“The laws of physics are decrees of fate.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1925)
Among military thinkers, it is axiomatic that nuclear weapons are needed to deter nuclear aggression and prevent nuclear war. There is, however, comparatively little evidence that such weapons can reliably deter conventional aggressions or control intra-war escalation.[i] With these points in mind, this article will examine Israel’s changing strategic posture[ii] (after Operation Roaring Lion) with reference to the following key question: Could Israeli nuclear weapons serve to reliably deter or manage conventional attacks? The answer will depend on the expected forms and levels of non-nuclear conflict.
Pertinent forms of military strategy
What do these issues signify in operational terms? Presumptively, at least, Israel’s deterrence posture identifies two distinct modes of strategic dissuasion: conventional and nuclear. Concerning the continuously opaque nature of this posture (i.e., “deliberate nuclear ambiguity”), Israel’s nuclear deterrence would not come into play until all forms of conventional deterrence had already been exhausted. Precisely how many non-nuclear deterrence options would first need to fail is logically unanswerable.
Before suffering substantial setbacks from American and Israeli attack operations (“Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion”), Iran had regarded Israel as a “one bomb state,” i.e., a country that could be “removed” with just a single nuclear weapon. Though this view may have been confirmable by the “laws of physics,” Israel’s national survival has never been determined solely by enemy capabilities. It was and still is about presumed enemy willingness to take existential risks.
Such willingness must depend (assuming rational enemies) on the credibility of Israel’s deterrence posture. As for non-rational state enemies, greater attention and assets should be allocated to conspicuously-graduated preemption options. Regarding Israel’s survival as a state, such allocations are of primary importance. In essence, what is needed in Jerusalem is a comprehensive framework for competitive risk-taking that offers “seamless” deterrence options.
When a country smaller than America’s Lake Michigan faces interpenetrating threats from both state and sub-state adversaries, it requires a secure and flexible deterrent, one that could escalate in measured increments from advanced conventional capabilities to theatre and strategic nuclear forces. Two propositions follow. First, effective conventional deterrence can reduce the likelihood that Israel would ever need to invoke nuclear threats. Second, a credible nuclear deterrent can strengthen the persuasiveness of conventional deterrence.
Two related questions arise: Under what circumstances could Israel become involved in a nuclear conflict, and what role might nuclear deterrence play in preventing such an outcome?
To purposefully answer these many-sided questions, Israeli analysts will need to integrate the critical military aspects of their investigations with authoritative legal ones.
What is at stake for Israel?
For the moment, such concerns could seem extraneous, gratuitous and without empirical foundation. Israel, after all, remains the only nuclear weapons state in the region. Nonetheless, certain malleable order-of-battle considerations could change unexpectedly, perhaps even from moment to moment. This “fluidity” remains most obvious in regard to diminishing threats from Iran and potentially expanding threats from Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan or North Korea.[iii]
Sometimes in strategic matters, truth must emerge through paradox. Even without an already-nuclear adversary in the region,[iv] Israel could find itself having to rely on calibrated nuclear deterrence against biological and/or conventional threats.[v] Acknowledging such potentially existential forms of reliance, the prospect of nuclear weapons use ought never to be ruled out per se.[vi]
In all foreseeable cases, Israel's nuclear doctrine and strategy should remain oriented to deterrence, not nuclear war-fighting.
In all foreseeable cases, Israel’s nuclear doctrine and strategy should remain oriented to deterrence, not nuclear war-fighting. Presumably, with such an understanding in mind, Jerusalem has already taken steps to reject tactical or “battlefield” nuclear weapons[vii] and disavow any correlative plans for counter-force targeting.
For Israel, nuclear weapons could make sense only for deterrence ex ante; not revenge ex post.[viii] In “eleventh-hour” circumstances, however, this position could mean crossing the nuclear threshold against a dangerous and determined non-nuclear adversary. Any such intent ought to be made known to pertinent enemies before Jerusalem would need to actualize any contemplated nuclear threat.
There are also associated legal issues. Contrary to some conventional wisdom, nuclear deterrence and certain forms of anticipatory self-defence[ix] need not stand in opposition to international law.[xviii] Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of law in preventing nuclear conflict will depend in significant measure on the success of regional deterrence strategies.
