The War Meant to Save Israel May Destroy It

The war on Iran may accelerate the transformations it was meant to prevent: a declining U.S. strategic role and a weakened Israeli deterrent posture, writes Ramzy Baroud.

By Ramzy Baroud
Z Network
When Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched their military aggression against Iran on Feb. 28, they appeared convinced that the war would be swift.

Netanyahu reportedly assured Washington that the campaign would deliver a decisive strategic victory — one capable of reordering the Middle East and restoring Israel’s battered deterrence.

Whether Netanyahu himself believed that promise is another matter.

For decades, influential circles within Israel’s strategic establishment have not necessarily sought stability, but rather “creative destruction.” The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

This idea did not emerge overnight. It was articulated most clearly in a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of U.S. neoconservative strategists, including Richard Perle.

The document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not merely military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favor.

In many ways, the subsequent decades seemed to validate that theory— at least from Tel Aviv’s perspective.

The Middle East Reordered

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely considered a catastrophe for Washington. Hundreds of thousands died, trillions of dollars were spent, and the United States became entangled in one of the most destabilizing occupations in modern history.

Yet the war removed Saddam Hussein’s government, dismantled the Baath Party, and destroyed what had once been the strongest Arab army in the region.

For Israel, the strategic consequences were significant.

Iraq, historically one of the few Arab states capable of confronting Israel militarily, ceased to exist as a coherent regional power. Years of instability followed, leaving Baghdad with a fragile political system struggling to maintain national cohesion.

Syria, another central concern in Israeli strategic thinking, would later descend into its own devastating war beginning in 2011. Libya collapsed earlier after NATO’s intervention in 2011 as well. Across the region, once-formidable Arab nationalist states fractured into weakened or internally divided systems.

From Israel’s vantage point, the theory of regional fragmentation appeared to be paying dividends.

Without strong Arab states capable of projecting military power, several Gulf governments began reconsidering their long-standing refusal to normalize relations with Israel.

The result was the Abraham Accords, signed in September 2020 under the Trump administration, which formalized normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, later followed by Morocco and Sudan.

For a moment, it seemed that the geopolitical transformation envisioned decades earlier had been realized.

Gaza Changed the Equation

But history rarely moves in straight lines.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza did not produce the strategic victory Israeli leaders had anticipated. Instead, the war exposed deep vulnerabilities in Israel’s military and political standing.

More importantly, Palestinian resistance demonstrated that overwhelming military force could not translate into decisive political control.

The consequences reverberated far beyond Gaza.

The war galvanized resistance movements across the region, deepened divisions within Arab and Muslim societies between governments aligned with Washington and those opposed to Israeli policies, and ignited an unprecedented wave of global solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel’s international image suffered dramatically.

For decades, Western political discourse framed Israel as a democratic outpost surrounded by hostile forces. That narrative has steadily eroded. Increasingly, Israel is described — even by major international organizations — as a state engaged in systematic oppression and, in Gaza’s case, genocidal violence.

The strategic cost of that reputational collapse cannot be overstated. Military power relies not only on weapons but also on legitimacy. And legitimacy, once lost, is difficult to recover.

Netanyahu’s Final Gamble

Against this backdrop, the war on Iran emerged as Netanyahu’s most consequential gamble.

If successful, it could restore Israel’s regional dominance and reassert its deterrence. Defeating Iran — or even severely weakening it — would reshape the balance of power across the Middle East.

But failure carries equally profound consequences.

Netanyahu, now facing an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2024 over war crimes in Gaza, has tied his political survival to the promise of strategic victory.

In multiple interviews over the past year, he has framed the confrontation with Iran in almost biblical terms. In one televised address in 2025, Netanyahu declared that Israel was engaged in a “historic mission” to secure the future of the Jewish state for generations.

Such rhetoric reveals not confidence but desperation.

Israel cannot wage such a war alone. It never could.

