Middle East Press On: Iran's Strike Near Dimona, Israel's Nuclear Secrets, Tehran Using Israel-US 'Madman Doctrine', Iran War Strategy, Zionism, US Israel War On Iran, New Age Islam's Selection, 23 March 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
23 March 2026
Iran’s strike near Dimona raises old questions about Israel’s nuclear secrets
Iran “gone wild” in Dimona: Is Tehran using Israel-US ‘Madman Doctrine’?
Iran war strategy: Peace through resistance
The US and Israel have different goals in the war on Iran
From Goal to Outcome: The Strategy Collapses before It Even Begins
The Self-Undoing of Israel: Has Zionism Crossed the Point of No Return?
Six Conditions to End the War: Iran Defines Endgame in Unprecedented Shift
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Iran’s strike near Dimona raises old questions about Israel’s nuclear secrets
March 22, 2026
By Jasim Al-Azzawi
Iran’s missile strike near Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility on Saturday night was more than a dramatic escalation in the shadow war between the two nations. It was a reminder of the fragility of Israel’s decades-long policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” a strategy designed to keep adversaries guessing about the country’s ultimate deterrent while avoiding direct confrontation with allies who have long opposed nuclear proliferation.
The missiles landed just 14 kilometres from the reactor, damaging nearby buildings and injuring at least 20 people. The facility itself was untouched, but the symbolism was unmistakable: Iran had demonstrated its ability to reach Israel’s most sensitive site, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration only a day earlier that Iran’s missile capabilities had been “destroyed.”
A Retaliation With Symbolic Weight
The strike was retaliation for Israeli-American attacks on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility only a day earlier. Tehran’s Aerospace Force commander, Majid Musawi warned of “upcoming surprises,” framing the attack as an “eye or an eye.” The message was clear: Iran could threaten Israel’s nuclear infrastructure, even if it stopped short of hitting the reactor itself. For Israel, the incident is a nightmare scenario. Dimona has long been the centrepiece of its nuclear program, shrouded in secrecy since the 1950s. The facility was built with French assistance, under the guise of a textile plant. When American inspectors pressed for clarity, Israeli officials offered evasions. President John F. Kennedy, sceptical of the “textile” story, insisted on sending inspectors. According to hearsay that has circulated for decades, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion considered Kennedy’s insistence intolerable, with some conspiracy theorists even suggesting—without evidence—that Kennedy’s assassination was linked to his pressure on Israel’s nuclear program.
The Ambiguity Strategy
For nearly seven decades, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied possessing nuclear weapons. This policy of deliberate vagueness—known as “amimut,” or opacity—has served multiple purposes. It has deterred adversaries without provoking sanctions or rupturing relations with Washington. It has allowed Israel to maintain a strategic edge while avoiding the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Non-Proliferation Treaty
The ambiguity unravelled in 1986 when Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Dimona, revealed details of Israel’s nuclear arsenal to the Sunday Times of London. His disclosures suggested Israel possessed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of warheads. Vanunu was abducted by Mossad agents in Rome, tried in Israel, and imprisoned for 18 years. His revelations, however, permanently altered the global perception of Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
A Reactor Under Threat
Saturday’s strike underscores the vulnerability of nuclear facilities in wartime. While Dimona’s reactor was not hit, the proximity of the missiles raises questions about what might happen if Iran—or another adversary—were to target it directly. A strike on a nuclear reactor could release radiation across the region, creating a catastrophe far beyond the borders of Israel. Israel has invested heavily in missile defense systems, including the Iron Dome and Arrow interceptors. Yet Iran’s ability to penetrate those defenses and strike so close to Dimona suggests that Israel’s shield is not impenetrable. Regional Reverberations.
The attack is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Gulf states that have normalized relations with Israel in recent years may now reconsider the risks of aligning too closely with a country whose nuclear facilities are under threat. For Iran, the strike was a demonstration of resilience and capability, intended to show that its missile arsenal remains intact despite Israeli claims. For Washington, the incident is a reminder of the delicate balance it has tried to maintain for decades: supporting Israel’s security while opposing nuclear proliferation. The United States has never publicly acknowledged Israel’s nuclear arsenal, even as it has pressed Iran to abandon its own nuclear ambitions.
Historical Echoes
The Dimona strike evokes historical echoes of the Cold War, when nuclear facilities were considered untouchable targets. Israel’s secrecy about its program was tolerated by successive American administrations, partly out of strategic necessity. Kennedy’s scepticism was unusual; later presidents accepted Israel’s assurances, even as intelligence reports confirmed the existence of a nuclear arsenal. The French role in building Dimona remains a sensitive subject. In the 1950s, Paris saw cooperation with Israel as a way to strengthen ties in the Middle East. The reactor was built using French technology, and Israeli scientists quickly mastered plutonium production.
