The geopolitical map of the Middle East was remade in early 2026 when what had for decades been a shadow war erupted into open, coordinated hostilities on February 28. What began as joint strikes by Israel and the United States, called Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Operation Epic Fury by the United States, directly struck Iranian leadership and critical infrastructure. Those strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior commanders of the IRGC, and destroyed nuclear and missile facilities. A conflict that had previously run largely by proxy suddenly expanded into simultaneous, synchronized fronts across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran itself.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed this campaign as the “War of Redemption,” signifying a doctrinal shift. Israel moved away from a posture of containment and incremental battlefield advantages toward a strategy of systematic neutralization, with decisive strikes against leadership, command nodes, and infrastructure intended not merely to survive but to dismantle the Iran-led axis of allied militias and to secure Israel’s preeminence in the region. Evaluating whether Israel can sustain such dominance requires tracing the deeper historical pattern in which existential threats have repeatedly catalyzed broader strategic depth.

From its founding conflicts, Israel has demonstrated a capacity to convert vulnerability into enduring advantage. In 1948, the new state repulsed invading Arab armies and established internationally recognized armistice lines even as the Palestinian displacement known as the Nakba reshaped the political map. The preemptive victories of 1967 against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan produced territorial buffers, including the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, that fundamentally altered the military balance and created an occupation framework that would endure.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War exposed serious intelligence and readiness flaws, but swift counteroffensives restored defensive lines, which opened the path to the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, and accelerated Israel’s advances in airpower, integrated intelligence, and technological self-reliance. Each episode deepened deterrence, consolidated buffer zones, and produced diplomatic realignments that elevated Israel’s regional position.

The current operations apply a similar logic across seven interconnected theaters, but on a far larger scale and with different emphases. Rather than temporary truces or isolated punitive raids, the campaign emphasizes leadership decapitation and infrastructure degradation enabled by precision munitions and unusually broad operational partnerships. That scope and coordination exceed prior mobilizations and reflect a deliberate effort to preempt coordinated retaliation by degrading the adversary’s capacity to wage synchronized multi-front warfare.

Diplomacy laid the foundations that made sustained operations possible. The Abraham Accords of 2020 normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, building economic and security ties that navigated core disputes and demonstrated Israel’s ability to cultivate selective partnerships despite diplomatic friction elsewhere.

This strategic approach set the stage for further initiatives, including Israel’s formal recognition of Somaliland in December 2025. This recognition, coupled with potential access near Berbera on the Red Sea, created new intelligence and logistical opportunities that extend beyond Israel’s conventional alliances, effectively opening a new axis countering the Houthis.

These alignments form a deliberate network for threat management, enhancing maritime security, establishing alternative supply lines, and providing operational depth that transforms distance into practical proximity. The overarching strategy reflects a well-calibrated, multi-year architecture aimed at obstructing a coordinated Iranian network across multiple theaters.

In Gaza, operations that began in late 2023 have evolved into a comprehensive program of demilitarization and the establishment of permanent buffer zones in the south. This includes exhaustive mapping of tunnels and command nodes, isolating the territory to such an extent that resupply from external sponsors has become logistically unsustainable. Together, these efforts signify a cohesive and methodical response to increasingly complex security challenges in the region.

In the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), stepped-up security operations were paired with accelerated settlement approvals and February 2026 land registrations under state designation, securing internal corridors, denying maneuver space to Iranian-linked cells, and creating defensible depth that reduced the need to shift northern force standing against northern threats like the Hezbollah and Syria .

Lebanon’s response was the most pre-calibrated: years of intelligence on Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure enabled planning rapid advances towards south of the Litani River by March 2026, with targeted strikes severing command chains and special operations exploiting known supply routes to dismantle the northern axis before it could synchronize fully with other theaters.

Peripheral fronts were managed with equal opportunism. The power vacuum in post-Assad Syria allowed the immediate creation of southwestern buffer zones and strikes on remaining Iranian assets, while quiet integration of Kurdish partners in northeastern Syria and in Iran’s Kermanshah region, an estimated 8,000–10,000 fighters, constrained adversary logistics and drew Tehran’s attention inward. Iraqi militias met calibrated standoff responses that limited their ability to force Israeli redeployment away from primary theaters.

Yemen became a model of peripheral positioning: anticipated Houthi attempts to disrupt Red Sea shipping could be countered through the Somaliland foothold at Berbera, enabling naval interdiction and persistent pressure on supply lines without overextending core forces. When Iran launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2000 drones in the opening fortnight, linking Hezbollah barrages.  These strategies transformed what could have been an overwhelming situation into a series of targeted efforts that gradually diminished the adversary’s capabilities.

Those operational advantages were institutionalized by the Hexagon Alliance, announced by Netanyahu on February 22, 2026, a framework that placed Israel at the technological and security core while drawing on the demographic and manufacturing heft of India, highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s February 26 visit, Mediterranean energy and corridors provided by Greece and Cyprus, the UAE’s economic channels built through the Abraham Accords and Somaliland’s Red Sea oversight.

The alliance’s architecture turned diplomatic diversification into a sustainment backbone: Indian and Cypriot links supported actions against Hezbollah and Syria, UAE networks provided economic bypasses and logistics, and A potential military presence in Somaliland could effectively mitigate threats posed by the Houthis, who collaborate with Al-Shabaab, an insurgent group in Somalia. This partnership complicates the regional security landscape, and bolstering military capabilities in Somaliland may provide a strategic counterbalance to these intertwined threats. Thus, rather than an ad-hoc coalition, the Hexagon converted political plurality into operational resilience that prevented the collapse of any single front from toppling the entire strategy.

Building on this strategic realignment, Netanyahu’s March addresses framed the ongoing “War of Redemption” not merely as a conflict, but as a project of regional redesign. His speeches fused historical narratives with contemporary strategy, explicitly linking present military operations to the territorial consolidations of 1967. By portraying newly established buffer zones as enduring fixtures, he signaled a doctrinal evolution from a posture of existential defense to one of active regional positioning. This narrative combines the immediate goals of defensive modernization with the long-term aim of economic resilience, casting Israel’s actions as a forward-looking campaign for influence that echoes past strategic adaptations while significantly raising the level of ambition.

The success of this ambitious vision, however, hinges on several critical factors. The long-term outcome depends on whether the buffer zones can be made durable, Iranian capabilities remain degraded, and the cohesion of the Hexagon Alliance holds. If these conditions are met, the trajectory of Israel’s strategic posture from survival in 1948 to strategic depth in 1967 could culminate in a fundamentally altered regional order. In such a scenario, no near-term rival could plausibly match Israel’s reach, granting it effective control over key maritime arteries from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean, sustained technological superiority, and a definitive leadership role within a coalition of moderate states.

By Bezawit Eshetu, Researcher, Horn Review