It is known that two‐dimensional vortices are subject to generic three‐dimensional instabilities. This phenomenon is located near the core of vortices and depends on the eccentricity of their streamlines. In this paper we are concerned with the modification of this instability when stretching is applied to such vortices. We describe this instability by linearizing the Navier–Stokes equations around a basic state, which is an exact time‐dependent solution. The complete system for the perturbations is reduced to a single equation for the perturbed velocity along the vortex span. In the limit of weak stretching, a perturbation theory can be performed and leads to a WKBJ approximation for the solution. This procedure demonstrates that a small amount of stretching is able to prevent the appearance of three‐dimensional instabilities for vortices with a low enough eccentricity. Since most vortices are slightly elliptical in turbulent flows, the above computations are expected to cover a wide range of experimental cases. In particular, it is tentatively argued that this mechanism may explain recent experimental observations [Phys. Fluids7, 630 (1995)]. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.