The Road Ahead
Whether Saturday’s strike marks the beginning of a new phase in the conflict remains uncertain. Iran’s warning of “upcoming surprises” suggests further escalation. Israel, for its part, is unlikely to abandon its policy of ambiguity, even as its nuclear infrastructure becomes a more visible target. The incident highlights the paradox at the heart of Israel’s nuclear strategy: Secrecy has preserved deterrence, but it has also created vulnerabilities. By refusing to acknowledge its arsenal, Israel has avoided international scrutiny. Yet that same secrecy makes Dimona a tempting target for adversaries seeking to expose Israel’s vulnerabilities.
As the dust settles in Dimona, the world is reminded that nuclear ambiguity is not invulnerability. The missiles that landed just short of the reactor may have been a warning shot. The next strike could test whether Israel’s decades-old policy can withstand the realities of modern warfare.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260322-irans-strike-near-dimona-raises-old-questions-about-israels-nuclear-secrets/
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Iran “gone wild” in Dimona: Is Tehran using Israel-US ‘Madman Doctrine’?
March 22, 2026
By Dr Ramzy Baroud
The wording is familiar. The urgency is always absolute. The implication is unmistakable: Israel is not choosing war. It is forced into it.
For many, the claim is inherently contradictory. How can a state initiate war—and in Gaza’s case, sustain a genocide—while insisting that it is merely defending itself from annihilation? Yet within Israeli political discourse, and across much of Western media, this contradiction is rarely interrogated. It is normalized.
That normalization is not incidental. It is foundational.
Dimona is not an ordinary town. It lies adjacent to the Negev Nuclear Research Center, widely understood to be central to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
Located deep in the Naqab desert, the facility has long been treated as one of Israel’s most sensitive strategic sites, associated with plutonium production and long-term weapons capability.
That context gives the strike its meaning. The Iranian attack on Dimona came hours after a renewed US-Israeli strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier the same day.
According to international and Iranian reports carried by Reuters, the Natanz enrichment complex in Isfahan province was targeted on the morning of March 21, with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirming damage but no radiation leak.
The sequence is not incidental. Natanz was struck in the morning; Dimona was hit later the same day. Even without an exact hour-by-hour timeline, the proximity establishes a clear operational logic: a nuclear facility in Iran is answered with a nuclear-adjacent site in Israel within hours.
Since the beginning of the war on February 28, 2026, Iran has followed a consistent pattern. Every escalation is met with escalation, and every strike on strategic infrastructure is answered with pressure on equally strategic targets.
This breaks from the historical pattern of US and Israeli wars in the Middle East, where escalation largely flowed in one direction.
For decades, Washington and Tel Aviv defined the tempo and limits of conflict. Others absorbed, recalibrated, and survived. Iran has challenged that model by redistributing vulnerability across the battlefield—expanding the geography of confrontation and refusing to remain within predefined limits.
Today’s events illustrate this shift with unusual clarity. The targeting of Natanz and the subsequent strike on Dimona form part of a single chain of escalation, not separate incidents. The battlefield is no longer fragmented; it is structurally connected.
The intellectual roots of this approach, however, lie partly in Israeli military doctrine itself. During the 2008–2009 war on Gaza, then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni articulated this logic in unmistakable terms.
“Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.”
She was even more explicit in a separate statement: “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded.”
These were not slips of language. They were declarations of doctrine.
The idea was simple: overwhelming, disproportionate, and seemingly uncontrolled force would deter adversaries by making the cost of confrontation unbearable. Israel would not merely respond; it would escalate beyond predictability.
For years, that doctrine functioned largely in one direction. Israel could escalate with overwhelming and unpredictable force, while others were expected to absorb the consequences and recalibrate. The logic was not simply military, but psychological—deterrence through excess, through the projection of a state willing to go beyond conventional limits.
A similar logic had already been articulated decades earlier in the United States through what became known as the “madman theory,” associated with Richard Nixon. The idea was that a leader’s unpredictability—even the perception of irrationality—could itself function as a tool of coercion.
Under Donald Trump, that posture did not emerge for the first time but reappeared in a more overt and performative form, where unpredictability was framed not as risk, but as leverage, and at times deliberately amplified.
But Iran appears to have internalized this logic and turned it outward. The strike on Dimona is not only retaliation. It is replication. Tehran is applying the same doctrine back onto its originators, transforming deterrence into a shared and unstable framework.
Strike Natanz, and Dimona is no longer untouchable. Expand the battlefield, and the battlefield expands further. What was once a one-sided doctrine of domination becomes a two-sided mechanism of escalation.
This dynamic has unsettled Washington. US media, citing intelligence assessments, reported in mid-March that the Trump administration had been warned of Iranian retaliation, yet the scale and coordination of the response exceeded expectations.
On March 21, even as military operations continued, Trump indicated that Washington was considering options to “wind down” the war, even as additional forces were deployed. Retreat would signal a geopolitical defeat; escalation risks a deeper one.
