TEHRAN – After 1000 days of waging a genocidal war, has the Israeli regime proven its capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict, or has it been forced to fundamentally redefine its policy?

A genocidal war on Gaza that began with a moment of profound shock and then expanded across both time and geography has evolved into an open-ended test for the Zionist regime, its society, security doctrine, and the political leadership.

Has this aggression given the regime an opportunity to restore its image, strength, and deterrence, or has it instead raised deeper questions about the limits of power, the cost of security, and society’s capacity to endure? And do the multiple fronts reflect an expansion of the regime’s capabilities, or an expansion of the predicament in which it has found itself?

The passage of more than 1 000 days is more than a chronological milestone in a long war; it is a revealing turning point that calls for an assessment extending beyond military and political statements.

October 7 was not just a passing security failure in Israel’s early warning or intelligence apparatus. Rather, it was a defining moment that reopened the question of whether the regime’s security doctrine itself remained fit for purpose. The resignation of Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi in January 2025, accompanied by his acknowledgment of responsibility for the failure of Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on that day, gave this debate an official dimension within the military establishment.

His resignation reflected an understanding that what had occurred was not simply a limited operational breakdown, but a failure in the IOF’s most fundamental mission: protecting the settlers.

Studies have made clear that the genocidal war on Gaza has compelled not only a reassessment of the IOF’s performance, but also a broader reconsideration of the very concept of security.

Meanwhile, another study by the Misgav Institute for Security and Zionist Strategy advances an even more explicit argument, calling for an entirely new doctrine based on reexamining the fundamental assumptions underlying the regime’s security concept, rather than repairing its historical doctrine.

The dilemma, however, lies not only in acknowledging the need for a new doctrine, but also in the conditions required to produce one. A security doctrine is not simply a military document issued by the General Staff; it is an expression of political and societal consensus regarding the nature of the threat, the limits of the use of force, and the price society is willing to pay.

After more than 1000 days of aggression, there is little indication that such a consensus has emerged within Israel, given the continuing disagreements over the genocidal war’s objectives, the boundaries of military force, and the IOF’s place within society.

As a result, the regime appears to have moved beyond many of the certainties that underpinned its traditional security doctrine, yet it has not settled on a new doctrine capable of uniting the political leadership, the military establishment, and society around a single strategic vision of national security.

More than 1000 days of war have demonstrated that the IOF’s military power is not sufficient on its own to produce lasting security. The central problem has not been the regime’s ability to employ military force, but rather its ability to translate that force into a sustainable strategic outcome that achieves its declared goals.

This became evident as the center of gravity shifted from Gaza to Lebanon, then to Iran, and back again to Lebanon. Although the scope of military operations continued to expand, this did not result in eliminating the sources of the threat or establishing a definitive and enduring security equation.

A study within the regime itself issues a notable warning against assuming that greater military force alone can provide the solution. It argues that history demonstrates enduring security requires a combination of military strength and political engagement.

This is reinforced by more research within the regime that concludes Iran and its regional allies have not been defeated. The real challenge, it argues, lies in transforming any “successes” into long-term strategic achievements.

The illegal Israeli-American war against Iran at the end of February 2026 represents perhaps the clearest illustration of this paradox. Even with the United States entering the aggression alongside Israel from the very outset, the question remained why the overwhelming military power could not produce the aggressor’s war goals.

The regime's excessive reliance on military force draws it into a prolonged war of attrition across more than one front. This gap between military superiority, such as Gaza or Lebanon, and strategic outcomes constitutes one of the most significant lessons about the structure of Zionist security.

Essentially, prolonged war drains the regime’s ability to continue bearing its human, economic, and psychological costs. After 1000 days of aggression against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, the discussion is no longer about the first weeks of the conflict, when broad national mobilization prevailed.

Instead, it centers on whether the settler society can sustain that same level of resilience during a campaign of aggression that has become open-ended in both time and geography, amid mounting IOF casualties and persistent uncertainty about objectives.