The Israeli preemptive attack against Iran on June 13 demonstrates that Israel continues to persistently spread conflict in the Middle East. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is mobilizing the Zionist lobby in Western countries to achieve its goals of plunging the region into chaos. Especially following the Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct.7, 2023, Israel launched a large-scale military offensive not only against the Palestinian people but also against other regional states and peoples, such as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
We have to remember that Israel was behind the overthrow of the Saddam regime in Iraq in 2003, when the Iraqi state was in a similar conflict. It was later admitted that the U.S. and the U.K. officials led the invasion of Iraq with forged documents. In other words, Israeli authorities created a crisis in the area by deceiving and misleading Western global powers. As a result of the invasion, the Iraqi state came under Iranian influence.
Israel was behind turning the so-called Arab Spring into an Arab winter in 2013, cooperating with some regional and global powers to overthrow the elected and legitimate government of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt. Israel, together with its regional and Western allies, successfully prevented any Arab country from transitioning to democratic politics. At the end, the Arab world experienced a strategic collapse.
On the one hand, as a result of strategic collapse, the Arab world today has no meaningful say in regional politics. Most Arab regimes are too dependent on Western countries and cannot even attempt to pursue policies that might contradict Israel’s regional projections.
On the other hand, many Arab states have normalized their relations with Israel, either diplomatically or de facto. While some Arab states, namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Morocco, signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, some others normalized their relations without signing an agreement. Israel and the Arab states took all these steps of normalization with the support of the U.S. government.
There are several important reasons why Israel launched a major military offensive on Iran. One of the main reasons for Israel’s attack on Iran is to push the Gaza genocide into the background. Due to some recent developments, the Israeli government has begun to be criticized harshly, even in its own allied countries.
A major development that has put Israel in a difficult position has been Israel’s intervention in the Madleen Gaza Boat, which was carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians suffering from starvation due to the Israeli blockade. Israeli forces have once again violated basic rules of international law and seized the Madleen Gaza Boat in international waters in the Mediterranean. The ship attempted to break the suffocating blockade of Gaza, but Israeli forces kidnapped and deported the 12 activists on board, members of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
Another important development was the Global March to Gaza, which was organized with the participation of activists from 54 different countries to draw attention to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza and the blockade it has imposed on the Gaza region. Although Egyptian authorities did not allow the activists to enter Gaza through the Rafah Border Crossing. The committee of the march emphasized that the main purpose of the action was “to lift the inhumane blockade on Gaza and to stop the massacres against civilians.” The committee pointed out that “this call is the voice of the global conscience.” The coalition of activists are determined to continue their efforts with a new strategic route focusing on social media and diplomacy. Within this context, the activists expect that the global public pressure will be increased, testimonies from the field will be conveyed to large masses, and the struggle will continue with humanitarian determination. All these measures will further contribute to the otherization and alienation of the Israeli government in the world.
The second reason Israel attacked Iran was to sabotage the ongoing nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran. Israel does not want a normalized Iran in the Middle East, because Iran and its proxies are Israel’s primary excuse to gain support from Western countries. Despite all the pressure from the Israeli government, President Donald Trump has tried to resolve the nuclear issue with Iran through diplomatic means. For now, it seems that Netanyahu, who thrives on chaos, has been able to prevent this. One of the indications of the deliberate sabotaging of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations is the killing of Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator.
Third, Israel has exploited the existing power vacuum in the region and has taken measures to prevent normalization in the region. Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah are mostly out of the equation. Furthermore, the regional Iranian axis was largely weakened after the collapse of the Baath regime in Syria. The Netanyahu government felt that the time was right to get rid of Iranian power, before it was too late. It is no secret that Israel wants to remain the only state with nuclear warheads in the region and, therefore, tries to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.
The fourth reason is the increasing political instability in American domestic politics. Trump, who has changed his regional policy toward the Middle East after his visit to the region, has to focus on domestic issues more than foreign crises. It was claimed by many observers that Trump excluded the Netanyahu government from his regional projections and attempted to cooperate with Arab states and Türkiye.
However, with the “no kings” protests across the U.S., millions of Americans took to the streets and stood against the Trump administration’s large-scale military parade in Washington, D.C. Organizers of the nationwide protests accuse President Trump of putting on the military parade as a show of dominance. It is clear that Netanyahu has benefited from the anti-Trump protests. He has hijacked the new Middle Eastern process initiated by President Trump and thus undermined his regional vision. It is possible that Trump will follow the Netanyahu government and use a foreign crisis for domestic consumption.
All in all, Israel continues to play its destructive role in the Middle East with the support of the West. The Netanyahu government has managed to drag most Western countries directly or indirectly into another illegal war. Not only the U.S. and the U.K., but also Germany, France and the EU have declared their support for Israel. It is clear that the West will not allow Israel to be defeated. In return, it seems that Israel will continue to seriously undermine Western values and institutions, paving the way for the further weakening of the West on a global scale.