Israel faces a different but equally dangerous reality. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, escalation has often functioned as a strategy, prolonging conflict and delaying internal crises. But Iran’s adoption of the same escalation logic complicates that approach.
When both sides embrace escalation as a principle, deterrence begins to erode.
Iran, however, appears to be operating with a longer horizon. Its capabilities extend beyond missile exchanges to include influence over maritime chokepoints, regional alliances, and actors capable of exerting pressure across multiple fronts.
Among these is the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where Ansarallah maintains the ability to disrupt global shipping. This adds another layer to a conflict already expanding beyond conventional battlefields.
Some of Iran’s capabilities are visible. Others remain deliberately undefined. This allows Tehran to escalate while preserving strategic depth, maintaining pressure without exhausting its options.
Ironically, the doctrine now shaping the war is one Israel helped normalize.
On March 21, with Natanz and Dimona linked within the same day of strikes, that transformation became unmistakable. The war is no longer defined by who escalates—but by what happens when both sides choose, deliberately, to ‘go wild’.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260322-iran-gone-wild-in-dimona-is-tehran-using-israel-us-madman-doctrine/
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Iran war strategy: Peace through resistance
March 22, 2026
By Hamid Bahrami
Three weeks into the war, Donald Trump finds himself trapped in a conflict of his own making. What was framed as a campaign of rapid coercion—measured in hours and ultimatums—is now unfolding on a timeline defined not in Washington, but in Tehran.
For years, the conventional wisdom in Washington and Tel Aviv held that Iran could be contained through a combination of economic strangulation and targeted assassination—a “decapitation” strategy designed to decapitate the Islamic Republic’s command structure without triggering a full‑scale war. That assumption is now being tested to destruction. What we are witnessing is not a random escalation but a collision of two fundamentally different strategic logics. The United States and Israel are fighting in the domain where they possess a clear comparative advantage: security operations, airpower, and the surgical terror of decapitation strikes. Iran, by contrast, has chosen to fight where its advantages lie—in military geography, asymmetric networks, and the ability to impose costs on a global economy that runs through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el‑Mandeb. The optimal Iranian response, therefore, is not to mimic the enemy’s tactics but to become more radically itself: to double down on the very domains where it holds relative superiority.
In international relations theory, deterrence is often divided into “deterrence by denial” and “deterrence by punishment.” For decades Iran leaned on denial—making aggression so costly that it would simply not be attempted. But the post‑October 7 landscape, punctuated by assassinations on Iranian soil, has pushed Tehran toward a deliberate pivot: deterrence by punishment. The logic is stark. When the Trump‑Netanyahu axis strikes Iranian infrastructure, they are testing Iran’s will. If Tehran fails to respond in kind—by targeting oil facilities in Persian Gulf Arab states, natural gas fields in Israeli waters, or the refineries that supply the U.S. military’s regional allies—then the bombing will not stop. It will expand until every major Iranian energy and logistical node lies in ruins. This is the brutal arithmetic of escalation dominance. In such a contest, the side that proves willing to absorb short‑term pain while making the other’s pain unsustainable ultimately dictates the war’s trajectory.
That is why Iran’s strategy today is built around offensive action. This war resembles basketball, defense matters, but the decisive variable is how many points you score. In this regional war, Iran’s ability to inflict damage—its offensive punch—is far more critical than its capacity to defend its own skies. Why? Because of the adversary’s asymmetric vulnerability. Israel suffers from limited geographic depth, a dense and socially fragile population, and an economy highly sensitive to disruption. U.S. forces, despite their technological prowess, are concentrated in bases across the Persian Gulf and the Levant that have become more exposed than Iran’s own territory. In any protracted “chicken game”—where both sides test who will blink first—the side with less to lose in terms of territorial integrity and social cohesion holds the advantage. Iran’s societal resilience, forged under decades of sanctions and pressure, has paradoxically become a strategic asset.
Iran’s non‑state allies are now being tasked with operationalizing this logic. Logically, they should raise the level of aggression: a combination of targeted ground operations, coordinated missile barrages, and drone swarms designed to overwhelm the enemy’s air‑defense capacities. The Houthis in Yemen, for instance, play a role reminiscent of the fifty archers posted on Jabal al‑Rumah during the Battle of Uhud. In that early Islamic battle, the Prophet Muhammad placed a small contingent of archers on a hill with strict orders to hold their position. They were not the main army, but their position was strategically vital; when they abandoned it, the tide of battle turned against the Muslims. Today, the Houthis are those archers on the hill. Their ability to block Red Sea shipping creates a strategic bottleneck that prevents the enemy from concentrating its forces on other fronts. In a war of attrition, such “archers on the hill” can determine the outcome.
