Strategic Stability in an Era of Hybrid Warfare: The Case of Iran and Israel Bilkisu Usman Bala

Abstract

The Iran-Israel rivalry has emerged as one of the most consequential cases for understanding strategic stability under conditions of hybrid warfare. Strategic stability serves as the primary theoretical framework used in this study, which employs a qualitative case study approach based on the systematic analysis of secondary sources, including policy documents, official statements, scholarly literature, and security reports, to examine contemporary shifts in the Middle Eastern security landscape. Traditional deterrence theory, developed primarily in the nuclear age, assumed identifiable actors, clear thresholds, and relatively predictable escalation pathways. The Iran–Israel confrontation challenges these assumptions. It is characterized by persistent competition below the threshold of full-scale war, combining cyber operations, proxy warfare, precision strikes, information campaigns, economic coercion, maritime disruption, and increasingly direct missile and drone exchanges. The findings of this article argue that hybrid warfare has transformed strategic stability from a condition of mutual restraint into a dynamic process of continuous risk management. While hybrid methods can delay conventional war by providing flexible options for calibrated coercion, they also increase the risks of misperception, inadvertent escalation, and crisis instability. The Iran-Israel case demonstrates that strategic stability in the twenty-first century depends less on preventing conflict altogether than on managing escalation across interconnected military and non-military domains.