Thomas Fazi
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IRAN is a nation grounded in moral principles, something incomprehensible in the West. Its civilisation goes back thousands of years.
Israel, the US and Iran: the war has only just begun
The old neocon dream of redrawing the Middle East through a series of regime changes to the benefit of the US and Israel, shelved for over a decade, has returned to the forefront
The sudden ceasefire “imposed” on Israel and Iran on June 24 by US President Donald Trump, in what many have dubbed the “12-day war”, most likely does not mark the end of hostilities, but rather the beginning of a broader and more dangerous confrontation for hegemony in the Middle East, with possible global ramifications.
The twelve days of conflict we witnessed represent a destabilising escalation in the confrontation between Israel and Iran, which has shifted from the “shadow war” of previous decades to a direct military clash.
In the former, Iran had troubled Israel primarily through its regional allies, especially Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel, for its part, had conducted a series of covert operations — acts of sabotage and targeted killings — on Iranian soil, often using local partners.
In the latter, the two countries directly attacked each other’s territories (albeit at a distance, as they do not share a border). The first signs of this escalation came with the “missile exchanges” between the two countries in April and October 2024.
In both the “shadow war” of past decades and the direct confrontation that ended on June 24, Israel was supported by the United States.
“Real men want to go to Tehran”
Ever since the 1979 revolution, when Iran withdrew from the American alliance system in the region, the Islamic Republic has been seen by Washington as an enemy to eliminate.
The American approach remained unchanged even after Iran’s revolutionary drive lost its initial momentum and it became clear that the revolution would not spread beyond Iran’s borders.
Starting from the early 2000s, the country was for years seen as the ultimate prize in a neoconservative plan to redesign the Middle East in order to definitively secure US-Israeli hegemony in the region.
This objective was explicitly laid out in a 1996 document drafted by a group of neocon strategists led by Richard Perle, titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
During the years of the US invasion of Iraq, a popular saying circulated in neocon circles, reportedly first uttered by a senior British official: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran”.
Even in 2009, the idea of regime change in Iran was still very much alive in the corridors of the American establishment, as confirmed by a report from the Brookings Institution (one of the most influential US think tanks) titled Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.
Chapter 5 of the report, titled “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike”, now appears remarkably prescient.
However, after George W. Bush’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and after Israel’s defeat in the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the neocon plans for the Middle East gradually receded into the background.
After yet another failure in Syria — where Washington had attempted a fresh regime-change operation in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings — the Obama administration sought to implement its announced “pivot to Asia” to contain China’s rise, and supported the Maidan uprising in Kyiv in 2014 as an anti-Russian manoeuvre.
A year later, precisely with a view to gradually disengaging from the Middle East, Obama reached an agreement with Tehran — the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — to put the nuclear issue to rest and establish a fragile modus vivendi with Iran. The goal was to allow Washington to shift its focus elsewhere.
In the years that followed, American presidents would be increasingly absorbed by the confrontation with Moscow in Ukraine, the trade war with Beijing and, more broadly, the renewed “great power competition”.
In Washington, the Middle East faded into the background, leading to a cooling of relations with long-time allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and to a steadily growing Chinese economic presence in the Gulf.
New US plans in the Middle East
Realising its loss of influence in the Middle East, the Biden administration in 2023 devised a plan for an American return to the region, based on new security agreements with key US partners in the Gulf, on the revival of the Abraham Accords introduced by former President Donald Trump to normalise relations between Israel and Arab countries, and on the announcement of an economic corridor — the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) — which was meant to cement the new American security architecture in the region from a logistical and trade perspective.
The IMEC was presented as a clear (and somewhat presumptuous) alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aiming to curb Beijing’s growing influence.
The Abraham Accords were intended to create a regional Arab-Israeli-American front aimed at isolating Iran and its regional allies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq and Ansar Allah in Yemen).
However, this framework was thrown into disarray by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing brutal Israeli military response, which was bound to provoke reactions from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Ansar Allah (also known as the “Houthis”, after their founder) in solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza.
