By Robert Inlakesh

As we approach the precipice of a major conflict between Tel Aviv and Tehran, it is important to take into consideration what is likely and how far it could go.

The fates of Palestine and Iran are inextricably intertwined. This is something that the Israeli leadership has made clear from day one of its genocide against Gaza. As we approach the precipice of a major conflict between Tel Aviv and Tehran, it is important to take into consideration what is likely and how far it could go.

As the US posture against Iran, setting the stage for possible military action by evacuating its non-essential personnel and families of soldiers from various nations within striking distance of Iran, many analysts are scrambling to make sense of the situation.

For months, the Israeli, British, and US media have all been releasing report after report on an alleged feud between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American President Donald Trump. During this time, we have heard everything from claims that Trump will recognise the State of Palestine, to him firing his staff in order to get an Iran nuclear deal independent of the Zionist Lobby’s assets in Washington.

Over time, it has become clear that the “anonymous sources” and “security officials” were non-existent and that most of the stories spread across the media are simply inaccurate. However, as is often the case with Israeli propaganda, the goal is never to actually convince the world of a lie, it is to saturate the media landscape with so many claims that it muddles the waters.

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Why is this all relevant to a potential strike on Iran? Well, since the US public are overwhelmingly opposed to initiating a war with the Islamic Republic, Trump needs someone to blame. On the other hand, Netanyahu needs to claim all of the glory should his master plan actually work, to one degree or another.

If you fish around now for analyses about what is currently transpiring, you will inevitably find various pieces arguing that Israel is seeking to attack Iran against the wishes of the United States. If Israel carries out an attack on Iran, there is no possibility at all that the US will be opposed to it and there is not a shred of evidence to support this notion, other than hearsay from unnamed sources.

Innuendo aside, through using basic reasoning, it can be deduced that a significant Israeli attack on Iran is close to an impossibility without the US. Why? There are four main reasons:

1. An attack on Iran could spark a major war, which, without a plan in place by the US, could completely collapse its entire regional project. This is not a simple move and there is a reason why the past Israeli attacks on Iran were so incredibly limited.
2. Israel needs the United States for air defence purposes. The evidence points towards US aircraft achieving most of the successful missile and drone interceptions during Iran’s Operation True Promise 1. Israel’s air defence systems are incapable of dealing with Iranian ballistic missile attacks.
3. There is no way the Israelis could possibly conceal something so huge from their American allies. They would have to know.
4. In the event of war, risking a breakup between Israel and the US would be a potentially nation-ending event.

Especially with the US now raising its threat levels across the region, withdrawing forces and their families, putting its major military bases on standby, while making various threats, it is not plausible to say that it isn’t aware, or that “Israel is dragging the US to war”.

Simply put, if the US wanted to stop such an attack, it could, but it is clear that whatever is coming is part of a carefully calibrated plan.

What To Expect

It is true that this could end up boiling over into a catastrophic war in which the Israelis could deploy nuclear weapons and the Iranians could decimate Israel, but this isn’t the most likely kind of conflict to occur.

If either side is going to be totally defeated, it will have to come as a result of action on the ground. Iran is not open to the possibility of being defeated on the ground, but the Israelis face this problem and do not necessarily possess the armed force capable of putting off a multi-front ground attack.

To get a sense of how policymakers in Washington view the event of war with Iran, the best place to go is to the right-wing think tanks. The Heritage Foundation – widely regarded as the most influential think tank over the Trump administration – laid out in a recent brief on the issue what they believed to be a strategy wherein the Israelis could hit Iran’s nuclear facilities and Iran would only commit a limited response.

Donald Trump himself has in the past stated that an attack on Iran will be led by the Israelis, also. According to The Heritage Foundation, in addition to pieces published by the pro-Zionist Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), their reasoning behind striking Iran is that they view Tehran as having been severely weakened. Yet, President Trump has refuted the idea that Iran is weak publicly, demonstrating that this reasoning is simply to sell the idea amongst the low-stock political class.