The maritime chokepoints are where Iran’s geostrategic advantage meets the global economy. Sustained disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el‑Mandeb, combined with a spike in oil prices and a corresponding tumble in U.S. stock markets, would fundamentally alter Washington’s cost‑benefit calculus. Western arms industries and economies, already strained, have limited tolerance for a prolonged internationalized conflict. If Iran and its non‑state allies can, within the next four weeks, exponentially increase the volume of their strikes on Israeli and U.S. targets—a “gates of hell” strategy—while keeping the waterways closed through the end of April, the American belief in airpower as a decisive instrument of victory will be shattered. This is not mere rhetoric; it is a calculated attempt to make the war economically unbearable for the other side. However, Trump and his allies do their best to localize the war through opening the strait of Hurmoz. This is fatal for Iran. The war of attrition is only in favour of Iran when it is internationalised.
This war is reversing Iran’s passive behaviour post-seven October. After years of what Tehran called “strategic patience”—absorbing blows while building capacity, hoping for diplomatic openings that never came—the doctrine has today been discarded. The new leadership has concluded that patience under relentless assassination and economic warfare had become a pathology rather than a virtue. If Iran had acted offensively before the war was imposed, conflict might have been averted. But now that war is here, Tehran believes the only way to demonstrate that the enemy miscalculated is to escalate beyond the enemy’s threshold of tolerance.
The decision to abandon strategic patience was crystallized in a moment of deliberate symbolism. Creating the narrative that despite credible assassination threats, the Supreme Leader remained in his usual residence—calculating that an epic martyr‑like death would serve a strategic purpose: transforming his blood into a mobilizing symbol for a wider regional and ideological confrontation aimed at driving the United States out of the Middle East, while also leaving behind a grand legacy. That calculation underscores a deeper truth: Iran now sees the conflict as “order‑making.” The war against Iran, in this view, is not a side skirmish but a struggle that will help determine the shape of the future democratic world order. The victorious parties will set the terms for the next regional and global system.
Throughout this confrontation, the United States and Israel have pursued a strategy of mass civilian casualties—striking schools, hospitals, and residential areas in a manner reminiscent of Vietnam. The aim is to use the brutality of bombardment to force the Iranian population to surrender. But the strategy overlooks the asymmetric resilience of a society that has internalized the experience of war as a constant. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf Arab states hosting U.S. bases from which attacks are launched against Iran face a question they cannot avoid: how can they expect Iran not to target those bases, when those very bases are used to bomb Iran? The attempt to separate these states from the consequences of American military infrastructure on their soil is failing.
At its core, the argument of this war is captured in the title “Peace Through Resistance.” It is not a slogan but a strategic proposition: that for Iran, in this moment, the path to a stable and recognized regional role runs not through concession but through demonstrating an unbreakable capacity to inflict pain. The war, like a basketball game, will be decided not by who defends best but by who keeps scoring when it matters most. The coming weeks will tell whether Iran can sustain the offensive momentum that forces a recalculation in Washington and Tel Aviv, or not. What is no longer in doubt is that the era of strategic patience is over. Whether that yields peace through resistance is now the question the coming weeks will answer.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260322-iran-war-strategy-peace-through-resistance/
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The US and Israel have different goals in the war on Iran
CON COUGHLIN
March 22, 2026
Donald Trump’s claim that he knew nothing about Israel’s attack on Iran’s main gas field suggests that significant tensions exist between the US president and Israel over how best to prosecute their joint military campaign against Iran.
Ever since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury more than three weeks ago, questions have been raised about the precise nature of the cooperation between the US military and its Israeli counterpart.
While Trump has suggested his main priority is to destroy, once and for all, Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal, the Israelis, who have dubbed their effort Operation Roaring Lion, appear determined to wage their campaign until regime change has been achieved in Tehran.
To this end, Israel’s Mossad intelligence service has ruthlessly targeted key figures in the Iranian regime, with Israel said to have been heavily involved in last week’s assassinations of Ali Larijani, Iran’s national security chief, and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib.
There have even been reports of Mossad agents directly calling Iranian police officers and threatening to kill them in an attempt to secure defections. Leaked documents and recordings have revealed a wide-scale Israeli effort to scare lower-ranking officials in the hope of enabling a popular uprising in Iran, while also assassinating senior regime figures.
By contrast, the US military has mainly been targeting Iran’s nuclear and military sites, especially the country’s ballistic missile launch pads that have been used to attack neighboring Gulf countries. While Trump has indicated he would like to see the war ultimately result in regime change in Tehran, he does not appear as committed to such an outcome as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has specifically said that he wants Israel’s military attacks on Iran to result in regime change.
One crucial difference in the prosecution of the war by the Americans and the Israelis has been an unwillingness on the part of the Americans to target key Iranian infrastructure, especially its energy sector — at least so far.
Trump’s approach was clear during the recent US military attack on Kharg Island, the narrow strip of Iranian territory in the Gulf that is responsible for about 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. While the US attacked a number of military bases operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it avoided attacks on the island’s oil facilities, with Trump declaring that he had deliberately left them untouched.
