One of my earlier articles for Al-Monitor, published in May 2013, featured extensive quotes from a retired Israeli general who raised a few questions: Why do the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) need so many armed divisions? Why is there a need for hundreds of fighter aircraft? Why does Israel need so many tanks? The region’s changing reality, in the setting of which almost all of the conventional enemies threatening the Jewish state have dissolved, should manifest itself also in its military’s structure, the general contended.

The said officer was a major general who had recently retired. He was not some voice from a distant past. According to his viewpoint, Israel continues to prepare for yesteryear’s war while ignoring the new reality, to wit, the blazing Middle East and the dissolution of dated frameworks. By doing so, it put itself in danger of being caught unprepared once again in the next round.

As it turns out, the statements by the Israeli officer were not said in a vacuum. Following in-depth background talks and internal discussions in the IDF, it is becoming apparent that in the past three years the Israeli military has undergone one of the most important revolutions in its history. Almost every area has been dramatically transformed — the military’s ORBAT (order of battle), target prioritization, operational doctrine, intelligence collection and dissemination, as well as its internal and external structure. Or, to quote a senior officer: “Today, no general in the IDF’s General Staff does the same work he did just barely three years ago. Everything has changed — the job description, the tasks, the modus operandi, as well as the agenda. Everything that existed prior to that is water under the bridge. Welcome to the new world.”

I have often written here about the changes taking place in the Middle East. Strategically speaking, the immediate threats to Israel have greatly diminished. The armies facing it have either been dissolved or have stopped being relevant. Beleaguered and having a lot on their plate, they are preoccupied with their own internal affairs. The menacing “eastern front,” consisting of massive Syrian and Iraqi divisions, is gone, having been replaced by a mixture of terrorist organizations and jihadist guerrilla groups which do not answer to regular forces. The Arab Spring has done away with the previous structure of the Middle East, whereby Arab countries and their regular armies were poised against Israel, confronting it once or twice every decade. Even though it is too early to assess where the region is headed and what these historic changes will spawn in the intermediate and the long run, it is abundantly clear, including to IDF generals, that Israel is not facing an existential threat at this time — the Iranian issue notwithstanding. A moot and controversial point in Israeli public, the topic of Iran is also being discussed in the decision-makers’ most classified forums.