On Friday, 13 June 2025, Israel launched an unprovoked military attack on Iran, striking more than 100 targets – including military bases, nuclear facilities and senior leadership.
The attack, which has heightened fears of a wider regional war, killed Iran’s military chief of staff, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, and several members of its nuclear programme – just two days before the sixth round of US-Iran nuclear talks was set to resume.
Since then, a total of 14 nuclear scientists have reportedly been assassinated in air strikes and car bombings.
Tehran had been working to reaffirm its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), allowing peaceful uranium enrichment under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Israel, however, has long opposed not only potential weaponisation but also any form of nuclear development in Iran.
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It seeks to dismantle the programme entirely, denying Iran access to nuclear energy altogether, even as it has possessed nuclear weapons since the late 1960s, remains outside the NPT and has never officially declared its arsenal.
This latest assault follows years of destabilisation efforts, including covert sabotage, assassinations and violations of Iranian sovereignty – all met with silence from the international community.
The United States, for its part, had advance knowledge of the strike. While White House officials have denied direct involvement, senior congressional leaders were briefed in advance – and President Donald Trump publicly praised the strikes as “successful” and said the US “knew everything” about the operation.
Israel’s gambit may yet backfire – ending in strategic failure and dragging the US into another unwinnable Middle East war
Having long sought to provoke a large-scale confrontation, Israel is now exploiting the impunity granted by western powers amid its genocidal war on Gaza and broader regional aggression to escalate its violent campaign even further.
Israeli officials who have claimed credit for regime change in Syria are now openly threatening to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and seeking to topple the Iranian government.
But to destroy Iran’s fortified nuclear sites and overthrow its leadership, Israel requires full US military support. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy is to provoke a wider conflict – one that forces Washington into direct war with Iran.
That gambit, driven by Israel’s hegemonic ambition to remain the region’s sole nuclear power, may yet backfire – ending in strategic failure and dragging the US once more into a costly and unwinnable war in the Middle East.
Securing the realm
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the US and Israel have regarded the Islamic Republic of Iran as a major threat – an obstacle to US hegemony and Israeli domination in the Middle East.
A key US strategy for curbing emerging regional powers has been to create counterbalances in the region.
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This policy explains America’s tacit support for Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, which it fuelled for eight years before the war ended inconclusively in 1988.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the US pivoted to a dual containment policy targeting both Iran and Iraq, while simultaneously expanding its military footprint in the region.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US emerged as the sole global superpower – a unipolar moment. This was seen by pro-Israel political forces, both in the US and in Israel, as a golden opportunity to extend American primacy in a way that furthered Israeli regional dominance.
By May 1996, Netanyahu was elected as the Israeli prime minister at a time when pro-Israel policymakers were already gaining significant influence within the Clinton administration.
By the end of that year, a strategic blueprint titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” was published. The “realm” in question was not the US, but Israel.
General Wesley Clark, the former Nato Supreme Allied Commander, revealed in 2003 that shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, neoconservatives in the Bush administration had crafted a sweeping plan to remake the Middle East in Israel’s favour.
After toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan, the plan was to invade and dismantle seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia – and ultimately Iran.
In The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued convincingly that pro-Israel forces in the US played a central role in driving the invasion of Iraq.
Since then, the US and Israel have worked to weaken or remove any government in the region not aligned with their interests, many of them the very countries listed by Clark.
Among these, Iran has always posed the most difficult challenge.
The Islamic Republic’s revolutionary foundation makes it uniquely resistant to external pressure and regime change, despite decades-long sanctions, isolation and western destabilisation campaigns.
The nuclear pretext
For 25 years, Netanyahu has relentlessly warned that Iran was just “weeks away” from developing a nuclear bomb.
However, intelligence assessments, including those from the IAEA, have consistently found no evidence that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons.
In 2015, the US and other permanent members of the Security Council, as well as Germany, reached a landmark agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The US policy of ‘maximum pressure’ failed, accelerating Iran’s enrichment rather than halting it
It allowed Iran to enrich uranium under strict international oversight, within the framework of the NPT. However, Netanyahu and his allies in the US Congress launched a campaign to kill the deal.
In 2018, they succeeded in convincing Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA.
Since then, both the Trump and Biden administrations have pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy – imposing harsh sanctions, financial restrictions and political isolation in an effort to coerce Iran into relinquishing its right to enrich uranium.
But the policy failed. Iran accelerated its enrichment efforts, raising its uranium purity from 3.75 percent to 60 percent and amassing over 400kg of enriched uranium.
When Trump returned to office in January 2025, he was eager to negotiate a new deal that would dismantle Iran’s enrichment capability.