By contrast, Israel appears to have no qualms about attacking key Iranian infrastructure targets, with Israeli warplanes launching an attack on the South Pars gas field on Wednesday.
While Israel insists that key Iranian infrastructure presents a legitimate target in its war against the regime, the attack on South Pars has exposed tensions between Israel and the Trump administration, with the American president insisting that he knew nothing about the Israeli attack, stating that Israel had “violently lashed out” by attacking the gas field.
In an attempt to draw a red line over which targets should and should not be attacked in the war, Trump insisted that Israel would not conduct any more attacks against Iran’s energy sector unless the Iranians continued their attacks on energy targets in the Gulf.
“Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility … in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No more attacks will be made by Israel pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar.
“In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars gas field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”
Despite Trump’s warning, the Israeli attack provoked a furious response from Iran, which responded by launching attacks against the energy facilities of several Gulf nations, including an attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan, the country’s main gas facility, which Qatari officials say suffered “significant damage.”
Despite Trump’s threat to “massively blow up” South Pars if Iran continued to attack the energy infrastructure of its Gulf neighbors, Israel’s role in initiating the tit-for-tat strikes in the energy sector has led to suggestions of a rift emerging between the US and Israel, particularly in terms of how long the fighting will continue.
Trump has indicated that the US has already achieved most of its war aims and that he might be minded to end hostilities in the near future. Netanyahu, by contrast, seems determined that Israel continue fighting so long as the regime still stands.
Speculation about a rift between the US and Israel has been fueled by comments made by Joe Kent, Trump’s former National Counterterrorism Center director, who asserts that the US president was “deceived” by Israel into launching the war.
In a letter posted on X, announcing his resignation, Kent said that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US and that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
The White House has dismissed the letter, saying the president had “compelling evidence” that Iran was going to attack the US first.
Nevertheless, with US media reports that the Trump administration is already talking to Iran about ending the conflict, Netanyahu's insistence on maintaining hostilities until his own goals are achieved could result in further tensions developing between the US and Israeli administrations.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2637271
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From Goal to Outcome: The Strategy Collapses before It Even Begins
March 22, 2026
By Shaher al-Shaher
The American-Israeli war on Iran continues, but with unclear objectives, especially as the target bank has reportedly been exhausted, according to statements issued by both sides.
The war’s objectives were clear and specific: to change the political system in Iran, destroy its missile capabilities, dismantle the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, obtain enriched uranium, dismantle the Basij, bring in mercenaries, and impose a political system subservient to Israel inside Iran.
Iran’s continued targeting of the Israeli interior and American bases in the region confirms its ability to sustain the confrontation, particularly since those attacking Tehran intended the conflict to become a zero-sum war.
Tehran has shifted from the tactic of “missile flooding” to the use of “precision strikes,” where a single missile is now capable of causing widespread destruction. Stealth aircraft are no longer as effective after Tehran succeeded in targeting them with an air defense system developed following the 12-day war.
The survival of the political system signifies the failure of the higher political objective of the aggression. The continuation of Iranian missile strikes reflects the failure of American and Israeli military and technological superiority. The collapse of the mercenary environment, both inside and outside Iran, signals the failure of the hybrid war aimed at inciting internal unrest.
It is a war without limits or clear expectations, and no one can predict its end scenario. What is certain, however, is that the region after this war will not resemble what it was before, and that this war will not be the last in the region.
Consequently, the theatre of operations has evolved into a global threat to energy transit and security. Here lies a critical principle: when America fails to achieve its strategic objectives, it not only loses the battle but is also forced to redefine its position within the conflict and the broader international system.
The gap between realities on the ground and the official Israeli narrative has widened significantly, especially as the Zionist government has imposed strict military censorship limiting the disclosure of Israeli losses.
Trump’s contradictory statements reflect a state of chaos and internal pressure within the United States. The man who spoke eight months ago about eliminating Iran’s nuclear program has returned to wage a new war against Iran.
Talk of Netanyahu’s ability to draw Trump into this war has become increasingly evident, and it appears that some countries in the region may also be dragged into a confrontation they are ill-equipped to fight.
Iran’s targeting of these countries has placed them in a difficult position. Silence is no longer viable in light of Iranian strikes and the clear American pressure on these states to participate in defending their “security and sovereignty.”
The July 2006 war, described by Condoleezza Rice as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” failed to achieve its objectives. The current war appears intended to fulfill that same vision.
The region stands at a historic crossroads, and for Arab countries that assess the situation strategically—beyond past grievances and reservations about Iran—the idea of Iran’s collapse may be more dangerous than its survival.
The rivalry between Arab states and Iran is real, but it stems from Arab weakness, which created a vacuum that Tehran filled—just as Turkey has done in other contexts. Nature abhors a vacuum, and any space left unoccupied will inevitably be filled by another actor.
The Gulf states’ decision not to become involved in the war is, for now, the wisest course of action. The debate over whether the Gulf is Arab or Persian is no longer relevant. A defeat for Tehran would likely render the future of the Gulf American and Zionist.