Scenarios
Realistic threat scenarios underscore Israel’s continuing need for a coherent nuclear doctrine grounded in systemic thought.[xix] Among many other things, this core requirement would postulate a counter-value targeted nuclear retaliatory force that is secure against enemy first strikes and capable of penetrating active defences. To best meet such imperative security expectations, the IDF would be well-advised to continue with its evident sea-basing (submarines) of nuclear deterrent force. Optimally, such steps would become part of a broader policy shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.”[x]
To satisfy the equally important and complex requirements of “penetration-capability,” Tel-Aviv will have to stay visibly ahead of enemy air-defense refinements. Such recommendations, duly followed, could convincingly enhance not only Israel’s national security, but also the more general prospects for nuclear war avoidance in the Middle East.
Four basic scenarios could lead Israel into a nuclear conflict: nuclear retaliation, nuclear counter-retaliation, nuclear pre-emption, and nuclear warfighting.
In Israel’s strategic nuclear planning, would-be state aggressors, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, should be systematically encouraged to believe that Jerusalem maintains the willingness to launch measured nuclear forces in retaliation and that these nuclear forces are sufficiently invulnerable to any-contemplated first-strike attacks. Additionally, these enemies should be made to expect that Israel’s designated nuclear forces could reliably penetrate all their ballistic-missile and air defences.
Though counter-intuitive, Israel and parts of the wider region would benefit from a limited shift from deliberate ambiguity toward selective disclosure. Properly calibrated disclosure could strengthen deterrence without requiring full transparency regarding Israeli capabilities.
Selectively released Israeli nuclear information could support the perceived utility and security of Israel’s nuclear retaliatory forces. Once disclosed, it should centre purposefully upon the targeting, hardening, dispersion, multiplication, basing, and yield of national ordnance. Under certain easily-imagined conditions, the credibility of Israeli nuclear deterrence could vary inversely with the perceived destructiveness of its relevant weapons.
Unsurprisingly, there will be many interrelated policy concerns, all with some measure or other of prospective legal significance. One such concern underscores that Israel will need to prepare differently yet subtly for military engagements with an expectedly rational nuclear adversary than with an expectedly irrational foe. In such nuanced and unprecedented circumstances, national decision-makers in Jerusalem would need to distinguish meaningfully between genuine enemy irrationality and feigned enemy irrationality.
The primacy of “mind”
Whatever calculable nuances would be encountered in Jerusalem, the only rational way for Israel to successfully meet these growing and overlapping challenges will be to stay ahead of its adversaries through the powers of strategic understanding. In classical Greece and Macedonia, linked arts of war and deterrence were described by military planners as theoretic challenges of “mind over mind,” not merely contests of “mind over matter.” At conceptual levels, such ancient descriptions remain entirely valid for Israel.
Israel’s nuclear strategy also carries implications for American national security. The relationship is reciprocal: developments in Israeli deterrence affect broader regional stability, while American strategic policies shape Israel’s security environment. Israeli planners will therefore need to remain attentive to wider great-power rivalries and their potential regional consequences.[xi]
Virtually any Israeli scholarship focused on nuclear war avoidance will be offered in at least partial response to world security configurations shaped by the United States. In this connection, Jerusalem will need to pay special attention to the changing face of US-Russian adversity.
Nuclear war and escalation
In the final analysis, to successfully prevent a nuclear war in the Middle East, it will be necessary to resist any world-system legitimations of belligerent nationalism. Nuclear deterrence and conventional deterrence are never best contemplated as separate security postures. Always, these seemingly discrete protective strategies are strongly interpenetrating and mutually reinforcing. To wit, even while Israel remains the only regional nuclear power, its nuclear weapons and doctrine could be used to deter certain massive conventional aggressions from formidable state enemies.
A nuclear attack or nuclear war in the Middle East is not out of the question. It is never a casually dismissible prospect, even if Israel should remain the only nuclear weapons state in the region. Why is this possible? The correct answer lies in the inherently complex structure of nuclear escalation, in the Middle East especially, but also anywhere else that a nuclear conflict is logically possible.
Atomic war could arrive in Israel not only as a “bolt-from-the-blue” enemy nuclear missile attack, but also by intended or unintended escalations. If, for example, an enemy state was to begin hostilities by launching “only” conventional attacks on Israel, Jerusalem could decide to respond, sooner or later, foolishly or wisely, with precisely calculated and correspondingly graduated nuclear reprisals. Alternatively, if these enemy states were to commence conflict by releasing certain larger-scale conventional attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem’s own conventional reprisals could be met, at least in the future, with enemy nuclear counter-strikes.
