Israel is succeeding but will it overreach?

Washington Post

3 hours ago

The Middle East is being reshaped by a fundamental shift in the balance of power: the rise of Israel. Consider the changed landscape. In the 1990s, Israel was closer to a run-of the-mill developing country. Today, its per capita gross domestic product rivals many in Europe and is the highest in the region, except for Qatar (which has a lot of oil and gas and few people). In 1990, Israel's GDP per capita was slightly higher than Iran's; today, it is nearly 15 times Iran's. The country now operates at the frontiers of technology, which is why the Gulf states have been so eager to develop ties with it. And in the last two years, Israel's military and intelligence forces have fought and bested Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Syria and Iran. Its multi-tiered air defenses have stopped the vast majority of incoming missiles and drones.
Put this all together, and you have a country that has become the region's superpower. Even so, Israeli officials were cautious about acting forcefully against some of the threats they faced. As Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations points out, for the last two decades, the conventional wisdom in the United States and in Israel was that with adversaries such as Hezbollah and Iran — which had thousands of rockets and missiles that they could rain down on Israel — deterrence was the best that Israel could achieve. Every time it suffered a blow, Israel hit back, but it all seemed calculated to avoid escalation.
The attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, changed the Israeli mindset, much as 9/11 did for the United States. The country's leaders were far more willing to take risks and confront adversaries preemptively, even preventively. Even so, it launched its exploding pager operation last September only because the plans were in danger of being exposed. Only then did the rest of Israel's attack follow, and it succeeded beyond all expectations, utterly devastating Hezbollah's leadership and its rocket infrastructure. This was the turning point. Hezbollah, the foe on Israel's borders it feared the most, turned out to be a paper tiger. In 2024, Israel attacked and destroyed many of Iran's air defenses. Neither of Israel's attacks that year produced anything near the kind of response that it had feared. Instead, the effect of these blows was to trigger the fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who had been propped up by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.
And so, in 2025, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to act on the threat that he had been obsessed with for more than 30 years — and to act aggressively. He launched an air attack against Iran and, so far, it has destroyed much of Iran's military leadership and infrastructure. While it has not destroyed the Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities, both of which are at least partially buried deep below ground, it has destroyed much of the rest of Iran's nuclear operations.
President Donald Trump, who had been eager to negotiate a deal with Iran, counseled Netanyahu not to attack (by Trump's own admission), and, when Israel did anyway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio put out a statement distancing the United States from the operation. Since then, watching Israel's success, Trump has had FOMO — fear of missing out — and embraced the operation, even signaling that he might join in and use America's massive firepower to blast Fordow.
But ultimately, putting an end to Iran's nuclear program cannot be done with just bombs, even bunker-busting ones. Iran is a country of 90 million, with a nuclear program that is now almost 70 years old, started under the shah. Thousands of scientists and technicians have worked on it. And nuclear technology is not cutting-edge technology; it was developed more than 80 years ago, in the era of shortwave radio and television tubes. The best way to put it under wraps is to make Iran agree to do so and verify that through intrusive inspections.
One of the dangers of military success is that it often expands the victor's ambitions. After a stunning initial success in the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur decided he would try to unify the two Koreas and moved into the North, triggering a massive Chinese response that bogged down American forces for years. After Afghanistan fell in a matter of weeks in 2001, the Bush administration was emboldened to take the War on Terror to Iraq. In 1982, Israel's early successes in Lebanon led it to try to 'solve the problem' once and for all. What followed was an 18-year unsuccessful occupation of southern Lebanon.
Israel's victories have been extraordinary so far, but they are making the country's leaders expand their ambitions — with some openly speaking about regime change and assassinating Iran's supreme leader. They are also emboldening Trump, who wants to get in on the glory. But it is at moments such as this that wise leaders avoid hubris and overreach and instead set clear, achievable goals that can transform military victories into lasting political success.