This new destabilisation of the Middle East called into question the entire structure of the IMEC and the Abraham Accords: an economic corridor could never take shape in a region wracked by conflict, and a normalisation of relations — particularly between Saudi Arabia and Israel — was unthinkable while the Israeli army was carrying out a massacre of Palestinians.
For this reason, the Biden administration — while never ceasing to provide logistical support and essential weapons for Israel’s military operation — repeatedly sought to discourage Israeli plans to expand the conflict on a regional scale, instead proposing a political solution for Gaza, which Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government consistently rejected.
The turning point of September 2024
The turning point that helped dispel the doubts of many American strategists and several members of the Biden administration was the stunning operation carried out by the Israeli army in Lebanon on September 27, 2024, which led to the elimination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, and the decapitation of the group’s entire leadership.
That operation — built upon a chilling level of intelligence penetration that allowed Israel to reconstruct with extreme precision the movements of the main leaders of the Lebanese movement, and to strike at the decisive moment with devastating results — prompted many in Washington to reassess their positions.
The prospect of dealing a mortal blow to a second link in the pro-Iranian axis — after the military weakening of Hamas in Gaza — led political figures and analysts in Washington to consider the strategy of using Israel as a “battering ram” to dismantle the Axis of Resistance and isolate Iran as a viable option.
It is worth recalling that on that very occasion Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law (then engaged in the presidential campaign), wrote in a lengthy post on X (Twitter) that Hezbollah was a gun held to Israel’s head. That gun had, until then, prevented the destruction of Iran’s nuclear installations.
Without Hezbollah, Kushner argued, Iran was significantly weaker and more exposed to a potential attack.
Such views gained further traction in Washington after the dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December 2024, and the subsequent dismantling of the remaining military apparatus in Damascus through a systematic Israeli bombing campaign, which left Syrian airspace under full Israeli control.
The old neocon dream of redrawing the Middle East through a series of regime changes to the benefit of the US and Israel — put on hold for over a decade — was now forcefully and unexpectedly resurfacing.
Assad’s collapse left Hezbollah isolated in neighboring Lebanon and severely weakened by the brutal military clash with Israel, which ended with the ceasefire of November 27 (constantly violated by Tel Aviv).
Gaza, with no support apart from limited backing by Ansar Allah from distant Yemen, was left to face its tragic fate alone.
To the east of a now entirely neutralised Syria, the US continued to exert significant influence in Iraq and to control its airspace.
There was thus a “window of opportunity”, as Israeli commentators wrote, to strike Iran’s nuclear installations given the weakened and isolated state in which Tehran found itself, and the existence of a secure corridor reaching the Iranian border through Syrian and Iraqi skies.
What is Tehran’s nuclear programme for?
At this point, it is important to clarify that Iran’s nuclear programme has served as a convenient pretext for launching a military attack against the country — but it is not the true objective behind such action.
As analyst Sina Toossi has written, Tehran’s nuclear programme should not be seen as an “ideological crusade to acquire the bomb”, but rather as a calibrated tool to achieve deterrence and bargaining power at the negotiating table.
One must not forget that, since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been under economic embargo and constant military threat, particularly from the United States (including US support for regional actors like Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988).
To escape this impasse, Tehran has relied on various tools — most notably, the creation of a regional alliance network acting as a security buffer around Iran, and the development of both a ballistic missile programme (especially to compensate for the lack of an effective air force) and its nuclear programme.
Through the latter, Tehran has become a “latent” nuclear power which, although it has so far shown no intention of building a nuclear weapon, possesses nearly all the infrastructure and scientific knowledge required to do so.
Iran’s strategy pursues multiple goals: to use elements of the nuclear programme as bargaining chips in negotiations to achieve the lifting of sanctions (which are not limited to the nuclear issue and in some cases predate it); to strengthen the tools that ensure its political, economic and scientific independence in a generally hostile environment; and, certainly, to keep open the option of building a nuclear weapon should an existential external threat arise.
In recent years, Iran’s political leadership has shown a willingness not to cross the threshold of latent nuclear capability, culminating in the 2015 agreement (the aforementioned JCPOA) with the Obama administration.
That agreement imposed verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear programme and a strict monitoring regime over its nuclear facilities, in exchange for security guarantees and the promise of sanction relief.
