Benjamin Netanyahu announces Israel's new national security doctrine

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, announced the country's new national security doctrine on Sunday 18 October 2026. Under the doctrine, Israel's strategic priority shifts from containing threats to prevention and carrying out pre-emptive strikes against threats that are still taking shape. The Israeli prime minister's office published the principles of the doctrine in Netanyahu's own words on X.

According to the prime minister's office, the doctrine was drawn up in cooperation with Israel's National Security Council and its head. Netanyahu said the attack of 7 October 2023 made a hard war unavoidable, and referred to the recent war as the "War of Redemption".

The seven principles of Israel's national security doctrine

According to the published text, the doctrine rests on seven pillars:

• Priority of prevention and pre-emptive action over containing threats
• Strengthening home-front defence against new threats
• Consolidating Israel's position as a regional power
• Maximum self-reliance in producing and supplying military munitions
• Maintaining superiority in advanced technologies
• Stronger confrontation of the global wave of antisemitism
• Using recent military developments to shape new regional alliances

The Islamic Republic at the centre of the new doctrine

In the text, Netanyahu said Israel has eliminated the "immediate and existential" nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic and broken the ring of encirclement that the regime had drawn around Israel with its proxy groups in the region. He described the wars in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran as part of the same process and called confronting the Islamic Republic and its affiliated forces the main achievement of Israel's military operations.

The doctrine was announced on the day Donald Trump warned that if the Islamic Republic does not change course, the United States will soon finish the job, and a few days after Netanyahu said the only way is to get rid of the Islamic Republic. Israel Katz, Israel's defence minister, had also said earlier that Israel is ready to resume attacks with full force.

Israel's new doctrine puts a pre-emptive strike on emerging threats ahead of containing them.