The American military presence in the region now constitutes more than half of its global deployments. The United States has used nearly every type of weapon, short of nuclear arms—which it has not hesitated to use in the past.
Statements by the US ambassador to the entity, made days before the war, regarding what he described as the “biblical right” of Israel to full control over the Middle East, did not exclude Arab countries from being targeted.
Netanyahu’s remarks about a six-party regional alliance targeting both the “deteriorating Shiite” and “rising Sunni” axes render continued discussion of a “Sunni-Shiite conflict” simplistic and misleading.
The objective is for Israel to dominate the region, and Netanyahu views Iran as the primary existential threat to the survival of the Israeli entity—one that must therefore be weakened.
Claims by some Arab voices about an “Iranian-American-Israeli triad” reflect little more than naivety and an attempt to deflect from their own inaction in the face of repeated Israeli violations. Iran has maintained its confrontation with Israel, while Arab states have largely abstained, prompting efforts to justify that inaction.
Türkiye has begun to recognize the danger, understanding that the defeat of Iran would likely be followed by Israeli moves against it. This confrontation may not be direct, but it is already evident in arenas such as Syria.
The Middle East is at a crossroads, all of whose paths lead to disaster. The region is entering a dangerous and potentially irreversible phase, while it is still being treated with the detachment of a passive audience.
The attack on the shared Iran-Qatar gas field was not merely tactical, but a complex geo-economic shock. The Pars field—the largest gas field in the world—is a cornerstone of multiple economies. Germany, for example, imports a significant portion of its gas from this field, while Japan, South Korea, and India also depend heavily on it.
This represents a fatal strategic paradox: the strike targeting Iran ultimately damaged the very energy infrastructure on which America’s allies rely, driving prices up by nearly 80 percent. In effect, Washington has undermined Europe’s energy lifeline with its own actions, turning its allies into victims.
Israel’s bombing of Iran’s Pars gas field prompted Tehran to strike Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, further driving up oil and gas prices and signaling a new phase of escalation, as both sides attempt to establish new rules of engagement.
The war began with clear objectives, foremost among them the overthrow of the Iranian political system—an objective that has yet to be achieved.
The deployment of US Marines from near Japan to occupy Iran’s Kharg Island coincided with US reports claiming that China would not invade Taiwan in 2026, highlighting the inconsistency and questionable credibility of earlier American assessments.
The gap between declared objectives and actual outcomes remains the primary measure of victory or defeat. However, traditional definitions of victory and defeat do not fully apply to this form of asymmetric warfare, where conventional military power intersects with long-term strategic endurance and complex Iranian policy frameworks.
Today’s war is not only about Iran. It is about reshaping the Middle East and controlling the world’s strategic chokepoints—Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, and the Suez Canal—possibly extending further to the Bosphorus and Gibraltar, as part of a broader effort to contain China.
The Strait of Hormuz has not simply been closed—it has been redefined. Iran has reengineered the conditions of navigation according to its own rules. Ships are now subject to an Iranian system requiring a $2 million transit fee per tanker, rerouting vessels through Iranian territorial waters and permitting passage only for approved ships. This effectively shifts control from international law to the Iranian field authority.
Control of the strait no longer belongs to those who possess naval fleets, but to those who dictate the rules of passage. In this sense, the Strait of Hormuz has been transformed from an international corridor into an Iranian-controlled platform—marking what can be described as a strategic setback for the United States, where the war has produced the opposite of its intended outcomes.
Although these developments indicate a level of escalation that is difficult to contain, assessments of a “point of no return” remain tied to the ability of international actors to intervene and impose a political or military settlement, as seen in previous conflicts such as the June 2015 ceasefire.
However, the current intensity of operations, the multiplicity of conflict zones, and the overlap of regional and international actors make a return to diplomacy far more complex.
The concern that the conflict is approaching a point of no return is driven by two main factors: the rising intensity of military operations, which increases both the cost of negotiations and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure, and the divergence of international and regional interests, which weakens the prospects for a rapid, mutually agreed settlement.
Therefore, the point of no return should be assessed not only by the scale of military escalation, but also by the level of trust between the parties, the depletion of humanitarian resources, and the absence of a credible negotiating framework capable of ensuring de-escalation.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/from-goal-to-outcome-the-strategy-collapses-before-it-even-begins/
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The Self-Undoing of Israel: Has Zionism Crossed the Point of No Return?
March 22, 2026
By Ramzy Baroud
Every war led by Benjamin Netanyahu is framed not as policy, but as fate.
“There are moments in which a nation faces two possibilities: to do or die,” Netanyahu declared on October 28, 2023, as Israel expanded its genocide in Gaza.
The wording is familiar. The urgency is always absolute. The implication is unmistakable: Israel is not choosing war. It is forced into it.
