Article in The Times of Israel by Andy Blumenthal: Israel, guided by G-d’s divine providence, decisively crushed the Iran-backed Houthis in a precision strike in Sanaa, eliminating their leadership for attacking Israel and strangling Red Sea trade routes. In 2024 and 2025, Israel’s strategic doctrine of deterrence and escalation delivered justice, eliminating Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Muhammad Sinwar, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, and 41 key Iranian military and nuclear figures, while dismantling Syria’s military capabilities. Despite being surrounded by adversaries denying its existence, Israel’s unmatched ingenuity and faith ensure its survival, offering enemies a stark choice: be deterred or be removed.

1. THE BLOGS
Andy Blumenthal
Leadership With Heart
Israel’s Doctrine of
Deterrence and Survival
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2. This week, Israel delivered a devastating blow to the Iran-backed Houthis,
obliterating their entire military and political leadership, including their self-
proclaimed prime minister, in a precision strike on a high-level gathering in
Sanaa. The Houthis, who brazenly vowed to attack Israel and remain undeterred,
launched relentless ballistic missile and drone attacks and targeted vital
shipping routes in the Red Sea to strangle Israel’s trade and maritime access.
Thanks to G-d, their aggression now lies in ruins, silenced by Israel’s
unrelenting hand, guided by divine providence. This successful operation
exemplifies Israel’s strategic doctrine of deterrence through precision and
escalation, forged in the face of existential threats.
In June 2025, Israel executed a staggering 12-day air campaign against Iran, a
nation openly calling for Israel’s destruction and pursuing nuclear weapons.
With surgical precision, the Israeli Air Force, supported by Mossad operatives
and commando units, swiftly eliminated 30 senior Iranian military commanders
—including Major General Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard
Corps, and Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces—and 11 top
nuclear scientists critical to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Striking over 900 targets,
including the Natanz nuclear facility, missile production sites, and air defenses,
Israel—with U.S. support—crippled Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons,
neutralizing its ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels for years. This
campaign, dubbed Operation Red Wedding and Operation Narnia, shattered
Iran’s command structure and stalled its nuclear program, a triumph of Divine
will and human resolve safeguarding Israel against an imminent threat.
Similarly, following Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, attack and Hezbollah’s
barrages of missiles, rockets, and drones, Israel responded with strategic
precision, ensuring every perpetrator faced justice. In July 2024, Israel
eliminated Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in a precision strike in
Tehran, dealing a severe blow to the group’s leadership. In September 2024,
Israel struck again, eliminating Hezbollah’s long-standing leader, Hassan
Nasrallah, in a pinpoint airstrike in Beirut, plunging the organization into

3. disarray. Weeks later, Israel dismantled Hezbollah’s operational core through an
unprecedented electronic assault, remotely detonating thousands of rigged
pagers and walkie-talkies, killing dozens, wounding thousands, and sowing
paralyzing distrust within the group. In October 2024, Hamas’s military leader,
Muhammad Sinwar, fell to Israel’s targeted strikes in the Gaza Strip. Then, in
December 2024, following the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Israel
advanced into critical buffer zones and launched hundreds of air and naval
strikes, obliterating Syria’s airbases, missile systems, chemical weapons
stockpiles, and naval assets, rendering it impotent as a platform for aggression.
Israel, a mere 20,770 square kilometers—barely 0.1% of the Middle East’s vast
expanse—stands encircled by 22 Arab nations and over 50 Muslim-majority
countries, many of which repeatedly deny its right to exist, echoing the chilling
genocidal rhetoric of a “final solution.” Yet, in this David-versus-Goliath
struggle, Israel triumphs. Why? Israel follows a disciplined doctrine of precision
deterrence and strategic escalation, coupled with enduring faith in G-d
Almighty. Enemies are offered repeated chances for peace, met with calibrated
counterstrikes that escalate only when defiance persists, like Pharaoh’s
unyielding heart. When all overtures fail, Israel acts with finality, achieving
absolute deterrence through elimination, as G-d’s hand steadies its course.
As in ancient Egypt, Israel’s adversaries—Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the
Houthis—fail to heed G-d’s warning: Your vows of annihilation and attempts to
choke Israel’s lifeline, as the Houthis did in the Red Sea, crash against a nation
forged in the fires of history, armed with unmatched ingenuity, vigilance, an
unbreakable collective will, and the eternal protection by G-d. Know this: Israel
will not hesitate to dismantle any threat to its existence. Hamas faced justice for
its brutality; Hezbollah was shattered by leadership loss and innovation; Syria’s
military lies in ruins; Iran’s nuclear ambitions were stalled; and the Houthis,
who sought to strangle Israel’s trade, were eradicated. Underestimate Israel at
your peril, for it is shielded by a power greater than any earthly force.

4. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Blumenthal is a dynamic, award-winning leader who writes frequently about Jewish life,
culture, and security. All opinions are his own.
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