This morning, a new Israeli strike targeted Iran several months after the war between Tel Aviv and Tehran, with the support of Washington. While negotiations on Iranian nuclear power were slipping between the Iranian regime and the United States, Israel forced destiny into a sequence where each operation seemed to bring the Middle East a little closer to a point of no return.
We are at a strategic crossroads facing an Iran in dire straits, now contested both externally and internally. This is quite the difference with the conflict last June which saw Israelis and Americans hit Tehran hard. The situation is terrible, not only for Iran, but for the entire regional balance. Because face to face there are actors who do not speak the same language, do not pursue the same objectives and do not accept the same costs.
Since at least 2012, Benjamin Netanyahu has had a constant obsession: preventing Iran from reaching the nuclear threshold, even if it means provoking a direct confrontation, because for Israel this regime is an existential threat to Tel Aviv. Under the presidency of Barack Obama, he continued to push Washington to strike Iranian installations. The Americans resisted. The 2015 agreement was seen in Tel Aviv as an unacceptable concession. Trump was quick to tear it up when he arrived at the White House. For Israel, the problem is not only technical or nuclear, it is ontological. He no longer wants this regime like a majority of Iranians who have been protesting since December and confronting the regime in the streets.
It is also the very existence of a regime which proclaims the destruction of the Hebrew State which is considered intolerable. Trump’s return to negotiation represented a vital panic for Israel, which decided to take the first step, both to show its determination, but also to test the Iranian regime’s retaliatory capabilities. And the United States, which massed a historic armada on the country’s borders, thinking that the regime would capitulate, had no other choice but to follow its historic ally, the Jewish state.
Hit to knock down
For Netanyahu, the Iranian question goes beyond classic deterrence. It is a matter of regime change. For more than a decade, Israeli strategy has combined targeted strikes, sabotage, assassinations of scientists, cyberattacks and diplomatic pressure. The implicit objective is clear: to weaken the regime to the point of causing its collapse. Israel believes that time is against it. Each Iranian technological advance, each additional enrichment, reduces the room for strategic maneuver. Israeli doctrine is based on preventive action. To wait would be to accept the irreversible.
In this logic, certain Israeli circles no longer hide their support for Iranian opposition figures, including the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi to ensure the transition, even if he does not represent all the diverse currents of the opposition and has lived in the United States for decades, making him somewhere ” suspicious “. The bet is risky: cause an internal implosion that would bring down the mullahs. But recent history reminds us that attempts to regime changeswhether in Iraq or elsewhere, often produce effects contrary to those sought.
Maximum pressure
The arrival of Donald Trump gave the impression of total alignment with Israeli positions. Withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, crushing sanctions, diplomatic isolation of Tehran: the policy of maximum pressure has put the Iranian economy under pressure.
However, behind the rhetoric, a reality emerges. Trump does not want a long war. Her electorate does not want her. A massive military intervention in the Middle East would be politically explosive as decisive elections approach. The recent surprise is also due to the reopening of a space for discussion around nuclear power, even though the Israeli obsession remains with the pure and simple overthrow of the regime. The violent demonstrations that have engulfed Iran since December may have given the illusion of a faltering regime. But the repression was brutal, methodical, effective. The Iranian government has shown that it will not back down. Banking on a rapid internal collapse is more wishful thinking than cold analysis. The successive failures of regime change policies in the Middle East should prompt caution. Overturning is one thing. Stabilizing is another.
Strategic test or uncontrollable spiral?
This morning’s Israeli strike marks a new threshold. It asks a simple and worrying question: how far can the escalation go without triggering a regional war? Can we just blow off the regime’s head, eliminating Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards without risking a backlash against the Iranian people? And can this even work? Israel is preparing for direct or indirect reprisals, via other regional relays of Tehran, which are very weakened. Iran is in a unique position. The mullahs’ regime has nothing to lose politically. Cornered economically, contested socially, he may be tempted by a nationalist headlong rush. An external confrontation can unite opinion around power.
What is of concern is the degree of American involvement. The United States has always been behind Israel. This morning’s operation could not be carried out without close coordination. Is this a test intended to assess Tehran’s true response capabilities? Is this a calibrated signal? Or the beginning of a dynamic that will escape its initiators? Trump announced this morning at the same time that he was engaging in a massive war, while he still had a few days of hope of reaching an agreement, since the last meeting between the mediators in Geneva.
At this point, no one knows where we are going. But the consequences could be terrible. For Israel, exposed to massive reprisals. For Iran, whose population would pay the price of increased radicalization. For the entire region, already fragmented by multiple conflicts. We are therefore at a crossroads. On the one hand, the logic of the existential confrontation. On the other, the prudent management of an adversary that we seek to contain without triggering a conflagration. This is what Trump had hoped for but which could not work: how do you negotiate with an adversary whose end you want?
The drama may be there: Israel speaks in terms of survival and overthrow. Washington speaks in terms of balance of power and political cost. Tehran speaks in terms of honor, resistance and strategic martyrdom. Three different languages. Three rationalities that do not meet. And in this space of strategic misunderstanding, history shows that crises are not always resolved by calculation. They sometimes tip over by accident. The Middle East is a specialist in it.
*Sébastien Boussois is a doctor in political science, media consultant, researcher in international relations associated with the CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team) and the Geostrategic Observatory of Geneva (Switzerland) and director of the European Geopolitical Institute (IGE).