As I mentioned in a previous article, it was Trump who, in 2018, unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement (which Iran was complying with), thereby laying the groundwork for the current crisis.
Despite this, according to the latest US intelligence estimates, Iran has not reactivated its military nuclear programme (which was suspended in 2003), and would need another three years to build a nuclear weapon (including miniaturising a warhead and developing a ballistic delivery system) if it were to make a political decision to do so.
It is therefore evident that the problem Iran represents in the eyes of its adversaries is not the nuclear programme itself, but rather Iran’s refusal to submit to the US-Israeli hegemonic architecture in the Middle East — making it, by definition, a regional competitor.
It is also worth noting that the government led by reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian (in office since July 30, 2024) had included in its political platform the goal of reopening negotiations with the US to achieve a reconciliation with the West — an effort previously attempted, without success, by figures such as Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani (the latter being the signatory of the JCPOA).
The interventionist front in Israel and the US
Despite the opening of negotiations in recent months between Iran and the Trump administration to resolve the nuclear dispute peacefully, during the same period a “war party” consolidated in both Israel and the United States — one determined to take military action against Tehran.
This camp was especially strong in Israel, where an entire political class supported the prospect of an attack. On June 13 (when the military operation began), it overwhelmingly expressed its backing for Prime Minister Netanyahu — including members of the opposition.
During the 12-day war, all the controversy surrounding October 7, the hostage crisis, the management of the war in Gaza and Israel’s institutional crisis vanished from the Israeli media landscape, giving way to a political and public-opinion rally-around-the-flag effect.
Two key figures in the planning of the attack on Iran were Mossad director David Barnea and Air Force Commander Tomer Bar.
Another essential figure, National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, played a central role in securing the approval of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Eyal Zamir.
The military’s endorsement marked a decisive break from the past. Since 2007, in fact, all of Israel’s military chiefs — from Gabi Ashkenazi to Benny Gantz to Gadi Eisenkot — had opposed the idea of a military strike on Iran.
Barnea, for his part, radically transformed the Mossad, introducing technological innovations in surveillance, tracking, monitoring and the use of artificial intelligence, which enabled the “decapitation” operations targeting Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon and Iran’s military elite, as well as the targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders from Beirut to Tehran.
Like Netanyahu, Barnea opposed the 2015 nuclear deal. He also maintained close coordination with the CIA, which played a crucial role in preparing the 12-day war.
In addition to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, General Michael “Erik” Kurilla — the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East — was a key ally of Israel within the Trump administration.
Multiple sources identify Kurilla as the pivotal figure within the administration who pushed for approval of the strike against Tehran.
Often described as staunchly pro-Israel, Kurilla has long viewed Iran as a threat to be eliminated. He was the architect of the failed bombing campaign against Ansar Allah in Yemen.
Kurilla’s determination to neutralise Iran stems from his conviction that Tehran is closely linked to Moscow and Beijing.
As he explained to the House Armed Services Committee in 2023, half of China’s oil and more than a third of its natural gas come from the Middle East, much of it shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. “That makes them vulnerable”, Kurilla concluded.
For him, striking Tehran also meant weakening China and Russia.
This view is shared by others in Washington, particularly among Republicans and neoconservatives. The Israeli lobby, unsurprisingly, supported the entire operation and applied pressure even on hesitant Democrats.
This broad coalition laid the groundwork for a hardening of the administration’s negotiating stance, which brought talks with Tehran to the brink of collapse — while simultaneously enabling the planning and execution of the attack.
The second part of this article will be published next week.
Israel, the US and Iran: the war has only just begun — part 2
What lies ahead, at best, is a long, simmering conflict spanning the entire region, in which Tel Aviv and Washington will continue to seek to weaken Iran’s regional allies and further isolate Tehran
Despite the long and meticulous preparation, and the logistical and intelligence support provided by the United States, the attack launched by Israel on June 13 against Iran failed to achieve its intended objectives.
As noted by Hesamoddin Ashna, former advisor to former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, at the end of the “12-day war” neither Israel nor Iran emerged victorious, and neither side feels defeated.
