As much of the commentary on the Iran war centres on its implications for US hegemony, the consequences for Israel are not always clear. An important part of the war’s story is, of course, the success of Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to convince President Trump to join a campaign against Iran. If the story is left there, however, we might presume that the war has proven to be effective in advancing the Israeli aspiration for uncontested regional dominance. The reality is quite different, and more ominous for Israel.
Since 2023, Israeli policy has been driven by a potent mix of existential dread and bloodthirsty opportunism. The al-Aqsa Flood was an astonishingly effective demonstration of Israeli vulnerability to Palestinian armed resistance, and an apparent vindication of anti-Palestinian rhetoric. Followed shortly afterwards by the election of a strategically incoherent, but performatively violent and pro-Zionist, Republican administration in the US, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu identified a delectable opportunity to advance long-sought-after strategic objectives. Netanyahu initiated an unprecedented acceleration of genocide against Palestinians that had hitherto been slow and quiet. Meanwhile, Trump’s recovery of the White House gave Netanyahu even less reason to worry about explaining his warmongering to the US paymasters, and an easy opportunity for the kinds of deceit and bribery that have put him so close to a prison sentence. Clearly, Bibi has sought to make the most of his strategic opening to achieve a ‘Greater Israel’ and a permanent degrading of regional resistance (i.e., the Islamic Republic; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Palestinian resistance forces around Hamas; and Nasrallah, or the Houthis, in Yemen).
Yet Netanyahu’s ‘muscular’ approach to Israeli strategic interests shares with the Trump regime an ideologically narrow, frequently short-sighted, and personally selfish perspective. Bibi has demonstrated no concern for the long-term relationship between Israel and its sponsors in the US and Europe, prioritising instead a drive toward constant and ruthless warmaking, which helps to keep the Israeli justice system off his back, and the Israeli population thirsty for a taste of victory. While there is good reason to see Netanyahu’s primary enemies, such as Hamas and Iran, as militarily weakened by his warmaking, his strategy is failing even by the standards of the Israeli settler project.
Though the US’s participation in the war on Iran was a personal victory for Netanyahu, the outcome is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of his general strategic failure. Israel has been defeated in much the same way, and for many of the same reasons, that the US has. The US has managed to degrade the Islamic Republic’s military capacity and eliminate their top tier of leadership. But Iran is very far from being militarily defeated, even in the air. On the ground, Iran would be more than capable of exacting intolerable losses on the US and Israel. This seemingly rules out any US ground invasion. Netanyahu evidently sold Trump on the notion that a vicious bombing campaign could result in a political or societal collapse, and it’s quite possible that Bibi sincerely hoped to achieve this. On this front, too, his defeat is spectacular, with early efforts to stimulate a Kurdish insurgency evaporating immediately, and Trump baulking at carrying out his threat of a civilizational assault with all its nuclear implications. Finally, whereas diplomatic pressure had presented a clear opportunity to curb Iran’s nuclear capacity, they now have every motivation to enrich and weaponise uranium rapidly.
For Israel, the campaign against Iran has also provided effective cover for an invasion of Lebanon, which has been similarly unimpressive from a military standpoint, and deeply disturbing from a humanitarian one. Their invasion of the south of Lebanon has displaced 1.3 million people, and their evident hope has been to stoke civil war by targeting the Shi’a population for displacement, discouraging solidarity from their Christian neighbours, and insisting that the Lebanese government disarm the only armed opposition to Israeli aggression. Yet the initial declared aim of their invasion – to occupy the country up to the Litani River – remains a pipe dream due to the robust fact that the Lebanese people, regardless of their feelings toward Hezbullah, will continue to resist such an occupation. While the Western imperialist power bloc is supportive of Israel’s aim to disarm Hezbollah, figures like Hillary Clinton and Emmanuel Macron prefer to lean on the client government in Beirut to do their bidding, rather than supporting a direct Israeli annexation.
