Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo
WHILE policymakers speak the language of “security” and “defence,” history reveals a different pattern: Israel has consistently benefited not from regional calm, but from regional fracture. The fragmentation of neighbouring states — their internal division, institutional collapse, and political paralysis — has often served Israel far more effectively than decisive battlefield victories ever could.
This is not chaos in the abstract. It is engineered instability — the deliberate cultivation of disorder as a geopolitical method.
Political scientists describe this pattern as managed instability: weakening adversaries not by conquering them outright, but by hollowing them from within. Fragmented states cannot project power. Divided societies cannot mobilise collectively. Governments consumed by internal crises cannot confront external aggression.
For a small state with limited demographic depth and no capacity to sustain prolonged multi-front wars independently, this strategy is not optional — it is structural.
Israel’s military superiority is real, but conditional. It exists within the protective umbrella of American military aid, diplomatic shielding, and financial support. Without Washington’s consistent backing — from advanced weaponry to vetoes at the United Nations — Israel’s strategic environment would look radically different.
Its economy, increasingly strained by permanent mobilisation, political polarisation, and war-driven expenditures, cannot sustain endless direct confrontation without external subsidy. Its population size limits its ability to absorb large-scale attritional warfare.
This structural vulnerability has shaped Israeli strategic thinking for decades.
In the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion advanced what became known as the Periphery Doctrine — building alliances with non-Arab actors to counterbalance surrounding Arab states. But over time, the logic evolved beyond alliances. The weakening of centralised Arab states themselves became strategically useful.
The controversial 1982 “Yinon Plan” articulated a vision of regional fragmentation along sectarian and ethnic lines. its underlying premise has repeatedly manifested in regional outcomes: divided neighbours are less dangerous neighbours.
Iraq offers the clearest example.
The 2003 US invasion dismantled Iraqi state institutions, dissolved its army, and unleashed sectarian violence that permanently crippled Baghdad’s capacity as a regional power. Iraq, once a central military actor in the Arab World, became consumed by internal conflict. It no longer posed a strategic challenge to Israel.
Libya followed in 2011.
Western intervention destroyed the centralised Libyan state and replaced it with competing militias and rival governments. The country, once influential in Arab politics, was reduced to a fractured arena of proxy struggles. Its military and political relevance evaporated.
Syria’s descent into civil war further entrenched this pattern.
As the country fractured under the weight of war and foreign intervention, its sovereignty eroded. Israel conducted hundreds of airstrikes inside Syrian territory with near impunity. The gradual consolidation of Israeli control in parts of the occupied Golan Heights proceeded with little meaningful resistance from a state consumed by survival.
Lebanon, chronically fragile and politically paralysed, remains trapped in cycles of crisis that prevent the emergence of cohesive national power.
In each case, centralised states that once shaped regional balances were transformed into inward-looking, fractured entities.
Iran, however, did not comply with this script.
For over four decades, Tehran has endured relentless pressure: sweeping economic sanctions, covert sabotage, cyber warfare, assassinations of scientists, diplomatic isolation, and proxy confrontations. Yet the Iranian state did not fragment.
Its institutions remained intact. Its military structures preserved cohesion. Its political system — though contested internally — did not collapse into sectarian civil war. Even waves of domestic unrest did not translate into state disintegration.
This resilience profoundly unsettled Israeli strategic calculations.
In July 2025, Israel launched a 12-day military confrontation against Iran, targeting military and strategic sites in what was widely interpreted as an attempt to restore deterrence or provoke destabilisation. The expectation among some Israeli planners appeared clear: sustained external pressure might crack the system from within.
Instead, Iran retaliated with calibrated missile and drone strikes that demonstrated range, coordination, and strategic discipline. The Iranian state did not unravel. It consolidated.
The subsequent escalation — now openly involving American participation — has been publicly justified through the language of nuclear threat prevention. Yet Iran had signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, agreeing to strict nuclear limitations under international inspection. Even after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018, Tehran repeatedly signalled willingness to negotiate.
The nuclear issue, therefore, appears secondary to a broader strategic objective: weakening Iran sufficiently to reshape the regional order.
A cohesive Iran challenges Israeli dominance not merely militarily, but structurally. It is geographically vast, demographically large, and institutionally resilient. It anchors regional alliances and influences multiple fronts. Unlike Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011, it possesses ideological coherence and state continuity.
For Israel, this reality is intolerable.
The latest war appears to represent a final attempt to reproduce the fragmentation model — to stretch Iran militarily, isolate it diplomatically, and push it toward internal fracture.
But Tehran recognised the pattern.
Instead of collapsing inward, Iran expanded the strategic cost outward. Its responses have not been reckless, but calculated. They have demonstrated that escalation will not be asymmetrical in Israel’s favour. They have signalled that a prolonged confrontation will strain not only Tel Aviv but also Washington.
This leaves the United States facing a narrowing corridor of options: escalate into a deeply unpopular ground war with unpredictable consequences, or pursue genuine negotiations that acknowledge Iranian resilience.
For Israel, either outcome carries risk.
A prolonged war exposes economic fragility and societal exhaustion. A negotiated settlement acknowledges that the fragmentation strategy has limits.
The doctrine of engineered instability has reshaped much of the Middle East over the past two decades. But Iran’s endurance threatens to expose its fundamental flaw: chaos can weaken states, but it can also consolidate them.
If Tehran continues to absorb pressure without fracturing, the strategy that once dismembered Baghdad, Tripoli, and Damascus may finally reach its limits in Tehran.
History shows that Israel has emerged stronger from every major regional upheaval.
Iraq’s destruction in 2003 eliminated a powerful Arab military rival. Libya’s collapse removed another regional actor. Syria’s fragmentation neutralised yet another centralised state. In each case, Israel grew more entrenched, more militarily confident, and more deeply embedded in US foreign policy.
Instability elsewhere translated into Israeli advantage. But the war on Iran may not follow that pattern.
If Iran survives — and more importantly, consolidates — the strategic equation changes. A resilient Iran that absorbs pressure and emerges as an undeniable regional power would mark the first major failure of the fragmentation model. For the first time in decades, a targeted state would not disintegrate.
That outcome would erode a central pillar of Israeli strategy.
Equally important is the shifting terrain within the United States. Unconditional support for Israel is no longer a guaranteed political consensus. A prolonged and costly confrontation with Iran could accelerate public fatigue and deepen skepticism toward open-ended alignment with Israeli maximalism.
If Iran endures and the war fails to deliver decisive Israeli gains, Washington may begin recalculating the domestic cost of permanent confrontation.
Under those conditions, the war on Iran could become something unprecedented: not another chapter in regional destabilization, but the last major US–Israeli war designed to reorder the Middle East through fragmentation.
Not because Israel would abandon dominance, but because the price of pursuing it would become unsustainable.
A consolidated Iran, a region no longer easily fractured, and a war-weary American public would mark a structural shift in the Middle East. In that reality, chaos would no longer expand Israeli power — it would expose its limits. Some would argue that it already has.
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– Dr Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
– Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature, and specialises in audio-visual and journalism translation.