On the campaign trail, he promised to avoid new wars and end America’s military entanglements. However, he soon found himself facing a defiant and extremist Israeli government that had radically revised its military doctrine following the Hamas-led Toufan Al-Aqsa attack on 7 October 2023.
That attack deeply shook Israeli society, which has long relied on deterrence as the most critical pillar of its military doctrine. However, a major consequence of the events at Toufan Al-Aqsa has been the undermining of this foundational element.
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To restore deterrence against the Palestinian resistance, the Zionist regime embarked on a genocidal campaign in Gaza that has already spanned more than 600 days.
Meanwhile, Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons, has long opposed any regional rival developing even peaceful nuclear capabilities.
It bombed nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 with total impunity. Despite these precedents, it has so far failed to destroy Iran’s far more advanced and dispersed nuclear infrastructure – some of which is buried deep in mountains and highly fortified.
Strategic miscalculation
In April 2025, Trump issued a 60-day ultimatum to Iran to accept a deal that would effectively end its nuclear enrichment capability.
After five rounds of talks, a sixth round was scheduled for 15 June. However, Trump, admittedly, was complicit and engaged in a deceptive campaign to allow Israel to wage its war and bomb nuclear sites two days before their scheduled meeting.
The deception worked. Israel carried out a massive decapitation strike on 13 June, assassinating over 20 senior Iranian military figures.
The goal was not only to derail the talks and destroy Iran’s mature nuclear programme, but to cripple Iran’s military leadership and nuclear experts – in the hope of sparking regime change.
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As Netanyahu rejoiced and Israelis gloated, Trump tried to take some credit as many pundits and politicians were revelling and writing the Islamic Republic’s obituary.
But as Mark Twain once quipped: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
History teaches us that it is not who fires the first shot that wins, but the one who fires the last.
If one were to determine the victors during the following dates in these conflicts – such as the Iraq-Iran war in October 1980, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in August 1982, or the American invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003 – they would have wrongly predicted the outcome in every case.
However, in the current conflict, Iran responded swiftly and forcefully.
Within hours, Iran’s supreme leader appointed new commanders, who launched a massive barrage of ballistic missiles and drones in retaliation, targeting Tel Aviv, Haifa and other Israeli cities.
The scope and scale of the response were unprecedented in Israel’s history.
Suddenly, the Zionist regime found itself paralysed. Millions of its people were forced into bomb shelters. The vaunted Iron Dome defence system was overwhelmed. Netanyahu’s calls for regime change in Iran, once brash and confident, now sounded desperate and fraught.
Boxed in
Israel faces a grim strategic dilemma. It cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear programme without US military help. It cannot induce regime change – a feat the US has failed to achieve despite decades of effort.
Thus, Netanyahu is frantically trying to pull the US into war.
On the other hand, Trump faces serious constraints. His base – the “Maga” movement – strongly opposes another Middle Eastern conflict. A war with Iran could jeopardise his domestic agenda and inflame tensions with geopolitical rivals like China.
Moreover, US assets in the region are vulnerable. There are 90,000 US troops (mostly in support and logistical roles rather than combat) stationed across dozens of bases, many within Iran’s missile range.
A wider conflict could prompt Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which 21 percent of global oil passes, or attack oil fields across the Gulf – potentially causing a global economic crisis.
If Netanyahu fails to draw the US into the war, and cannot dismantle Iran’s nuclear capability or cause regime collapse, Israel’s deterrence will be permanently weakened
Israel has boxed itself in. It defines its victory as either the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear programme or the fall of the regime. Anything less will be a crushing defeat. So, Netanyahu is once again trying to manipulate a US president. But the stakes are now dangerously high.
There are three main scenarios that could unfold:
1) A prolonged war of attrition: In this scenario, Israel and Iran engage in a grinding conflict that remains contained. Iran absorbs the damage and continues to strike Israeli targets, eventually emerging as the prevailing party as Israel is battered and fails to curtail Iran’s nuclear capabilities. As its nuclear activities survive, its regional influence is not only restored, but also grows.
2) US intervention: America is drawn into the war, seeking to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme and force Tehran into a new agreement. But this could destabilise the global economy and is unlikely to achieve its aims, given Iran’s ideology and its strategic ties to Russia and China.
3) Regional conflagration: A full-blown regional war draws in multiple actors, shatters existing rules of engagement, and possibly ignites a global conflict. Some analysts have warned that this could mark the beginning of World War Three.
If Netanyahu fails to draw the US into the war, and cannot dismantle Iran’s nuclear capability or cause regime collapse, Israel’s deterrence will be permanently weakened. Ironically, such a blow may also force Israel to end its devastating genocidal war on Gaza and abandon its quest for unchallenged regional hegemony.
As Vladimir Lenin once observed: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” In the weeks ahead, the world may be living through one of those historic times that may define the region for decades to come.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