The clearest victor of the war in Iran has been Russia. While Russia is not a major player with a direct role in Palestine, its relative strengthening could prove to be an important secondary factor in the decline of Israel as a regional power. The lifting of sanctions on Russian oil due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the resultant rush of billions into Putin’s coffers, and the slow implosion of NATO mean that Europeans have added reason to prioritise security on their eastern flank, at the expense of their unpopular and erratic West Asian ally. European politicians are now less likely to risk their electoral futures to defend Israel, given the widespread perception that Israeli actions are unjustified, morally and strategically, and given that Russia’s leverage is growing. Already, evidence of this shift is visible in the antiwar positioning of Pedro Sanchez in Spain, as well as the responsiveness of Italy’s Georgia Meloni to huge domestic pressure (exercised notably in mass general strikes) to support Palestine. France’s Macron has been disturbed by Israel’s effort to destabilise Lebanon, and is flanked both to the right and left by anti-American sentiment. The Green threat to Starmer’s Labour, and the growing fractures between the European and American far right, spell additional trouble for Israel in Europe.
Even more decisively, Netanyahu’s warmongering has splintered Trump’s political base in unprecedented ways and is forcing Democratic politicians into a far more critical posture vis-à-vis Israel. Gavin Newsom – a likely favourite for the Democratic presidential nomination – has rapidly backtracked on his recent framing of Israel as an apartheid state, but the penetration of such language into the milieu of establishment Democrats illustrates just how far Zionism has become an electoral liability for US liberals, even as they continue to lean on Zionist funders like AIPAC. Media efforts to paint Zohran Mamdani as antisemitic in a heavily Jewish city have broadly failed, despite the seemingly open goal, given his Muslim faith and anti-Zionist background. The pro-Israel lobby has exacted some political concessions from Democratic “progressives”, including Mamdani, but the Zionist monopoly on Democratic Party politics increasingly appears to be over, at least for now. The national popularity of ‘progressive Democrats’ with relatively robust pro-Palestinian stances, and the recent nomination of James Talarico for the Texas Senate race, compound the sense that the Israeli alliance with Leftist and liberal Americans has been seriously compromised.
Even in the Republican camp, Israel and Netanyahu are increasingly mistrusted, and the Iran war appears to have been the crossing of a Rubicon. The ‘America First’ wing of Trump’s MAGA movement has become increasingly alarmed at his embrace of an aggressive and reckless militarism over recent months. Their perception is that Trump’s interventionist shift has been effected by Netanyahu, whose pitch for a war on Iran seemingly convinced Trump to ignore his own advisor’s scepticism about a quick and easy regime change operation. Increasingly desperate and congenitally tactless, Trump looks set to finalise this split with a very public attack on key media outriders of his movement, including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones. While the war on Iran remains extremely popular among Israelis, their American counterparts view it rather dimly, and this divergence will only be compounded as voters learn that the inflationary consequences will not subside quickly.
The Zionist project relies on a constant expansionism that necessitates regular conflicts with Israel’s neighbours. But in rushing to achieve multiple ambitious objectives simultaneously, Netanyahu has seriously compromised the long-term interests of the Israeli ruling class. He has also subjected the Israeli economy to a growing debt burden, a brain drain, and increased international support for the imposition of sanctions against Israel’s essential weapons industry. While we should not be satisfied by commonplace liberal-Zionist efforts to reframe Israeli crimes as aberrant consequences of a far-right government, we should also not gloss over Netanyahu as an exemplary strategist with a record of success.
Even on Bibi’s own terms, and the terms of the Zionist project, the war on Iran has made Israel significantly weaker. The ambient bloodlust in Israeli society makes it unlikely that, if Netanyahu were replaced, his potential successor might reverse that trend. And the accelerated rebalancing of regional and global power gives ample reason to expect that Zionist self-harm will leave permanent vulnerabilities in the US-Israeli imperial order. One does not need to be a champion of multipolarity to recognise that Iran’s likely upgrading as a power following this war presents meaningful opportunities for anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics in the West.
