Middle East developments over the past few years — including the civil war in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State, the expected fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the violence in Iraq — have all affected Israel’s conception of national security. In light of these developments and the fact that for the first time in its history, Israel was not surrounded by conventional armies capable of threatening it, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) made several important changes: armored divisions were dismantled, land forces were diverted to different positions, commando units were established and infantry units were upgraded. In general, the IDF adapted itself more to guerilla warfare and fighting against widely dispersed networks of terror organizations rather than traditional large-scale wars against regular standing armies.

But over the last few months, a new perspective is beginning to penetrate Israeli’s security officials. The working assumptions that took root in recent years have been undermined and are starting to fall apart. We are not yet at the stage at which the IDF is changing course, but if events continue to advance in the direction they have gone in the last half year, then anything is possible.

A formerly very high-placed source in Israel’s security system spoke to Al-Monitor last week. He said on condition of anonymity, “It’s high time to admit that perhaps all our assessments were erroneous. The prevailing consensus of the last five years was that Syria will never return to its former state. We thought that however this turns out, the Syrian state as we knew it had passed from the world. But evidently we were wrong.”

Israel’s top decision-makers have not changed course, but it is likely that such arguments are heard in private discussions, and top-secret intelligence assessments see it as a real possibility that Assad is capable of outsmarting those who prematurely eulogized him and Syria as we knew it.