Far from being permanent, the ceasefire depends on each side’s ability “to rebuild offensive and defensive capabilities, economic strength and social cohesion as quickly as possible”.
Israel, in any case, did not achieve the result it had aimed for. The Netanyahu government had set its sights on something more ambitious than merely curbing Iran’s nuclear programme (and even that objective has largely failed, as we shall see).
The Israeli military leadership attempted a genuine regime change operation, or even the collapse of the Iranian state.
A sophisticated intelligence operation
Israeli strategists had planned an operation that combined air power with special operations conducted on Iranian soil by Israeli commandos and locally recruited agents. These forces deployed swarms of small drones to neutralise Iranian air defences and maximise the element of surprise.
The work of pre-positioning the drones on Iranian territory had, of course, begun months in advance, and strongly resembles Operation “Spider Web”, through which Ukraine struck multiple Russian military bases on June 1, damaging or destroying several of Moscow’s strategic bombers.
Given the similarity (in terms of the unprecedented use of drones) and the temporal proximity of the two operations — which both required lengthy planning — one cannot rule out some process of “osmosis” between the intelligence services of the two countries, mediated by Western intelligence agencies.
Both American and British intelligence maintain close ties with their Ukrainian and Israeli counterparts. London appears to have an explicit military cooperation agreement with Israel aimed at countering Iran.
“Decapitating” the Islamic Republic
In April, just a month after taking office, the new commander of the Israeli army, Eyal Zamir, determined that June would offer the best “window of opportunity” for the operation against Iran.
Alongside efforts to neutralise Iranian air defences, Israel had planned a true decapitation operation — not only targeting the scientific leadership of Iran’s nuclear programme, but also the country’s military (and political) leadership.
The campaign against nuclear scientists, dubbed “Operation Narnia”, resulted in the elimination of around fifteen of them (and in many cases, their families were exterminated along with them).
The operation targeting the military leadership, which the Israelis called “Operation Red Wedding” (after a scene from Game of Thrones), led to the killing of about ten high-ranking military officials, including the commander of the armed forces Mohammad Baqeri, the supreme commander of the Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami and the commander of the aerospace forces of that same corps, Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Ali Shamkhani, a trusted advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, initially believed to be dead, barely survived serious injuries caused by a bombing of his residence.
Israeli Defense Minister Katz stated that Khamenei himself would have been eliminated if Tel Aviv’s armed forces had had the opportunity — but it had proven impossible to locate him.
Katz’s remarks appear to contradict earlier statements by U.S. President Donald Trump.
On June 17, Trump had posted on Truth, his preferred social media platform:
We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.
After the top Iranian military leaders had been killed, other generals reportedly received threatening phone calls demanding that they record video declarations of surrender, under threat that their children would be eliminated. None of them, however, gave in to the threats.
Further suggesting that Israel aimed to provoke a collapse of the Iranian state is the fact that paramilitary Basij forces and other internal security structures were targeted, along with the headquarters of state television and Evin prison, where leading dissidents are held (around seventy people, including detainees and visiting family members, were killed in the bombing).
In total, 28 Iranian provinces were struck by Israeli bombings, which targeted not only military sites but also civilian infrastructure, including fuel depots, warehouses, residential areas and hospitals — causing over a thousand casualties, according to a report by the organisation Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), which is not affiliated with the government.
An unexpected reaction
This frontal assault by Israel, however, had the opposite effect of what the Netanyahu government had hoped for. The Islamic Republic not only withstood the blow, but displayed a unity that took both the Israelis and Americans by surprise.
Most Iranians did not perceive the Israeli action as an attack against the regime of the Islamic Republic, but as an attack against the Iranian nation.
Despite the complex makeup of Iranian society and its multiple ethnic affiliations, Iranians share a strong sense of national identity shaped by the collective memory of numerous foreign interventions in the country.
Beyond ideological and social differences, they place hostility towards foreign — especially Western — aggressions above resentment towards their own government.
Opposition groups supported by the West — such as the Islamist-Marxist sect Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) or the monarchists loyal to Reza Pahlavi (son of the deposed Shah, and widely seen by Iranians as a puppet in the hands of the US and Israel) — have no real foothold within the country.