Thus, Netanyahu worked tirelessly to draw the United States directly into the conflict — a familiar pattern in modern Middle Eastern wars.

The Paradox of Trump’s War

For Americans, the question remains: why did Donald Trump — who repeatedly campaigned against “endless wars” — allow the U.S. to enter yet another Middle Eastern conflict?

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously declared: “We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Yet nearly a decade later, his administration has plunged Washington into a confrontation whose potential consequences dwarf those of the earlier wars.

The precise motivations matter less to those living under the bombs.

Across the region, the scenes are painfully familiar: devastated cities, mass graves, grieving families, and societies once again forced to endure the violence of foreign intervention.

But this war is unfolding in a fundamentally different geopolitical environment.

The U.S. no longer commands the unchallenged dominance it once enjoyed.

China has emerged as a major economic and strategic actor. Russia continues to project influence. Regional powers have gained confidence in resisting Washington’s dictates.

The Middle East itself has changed.

A War Already Going Wrong

Early signs suggest that the war is not unfolding according to the expectations of Washington or Tel Aviv.

Reports from U.S. and Israeli media indicate that missile-defense systems in Israel and several Gulf states are facing a serious strain under sustained attacks. Meanwhile, Iran and its regional allies have demonstrated missile capabilities far more extensive than many analysts had anticipated.

What was supposed to be a rapid campaign increasingly resembles a prolonged conflict.

Energy markets provide another indication of shifting dynamics. Rather than securing greater control over global energy flows, the war has disrupted supplies and strengthened Iran’s leverage over key maritime routes.

Strategic assumptions built on decades of uncontested American military power are colliding with a far more complex reality.

Even the political rhetoric emanating from Washington has become noticeably defensive and increasingly angry — often a sign that events are not unfolding as planned.

Within the Trump administration itself, the intellectual poverty of the moment is difficult to miss. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose public persona is built on television bravado rather than strategic literacy, has often framed the conflict in language that sounds less like military doctrine and more like locker-room theatrics. 

In speeches and interviews, he has repeatedly reduced complex geopolitical realities into crude narratives of strength, masculinity, and domination.

Such rhetoric may excite partisan audiences, but it reveals a deeper problem: the people directing the most dangerous war in decades appear to understand very little about the forces they have unleashed.

Hegseth’s style is symptomatic of a broader intellectual collapse within Washington’s war-making circles — where historical knowledge is replaced by slogans, and strategic planning by theatrical displays of toughness.

In such an environment, wars are not analyzed; they are performed.

The End of an Era?

Netanyahu sought to dominate the Middle East. Washington sought to reaffirm its position as the world’s unrivaled superpower.

Neither objective appears within reach.

Instead, the war may accelerate the very transformations it was meant to prevent: a declining U.S. strategic role, a weakened Israeli deterrent posture, and a Middle East increasingly shaped by regional actors rather than external powers.

Trump, despite the lofty and belligerent language, is in reality a weak president. Rage is rarely the language of strength; it is often the mask of insecurity.

His administration has overestimated America’s military omnipotence, undermined allies and antagonized adversaries alike, and entered a war whose historical, political, and strategic dimensions it scarcely understands.

How can a leadership so consumed by narcissism and spectacle fully grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe it has helped unleash?

One would expect wisdom in moments of global crisis. What we have instead is a chorus of slogans, threats, and self-congratulation emanating from Washington — an administration seemingly incapable of distinguishing between what power can achieve and what it cannot.

They do not understand how profoundly the world has changed. They do not understand how the Middle East now perceives American military adventurism. And they certainly do not understand that Israel itself has become, politically and morally, a declining brand.

Of course, Trump and his equally arrogant administration will continue searching for any fragment of ‘victory’ to sell to their constituency as the greatest triumph in history. There will always be zealots ready to believe such myths.

But most Americans — and the overwhelming majority of people around the world — no longer do.

Partly because this war on Iran is immoral.

And partly because history has very little patience for losers.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015), and was a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Visit his website.

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