June 19, 2025
ISLAMABAD – For Bibi, Iran is the coup de grâce of a political strategy more than 25 years in the making.
For years, allies and adversaries alike have ridiculed Benjamin Netanyahu as the boy who cried wolf. The far-right hardliner has long been haunted by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb, decrying that Tehran is just “weeks away” from such a weapon for over three decades now. A poster boy for genocide, he may be, it takes a man of a certain skillset to be able to be taken seriously after being so wrong for so long.
Despite his faulty calculus, Netanyahu never really let up. From infamously waving a cartoon sketch of an Iranian bomb at the UN in 2012 to privately lobbying Western leaders into a broader military entanglement with Ayetollahs, the Israeli premier has long prized a war with Iran as the crown jewel of his sordid legacy.
So when he finally signed off on a series of “pre-emptive strikes” that looked to target Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and military brass in the early hours of Friday, it wasn’t really much of a surprise. On the contrary, the post-attack script was practically writing itself.
“If we don’t attack, then it’s 100pc that we will die,” he argued in a video statement to the nation, hours after 200 Israeli warplanes zipped into Iranian airspace and dropped hundreds of bombs, rocking cities with explosions and jolting people out of their beds.
Old habits die hard, and sure enough, Bibi once again asserted the same, old, tired trope: that “Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs” and was “taking steps to weaponise this enriched uranium”. In typical Bibi fashion, he didn’t feel obliged to provide any evidence as to why the Iranians would suddenly abandon decades of nuclear restraint out of the blue. Nor did he deem it necessary to explain what had changed since US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in March that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that the Ayatollah “has not authorised the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
“We decided we couldn’t wait anymore. We are at midnight,” said Netanyahu.
It’s the same apocalyptic framing that has defined much of Netanyahu’s public advocacy over the years. These lacklustre justifications are usually enough for the Piers Morgans of the world, who suspend all logical scepticism to parrot whatever the latest eurocentric talking point of the day is. For the rest of us, however, Netanyahu’s stated strategic objective is as murky as it gets.
For one, the only nuclear site that Netanyahu mentioned in his speech was the large enrichment facility at Natanz. The Iranians have informed the IAEA that while Natanz was indeed targeted, other sites with nuclear material were operating normally. Later, Israel also attacked Fordow, where Iran is also suspected to be enriching material up to 60 per cent, but hasn’t been able to cause any observable damage. It looks like Israel attempted just enough of an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to be able to paint it as an act of preemptive self-defence. Since then, Netanyahu has stuck to his signature brand — bombing civilian areas, targeting journalists and trashing economic zones.
The consensus has long been that any meaningful attempt at the neutralisation of Iran’s nuclear program is a notch above Israel’s pay grade anyway. This is largely because the Iranians have safely buried their most advanced centrifuge cascades for enriching uranium hundreds of feet beneath the ground at sites like Natanz and Fordow. Potentially getting at those facilities would require the 15-ton bunker-buster bombs and a kind of military attrition that only the United States can provide. At most, Israel could perhaps delay a potential nuclear weapon by a matter of months, which is nearly not enough of a payoff to push the region into a war of uncertain consequences.
Most importantly, it doesn’t really take a four-star general to know that any meaningful threat to the Iranian regime is likely to force the Ayatollah’s hand into abandoning the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and race toward a bomb. They certainly have the capability to do so. In a sit-down with CNN’s Christine Amanpour, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted as much: “They have 400 kilograms of 60pc enriched uranium and it can be enriched to 90pc in a garage with the right equipment and they will have a crude bomb”. Considering the entire country of Israel is considered a “one bomb state”, coaxing the Ayatollah by bombarding his capital seems to be somewhat counterproductive.
Granted, missing out on an opportunity for a chaotic war has never quite been Bibi’s style, but bombarding the Islamic Republic mere days before another round of negotiations is particularly deranged for a country already on the brink of maxing out its political capital as far as the international community is concerned. The only plausible conclusion, therefore, is that the alarmism over WMDs is a smokescreen for something else. It’s a saga that traces back long before Netanyahu came onto the political scene, one that goes back to the very genesis of the American empire.