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The ideas that Hezbollah has been defeated, Iran’s air defences were all destroyed by Israel’s lackluster attack on them late last year and that the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance is on its knees, are not plausible. These are arguments for the public and are not likely to be taken seriously by defence officials and intelligence agencies internally.

Reading between the lines here, the US-Israel alliance has to have one of two approaches:

1. They are planning an attack on Iran but believe it can remain limited.
2. They are both bluffing and won’t attack.

All the evidence points towards the US-Israel alliance being serious about the prospect of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. The motivating factors here are numerous. One of them being that in the event of a controlled and limited conflict, both sides can claim victory and present their strikes as evidence. The damage done to Israel could also open the way for concluding the conflicts on its other fronts.

In addition to this, if the Israelis and Americans are to claim that Iran’s nuclear program was wiped out – regardless of whether the strikes actually worked or not – it will quiet down dissenting voices when it comes to an interim deal with Iran that could de-escalate tensions completely. 

Joe Biden took the approach of reaching a non-binding interim agreement with Tehran, releasing tens of billions in frozen Iranian assets and passing the whole thing off as a simple prisoner exchange. At the time, the Democratic Party President understood that passing a new Iran Nuclear deal through Congress would not be possible due to all of the pushback and so opted for an unofficial agreement instead. It appeared as if this deal was a kind of attempted insurance policy so that Iran would not cause issues with Saudi-Israeli normalisation.

October 7, 2023, changed everything, however, which has landed the region where it is today. The US perspective, along with the Israeli one, looks at self-preservation, image of victory, and restoring the prestige of their military might.

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Israel tried to finish off the Palestinian people, defeat Hezbollah, and achieve its “Greater Israel” project, but has dramatically failed to do so. Despite achieving various tactical victories over Hezbollah and even Iran, with the assassinations of senior IRGC officials and Ismail Hanniyeh inside Tehran, none of their foes have been strategically defeated.

In Gaza, the Israeli military is exhausted, and the only thing keeping them going is their air force and the unlimited supply of Western-made munitions. Israel’s army is falling apart under the pressure and is using starvation, rather than successful ground operations, as its preferred tactic. It even has contracted criminal ISIS-linked militia men, who it formerly used to steal aid, to begin fighting in the place of the Israeli army on the ground in some instances.

The invasion of southern Lebanon was also a dramatic failure, and under the best possible conditions. Now, they are stuck, having spent most of their intelligence cards, and are incapable of landing the blows that would lead to Hezbollah’s defeat.

While Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the others may have previously taken the view that this war is not the “final war of liberation” as former Hezbollah Secretary General, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, called it. This calculation has clearly changed now. They do see this war as existential and that the Israelis are now in their weakest ever position.

All of this is to say that an Israeli attack on Iran will more likely than not be rather limited in its scope, with the intention of keeping Tehran’s retaliation within reason. Yet the wildcards are Hezbollah and Hamas.

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As I have noted in previous pieces, Hezbollah is likely to attack Israel if Iranian missiles are raining down on its airfields and thus degrading the air power that the Zionist military has to leverage against Lebanon in such a fight. This will present a golden opportunity for Hezbollah to restore its image and reclaim Lebanese territory. 

Then there is Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance factions. Their actions could determine how far Hezbollah will end up going in their offensive, and the Palestinian response could be significant, despite the massive hits Gaza’s armed groups have taken.

The reason why Iran will not be seeking to totally destroy Israel with its missile power, something it could undoubtedly attempt, is that the Israelis do have nuclear weapons. In 1973, the Israelis came dangerously close to pursuing this option when they were overwhelmed by the Syrian and Egyptian armies. 

How this all escalates over a period of days, following the first round of strikes and the retaliatory attacks from Iran, is very hard to call. But this could easily spiral out of control. When the US went to war in Iraq, although this conflict is very different, the think tanks in Washington got so tied up in their own propaganda that they failed to predict the backlash. The US took over Baghdad with no real vision as to how they would move the country forward, and they still remain in Iraq to this day.

One wrong move in this war is not the difference between a few IED attacks, foreign influence, or armed groups forming; it is a potential slippery slope towards nuclear weapons being used or the capture of occupied Jerusalem.

(The Palestine Chronicle)