Beyond Tehran: Israel’s Shifting Focus Toward a New Regional Strategic Threat

For much of the past year, Israeli leadership has framed the aftermath of its conflict with Iran in triumphant terms, citing a weakened adversary, a stalled nuclear program, and the systematic dismantling of regional proxies. However, even as that campaign wound down, Jerusalem began defining a new threat using rhetoric once reserved exclusively for Tehran. This emerging challenge is more diffuse and harder to define, comprising states that possess some of the world’s most potent conventional military capabilities.

This shift in strategic language has been driven by the highest levels of government.

On February 17, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is expected to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming election, told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that “Turkey is the new Iran.”

Bennett further alleged that Ankara is attempting to pivot Saudi Arabia away from Israel to establish a hostile Sunni axis in partnership with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed these sentiments by proposing a “hexagon of alliances”—incorporating India, Greece, and Cyprus—designed to counter both the Shia axis he claims to have neutralized and a burgeoning Sunni bloc.

These statements suggest a consensus between two leading Israeli figures: that the nation’s next strategic struggle will not be a repetition of the Iran campaign—which targeted a state already isolated by Israel and the U.S.—but rather a confrontation with a more fragmented and significantly better-armed coalition of powers.

“Turkey is the new Iran.” — Naftali Bennett, 17 February 2026

Turkey serves as the presumptive anchor of this perceived axis. It maintains NATO’s second-largest standing military, with approximately 355,000 active personnel and an annual defense budget exceeding $27 billion. Turkey has also emerged as a global leader in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) exports, with firms like Baykar, Aselsan, Roketsan, and TUSAŞ controlling an estimated 65 percent of the global market. The new jet-powered Kızılelma combat drone, which has successfully destroyed radar-guided targets during testing, is currently entering mass production for military deployment. Additionally, Ankara’s “Blue Homeland” naval doctrine extends its operational reach across the eastern Mediterranean, encroaching upon areas near Israel’s offshore gas fields.

Similarly, the military landscape in Egypt has evolved beyond the comparisons to 1967, when Israel neutralized the Egyptian air force in hours. Current capabilities make such analogies obsolete.

By 2026, Egypt fields roughly 450,000 regular troops and 800,000 reservists, spending nearly $12 billion annually on defense. Its diverse arsenal includes American Abrams tanks, French Rafale jets, Russian Su-35s, and German-built submarines.

In late April, the Egyptian military conducted “Badr 2026,” a large-scale live-fire exercise in the Sinai that state commentators characterized as a clear message of deterrence. Netanyahu acknowledged this shift in February during a closed-door session of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee, warning that the Egyptian army is growing stronger and requires close monitoring.

Egypt in 2026 is not Egypt in 1967 — and Israeli officials increasingly say so themselves.

Saudi Arabia contributes a capable air force centered on F-15s and Typhoons, while its security apparatus has quietly diversified its international ties between Washington and Beijing. However, Pakistani capabilities are of particular concern to Israeli planners. As the only Muslim-majority state with a functional nuclear arsenal and the delivery systems to deploy it, Pakistan also possesses an air force recently tested in combat. The Pentagon confirmed that China delivered 36 J-10C fighters to Islamabad; Pakistan reports that these aircraft, utilizing long-range PL-15 missiles, downed several Indian jets, including at least one Rafale, during a brief conflict last year.

In April, Pakistan reportedly deployed two dozen of these aircraft to escort Iranian negotiators, placing its air force within the same operational theater as Israeli activities.

Whether these individual capabilities constitute a coordinated threat remains a point of contention within Israel’s own security establishment. There is no mutual-defense treaty linking Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, and Islamabad, nor is there evidence of joint military planning. Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has taken a more measured approach, noting that Turkey is no longer a “partner on the periphery” but a major regional power—a statement regarding ambition rather than imminent conflict. Andreas Krieg of King’s College London suggests the “hexagon” is more of a rebranding of existing ties than a new alliance. Furthermore, Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House and former ambassador Alon Pinkas argue that Bennett and Netanyahu may have domestic political incentives to maintain a sense of external threat, warning that treating Turkey as a second Iran risks creating the very adversary they fear.

This presents a critical strategic risk. While Iran’s hostility was rooted in a decades-long ideological project, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan share no such unifying doctrine or joint command. Cairo and Riyadh maintain peace treaties and quiet security arrangements with Israel that they have shown no intention of abandoning. Currently, the primary commonality between these states is a shared alarm at an Israel that struck six regional countries in a single year and now warns of a “radical Sunni axis.” Whether this alarm evolves into a formal alliance may depend less on the decisions made in foreign capitals and more on the policies pursued in Jerusalem.

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