Empire, in its own words
When the USSR fell in the winters of ’91, the United States was left crippling with a national identity crisis. Without a grand antagonist to rally against, the US had lost its compass for global engagement. This was uncharted territory for any nation in the history of the world. Perhaps for the first time ever, the world was, in the truest sense of the word, unipolar.
Recognising the gaping ideological void left by what Charles Krauthammer dubbed ‘the unipolar moment’, an ambitious cadre of neoconservatives saw gold in the streets. Drawing from a deep well of hard theory, these thinkers began cooking up a revolutionary approach to international affairs that would go on to cement the United States as the undisputed world empire.
The intellectual vanguard of this movement coalesced around a handful of think tanks concentrated in and around the Beltway. The most notable, and perhaps most influential, of these was the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a think tank established in 1992 around the core premise that “American leadership is good for both America and for the world.” Fully cognisant of the unrivalled military apparatus at its disposal, the PNAC’s leading lights penned what would go on to become the ideological blueprint for the new American empire.
Titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy”, the groundbreaking policy brief urged the United States to realise and embrace the moral obligations of its unprecedented power, and assume the mantle of a “benevolent global hegemon” — one that wouldn’t hesitate to flex its military muscle in order to advance, and when necessary enforce, liberal democratic principles across the world.
Over the next few years, the neoconservative doctrine gradually penetrated the highest echelons of government. The Clinton years, for instance, saw figures like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright articulate a kind of hubris that had become indicative of the American Century: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”
If America were to assume the throne of global imperialism, it would need to tame the vast deserts (and the rich oil reserves that lay underneath) of the Middle East. In the summer of 1996, a constellation of neoconservative strategists — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others — drafted a policy blueprint for the then-newly elected Prime Minister of Israel: an up-and-coming hardliner who went by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” embodied the broader neoconservative vision for an American satellite state in the Middle East, and went on to become the foundational document guiding Netanyahu’s political vision for the region.
The Clean Break strategy rested on a three-pronged approach for Israel: A departure from the Oslo Accords and a rejection of the two-state solution, a regime change operation in adversarial states across the Middle East, and a politically-symbiotic alliance with the United States through preemptive military strength, market reforms, and opposition to Islamist regimes. When the Bush administration took the White House, Perle, Feith, and Wurmser, alongside fellow neoconservatives and PNAC alum Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, found themselves occupying pivotal positions in the national security apparatus.
Around this time, the PNAC drafted a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” It recognised that imperative though it may be, manufacturing consent for a regime change excursion into the Middle East wouldn’t exactly be a cakewalk without “some catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbour.” A year later, two Boeing 767 airliners rammed into the World Trade Centre and in the ashes and embers of unspeakable tragedy, the neocons had their opportunity. They’d be remiss not to cash in.
With American public opinion at its most malleable, the neocons packing the Bush cabinet rolled out the red carpet for Netanyahu, then enjoying a stint as a “regional expert” on the Middle East, to address Congress in 2002. It came as no surprise, then, that Netanyahu’s testimony was in perfect lockstep with the Clean Break papers.
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” he predicted. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.” The monstrosity of the lies told, the millions of lives lost, and an entire region left in disarray was just another Tuesday for the Likud Party czar.
According to retired four-star general of the US Army and former NATO commander Wesley Clark, it was no coincidence that Netanyahu centred his 2002 testimony on a US-backed regime change operation in Iraq and Iran. In a bombshell exposé in 2007, Clark recounted heading to the Pentagon 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, where he was allegedly shown a plan that outlined US military action aimed at “taking out seven countries in five years”. The regimes staring down the gun’s barrel were: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
Now, one could argue that Clark was lying, that he was fabricating the existence of these scandalous documents, and that the architecture of the so-called Terror Wars was not at all choreographed in the dark rooms of the Pentagon years in advance. Making such an argument, of course, would have to involve the colossal task of explaining away over 20 years of American military excursions in the Middle East.
For the next couple of decades, the American war machine ticked off nearly every country listed in the Pentagon memo like items off a grocery list. Wherever there was the slightest inkling of pretext, the wrath of Empire, ruthless and swift as it is, made sure to follow. Where there wasn’t, it was simply manufactured all the same. Twenty years on, almost every regime on Clark’s list — from Saddam’s Iraq to Assad’s Syria — has either fallen or has been rendered, for all intents and purposes, defunct. All, save for one.