For many, the claim is inherently contradictory. How can a state initiate war—and in Gaza’s case, sustain a genocide—while insisting that it is merely defending itself from annihilation? Yet within Israeli political discourse, and across much of Western media, this contradiction is rarely interrogated. It is normalized.
That normalization is not incidental. It is foundational.
Long before the establishment of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948—the Nakba, or catastrophe, for Palestinians—the language of existential threat was deeply embedded in Zionist political thinking. Survival was never framed as coexistence, but as triumph. Security was never separated from expansion.
In recent years, that fatalistic language has returned with renewed intensity.
The events of October 7, 2023, brought a sudden end to what had been, for Netanyahu, a moment of unprecedented political triumph. Prior to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel was not merely secure—it was ascending. A parallel “flood” was underway: normalization.
Arab, Muslim, African, Asian and even Latin American states were steadily incorporating Israel into their political and economic frameworks. The so-called isolation of Israel was collapsing.
Netanyahu was openly celebrating this shift. In September 2023, speaking alongside US President Joe Biden, he said, as reported by Reuters: “I think that under your leadership, Mr President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” adding that such a deal would “go a long way first to advance the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, achieve reconciliation between the Islamic world and the Jewish state.”
Days later, addressing the United Nations, he spoke of “the blessings of a new Middle East,” according to the official transcript of his September 22, 2023, UN speech.
This was not merely political rhetoric. It reflected a broader strategic project: Israel’s integration into the region, not through justice, but through power—through alliances with wealthy Gulf states, economic expansion, and geopolitical repositioning.
The genocide in Gaza shattered that trajectory.
Far from cementing Israel’s regional and global standing, the war has accelerated its isolation. According to a June 2025 Pew Research Center survey, majorities in most of the 24 countries surveyed held unfavorable views of Israel, while confidence in Netanyahu remained low across nearly all regions.
This shift is not limited to the Global South. It reflects a broader erosion of Israel’s legitimacy, even among traditional allies.
In response, Israeli political discourse has returned—almost instinctively—to the language of existential war.
Even when Netanyahu attempts to revive earlier narratives about shaping a “new Middle East,” the rhetoric repeatedly collapses back into warnings of annihilation. This reveals a deeper truth: within Israeli political thinking, the alternative to dominance is not coexistence, but destruction.
Part of this can indeed be explained through the logic of settler colonialism. Expansion is not incidental to settler-colonial projects; it is built into them. Such systems do not merely occupy land. They must continuously secure, reorder and enlarge their control, while presenting indigenous resistance as irrational violence.
Other settler-colonial societies remained colonial in essence while their territorial expansion was curbed by larger geopolitical constraints. Israel has never truly encountered such limits. It has not been meaningfully held accountable. Shielded by unconditional US support and enabled by Western powers that were themselves former or current colonial actors, it has had every structural incentive to continue.
But Israel’s fixation on existential danger even at the height of military superiority points to something deeper. It suggests a political culture haunted by its own origin story.
One possible explanation is moral and historical illegitimacy. Israel knows, at some buried but irrepressible level, that it was founded on the destruction of another people, on expulsion, massacre and erasure. A state built on the ruins of Palestine cannot indefinitely silence the history beneath it.
Still, there is more to the story.
Even before the genocide in Gaza, Israel was gripped by internal debates about its own continuity. In 2023, amid a profound political crisis, President Isaac Herzog warned of a possible “constitutional collapse,” according to Reuters. At the same time, Israeli discourse increasingly invoked the so-called “eighth decade curse,” the notion that Jewish political entities historically falter as they approach their eighth decade.
As noted in various newspapers, Netanyahu has been described as viewing himself as uniquely capable of leading Israel “into its eighth decade and beyond,” reflecting a deeper anxiety about national continuity.
October 7 brought these fears roaring back. So did the emergence of a more assertive regional pro-Palestine camp, particularly within what is often called the Axis of Resistance. True, several Arab regimes remained aligned with Washington and eager to contain the fallout. But in doing so, many only further exposed their own fragility.
From Israel’s perspective, this convergence of pressures reinforces both real and imagined fears—not only to state security, but to the ideological foundations upon which the state was built.
What makes this especially striking is that Israel has failed to secure decisive strategic outcomes in war after war. In Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond, it has relied on overwhelming force without achieving lasting political resolution.
Here lies the central irony.
Israel’s fears, long framed as hypothetical or exaggerated, are being transformed into tangible risks—not by inevitability, but by Israel’s own actions.
The result is a self-fulfilling trajectory: a march toward deeper isolation, perpetual conflict, and internal uncertainty—driven not by necessity, but by an inability, or refusal, to imagine an alternative.
That march may yet reach its logical end.
The deepest irony is that Israel once had alternatives. It was not fated to choose this path. But a just coexistence—one grounded in equality and historical reckoning—has never been intelligible within Zionist political vocabulary. There, coexistence is recast as disappearance.
And so Israel is not merely confronting a crisis.
