How Iran’s attack will force Israel to rethink its security

The April 13 Iranian attack on Israel with more than 300 explosive-laden drones and missiles has definitively altered the West Asian security framework. Certain long-held axioms have been broken or rendered obsolete, spanning the entire spectrum of warfare – from strategic nuclear weapons and conventional capabilities, such as air defence systems, to low-intensity conflict and grey zone warfare.

While there is both anxiety and uncertainty about how Israel’s military is likely to respond to the audacious, albeit carefully calibrated, attack by Iran, some red lines will have to be revisited and redrawn in West Asia.

The first is the kind of deterrence profile and image that Israel has sought to project in the region. The Israeli nuclear programme is shrouded in secrecy but probably began in the 1950s when it had the tacit approval of the United States, Britain and France – three Western nuclear-armed powers. Nuclear non-proliferation was ostensibly the policy goal of some major powers at the time but Israel was determined to acquire nuclear weapons covertly – and it did.