The state and military apparatuses, after the initial shock and despite the loss of top commanders, responded by quickly replacing those killed and demonstrating the resilience of a layered and institutionalised structure that does not rely on individual charismatic figures.
No defections occurred within these structures, no attempts at insurrection took place — instead, a marked consolidation was seen among the population.
Rain of Iranian missiles
Starting on the evening of June 13, the Iranian armed forces responded by launching waves of missiles and drones towards Israeli territory. The Iranian attacks increased in intensity over the following days, reaching a missile shield penetration rate of 16%, according to a Telegraph investigation based on satellite data.
This means that dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles struck Israeli territory, causing substantial damage — estimated at $3 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The Israeli daily Haaretz estimates that in Tel Aviv alone, 480 buildings were damaged, many of them severely.
Although the Israeli government imposed censorship on the strategic targets hit by Iran, the Telegraph investigation reports that at least five Israeli military bases across various parts of the country were struck.
Among them were a major airbase, an intelligence center and a logistics base.
Other targets hit, according to the British newspaper, included seven energy infrastructures (among them a refinery in Haifa), two buildings of the Weizmann Institute — one of the country’s leading research centres — and the Soroka University Medical Center.
Damage to residential areas resulted in 15,000 people being displaced.
The Telegraph also cites prominent Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker from Channel 13, who reported that many of the Iranian strikes on Israeli military bases were successful, but due to censorship the public was not informed.
[This] created a situation where people don’t realise how precise the Iranians were and how much damage they caused”, Drucker said.Thanks to Israel’s dense network of bomb shelters, only 28 fatalities were recorded, but the Israeli economy was paralysed for twelve days.
In addition to the cost of damages and economic losses caused by the shutdown, one must also account for military expenditures related to the deployment of Israel’s complex missile defense system to intercept Iranian projectiles. According to Haaretz, those costs amounted to approximately $287 million per night.
Altogether, the war with Iran cost Israel several billion dollars — $12 billion, according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. A massive sum for a conflict lasting just twelve days, especially considering that Israel’s defense budget for 2024 was $46.5 billion (already up 65% from the previous year).
Who helped Israel
It must be noted that Israel did not act alone — neither in its offensive against Iran nor in its defensive efforts.
During their missions over Iranian territory, Israeli fighter jets were refuelled mid-air, between Syria and Iraq, by American tanker aircraft.
And a coalition of regional and European countries (France and the United Kingdom) assisted the US in intercepting Iranian missiles and drones headed for Israel.
Washington, of course, contributed the most: to the two THAAD missile batteries already deployed on Israeli soil, it added five Aegis-equipped destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean.
According to estimates cited by Newsweek, the US expended between 15% and 20% of its THAAD interceptor stockpile to defend Israel from Iranian missiles, with total costs exceeding $800 million.
This massive deployment of forces did not prevent the Jewish state from suffering the damages mentioned earlier.
Finally, Tel Aviv had to request US assistance to strike Iranian nuclear sites with sufficiently powerful “bunker buster” bombs.
According to Israeli Defence Minister Katz, when Netanyahu’s government launched the attack on Iran, it had no certainty that Trump would come to its aid.
Among military experts, there was awareness that not even the most powerful American ordnance might be capable of destroying deeply buried Iranian installations such as the one at Fordow.
Israel, therefore, took a gamble.
In the end, American B-2 bombers dropped no fewer than fourteen GBU-57 MOPs on two Iranian nuclear sites (twelve on Fordow, two on Natanz). These are the most powerful conventional bombs in the world.
But according to the Wall Street Journal, the US has produced only about twenty of these bombs to date, meaning that the strike on Iranian facilities consumed 70% of its stockpile of that weapon type.
Shortly afterward, Trump imposed a ceasefire that was eventually accepted by both Israel and Iran.
The move by the American president was likely motivated not only by his reluctance to once again drag the US into a dangerous Middle Eastern war, but also by the fact that both Israel and the US had exhausted an excessive number of interceptors and were finding it increasingly difficult to stop Iranian missiles.