And so for Bibi, Iran is the coup de grâce of a political strategy more than 25 years in the making. The early-morning strikes and the hawkish rhetoric that followed are not solely about Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. It’s about a near-perfect execution of the Empire’s nefarious design in the Middle East — one that has moulded and sculpted the contours of Netanyahu’s politics, and one he’s remained remarkably devoted to for much, if not all, of his public career.
With domestic and international patience for his crimes in Gaza wearing thin, Netanyahu knows his days at the Knesset are numbered. On top of that, the regime in Tehran is uniquely exposed, perhaps for the first time. Iranian air defences have been battered over the past year. So, too, has its axis of deterrence that it built up over decades by arming both Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and a swath of smaller proxies across Syria and Yemen.
These shifts in the strategic environment have opened a window for action at much lower risk to both the Jewish state and its benefactor across the Atlantic than at any time since the Iran-Iraq war of the eighties. It’s a dwindling moment Netanyahu cannot afford to let by. And so after 30 painstaking years of waiting, the stars have finally aligned for the Israeli prime minister and the American foreign policy establishment. There’s just one Trump-sized problem.
The final play
Time and again, Trump has made it clear that a war with Iran is the furthest thing from his foreign policy agenda. Whether it be deploying his fixer Steve Witkoff to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before even kicking off his presidency, or explicitly warning the Israelis against a unilateral attack that would short-circuit his outreach for diplomacy, Trump appeared to be sticking to his guns (as ironic as the expression may be) on avoiding a catastrophic war in the Middle East at any cost. Sure, a baseline resistance to war is not too much to ask for, but in the high halls of Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s as good as it gets.
The streets were chirping with speculation of a potential rift between the American president and Bibi Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the attack. When the President decided to play dealmaker in his most recent tour to the Middle East, and notably left out Israel from his travel list, the media took it as a telltale sign of a chasm between the Oval Office and the Knesset. More damaging still, US negotiations with Iran and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — two of Israel’s most bitter regional adversaries — proceeded without any visible Israeli involvement, despite Jerusalem’s long-standing insistence on being central to all Middle Eastern diplomacy. As international condemnation for the genocide in Gaza reached fever pitch, the diplomatic cold shoulder was made even more apparent when Vice President JD Vance abruptly cancelled his trip to Israel over supposed “logistical issues” — largely taken as diplomatic speak for ‘we’d rather not be seen with you right now.’
This presented Netanyahu with a glaring problem. Starting catastrophic wars may come as second nature to him, but without Uncle Sam’s military hardware and diplomatic cover, he risks bumbling Israel into an ill-advised war of attrition with Iran. And unlike Iraq and Libya, Iran is no pushover. The regime in Tehran has weathered four decades of crippling sanctions, international isolation, and constant saber-rattling and so far, has lived to tell the tale.
As the civilian death toll rises, the people of Iran will naturally rally around the flag, gutting any further hopes of an internal mobilisation against the Ayatollah. This matters as the play was never about Iran using a bomb to attack Israel — which would be suicidal — but rather that an Iranian bomb would limit Israel’s (and therefore the United States’) manoeuvrability to dominate the region with impunity. And so for Israel to assume the throne of regional hegemony, it would need to find a way to derail Trump’s push for diplomacy.
And herein lies the bard: Netanyahu’s appetite for regional conflagration consistently outpaces Israel’s actual capacity to deliver it. So in the face of a closing window, what could the Israeli premier do to not only spark the war he always wanted, but outplay the American president by blowing up his negotiations with Tehran and ensnare him into a conflict he clearly doesn’t seem to want? Once Netanyahu’s ordeal is framed in this light, his strategic math begins to add up. In finally striking Iran, Netanyahu has presented the White House with a fait accompli that would be politically impossible to reverse.
The elegance of the gambit, from Netanyahu’s perspective, lies in its simplicity. Each Iranian response to Israeli provocation creates a new crisis that demands American involvement. Once the conflict rises up the escalation ladder — and it will — Trump will be faced with an impossible choice: commit political suicide at home by abandoning America’s most reliable project in the Middle East, or betray his base of ‘America First’ conservatives by tossing the country into yet another foreign entanglement. Watching Israel go it alone while America stands on the sidelines would be tantamount to a political crucifixion at home for Trump.