In the past, Israeli conventional pre-emptions have figured importantly as presumptive remedies for nuclear threat. Reasonably, if it hadn’t been for Israel’s earlier defensive first-strike operations against Iraq and Syria (Operation Opera and Operation Orchard, respectively), the Middle East would already have suffered destabilizing impacts of Arab/Islamist nuclear forces. Looking back on these critical examples of anticipatory self-defence, Israel had ensured that jihadist terror groups would not become nuclear. The impact of these complex military operations benefited not only Israel, but also the United States and assorted allies.[xii]
For the Middle East, the regional future is apt to become substantially less secure.
Still, for the Middle East, the regional future is apt to become substantially less secure. With a continuously aspirational nuclear Iran, variously derivative risks of nuclear terrorism could at some point become intolerable.[xiii] Some of these expected risks might not be confined to the Middle East. In one form or other, they would “carry over” to American and/or European homelands.
By maintaining a credible conventional deterrent, Israel could most reasonably reduce its potential exposure to nuclear warfighting.[xiv] A fully persuasive Israeli non-nuclear deterrent, at least to the extent it would prevent large-scale conventional enemy attacks, could lower the country’s overall risk of exposure to unmanageable variants of nuclear escalation. In the specific lexicon of nuclear strategy, Israel could reap multiple security gains by staying in conspicuous control of “escalation dominance.”[xv]
Foreseeable deterrence connections
Several strategic implications warrant special mention. Any rational state enemy considering attacks against Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons would take more seriously Israel’s nuclear deterrent. This argument suggests that a strong conventional capability will always be needed to deter or pre-empt certain large conventional attacks.
Inevitably, in seeking to continually reassess their own military power positions, Israel’s enemies will strive to determine how Jerusalem views its own conventional weapon opportunities and limitations. If these enemies did not perceive any Israeli sense of expanding conventional force weakness and were driven by expectations of Israeli unwillingness to escalate to nonconventional weapons, they could decide rationally to attack first. The net result could include: (1) defeat of Israel in a conventional war; (2) defeat of Israel in an unconventional (chemical/biological/nuclear) war; (3) defeat of Israel in a combined conventional/unconventional war; or (4) defeat of enemy state(s) by Israel in an unconventional war.
Ironically for Israel, even the “successful” fourth possibility could prove net-negative. This conclusion also raises questions about the continuing utility of Israel’s long-standing “bomb in the basement” posture. Always, the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent will depend in part on the perceived “usability” of its nuclear arsenal. Should Israel’s still-ambiguous nuclear weapons be regarded by prospective attackers as high-yield, indiscriminate, “city-busting” (counter-value) weapons, rather than minimal-yield, “war fighting” (counterforce) ordnance, they might not reliably deter.[xvi]
Counterintuitively, successful Israeli nuclear deterrence could vary inversely with perceived destructiveness.[xvii] It further suggests that continued Israeli policies of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” would encourage erroneous and aggressive calculations by prospective attackers.
On one occasion or another, this out-of-date security policy could fatally undermine Israel’s nuclear deterrent. The supposedly valid counter-argument that an Israeli end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” would encourage enemy state nuclearization is based neither on historical evidence nor valid logical inference. Historically, states have almost always done what would maximize their presumed survival interests, not interests of a wider world order.
In all matters of Israeli nuclear deterrence, adversarial perceptions will remain determinative. Unintentionally, by keeping its nuclear doctrine and capacity in the “basement,” Israel could contribute to an impression among regional enemies that its nuclear weapons are not operationally usable. In such circumstances, recalcitrant state enemies, unconvinced of Israel’s willingness to actually employ its nuclear weapons, might calculate the cost-effectiveness of striking first themselves.[xviii] Depending on the particular circumstances, any such adversarial acceptance could be either reluctant or enthusiastic, but still yield the same or similar outcome for Israel. In Jerusalem, therefore, any such adversarial presumptions would be “unacceptable.”
Consequences of failed military deterrence
To prevent a regional nuclear war, Israel will need to field a fully-dependable nuclear deterrent. At the same time, it cannot rely on this necessary basis of national security doctrine any more than it can depend solely on conventional deterrence. Instead, it must rely on complementary nuclear/conventional forces and doctrine; interpenetrating systems of air defences and predictable availability of eleventh-hour pre-emption options.
For Israel, this means, among other things, a continuing willingness to respect the full range of doctrinal complexity and to forge ahead with appropriate and presumptively advantageous security policies. To successfully influence the choices that adversarial states could make vis-à-vis Israel, Jerusalem will need to clarify that its conventional and nuclear deterrence postures are seamlessly interpenetrating and that the nation stands ready to counter enemy attacks at every level of possible confrontation.
