June 17, 2025
ISLAMABAD – Israel sees in Iran a state it aims to destroy, not because it is worried that its black-turbaned fundamental clerics will get the bomb, but because it sees in Iran a worthy adversary.
In April, President Trump told journalists in the Oval Office that he was pretty confident there would be a deal with Iran “without having to start dropping bombs all over the place”. A little more than a month later, Israel is doing exactly that — dropping bombs all over the place.
It is now clear that the bait for surprising the Persians was dialogue with the US; talks that were cancelled and rescheduled to allow the Israelis to attack, and that Trump was playing his role in this deception.
Meanwhile, the West offers pathetic platitudes to de-escalation but sends jets to Israel, the glorified petrol stations of the Gulf look on with feigned concern as Israel does their bidding, and non-Arab states like Pakistan avert their gaze haplessly as Tehran is ravaged by bombs battle-tested on Palestinians. It is only Iran that stands against Israel, and it stands completely alone.
Cast in the same mould
Iran and Israel are surprisingly alike. Both countries are nestled among neighbours they believe are hostile to them, both are religiously distinct, and both believe themselves to be culturally and intellectually superior to the Arabs. In his brilliant book, Treacherous Alliance, political analyst Trita Parsi notes that theirs is a nemesis born of affinity. The Iranians and Israelis, he says, often think as they go about their daily lives that “the Arabs are out to get us.” The hate it seems is returned; the title of a book by Khairallah Tulfah, Saddam Hussein’s maternal uncle is, ‘Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies’.
The Israeli disdain for the Arabs is evident, “we know what the Arabs can do, and it isn’t much,” an Israeli analyst told Parsi, but while Israeli officials saw themselves as culturally superior to their Arab neighbours, they saw Iran as an equal. And this view, it seems, was shared by the Persians, leading them into an unlikely alliance with Israel during the Iran-Iraq war, where Israel helped the Iranians, ironically bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 in collaboration with Iran. It was only after Iran defeated Iraq (in a war in which almost the whole international community, including the US, sided with Iraq), that both states, in their aspiration for regional hegemony in the Middle East, turned from allies to enemies.
The most important similarity between both nations is their fundamental belief that they can’t rely on anybody but themselves. While this is true for the Iranians, it is less true for Israel which is the golden calf of the only superpower in the world.
In spite of this, its persecution complex after the Holocaust means Israelis inherently still believe they must stand on their own. It is this mindset that has led each to pursue its own military and economic development, a pursuit most difficult for Iran which has been strangled by sanctions that have left it out in the cold.
It is this formidable rivalry which leads to the two states being at war today. The animosity between them is not born out of enmity, but competition. Israel sees in Iran a state it aims to destroy, not because it is worried that its ‘black-turbaned fundamental clerics’ will get the bomb, but because it sees in Iran a worthy adversary.
A nuclear Iran
Under international law, of course, Israel’s actions are completely unlawful. While some attempt has been made to pay lip service to the notion of self-defence, this is against a far-fetched threat which may materialise if Iran were to get nuclear weapons.
It was in fact Israel’s strike on the Osirak reactor that solidified opposition to this form of self-defence in the international community. Preventive self-defence, against threats which are not imminent, are illegal acts of aggression, though Israel remains protected by America’s veto from a Security Council resolution calling for an end to its strikes.
Moreover, the targeted assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists are indeed war crimes, as they are civilians who cannot be made the object of attack. If the laws of war were enlarged to include scientists working on nuclear programmes, every scientist or engineer working on the Manhattan Project would have been targetable.
While it is an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons even though it cries wolf over Iran’s attempt to enrich uranium, the old joke in diplomatic circles is that Iran has supposedly been weeks away from getting the bomb for the last 30 years.
This time was no different; the acquisition of nuclear weapons was imminent, said Netanyahu, waving around a resolution from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which holds Iran in breach of its obligations. This is despite the fact that Iran strategically has always desired a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, as it would enjoy conventional supremacy as one of the largest states in the region. However, the failure of the Iranians has been their ever willingness to talk.
In 2003, after the Americans occupied Baghdad and fearing they were next, the Iranians sent the most compromising proposal possible to the United States in which they put everything on the table. They offered to end their support for the Palestinian resistance and pursue the Pakistan/ Malaysian model, under which they would not recognise Israel but would stop arming the non-state groups fighting against the occupation. They also offered to disarm Hezbollah and make it a political party, and most importantly, they offered to give up entirely their nuclear programme and open it up to intrusive international scrutiny.
In return, there would be an end to sanctions that had crippled the country’s economy and stymied its development. It should have been a no-brainer but it wasn’t. US Vice President, Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, shut it down saying “we don’t speak to evil”. Compared to America’s neo-conservative war hawks, the Ayatollahs are more flexible.
As a result, Iran had to ideologically commit to confronting the US-led order and it did so by championing the Palestinian cause, arming armed groups directly, with few strings attached. It also continued to enrich uranium, as it is allowed to do, to meet its energy needs.
Two years after Iran’s proposal to the US, when asked how far Israel would go to stop Iran’s nuclear programme, Dan Halutz, Israel’s Chief of General Staff, said “two thousand kilometres”, the distance between Israel and Iran.
If it wasn’t clear then, it should be now. Iran absolutely must have nuclear weapons if it is to ward off any future Israeli threats. While it can quote international law by the yard, the UN Charter cannot do what nuclear warheads can. Iran must have the bomb.
How does this end?
Regime change in Iran has been on the cards for decades. General Wesley Clark, former commander of Nato and US presidential hopeful in 2003, claimed that he had met with a senior military officer in 2001 who told him that the Bush administration was planning to attack seven Muslim majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. Almost all of those countries have either had their leaders toppled in direct or indirect military intervention by the West, all except Iran.
Almost two decades ago, Netanyahu believed the US didn’t even need a military incursion to achieve this goal. In 2002, he told a US congressional committee meeting that regime change in Iran could be affected through transmitting US TV shows into Iran’s satellite TV network, “because that is subversive stuff … the young kids watch it.. they wanna have nice clothes and the same houses and swimming pools …”
Today, as bombs rain on Tehran, there are two ways this conflict can go. Iran can continue to send its missiles to Israel for long enough that the war becomes unpopular with the Israeli public and Russian and Chinese diplomats intervene to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Or, the Iranian regime cannot hold and it will fall.
If it does, Israel will install itself in Iran, allowing a puppet regime that offers no resistance to itself or the Saudis. The Gulf states and Israel may then allow there to be an emasculated, demilitarised, and supervised Palestinian state which will be a state only in name, with Israel controlling its borders and foreign policy, and continuing its military presence in the country. They will say this is a victory for peace, a victory for the Middle East, a victory for Muslims.
In the meantime, Iran, as of now unbowed and undefeated, fights on.
“Indeed, Pharaoh elevated himself in the land, and made its people into factions, persecuting a sect, slaughtering its sons and sparing its women. Indeed, he was one of the corrupters. But We willed that We would favor those who were downtrodden in the land, making them leaders and heirs.” — Qur’an 28:4-5
Ayesha Malik is an international lawyer and is Deputy Director at the Research Society of International Law where she runs the Conflict Law Centre.