and distributed across the Horn of Africa.

Nevertheless, the most profound shift comes from the Gulf bloc, where states that once kept Israel at arm’s length now lean unmistakably toward its security camp.

Undeniably, the Abraham Accords strengthened this process, but the post-2025 environment has driven it deeper.

Intelligence fusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain now resembles a regional early-warning grid. Radar integration tracks Iranian UAV flights. Cyber cooperation monitors networks in Ahvaz and Bandar Abbas. Maritime coordination watches the IRGC naval movement in the Strait of Hormuz.

What once would have been diplomatic fantasy is now a quiet operational reality.

This is the Periphery Doctrine turned on its head.

Instead of Israel fully relying on non-Arab actors to counter Arab hostility, it now relies on Arab states to counter Iranian expansion.

In this moment of history, critics claim these partnerships rest on unstable foundations.

They cite Turkey’s political evolution after 2009, Ethiopia’s civil conflict, or Iran’s 1979 revolution as evidence that peripheral alliances eventually collapse. But, without a doubt, this objection misreads the modern version of the doctrine.

The 2025 Periphery Doctrine is not a grand alliance anchored in ideology. It is a network — flexible, modular, and built to function even when individual components shift.

When one partner pulls back, another fills the vacuum. Hence Kazakhstan’s entry into the orbit, even as Sudan—sadly—slides out of it.

The logic is pragmatic, not sentimental.

Inside Israel’s security establishment, this shift reflects a deeper realization.

The wars of 2023–2025 shattered any illusion that the Levant and the region in general could be stabilized through deterrence alone.

Hezbollah retained most of its firepower, Iran’s drone production soared, Lebanon’s economy collapsed by more than 80% since 2018, and Syria effectively ceased to function as a coherent state. The region that once formed Israel’s immediate strategic arena has become a patchwork of militias, shattered infrastructure, and political vacuums. You cannot stabilize what no longer exists.

However, I contend that the Periphery Doctrine is back because it broadens Israel’s strategic horizon, spreads risk, and connects Jerusalem to state and non-state actors operating beyond the region’s collapsing core. Indisputably, it works.

On top of that, it also provides the most effective pathway for expanding the Abraham Accords.

From radar integration with Saudi Arabia and Oman to Red Sea coordination with Egypt and East Africa, from energy ties with Greece and Cyprus to intelligence channels stretching into the Caucasus and broader Eurasia, Israel is shaping a regional architecture where normalization is not the starting point but the inevitable conclusion of realities already taking root.

The State of Israel is not merely adapting to a changing Middle East. It is reconstructing the map around the edges of a region whose center no longer holds.

And in doing so, it has resurrected a doctrine rooted in Israel’s founding years—not out of sentiment, but out of the same hard strategic instinct its founders embraced: survive by imagining what others cannot.

Call it whatever you like, dismiss it if you must — but the Periphery Doctrine has returned, reminding the region that even as states crumble and terrorist groups surge, Jerusalem retains the ability to bend geography to its strategic interests and Jewish national imperatives.