In recent weeks, voices in Israel have increasingly warned of a widening gap between the official narrative that speaks of 'great achievements' and 'achieved victory,' and a more complex battlefield reality that reveals the continued ability of adversaries to withstand and reorganize, imposing ongoing costs on the Israeli home front.
This scrutiny is not limited to direct military performance but extends to the core of the intelligence and political systems upon which Israel bases its war decisions and assessments. From Iran to Lebanon, and previously in Gaza, the same pattern recurs: optimistic assessments regarding deterrence, exaggeration in measuring the damage inflicted on the adversary, and the assumption that severe strikes will quickly lead to the collapse of hostile will, regime change, or the imposition of terms favorable to Israel.
Details of the Situation
However, the facts, time and again, move in a different direction, revealing that what is presented to the public as victory is not necessarily more than a temporary political and media image, which quickly erodes under the pressure of the battlefield. Veteran writer Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth criticized the 'great victory' rhetoric in an article published on April 6, arguing that the facts themselves do not support it. The downing of aircraft, the continued ability of the adversary to repair its systems, and the response with missiles and drones are all indicators that contradict political celebrations.
Barnea believes that the problem lies not only in military performance but also in the nature of political leadership that substitutes objective assessment with a mobilizing discourse directed at the public. War has become no longer a field for rational risk management but a platform for producing illusions: promises of regime change, insinuations of imminent resolution, and celebrations of results that reality contradicts.
Context and Background
Barnea's observation gains greater significance when linked to a deeper issue: the failure of intelligence and politics to predict the collapse or resilience of regimes. Israel, like others, misjudged the fate of the Syrian regime and misread its own ability to politically overcome the shock of October 7. The sharp and clear conclusion is that there is no fixed equation stating that severe strikes topple regimes, nor that the elimination of leaders automatically leads to the disintegration of hostile structures. Organizations and regimes deeply rooted socially and ideologically can absorb blows and produce alternative leadership, and may even become more radical.
From a more specialized intelligence perspective, national security expert Shira Barabibai Shaham, in an article published in Yedioth Ahronoth, addresses Barnea's conclusion, noting that the failure is not an isolated incident but a recurring pattern: an exaggeration in estimating Israeli deterrence and an overestimation of the damage inflicted on the enemy after each round of fighting. From this perspective, the surprises that have emerged in Hezbollah's behavior, as well as in the resilience of the Iranian regime, are not understood as exceptions but rather as a direct result of a systematic flaw in assessment.
Consequences and Impact
According to Shaham, Israeli agencies do not only misjudge the adversary's capabilities but also misunderstand its intentions, misestimate the time needed to restore its capabilities, and misjudge the impact of strikes on its political and military decisions. Each round of fighting is marketed internally as an achievement in deterrence, but the next round reveals that the deterrence was weaker than claimed and that the enemy has quickly regained a significant portion of its capabilities.
This is what happened before October 7, 2023, with Hamas, what is repeating with Hezbollah after the 2024 war, and what is also evident in the war against Iran. What unites these cases is the tendency to read the adversary from the perspective of Israeli desire rather than from its internal logic, making Israeli deterrence less effective than assumed.
Impact on the Arab Region
The repercussions of these failures extend to the internal political and strategic sphere. When war decisions are based on optimistic assumptions that later prove inaccurate, Israeli leadership finds itself compelled to bridge the gap by escalating rhetoric or postponing political resolution. The talk of 'decisive strikes' becomes a tool for managing public opinion, accumulating a dangerous gap between public expectations and what the political establishment can actually achieve.
Ultimately, the question that arises in Israel is not only: why has complete victory not been achieved? But also: why does the political and security establishment insist on defining victory in a way that the battlefield does not validate?