Making a desert, calling it peace: The enduring logic of Israel’s ‘Clean Break’ strategy

"They make a desert and call it peace," wrote the Roman historian Tacitus, capturing the brutal logic of the Roman empire in a single, enduring line. 

Nearly two millennia later, that phrase resonates with unsettling clarity across the Middle East. As wars expand from Gaza to Iran, and as entire territories are reduced to rubble in the name of security, the question is no longer simply about military necessity but about strategic intent. 

Is this the pursuit of peace — or the deliberate remaking of a region through destruction? 

To understand the answer, one must return to a doctrine first articulated in 1996, a policy blueprint that envisioned not coexistence, but dominance. It's called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm'. 

Set against the ongoing devastation of the Gaza War and the widening confrontation with Iran, the moment feels less like a rupture and more like the culmination of a long-articulated doctrine. It laid out a strategic vision for Israel that rejected negotiated peace in favour of regional transformation through force. 

Today, that vision appears less like a historical curiosity and more like an operating manual.

The doctrine behind the moment

The "Clean Break" report was crafted for Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term in office by a group of American and Israeli strategists led by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. It emerged at a time when Israel stood at a crossroads. 

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin had derailed the fragile optimism of the Oslo Accords, and Netanyahu's rise signalled a decisive ideological shift.

Where Oslo had envisioned "land for peace", Clean Break proposed something altogether different: "peace for peace," secured not through compromise but through dominance. It rejected the premise that Israel's security could be achieved via territorial concessions or accommodation with Palestinian leadership. 

Instead, it argued for reshaping the regional environment itself — weakening adversaries, cultivating alternative alliances, and, where necessary, pursuing regime change.

Three pillars define the doctrine. 

First, Israel would abandon the pursuit of comprehensive peace with the Arab world, opting instead for selective partnerships — particularly with Jordan and Turkey. 

Second, it would reserve the right to conduct unilateral military action, especially in Palestinian territories, while actively seeking to sideline leadership figures like Yasser Arafat. 

Third, it would deepen strategic integration with the US, not merely as a patron, but as a co-architect of regional order.

But the most consequential elements lay in its offensive prescriptions. The report explicitly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the rollback of Syrian influence through proxy warfare, and the containment of Iran as a long-term strategic objective. 

Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran were identified as a single axis of resistance that needed to be fractured.

From paper to policy

At the time, parts of the report were dismissed as ideologically driven or strategically overambitious. Yet, viewed from 2026, its core assumptions have proven remarkably durable.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq — championed in Washington by many of the same figures involved in Clean Break — removed Saddam Hussein, one of Israel's principal regional adversaries. The subsequent destabilisation of Iraq created a vacuum that reshaped the balance of power across the Middle East.

In Syria, a decade of civil war has left the state fractured and weakened. The collapse of the Bashar al-Assad government in 2024 marked a decisive turning point. In the aftermath, Israel conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military infrastructure, systematically dismantling its air defences. 

The result is a strategic corridor: Israeli aircraft now operate over Syrian airspace with near impunity, enabling direct strikes on Iranian targets.

Lebanon, too, has been drawn into this orbit of instability. Repeated confrontations with Hezbollah have degraded infrastructure and deepened internal divisions. Sudan's partition, Libya's fragmentation, and Somalia's persistent instability all reflect a broader regional pattern: states weakened, borders blurred, and central authority eroded.

None of these developments can be attributed solely to the Clean Break doctrine. But together, they echo its underlying premise — that Israel's security is best ensured not through a stable regional order, but through a fragmented one in which no rival can consolidate power.

Iran: The final frontier

If Iraq was the first major test of this doctrine, Iran is its ultimate expression.

For decades, Tehran has been viewed in Israeli strategic thinking as the principal long-term threat — not merely because of its nuclear ambitions, but because of its capacity to project influence through non-state actors across the region. 

The Clean Break report identified Iran as a central pillar of resistance, to be contained, weakened, and, if possible, destabilised.

The current war reflects that logic with striking clarity. What began as a series of targeted strikes has evolved into a sustained campaign against Iranian infrastructure, leadership, and regional networks. 

The killing of figures like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani represents a significant escalation, signalling a shift from deterrence to decapitation.

Crucially, this campaign is not confined to Iranian territory. It extends across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf, drawing in multiple actors and blurring the line between state and non-state conflict. 

In doing so, it mirrors the "mini–Cold War" envisioned by Clean Break's authors: a region defined by proxy warfare, strategic fragmentation, and continuous low-intensity conflict.

Gaza and the collapse of restraint

The war in Gaza provides the clearest illustration of how far this doctrine has evolved — and how little remains of the constraints that once shaped Israeli policy. 

As of mid-March 2026, the number of confirmed fatalities has surpassed 72,200, with over 171,800 people suffering from injuries that the crippled healthcare system is largely unable to treat. 

This scale of loss is compounded by the fact that nearly the entire population — approximately 1.9 million people — remains internally displaced, forced into a shrinking 'humanitarian zone' that lacks the basic infrastructure for human survival, leading to preventable deaths from exposure, disease, and malnutrition.

The scale of destruction, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, and the rejection of negotiated settlement all reflect a departure from earlier frameworks of conflict management. Where previous doctrines sought to contain violence within defined limits, the current approach appears to embrace escalation as a means of achieving strategic clarity.

The American factor

No analysis of Clean Break — and its contemporary relevance — is complete without examining the role of the United States.

From the outset, the doctrine envisioned Washington not merely as an ally but as an active participant in reshaping the Middle East. The integration of American and Israeli strategic objectives has been a defining feature of the past two decades, from Iraq to Syria and now Iran.

Yet this alignment has also carried risks. As the current conflict expands, the United States finds itself increasingly entangled in a regional war with global implications. 

Intelligence warnings — now publicly reported — indicated that strikes on Iran would likely trigger retaliation against "soft" targets across the Gulf. That scenario has now materialised, with civilian casualties mounting in countries far removed from the initial theatre of conflict.

The end of the 'Limited War'

Perhaps the most significant implication of this moment is the collapse of the idea that war in the Middle East can remain limited.

The Clean Break doctrine assumed that strategic transformation could be achieved through controlled escalation — targeted strikes, proxy conflicts, and selective interventions. But the current trajectory suggests that such control is increasingly illusory.

The war with Iran is no longer contained. It is spilling into the Gulf, destabilising Lebanon, and exacerbating humanitarian crises across multiple fronts. The boundaries between conflicts—Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran — are dissolving, replaced by a single, interconnected total war. 

In this sense, the doctrine has succeeded on its own terms: the regional order has been fundamentally reshaped. But the cost — measured in civilian lives, displaced populations, and institutional collapse — raises profound questions about whether this transformation has made Israel, or the region, more secure.

A strategy fulfilled — or a trap realised?

Three decades after its formulation, the Clean Break strategy casts a long shadow over the Middle East. Its influence is visible not only in policy choices but in the very structure of the current conflict.

Yet there is an irony at its core. A doctrine designed to enhance security through dominance has produced a region characterised by perpetual instability. The weakening of adversaries has not eliminated threats; it has multiplied them, creating a landscape in which conflict is both chronic and contagious.

The question now is not whether this strategy is being implemented. It clearly is. The question is whether it can ever reach an endpoint — or whether it has locked the region into a spiral from which there is no clean break at all.

Shadique Mahbub Islam is a journalist.