It is undoing itself, by its own hand.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-self-undoing-of-israel-has-zionism-crossed-the-point-of-no-return/
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Six Conditions to End the War: Iran Defines Endgame in Unprecedented Shift
March 22, 2026
War Enters New Phase
As more of Iran’s missile capabilities, operational endurance, and strategic leverage over the Strait of Hormuz come into sharper focus, Iranian officials are beginning to articulate, with increasing clarity, the country’s conditions for ending the war.
In a significant development, a senior Iranian political-security official revealed six core conditions required for a ceasefire in remarks to the Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen.
The statement marks the most detailed and structured position issued by Tehran since the escalation began.
The announcement follows a series of powerful and devastating Iranian strikes across Israel, particularly in Arad and Dimona, which appear to have reshaped the military and political dynamics of the confrontation.
Despite strict military censorship and severe restrictions imposed on Israeli journalists, emerging images and fragmented reports indicate dozens killed and wounded, alongside widespread destruction in targeted areas. The scale of the damage, though only partially visible due to reporting limitations, suggests a significant breach in Israel’s defensive posture.
New Strategic Framework
Until now, Iranian officials had spoken in broader terms about ending the war, typically emphasizing the need for guarantees against renewed aggression by Israel and the United States, alongside calls for lifting sanctions. However, these statements remained largely general and lacked a clearly defined framework.
The latest remarks signal a notable shift.
According to the Iranian official speaking to Al Mayadeen, Tehran has now formalized its position within what he described as a “new legal and strategic equation,” reflecting both battlefield developments and evolving geopolitical realities.
The official noted that regional mediators and various international actors had conveyed proposals to Tehran aimed at halting the war. However, he stressed that Iran’s conditions “must be taken seriously,” indicating that the balance of power has shifted sufficiently for Tehran to dictate terms rather than merely respond to proposals.
The Six Conditions
The six conditions outlined by the Iranian official represent a comprehensive restructuring of the conflict’s political and security framework.
First, Iran demands binding guarantees that war will not be repeated, signaling a rejection of temporary or symbolic ceasefire arrangements.
Second, Tehran calls for the closure of US military bases across the region, a demand that directly challenges the broader American military presence in West Asia.
Third, Iran insists that the aggressors pay compensation for damages inflicted during the war.
Fourth, it calls for an end to all ongoing wars across regional fronts, positioning the current confrontation within a wider regional context rather than an isolated conflict.
Fifth, Tehran seeks the establishment of a new legal regime governing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy artery over which Iran holds strategic influence.
Sixth, the Iranian demand extends into the media sphere, calling for the prosecution and extradition of individuals affiliated with what it describes as hostile media operations targeting Iran.
Taken together, these conditions go far beyond conventional ceasefire terms, reflecting an attempt to redefine not only the outcome of the current war but also the regional order that underpins it.
Strategic Patience
The Iranian official emphasized that Tehran’s actions are not reactive, but rather part of a pre-planned strategy.
“What Iran is implementing in its defensive war is a plan prepared months ago,” he said, adding that the strategy is being executed “stage by stage, with great strategic patience.”
This assertion aligns with the observable shift in Iran’s military approach. While earlier phases of the conflict relied on saturation-style missile launches, recent operations appear more precise, targeting critical infrastructure and high-value sites.
The official further claimed that Iran has now achieved “full control over the skies of the enemy,” following the destruction of key air defense infrastructure.
No Immediate Ceasefire
Despite the articulation of conditions, Tehran does not appear to be seeking an immediate halt to hostilities.
On the contrary, the Iranian official indicated that, given the current military balance, Iran “does not see a near horizon for a ceasefire.” Instead, Tehran intends to continue what it described as a policy of “punishing the aggressor” until a “historic lesson” is delivered to both Israel and the United States.
This position reflects a broader strategic calculation.
What initially appeared to be a high-risk escalation has, from Tehran’s perspective, evolved into an opportunity to consolidate deterrence, reshape regional dynamics, and force adversaries into a defensive posture.
A War Reframed
The emergence of clearly defined Iranian conditions also coincides with growing indications that Washington is seeking an exit from an increasingly complex and costly confrontation.
Early objectives attributed to the US-Israeli campaign—reportedly including the weakening of Iran’s military capabilities and even the transformation of its political system—have not materialized. Instead, the war of aggression appears to have strengthened Iran’s regional standing and bargaining position.
By formalizing its demands, Tehran is not merely outlining terms for ending the war; it is reframing the conflict itself.
No longer confined to immediate military exchanges, the war is now being projected onto a broader strategic plane—one that encompasses military presence, economic structures, legal regimes, and information warfare.
In this evolving landscape, Iran’s message is clear: any ceasefire will not be a return to the status quo, but the beginning of a new regional equation shaped by the realities of the battlefield.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/six-conditions-to-end-the-war-iran-defines-endgame-in-unprecedented-shift/
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