In the end, it is always an intellectual contest
Even after its 2026 military successes against Iran, Israel is entering into a period of protracted uncertainty. Before it can fulfil its primary legal and security obligations during this period, the Jewish state’s most capable scholars should accept increasing responsibility for meeting strategic challenges of “mind.” In this regard, a core challenge will be deciphering the best course of action on nuclear matters whenever gainful action requires all relevant parties to reliably cooperate.
Going forward, the only way for Israeli strategists and decision-makers to make sense of variously bewildering uncertainties will be to approach their task as one requiring refined theory-construction. Under no circumstances should this task become the province of narrowly political or commercial elites. If such possession were ever to become a fait accompli, Israel’s national security policies could be torn into irremediable tatters.[xix]
To ward off existential military harms, including unprecedented forms of surprise attack, Jerusalem needs a coherent strategic deterrent, one that incorporates all conceivable threats within a structured system of carefully-calibrated reactions. Some nuclear threats could serve Israel’s deterrence objectives even before pertinent enemy states become operationally nuclear, and not “merely” because its conventional deterrent would have already failed. Reciprocally, Israel’s conventional deterrence, if suitably calibrated, could make it irrational for Jerusalem to make any belligerent use of nuclear ordnance.
It’s time for policy-relevant conclusions. The principal “lesson” can be summarized as follows: Under no circumstances should Israel’s military planners embrace a concept of national security that regards conventional and nuclear deterrence as inherently sequential or mutually-exclusive.
[i]See by this author (Louis René Beres) and Ambassador (Israel) Zalman Shoval at Modern War Institute, West Point: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/.
[ii]See earlier, by this author, at Military Strategy Magazine: Louis René Beres, https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/israels-nuclear-posture-intellectual-antecedents-and-doctrinal-foundations/.
[iii] See by this author (Louis René Beres) at JURIST: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/08/absurd-connections-israel-north-korea-and-nuclear-war/.
[iv] North Korea is an already-nuclear antagonist that has a tangible history of direct military conflict with Israel.
[v]These would be massive conventional threats. See by this author: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/30198. See also by Professor Beres: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-deterrence/.
[vi] Even before the nuclear age, ancient Chinese military theorist, Sun-Tzu, counseled, in The Art of War: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” (See: Chapter 3, “Planning Offensives”).
[vii] An already-nuclear Islamic state that has openly embraced certain nuclear-warfighting concepts of deterrence is Pakistan.
[viii] This assumption was a dominant premise of this writer’s Project Daniel Report to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: See, Louis René Beres, Chair, Project Daniel: Israel’s Strategic Future (Tel Aviv, 2003-2004).
[ix] For early scholarly examinations of anticipatory self-defense, by this author, and with particular reference to Israel, see: Louis René Beres, “Preserving the Third Temple: Israel’s Right of Anticipatory Self-Defense Under International Law,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 26, No. 1, April 1993, pp. 111- 148; Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Preemption and Anticipatory Self-Defense,” Houston Journal of International Law, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1991, pp. 259 – 280; and Louis René Beres, “Striking `First’: Israel’s Post-Gulf War Options Under International Law,” Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Journal Vol. 14, Nov. 1991, pp. 1 – 24.[x] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy.
[xi] See by Louis René Beres: https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf.
[xii] On vital interconnections between US and Israeli nuclear security, see previously referenced 2016 monograph (published at Tel Aviv University) authored by Professor Beres (with special postscript by USA General, ret., Barry R. McCaffrey): https:/sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf; See also: http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/Articles/07spring/beres.pdf.
[xiii] See, by Professor Beres: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1410&context=gjicl.
[xiv] The avoidance of nuclear war fighting in any form was a major conclusion of the Project Daniel Group in its 2003 report to Prime Minister Arik Sharon: http://www.herzliyaconference.org/_Uploads/2905LouisReneBeres.pdf.
[xv] See, for example: Louis René Beres: http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/28836.
[xvi] On such issues, see by Professor Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); 2nd ed. 2018. See also by Beres: http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/adkan17_3ENG%20(3)_Beres.pdf and, from Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School: http://harvardnsj.org/?s=louis+rene+beres.
[xvii] To wit, US President Donald J. Trump’s random threats of “obliteration.”
[xviii] Such calculations will include judgments on Israel’s active defenses. For example, see by Syeda Saba Batool in Manara Magazine (13 April 2026): https://manaramagazine.org/2026/04/iran-israel-effectiveness-of-ai-defence/.
[xix] This fate should bring to mind the closing query of Agamemnon in The Oresteia by Aeschylus: “Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatreds, the destruction”?
