Long-term regional security and stability in the Middle East seems out of reach. On the contrary, in the light of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran that broke out on 28 February, the Middle East is now in the throes of an unlimited period of destabilisation.
This is the second stage, or another round of fighting, in the conflict that broke out in June last year and then went into remission for a while before resuming. While the last round of fighting lasted 12 days, this time around no one knows how long it will last, or, more importantly, how it will end.
In last year’s conflict, US President Donald Trump declared victory, claiming that the attacks he had ordered against Iranian nuclear sites had led to their obliteration. However, the American military did not wholly share this opinion.
Over the last nine months, the period between the two rounds of fighting in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played up the false idea that Iran represents an “existential threat” to Israel, hammering the message into the ears of the American president that Tehran has resumed working on manufacturing a nuclear bomb.
He has done this in an electoral campaign year in Israel and at a time when his personal and political future hangs in the balance. He has kept up his warnings that the Iranians have been perfecting their ballistic missiles programme, and he has gone as far as to claim that they would be able to target the continental United States.
This conclusion contradicts the gist of an unclassified United States Defence Intelligence Agency estimate from last year that said that it could be another decade before Iran has the technology to build an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the United States.
After the first round of fighting last year, the American administration showed an interest in negotiating an agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme with the Iranian government. Oman, the usual conduit for indirect talks between Washington and Tehran, organised three rounds of talks between the two sides in Muscat and Geneva. The last of these took place in Geneva on 26 February, and its positive outcome warranted further technical and political talks that were scheduled to resume this week.
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Abusaidi said after last Thursday’s session that Iran had agreed to American demands for the “zero accumulation” of enriched uranium stocks. He urged the United States not to get sucked in further into a conflict with Iran.
However, the Americans and Israelis had other plans, and the negotiations were used to lead the Iranians to believe that time could be on their side. They should have been alerted by the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu that took place on 9 February at the White House and that was hurriedly arranged apparently at the request of the latter. It was in this meeting that the joint US-Israeli military strikes against Iran were approved.
Although the strikes are part of a joint military effort between Washington and Tel Aviv, the ultimate objectives of the two sides are not necessarily the same, and there is no evidence that they see eye-to-eye on the day after in Iran once the guns fall silent.
The first wave of the attacks last Saturday morning killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A three-man steering council meeting was then announced for later in the day, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a member of the council, said that Iran would continue to follow the guidelines established by the late Ayatollah Khamenei.
Meanwhile, Trump called on the Iranian people to “take the government into your own hands,” telling them that “when we are finished, take over your government.” The Israelis announced on 1 March that Israel is creating the military conditions for a change of regime in Iran.
However, there is a near consensus among Iran-watchers that it will be difficult to bring down the Iranian regime, not only because political power is diffuse in the country, but also because of the strong attachment of the Revolutionary Guards and the army to it.
Other experts who have followed other attempts at regime change in the Arab world have warned against repeating the same mistakes that took place in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. Many fear a prolonged period of political instability within Iran, with attendant ramifications throughout the Middle East.
From his first day in power back in May 1996, Netanyahu has had two major strategic objectives on his mind, objectives that have been largely followed and supported by the Likud Party and the Israeli general public from 1996 onwards, save for the interlude of the signing of the Declaration of Principles, commonly known as the Oslo Accords, on 13 September 1993 between the then Labour government of Yitzhak Rabin and the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat.
Netanyahu’s first objective has been to torpedo the Oslo Accords to thwart any attempt to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank linked to Gaza. The other has been to cut Iran down to size.
To achieve the second objective, he tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the negotiations that led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 5+1 agreement made with Iran under the Obama administration in July 2015. In a desperate move, Netanyahu even had himself invited by the then Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, without prior consultation with the White House, to address a joint session of the US Congress and warn against signing any agreement with Iran.
Nine years later, he received a similar invitation from another Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, in July 2024 to repeat the same warnings, but this time framing the confrontation with Iran in more grandiose terms, describing it as a showdown between “civilisation” and the “forces of evil”. This time round, there were listening ears in the White House and a team of close advisers to Trump who cater to Israeli plans.
Taking the last two-and-a-half years into consideration, from 7 October 2023 until 28 February this year, Netanhayu has managed to manoeuvre the two Trump administrations, 2017-2021 and 2025-2029, into helping him achieve his two most-cherished strategic objectives. Achieving the two means preparing the ground for the annexation of the West Bank, thus establishing the Zionist dream of the land of Israel from the River to the Sea, as the early Zionist thinkers put it in the last century.
In fact, changing the regime in Tehran from an Israeli perspective is not mainly about its nuclear programme or its ballistic missile programme, as the Israelis want us to believe, but instead is about preparing the ground for the emergence of a “Greater Israel” with the connivance of the two Trump administrations.
In this war, Iran stands on its own. To make matters worse, the Iranians have grossly miscalculated, strategically, in targeting the Gulf countries, claiming that they are retaliating against the American air strikes believed to be being carried out by planes and missiles from American bases in the Gulf, the total number of which is 13.
Unfortunately, in so doing, they have played into the hands of Netanyahu, who has always prided himself on working to establish a Sunni Arab-Israeli alliance in the Middle East to counter Iran and its proxies.
On the other hand, and notwithstanding the strategic partnership agreements that Iran has signed separately with both China and Russia, so far, only verbal support for Iran has been forthcoming from Moscow and Beijing. Their relations with Trump’s White House have proved more important than coming to the aid of Iran in its hour of need.
How the nine-month war against Iran will end remains to be seen. However, one thing is certain. The Middle East will not be the same in its wake, and the regional powers should brace themselves for a reshaped region. The Arab powers should form a shield against the so-called “Greater Israel”, the ambition behind the formation of which is the main cause of the war against Iran.
*The writer is a former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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