Netanyahu understands this as well as anyone, and knows that once blood is spilt and the President’s credibility is perceived to be on the line, the original question of whether the war was wise becomes irrelevant. By lighting the fuse on a regional powder keg, Netanyahu has effectively cornered the leader of the Free World into becoming his partner in international war crimes. Hence, this is a war, not of necessity, but of calculated provocation — a masterclass in forcing the hand of a reluctant superpower and bending it to your will. After all, what’s the point of being America’s indispensable ally if you can’t occasionally make yourself truly indispensable?
Whether Trump really was blindsided by Netanyahu’s actions on Friday or whether he was using diplomatic leverage with the Iranians as a ruse to double-cross them while the Israelis took their shot will be a debate that will rage on long after the dust settles on Trump’s presidential stint. For the President today, it’s a zero-sum game. Either he admits to being blindsided by Netanyahu and runs the risk of appearing incompetent, or he admits to being in lockstep with the Israeli prime minister and alienates his most ardent supporters at a time he needs all the political capital he can muster. Regardless, the ball now firmly rests in Trump’s court. The Israelis have reportedly invited the administration to join the war effort, and in doing so, handed the President the single greatest test of his life — one that will go on to define his legacy for generations to come.
Tough choices
Where the buck falls in this conflict will now largely depend on what Trump decides to do from here on out. Initially, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quick to dismiss Jerusalem’s onslaught as “unilateral action”. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio maintained. At first, the administration appeared to hold its ground, declining Netanyahu’s increasingly frantic invitations for kinetic collaboration and maintaining the pretence that America had nothing to do with Friday’s fireworks.
But cracks in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) camp are already beginning to show. As the two countries climb the escalation ladder and the legacy media work in overdrive to sell American involvement to the people, Trump seems to be capitulating to the oldest con in the Washington playbook: the manufactured crisis that demands American intervention. The pressure is mounting from all the usual suspects — defence contractors salivating over potential windfalls, congressional hawks encircling the Oval Office and dusting off their war drums, and keyboard warriors seeking to monetise a conflict they don’t fully understand.
It is enough pressure to crush the staunchest of pacifists, and Trump is the furthest thing from an ideologue. Buckling under domestic duress, he seems to be abandoning his initial position of non-involvement for a tone of reluctant endorsement, committing intelligence and logistical aid to the Israeli war effort.
“We knew everything, and I tried to save Iran from humiliation and death. I tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out,” Trump has said. His shifting stance around the Israeli strikes, which he has called “excellent” and “very successful”, and his sheer inability to restrain Netanyahu, is a dark omen for what could come next. Playing right into Netanyahu’s hands in this manner is likely to further alienate the Iranians, making any prospect of a diplomatic solution politically impossible for Tehran, and boxing America into yet another foreign war.
It is said that President Kennedy also encountered a similar dilemma at the outset of his presidency in 1961. Shortly upon entering office, the young president found himself staring down the barrel of a half-baked CIA operation that had all the strategic sophistication of a college prank. The Bay of Pigs invasion was, by any reasonable assessment, a spectacularly misguided adventure — a ragtag group of Cuban exiles, armed with outdated weapons and deployed into the Bay of Pigs to topple a seasoned revolutionary in Castro who had already proven his mettle against far superior forces.
Yet the CIA’s game plan was to let the operation proceed as planned. When it inevitably collapsed into chaos, Kennedy would have no choice but to authorise full-scale American military intervention to save face and salvage what remained of American credibility.
It was political chess of the highest order — a deliberate failure designed to manufacture the very crisis that would justify a war the Agency had wanted all along. Once the new President’s fingerprints were on the operation, backing down would mean accepting humiliation on a global stage. The choice was binary — double down with American firepower, or watch the Free World’s credibility crumble in the Caribbean surf. Today, Netanyahu is taking a page out of the same playbook.
Ultimately, Kennedy called the CIA’s bluff, refusing to commit to a war with no strategic payoff for any stakeholder involved. It would bode well for America and the world at large for Trump to do the same.
The author is a student at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, and is interested in political, historical and social affairs.