As American experts observed, had the conflict turned into a prolonged war of attrition, it would have entailed exorbitant costs and damage for Israel.
No objectives achieved
The outcome of the conflict is, all in all, disappointing for both Washington and Tel Aviv.
Israel did not achieve regime change in Iran — on the contrary, it triggered a rallying of the country around the government.
And despite the bombastic statements from Trump, as well as from other members of his administration and the Netanyahu government, Iran’s nuclear programme — though damaged — is far from destroyed.
The controversy that erupted in Washington, after an initial estimate by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) claimed that the Israeli-American bombing had delayed Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months, eventually subsided when the Pentagon revised the delay to “two years”.
But that debate is misleading, as pointed out by American nuclear non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis.
The key point is that while Tehran may need time to restore the infrastructure of its civilian nuclear programme, the process leading to the production of an atomic bomb is much more agile and rapid.
And Iran — bombed despite being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and having allowed IAEA inspectors to monitor its nuclear sites — now has every incentive to develop a military nuclear programme in order to acquire a deterrent that would prevent future attacks.
As Lewis observed, the obstacle to producing a nuclear bomb for Iran has never been technical, but political. In other words, Tehran had so far chosen not to build a weapon. But the 12-day war may have changed the minds of the Iranian leadership.
Following the Israeli-American bombing, Iran ceased cooperation with the IAEA, whose inspectors have since left the country.
Moreover, over 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60% is now unaccounted for — no one knows where it is. All indications suggest that the Iranians removed this material from the Fordow and Natanz sites in anticipation of the airstrikes.
It is highly likely that Iran still possesses a sufficient number of centrifuges to continue enriching uranium, and it has at least two recently built fortified sites, in Natanz and Isfahan, which were not even bombed because they lie at depths unreachable even by the most powerful US bombs.
According to Lewis, Iran also has an underground facility outside Tehran (Shahid Boroujerdi) for converting uranium hexafluoride into metal — a process that may eventually be necessary for building a nuclear weapon.
This facility, never previously activated, could now be brought online.
All things considered, the 2015 agreement (JCPOA) had placed Iran’s nuclear programme under a strict monitoring regime for 15 years (and even after the deal’s expiration, the programme would have remained under IAEA oversight).
The June bombing delayed it by a few months at most (this is Lewis’s assessment as well) and led to the expulsion of IAEA inspectors from Iran. A result that, by any measure, must be considered a failure.
A conflict destined to continue
Moreover, although Tehran has expressed its willingness to reopen negotiations, it is clear that the chances of a successful deal are currently close to zero — both due to the deep mistrust the Iranian leadership harbours towards the Trump administration, and because the latter’s demand to dismantle all uranium enrichment infrastructure is unacceptable to Iran.
For Tel Aviv and Washington, however, if the nuclear programme cannot be eliminated through diplomacy, the perceived need to periodically strike Iran in order to turn back the clock on its programme will inevitably return.
The ultimate objective, in any case, is much broader.
As Israeli analyst Raz Zimmt has written, from Tel Aviv’s perspective “a long-term solution to the Iranian challenge to Israel’s security lies in regime change in Tehran”. In the meantime, Israel will continue its campaign against Iran “through diplomatic, economic, covert intelligence, and, at times, military means, in close coordination and cooperation with the United States”.
What lies ahead, at best, is a long, simmering conflict spanning the entire region, in which Tel Aviv and Washington will seek to weaken Iran’s regional allies and further isolate Tehran.
At worst, this confrontation could escalate into outbreaks similar to the recently concluded “12-day war”, but with far greater levels of danger — potentially destabilising the entire region.
As I pointed out in the first part of this article, we are in the midst of a campaign to reshape the Middle East — from the Palestinian Territories to Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf (through the Abraham Accords) and Iran.
A campaign led by Israel, with decisive support from the United States — a superpower in debt and in decline, seeking to escape its crisis through coercive economic measures (the trade war) and military actions.
The outcome of this campaign is far from certain. The Islamic Republic has shown internal resilience and significant military capabilities.
