The October 7 Hamas assault on Israel did not merely mark another round of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; rather, it triggered a deeper and more structural transformation in the security landscape of the Middle East. While the attack exposed tactical vulnerabilities within Israel’s internal security nodes, it simultaneously accelerated the erosion of Iran’s long-standing regional strategy and pushed both Tehran and Tel Aviv into recalibrating their entire doctrines of deterrence and regional power projection. This article examines how Israel has responded to this evolving environment by transitioning toward a highly sophisticated network-centric security architecture, while Iran has increasingly shifted from an offensive forward-defense posture to a defensive homeland-centric strategy. The analysis further explores the wider regional balance of power and the recalibration of key actors, including Turkey, the Gulf Arab states, and the US.
For over two decades, Iran’s regional deterrence model was built on the concept of forward defense: expanding its strategic depth by constructing a multi-layered network of non-state actors, proxy forces, and political alliances across the Middle East. This network — commonly referred to as the “Resistance Axis”—included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen. The objective was clear: to push any military confrontation with Israel and the US as far from Iranian territory as possible.
However, following October 7, it has become evident that the operational functionality and strategic coherence of this network are increasingly degraded. Hamas, after suffering heavy Israeli military retaliation in Gaza, has seen much of its infrastructure dismantled. Hezbollah faces severe domestic political and economic constraints in Lebanon and remains hesitant to fully engage in an all-out conflict. Syria has largely become an open theater for regular Israeli strikes on IRGC positions and logistical corridors, while Iraqi militias are under sustained pressure from both US and Israeli precision operations. Even the Houthis, while capable of maritime disruption in the Red Sea, operate with a degree of autonomy that limits their integration into Iran’s broader command structure.
Simultaneously, Israel has achieved significant intelligence penetration across these networks, weakening Iran’s ability to maintain command and control across its dispersed assets. Mossad’s ability to disrupt IRGC logistics, intercept weapons transfers, and conduct high-value targeted killings has systematically eroded the effectiveness of the Resistance Axis. Faced with this multi-dimensional degradation, Iran has been forced into a strategic recalibration. The Islamic Republic is now increasingly shifting its security focus inward, prioritizing the fortification of homeland defense capabilities. This transition includes the dispersal of key missile and nuclear infrastructure, the construction of deeply layered air defense systems, the development of hardened command and control bunkers, and the enhancement of domestic cyber-defense capacities. Iran’s strategic depth has contracted from an expansive external buffer to a domestic, multi-layered defensive shell designed to absorb and survive precision strikes on its soil.
While Iran is being pushed inward, Israel has simultaneously advanced into a completely new strategic phase: the proactive engineering of regional security networks. Moving beyond traditional reactive defense, Israel is now actively reshaping the regional security order through a sophisticated model based on security nodes control. This approach aims not only to neutralize immediate threats but to fundamentally control the operational environment across the Middle East.
At the core of Israel’s network-centric architecture lie multiple interlocking security pillars. Through Mossad’s unmatched penetration into Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi systems, Israel is able to target leadership, logistics chains, and strategic assets before they mature into existential threats. Its multi-layered air defense systems, such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 3, provide layered interception capabilities capable of dealing with diverse threats ranging from short-range rockets to advanced ballistic missiles. Technologically, Israel leads the region in offensive drone technology, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, and the integration of artificial intelligence into real-time battlefield decision-making. In security diplomacy, Israel has successfully integrated itself into the security frameworks of key Arab states, including the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and increasingly, Saudi Arabia. These partnerships extend beyond diplomacy into operational intelligence sharing, joint training, and defense procurement. In energy geopolitics, by securing its position in the Eastern Mediterranean energy network, Israel is developing an energy corridor directly linking the region to European markets, further expanding its strategic leverage. This comprehensive architecture allows Israel not only to defend itself more effectively but to proactively dismantle adversarial networks while simultaneously building durable regional security partnerships under its leadership.
Iran’s retreat from regional offensive capabilities toward homeland defense marks the most significant transformation in Tehran’s national security strategy since the Iran-Iraq War. No longer capable of maintaining reliable external deterrence through proxies, Iran is instead investing in survivability through strategic dispersal, deeply buried infrastructure, air defense systems, and cyber capabilities. Yet, this defensive posture leaves Iran increasingly vulnerable to Israel’s long-range precision capabilities and intelligence penetration.
Turkey remains one of the few actors in the region pursuing an independent power trajectory. Ankara has consolidated its strategic influence in northern Syria, Iraq, the Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. In parallel, Turkey engages in its own form of security diplomacy across the Arab world, using Islamist ideological currents as leverage. From Israel’s perspective, Turkey represents a long-term geopolitical and ideological competitor whose growing presence in energy corridors, Arab political spaces, and regional diplomacy poses structural challenges to Israel’s emerging security order.
The UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have transitioned from their historical dependency on US security guarantees to becoming active regional security players aligned with Israel. Through acquisitions of Israeli air defense systems, cyber technologies, and intelligence cooperation, the Gulf monarchies are integrating themselves into Israel’s broader security web. Saudi Arabia’s anticipated normalization of relations with Israel would formalize this evolving architecture, creating a regional axis that balances Iran and moderates Turkey’s potential rise.
Under a second Trump administration, the US is poised to restore its maximum pressure campaign against Iran while further reducing its direct military engagement in the region. Instead, Washington would increasingly delegate regional operational management to the emerging Tel Aviv-Riyadh-Abu Dhabi axis, while remaining a critical supplier of logistics, advanced weaponry, and strategic intelligence. This posture allows the US to retain overarching influence while minimizing its direct exposure to regional conflicts.
Beyond tactical security concerns, Israel’s drive toward regional hegemony is deeply rooted in the broader geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East’s evolving architecture. Multiple structural shifts converge to make this moment strategically unique for Israel’s long-term aspirations.
The collapse of traditional military threats has created new opportunities. With the defeat of classical Arab coalitions, the collapse of Syria, Iraq’s fragmentation, and Egypt’s strategic realignment, Israel’s near-front conventional military challenges have largely dissolved. In their place, Israel faces asymmetric, hybrid, and networked threats — primarily emanating from Iran’s proxy structure. These threats require not just reactive defense but proactive control of the regional security ecosystem itself.
The gradual retrenchment of the US from direct military entanglements in the Middle East has created a widening strategic vacuum. With Washington delegating more operational control to regional actors, Israel perceives a rare historical opportunity to step forward as the region’s primary security manager — reducing its own dependency while offering the US an indispensable partner capable of ensuring regional stability without large-scale American deployments.
As Iran increasingly shifts to homeland defense and its external networks degrade under Israeli precision operations, Israel sees an opportunity to neutralize Tehran’s regional influence structure at a strategic level. A weakened Iran reduces the risk of future multi-front wars and strengthens Israel’s ability to shape security arrangements that prevent the reconstitution of an alternative axis.
The Abraham Accords, coupled with deepening security coordination with Gulf states — particularly Saudi Arabia — have allowed Israel to develop new geopolitical depth. Through integrated air defense, intelligence sharing, joint technological cooperation, and energy projects, Israel is forging an unprecedented security architecture in which it becomes the hub of regional security cooperation, replacing previous alignments centered around great powers.
Israel’s dominance in advanced military technology—cyber capabilities, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), missile defense systems, AI-enabled battlefield management, and precision strike capabilities—positions it as a security provider rather than just a security consumer. This technological supremacy allows Israel to project influence without conventional force projection, giving it hegemonic leverage across both the military and diplomatic dimensions of the region.
Given its geographic smallness, demographic fragility, and absence of strategic depth, Israel’s pursuit of hegemonic control is ultimately a survival strategy. By shaping the security architecture of the region, neutralizing its adversaries’ operational capacity, and ensuring alignment among neighboring regimes, Israel seeks to engineer a long-term balance that insulates it from existential —preserving both internal stability and regional dominance.
Turkey’s growing assertiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Arab world poses a potential long-term geopolitical competitor to Israel’s hegemonic vision. Through proactive regional management, Israel seeks to pre-emptively anchor a durable coalition system that limits Ankara’s capacity to disrupt Israel’s emerging regional leadership role.
The emerging security order of the Middle East can thus be defined by clear structural shifts. Iran is retreating into homeland-centric defense, or as we can call it backward defense, fortifying internal deterrence capacities while losing effective control over its former external security buffers. Israel is becoming the principal architect of regional security, operating a transnational network of intelligence, technology, military partnerships, and energy diplomacy. The Gulf Arab states are evolving into active regional security players, working as functional partners within Israel’s expanding security architecture. Turkey maintains a semi-autonomous balancing role, exploiting regional rivalries while pursuing its own geopolitical ambitions. The US steps back from frontline operational dominance while retaining overarching strategic oversight through indirect management.
The nature of the Israeli-Iranian conflict has undergone a profound structural shift since October 7. No longer defined by proxy warfare alone, the conflict has evolved into a battle over security networks and operational nodes. Iran, having lost much of its regional operational depth, has shifted to layered domestic defense, while Israel actively dismantles Iran’s external networks and simultaneously consolidates its role as the central security manager of the Middle East. Through its mastery of intelligence, technology, energy diplomacy, and military innovation, Israel is no longer merely defending its borders but is systematically engineering an entirely new regional order in which it functions as the dominant security node — controlling the operational tempo, defining the rules of engagement, and managing the balance of power across multiple fronts.
Bardia Farahmand is an independent Middle East analyst based in Prague.
