The peak of Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign against Iran was a joint US-Israeli operation targeting three key Iranian nuclear sites on 22 June, with the heaviest bombs in the US arsenal. Afterwards, US President Donald Trump ordered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease bombing the country, but since the Israeli premier has falsely claimed total victory, asserting he was on the brink of redrawing the map of the Middle East.
Such claims are obviously exaggerated, but the worse part is that they reflect the illusion of being the “king of Israel”, as Netanyahu reportedly likes to be called. Netanyahu has not learned the lessons of the criminal genocidal war he has been waging against the Palestinian people over nearly two years, turning Israel into a pariah worldwide, let alone eight decades’ worth of lessons from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
There is no doubt that the United States and Israel have dealt extremely heavy blows to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Equally important were the Israeli strikes on the opening day of the war, 13 June, in which nearly all top Iranian military leaders were killed, as well as more than a dozen prominent nuclear scientists. This sent a clear message to the Iranian regime that they were totally exposed and deeply infiltrated by Israeli intelligence agents. In a manner similar to the tactic Israel used in its daring operation against Lebanon’s Hizbullah, in which detonated pagers were used, over many years Israeli Mossad agents managed to smuggle personnel, an arsenal of weapons, drones, and missiles inside Iranian territory to use in the operations they conducted on 13 June.
Despite such heavy blows, Iran managed to retaliate by launching unprecedented missile attacks against Israel, closing the main Ben Gurion Airport, causing widespread damage in various Israeli cities, and forcing millions of Israelis to stay in bomb shelters for days. After the dust settled, what is more, there are more and more questions, if not serious doubts, about whether the US-Israeli joint operation actually “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme, as Trump and Netanyahu insist, or only caused extensive damage that could be repaired within months or a few years. As one Iranian official said, a nuclear programme consisted of technology, scientific knowledge and infrastructure. While the US-Israeli operation caused extreme damage to the infrastructure, the technology and the scientific knowledge, despite the loss of top scientists, remain intact.
Nonetheless, all parties aware of realpolitik in the region are certain that the core of the conflict between Israel and the United States, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other, is not just about the nuclear issue. Certainly, Israel and the US are not content that Tehran will maintain its ability to launch long-range ballistic missiles at Israel, or its backing and support of “resistance groups” such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and similar militias in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen.
While Iran chose to only symbolically respond to the US attack against its nuclear sites by informing Trump in advance that it would target the nearby US military base in Udaid, Qatar, what counted was the message of what Iran could do if the US became more involved in the conflict, failing to restrain Israel from carrying on with its military campaign. Other open threats by Iran included closing down the crucial navigation line of the Strait of Hormuz, which conveys some 25 per cent of the world’s oil and gas, or even targeting oil installations in neighbouring Arab Gulf countries.
Such Iranian threats did not come to an end, and the reality on the ground did not change overnight, after the 12-day military campaign by Israel and the US. Most analysts agree that Netanyahu, and most probably Trump, were hoping the expanded campaign and the humiliation caused by the assassination of top Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists would enable Iranian opposition groups to overthrow the regime. But such dreams did not come true, and all reports coming from Iran pointed out that more people rallied behind the regime while it facing foreign aggression.
For all those reasons, Egypt, and all key regional countries have warned against the uncalculated consequences of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, insisting this was not the right way to restore stability and calm in the region. Netanyahu, for decades, has been attempting to evade the core reason behind all regional conflicts: the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Instead, his strategy has been to ignite new, endless wars, claiming that no true peace in the region would be established before terminating all threats to Israel’s security, whether from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, or Iran.
Yet, nearly two years of barbaric, brutal war against Palestinians in Gaza, in which more than 56,000 people were killed, most of them women and children have led to nearly the whole world recognising the injustice the Palestinian people have been suffering for decades, and the fact that the primary step to end violence in the region is to end Israel’s illegal and inhumane occupation of Palestine.
In his speech marking the 12th anniversary of the 30 June, 2013 Revolution, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi summed up the situation in the region, and the only way to restore peace. Al-Sisi urged all the parties involved in the conflict and the international community “to continue to take all necessary measures and heed the voice of wisdom and reason, to spare the peoples of the region the scourges of destruction and devastation.”
He added, “Egypt, always a steadfast advocate for peace, firmly believes that peace is not born of bombardment, nor is it imposed by force, nor achieved through normalisation rejected by peoples. True peace is built upon the foundations of justice, equity, and understanding.” He also stressed that the “continuation of war and occupation will never yield peace; rather, it fuels the spiral of hatred and violence and opens the doors to vengeance and resistance, which will not close. Enough with violence, killing, hatred, enough with occupation, displacement, and dispersion.”
Indeed, there has been far more than enough bloodshed and starvation of the Palestinian people, with no reason on earth for it to drag on for so long. It is time for wisdom to prevail.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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