Iran and the broader Middle East — strategic from the standpoint of energy and Eurasian integration projects (from China’s Belt and Road Initiative to the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) between Russia and Iran) — are therefore poised to become one of the hottest and most dangerous theatres in the global battle to reshape the balance of power.
ADDENDUM
Ukraine and Iran: two fronts of a piecemeal world war
The Ukraine war and the Israel-Iran conflict are not separate crises, but interlinked fronts in a piecemeal world war — one that pits the US against a de facto alliance of of Russia, Iran and China
Donald Trump’s effort to broker a peace deal in Ukraine faltered not simply because of flawed diplomacy, but due to a convergence of political constraints, institutional resistance and fundamental misreadings of the conflict’s nature. What was billed as a bold initiative to end the war has instead exposed the limits of Trump’s foreign policy instincts — and left the United States more entangled than ever.
From the outset, Trump underestimated how politically untenable compromise would be for both Europe and Ukraine. For European leaders, the war has become a legitimising force — one that justifies economic sacrifices, centralised governance and increasingly authoritarian policies. Any deal that recognised Russian territorial gains would amount to a political admission of failure, emboldening domestic opposition. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky faced even higher stakes. A peace deal, particularly one seen as capitulation, could mean the end of his presidency or even threats to his personal safety. These domestic realities made any serious negotiations unlikely — unless the United States exerted overwhelming pressure, which it chose not to do.
Yet even if Trump had pushed harder, his efforts would still have run aground on the shoals of American politics. Within Washington, the national security establishment — including many within Trump’s own administration — remain firmly committed to prolonging the conflict. Despite Trump’s rhetorical break from bipartisan interventionism, he faced deep institutional resistance. Ultimately, he lacked the political will to challenge this entrenched consensus — assuming he ever really wanted to.
Compounding these difficulties was a key miscalculation: Trump appears to have believed that recognition of Russia’s territorial gains would be enough to secure a breakthrough. But from Moscow’s perspective, the war has never been solely about Ukraine. Russia’s demands include a new European security architecture, limits on NATO expansion and recognition of a multipolar world order — one in which Western dominance gives way to a new global architecture based on indivisible security and sovereign equality. In this context, Trump’s push for an immediate ceasefire before addressing broader issues was a nonstarter. So too were proposals such as deploying European “peacekeepers” in Ukraine or endorsing frameworks like the Kellogg Plan, which envisioned a frozen conflict.
The United States also made strategic missteps on the Ukrainian side, including pressuring Kyiv to formally accept Russian control over Crimea — a politically impossible move that only deepened mistrust. What the situation required was a gradual, carefully phased process: slow normalisation of relations with Russia, calibrated reduction of support for Ukraine and years-long negotiations grounded in trust-building. Instead, Trump tried to compress the entire process into an arbitrary 100-day window.
Meanwhile, the US repositioned itself as a neutral mediator rather than a direct party to the conflict — despite continuing its military and intelligence support to Ukraine (following a brief pause). That contradiction was always bound to undermine the negotiation process. As Michael Brenner wrote:
The result was not a diplomatic breakthrough, but a diplomatic collapse. The failure wasn’t just tactical. It revealed deeper contradictions within Trump’s “America First” doctrine. While he rhetorically distanced himself from the interventionist orthodoxy of previous administrations, his approach still assumed American global supremacy. As such, he was never truly prepared to accommodate Russia’s vision of a multipolar world — and neither was the broader US foreign policy establishment. Brenner hit the nail on the head:
[R]esolution on Russian terms would be experienced by all as a humiliating Western defeat — above all, defeat for the United States that instigated and directed the war as the culmination of a strategy conceived in 2008 and born in 2014 to force Russia into a box on the periphery of Europe from which it never could break free. America’s ego has become too fragile, its diffuse sense of vulnerability too acute, its compulsive need to demonstrate that it is still the world’s Number One has a too tenacious hold on its political elites — including Trump personally — for American elites to tolerate the stigma of such a defeat. The United States that was resilient, self-confidence enough to absorb the blow of defeat in Vietnam 60 years ago is gone forever.
