Like US President George W. Bush when he launched his invasion of Iraq in 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, aims to go far beyond Iran and to “redraw the map of the Middle East.” While the neoconservatives believed that the capture of Baghdad would usher in an era of democracy throughout the region, the leaders in Tel Aviv see themselves in an apocalyptic struggle against “evil,” using the need to defend the so-called “Judeo-Christian civilization” as an alibi. But this new Israeli aggression is fueling the flames of conflict that will make the region and its countries unlivable. Israel boasts of waging war on “seven fronts”: Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Syria; it could have added East Jerusalem, where settlement expansion and the confiscation of Palestinian property are intensifying.
Iran is the main target of recent attacks under the false pretext of a nuclear threat, which is as untrue as the allegations of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The Israeli bombings come at a time when negotiations between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Oman, were continuing on Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of economic sanctions. This is the second time that Israel has hindered a diplomatic solution.
In May 2018, encouraged by Netanyahu, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iranian nuclear deal signed three years earlier, which had been endorsed in two resolutions by the United Nations Security Council. In the immediate aftermath, the US president intensified sanctions against Iran, which were much tougher than those in place before 2015, targeting any company doing business with Iran, whether American or not, and effectively prohibiting Tehran from selling its oil and petrochemical products. This is a gradual strangulation of a UN member state, illegal measures that have elicited little reaction from the “international community.” As for the idea that Iran was on the verge of possessing nuclear weapons, one need only reproduce a few statements lazily repeated by the media to realize that this scare tactic is nothing new (see box below).
Guilt reversal
For decades, Tehran has been consistently portrayed as the main threat to stability in the Middle East, as much for its nuclear ambitions as for the Islamic nature of its regime. We have heard Benjamin Netanyahu repeat this assertion many times, even in front of the UN General Assembly, while he was carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza and bombing towns and villages in southern Lebanon and entire neighborhoods of Beirut. While this rhetoric has long been supported by Saudi Arabia, the reaction of Riyadh—the first capital to denounce the Israeli offensive — and then of other Gulf countries underscores the region’s aspiration for stability. Who would be so naïve — not to say disingenuous—as to believe that this role of regional threat is played by any state in the region other than Israel ?
This Israeli threat is all the more out of control because —surprise, surprise — it is supported to the hilt by Western chancelleries. The brief period of criticism of Tel Aviv for the genocide it has been carrying out in Gaza for 20 months has come to an end; gone is any desire to draw a red line for Israeli leaders, even if it often meant incriminating Benjamin Netanyahu alone in order to preserve Israel’s innocence, even though the country’s political forces and a large part of its public opinion supported his policy in Gaza. The sacred western union is back, once again invoking the famous “right of Israel to defend itself,” in total violation of international law.
Never have Western leaders been bothered by Israel’s own nuclear program and its categorical refusal to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In his press conference on Friday June 13, French President Emmanuel Macron did not say a word about the Iranian civilian victims, even though the death toll had risen to 224 at that point, suggesting that Israel had only targeted military and nuclear facilities. In a complete reversal of blame, he placed the “heavy responsibility for destabilizing the entire region” on Iran. It was like hearing former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir blaming the ‘Arabs’ for forcing the Israelis to “kill their children.”
A much greater threat hangs over the Iranian civilian population and the countries of the region as long as the Israeli bombings continue: a nuclear and ecological disaster. The uranium enrichment site in Natanz, located between the cities of Kashan and Isfahan, was hit by Israeli bombings on Friday, June 13. The director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, described the situation as “extremely worrying.” While the organized famine in Gaza barely raises an eyebrow among Western leaders, will the risk of radiation for Middle East’s populations prompt them to react ?
Let’s Forget Gaza
By opening this new front, Israel has confirmed a break with its strategic military doctrine, which advocated short wars against a limited number of adversaries. Today, it is not seeking an end to hostilities but their prolongation, including by violating the agreements it has ratified. For example, Tel Aviv signed a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon that came into force on 27 November 2024. Despite this, it continues to occupy Lebanese territory and committed 1,500 ceasefire violations up until 3 April 2025, without France, which is involved in monitoring the agreement, feeling the need to raise objections.
