The Collapse of Supremacy and Impunity for Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionist movement are facing a nightmare. On 15 June, Iran and the US reached a tentative deal or memorandum of understanding (MoU) intended to end the Middle East conflict comprehensively and permanently. The MoU will be signed in Geneva, Switzerland, on 19 June. Further negotiations lasting 60 days are still required to resolve crucial issues. While the world welcomes the MoU, which aims to end the energy and food crisis caused by Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, Israel has greeted it with scepticism. The reason is that the MoU requires a complete cessation of conflict, including in Lebanon.
A week before the MoU was agreed, escalation between Iran and the US occurred again after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was accused of shooting down a US Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz. The perpetrator may have been Israel. Regardless, mutual attacks between Iran and the US ensued. Iran attacked US military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan in response to US strikes on Bandar Abbas and islands in the Strait of Hormuz. Subsequently, Iran changed its strategy from defensive to offensive, targeting both the US and Israel. Consequently, for the first time since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran took the initiative to directly attack Israel, a state with military supremacy that receives impunity from the US and the West. With these two advantages, the Zionist regime had been free to act against other countries in the Middle East.
The Arab defeat in a series of wars with Israel since its founding in 1948, and Egypt’s peace deal with Israel in 1979, altered regional geopolitics. No Arab-Israeli wars have occurred since. Egypt’s peace with Israel cannot be separated from the 1973 war. Although Egypt and Syria did not win, they demonstrated their best military performance. Making peace with Israel became imperative for Egypt after the US committed to building Israel’s military supremacy. Meanwhile, Egypt’s economy was devastated by war. President Anwar Sadat’s peace offer was difficult for Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government to refuse, as the mullahs’ revolution in Iran, which overthrew the Pahlevi dynasty, a US and Israeli ally, reshaped regional geopolitics again. The Israel-Iran alliance, based on the Nixon Doctrine to counter the Arabs, collapsed. Israel’s vulnerability increased because Iran made the liberation of Palestine a principle of its foreign policy.
Direct exchanges between Israel and Iran did occur in 2024. However, these were provoked by Israel attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, assassinating Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. Iran retaliated by launching 350 drones and missiles at Israel, which the IDF answered by striking a nuclear site in Isfahan. A larger war between the two followed after US-Israeli aggression in June 2025 and February 2026.
Iran’s attack on Israel on 7 June demonstrated this policy shift. Previously, Iran projected power through its ‘axis of resistance’—a network of proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen—while avoiding direct military confrontation with Israel. Now, Tehran has made its proxies a red line, meaning Iran will intervene if its proxies are struck by Israel. Iran had previously informed Israel of the consequences if the war in Lebanon did not stop. The Hizbullah-Israel war should have ended after a US-mediated ceasefire was reached on 24 November 2024. Hizbullah withdrew from southern Lebanon, but Israel refused to fully withdraw. By maintaining five strategic points in Lebanon, the IDF freely attacked civilians, displaced residents from their homes, and destroyed civilian infrastructure. As mediator, the US should have pressured Israel to comply with the ceasefire. Israel even faced no sanctions for killing UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Israel’s rationale was that Hizbullah must be disarmed as a condition for its withdrawal from Lebanon. This demand was unreasonable, as the weak government of President Joseph Aoun could not possibly disarm Hizbullah, which is superior to the Lebanese military. On the other hand, the Lebanese government could not confront the IDF. Before Hizbullah’s emergence in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon twice (in 1978 and 1982). The IDF was only expelled from Lebanon after an 18-year occupation thanks to Hizbullah’s resistance. In 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon again, only to be repelled after a 34-day war with heavy Israeli casualties. Moreover, Hizbullah is an official political party with seats in parliament. Hizbullah re-entered the battlefield only after US-Israeli aggression against Iran on 28 February killed Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. That aggression ended on 8 April. The ceasefire agreement stipulated an end to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon. Later, under Israeli pressure, US President Donald Trump stated the Lebanon issue was not included in the ceasefire. To separate Iran from Lebanon, Trump sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Lebanese government in Washington. After three rounds of talks between Lebanese and Israeli diplomats, an agreement was reached on 4 June. However, the one-sided deal, opposed by Hizbullah, contained a clause that the Lebanese military would take over security in southern Lebanon but did not require the IDF to fully withdraw. Instead, the IDF intensified large-scale attacks up to the outskirts of the capital, Beirut. More than one million people were displaced, nearly 4,000 civilians were killed, and infrastructure was destroyed.