In the end, Trump’s peace initiative has not only failed — it has deepened America’s stake in the war. While he lacks the appetite to pursue a Biden-style escalation, he also chose not to fully disengage. In doing so, he has made the conflict his own. Ironically, the much-criticised mineral deal he helped broker may end up benefiting Ukraine more than the US, by ensuring continued American involvement and preventing a total abandonment of Kyiv — even if the mineral assets turn out to be overstated.
It now appears like US military aid is about to cease, with Europe stepping to partially fill the gap — in coordination with the US, one has to assume at this point. But this is unlikely to change Ukraine’s trajectory. A Russian breakthrough — and a potential Ukrainian collapse — remains a distinct possibility. Whether such an outcome would force a return to the negotiating table or lead to further escalation is unclear. What is clear, however, is that deep mutual distrust ensures any peace agreement would be fragile and subject to reversal.
Meanwhile, Russia is likely to maintain a strong military posture in the region, particularly in response to European rearmament and increasingly aggressive rhetoric. This dynamic will almost certainly provoke new rounds of countermeasures, keeping both sides locked in a toxic cycle of escalation.
The eruption of open conflict between Israel and Iran has only deepened the geopolitical fracture lines that were already widening in Ukraine. Though these wars appear geographically and politically distinct, they are, in truth, interlinked fronts in what increasingly resembles a piecemeal world war — one that pits the United States against a de facto alliance of Russia, Iran and China.
This informal bloc, often described as a “strategic partnership” rather than a formal alliance, now features comprehensive military and economic integration. Russia and China conduct regular joint patrols across the Pacific and, together with Iran, stage increasingly frequent naval and military exercises in the Arabian Sea. Their cooperation extends to trade, logistics, energy and, crucially, arms and technology transfers. Financially, they are rapidly de-dollarising their transactions, shifting to rubles and renminbi in an effort to insulate themselves from Western financial pressure.
What unites these three powers is not merely opposition to specific US policies, but a shared conviction that the era of American-led global hegemony must end. Their vision is one of a multipolar order based on sovereign equality, regional power balances and the containment — or outright rejection — of what they (rightly) see as imperial overreach by the US and its allies.
This vision now has real teeth. If the United States escalates its military campaign against Iran, it risks not only igniting a broader regional war but raising the stakes in the ongoing de facto world war. Indeed, as Tariq Ali noted, Trump’s threats against Iran should be seen as part of a wider plan against China:
The main purpose for destabilising Iran is to get concessions from them. And the concessions are not simply on nuclear reactors. I think there’s a more serious plan to which is to make it impossible for Iran as a sovereign state to negotiate and sell oil and gas directly to China.
The US would like to be the power that determines to whom energy is sold and under what conditions. It’s part of their big plan to surround and lay siege to China… they are concerned and worried about the development of China as a major economic power and they want to control it. So in my opinion, the threats against Iran are more to do with that than anything else.
In such a scenario, Russia and China would likely respond — not necessarily with direct military intervention, but by flooding Iran with weapons, intelligence and possibly extending a nuclear umbrella as a deterrent. Indeed, China is already backing Iran. As one X user noted:
Iran’s recent missile strikes have become notably more precise, largely due to China granting it access to the advanced BeiDou satellite navigation system. If Pakistan is visibly supporting Iran, it’s unlikely to be acting alone. China supplies most of Pakistan’s military hardware, and its logistical and technical backing is essential to any sustained Pakistani operation.
Thus, the Ukraine war and the Israel-Iran conflict are not separate crises, but nodes in a single systemic breakdown of unipolar order. The US finds itself simultaneously overcommitted and under-resourced, confronting adversaries that now act in coordinated defense of a shared strategic goal: the dismantling of American imperial primacy.
For now, the most plausible outcome remains prolonged conflict, rising costs and widening divisions — not only between Russia and the West, but within the West itself. Peace will remain elusive until Washington and its allies reckon with the core issue: the unwillingness to relinquish a hegemonic doctrine that tolerates no rivals. Until then, war will remain the mechanism by which global order is contested — and Donald Trump, whether he intended it or not, may go down not as the president who ended global war, but as the one who inherited it and let it burn.
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