In Gaza, the truce came into effect on 19 January and led to the release of many hostages and hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners. But Israel violated it and unilaterally resumed its bombings on 18 March, showing how little it cares even about the hostages. Here too, neither the United States nor the West protested, but instead blamed Hamas. It is not insignificant that the attack on Iran was launched within 48 hours of a total blackout in Gaza—a disruption of all means of telecommunication after Israel targeted a fiber-optic cable. Cut off from the world, Gaza, which was just beginning to take its rightful place in the media spotlight, could disappear from the headlines and the genocide could continue out of sight. During the three days that this total blackout lasted, men, many of them young, were killed by the Israeli army while seeking humanitarian aid in the Netzarim corridor to feed their families, victims of organized starvation. Their blood mixed with the vital white powder escaping from the flour bags. Among them was Obeida, the nephew of our correspondent Rami Abu Jamous. He was 18 years old.
While there is a personal dimension to Netanyahu’s desire to engage in endless war—fear of judgment in his corruption trials and of a commission of inquiry into his personal responsibility for the failure of 7 October 2023 — it would be wrong to limit ourselves to this interpretation. He does not aim to bring about a democratic Middle East as dreamed of by American neoconservatives, but to sow chaos in order to prevent the emergence of any state or structured force capable of resisting Israel.
Its behaviour in Syria is significant. Tel Aviv has taken advantage of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime not only to expand the territory it already illegally occupies in the Golan Heights, but also to stir up internal tensions by regularly bombing territory and trying to forge ties with “minorities,” whether Druze or Alawite, in order to prevent the re-establishment of a stable Syrian state. It is thus reviving an old strategy of allying with “minorities” that has always dictated, at least in part, Israeli policy, particularly in Lebanon during the civil war (1975-1989), through its alliance with Maronite groups. It has a clear goal, which was explained by Michael Young, editor-in-chief of the blog Diwan, in an op-ed published by L’Orient-Le Jour on 16 January 2025 :
For Israelis, the fragmentation of Syria and the neighbouring Arab countries would be a godsend. Not only would this outcome guarantee the weakness of Israel’s neighbours, but it would also mean, in the case of Syria, that there would be no credible government to challenge the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights. Weakened Arab states also open other doors, notably allowing Israel to carry out ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population by pushing them into neighbouring countries without much resistance. Such would be the advantages of partitioning the country along ethno-confessional lines, allowing Israelis to establish buffer zones near their own borders, or zones of influence elsewhere”.
A chaotic and divided Middle East ruled over by a state openly unencumbered by international law—this is the promise held out by Israel, whose Western allies are ensuring that it has the means to fulfill it.
Anthony Cordesman and Khalid al-Rodhan are researchers whose book Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction : The Real and Potential Threat, published in June 2006, assesses estimates by intelligence services and officials of the likely amount of time Iran would need to produce a nuclear weapon. The following examples have been reported by Alain Gresh in his blog Nouvelles d’Orient1, nearly 20 years ago.
End of 1991 : Reports to Congress and CIA evaluations believe that there is “a strong probability that Iran has obtained all, or virtually all, the components necessary to produce two or three nuclear bombs”. A report to the House of Representatives in February 1992 suggested that those bombs would be operational between February and April 1992.
24 February 1993 : CIA Director James Woolsey states that Iran was eight or ten years away from being able to produce its own nuclear bomb, though it could become a nuclear power sooner with outside help.
January 1995 : Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency John Holum testifies that Iran could have the bomb in 2003.
5 January 1995 : Secretary of Defense William Perry states that Iran could be less than five years away from producing a nuclear bomb, although “the speed will depend on how they work to acquire it.”
29 April 1996 : Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres says he believes that “four years from now, they (Iran) could have nuclear arms”.
21 October 1998 : General Anthony Zinni, US Central Command chief, states that Iran could be able to deliver nuclear bombs in five years’ time. “If I was a betting man, I’d say they’ll be operational in five years, that they’ll have the capability.”
17 January 2000 : A new CIA evaluation of Iran’s nuclear capacities says that the CIA cannot rule out that Iran already has nuclear arms. The evaluation is based on the acknowledgement by the CIA that it cannot follow Iran’s nuclear activities precisely and thus cannot exclude the possibility that it might have a nuclear weapon.
1Alain Gresh, “Quand l’Iran aura-t-il l’arme nucléaire ?”, Nouvelles d’Orient, 4 September 2006.