Will the US-Israeli War on Iran Open the Road to Palestinian Freedom?
Some are expressing frustration that Iran’s conditions to end the war have not explicitly and unequivocally included a demand to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and dismantle the apartheid regime.
Among the conditions circulated in Iranian and sympathetic media—though not formally confirmed by Tehran—is the proposition that any resolution must include an end to Israel’s war across all fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond. However, these conditions did not specifically prioritize the freedom of Palestine as a precondition to ending the war.
That frustration is neither misplaced nor marginal. For many, Palestine is not one issue among others, but the defining axis of the conflict itself. Precisely for that reason, however, it cannot be approached in isolation. To treat the current war solely through what has or has not been explicitly stated risks narrowing a profoundly complex confrontation into a single dimension, when in fact it is through this broader, interconnected struggle that the question of Palestine is ultimately being shaped, contested, and potentially resolved.
Several strands of analysis capture elements of this reality, but few sustain it. Some focus narrowly on Israeli domestic politics, arguing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war to preserve his coalition, delay accountability, and avoid legal consequences that could end his political career.
Others shift to a broader strategic reading, situating the war within Israel’s long-standing pursuit of regional dominance—neutralizing adversaries, expanding normalization, and consolidating its position as the central power in the region.
A third line of analysis, closer to the mainstream, continues to operate within the declared framework of Washington and Tel Aviv. Even when it introduces criticism, it remains anchored in the language of Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli “security,” and the familiar architecture of justification.
This framework is not neutral. It systematically evades assigning responsibility to Israel for the war, just as it has persistently refused to confront the genocide in Gaza. Even its criticisms of US President Donald Trump remain procedural—focused on the White House’s unclear objectives, poor coordination, and contradictory messaging—rather than on the political and moral logic driving the war itself.
Between narrowly internal explanations and an increasingly hollow mainstream narrative, the broader historical trajectory disappears from view.
The truth lies elsewhere.
The Middle East has not entered a crisis suddenly. It has been shaped—deliberately—for instability. What we are witnessing is not an abrupt rupture, but the acceleration of a long-standing historical process that is now reaching a decisive phase.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, concluded between Britain and France, did not simply divide territory; it engineered fragmentation. Arbitrary borders were imposed with little regard for historical, cultural, or social realities, ensuring that the region would remain politically fractured and externally manageable.
This colonial framework was later reinforced through post-World War II arrangements that transferred effective control of the region to the United States. A defining moment came in 1945, when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt met Saudi King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy, establishing a strategic formula: American security guarantees in exchange for stable access to oil resources.
That arrangement evolved, particularly in the 1970s, into the petrodollar system, whereby global oil transactions were denominated in US dollars. The consequences were structural. Global demand for the dollar was secured, and the strength of the US economy became directly tied to its influence over Middle Eastern energy flows.
From that point onward, US dominance in the region was not merely strategic—it was foundational to the global economic order.
When did this begin to shift?
A common answer points to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Intended to consolidate American control, the war instead destabilized the region in profound and lasting ways, exposing the limits of direct military intervention and accelerating forces that Washington itself could not fully contain.
By 2011, the United States began to recalibrate. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” reflected a strategic reorientation toward China, while in the Middle East, Washington adopted a more indirect model of engagement—often described as “leading from behind.”
This approach was evident in Libya in 2011, where NATO forces, under US coordination, intervened militarily without a large-scale American ground presence, resulting not in stability, but in state collapse.
Across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, the United States increasingly relied on proxies, regional alliances, and hybrid forms of warfare. It sought to maintain influence while reducing the political and financial costs of direct occupation.
Within this evolving framework, Israel assumed a more central role. It was no longer simply an ally, but a pillar—positioned as a regional guarantor of security within a US-led order. Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, were incorporated into this arrangement as economic partners, their normalization with Israel framed as both pragmatic and inevitable.
The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, formalized this shift. They were not merely diplomatic agreements but components of a broader project to reorganize the Middle East in alignment with US and Israeli strategic priorities.
While widely described as a betrayal of Palestine—and rightly so—the Accords were also designed to bypass the Palestinian question altogether. Jared Kushner articulated this logic explicitly, arguing that regional cooperation and economic integration could proceed independently of resolving Palestinian rights.
The discourse itself began to shift accordingly. Israel adopted and expanded the language of a “new Middle East,” advancing a vision in which it occupies a central, uncontested position.
This vision was made unmistakably clear in September 2023, when Netanyahu addressed the United Nations and presented a map of the region that excluded Palestine entirely—a political statement as much as a visual one.
Yet even the genocide in Gaza did not fundamentally disrupt this trajectory. Several Arab governments, despite rhetorical condemnation, continued to prioritize the preservation of this emerging order, investing political capital in its survival while offering little meaningful support to Palestinians.
This posture is not accidental.
Many Gulf states were not the product of anti-colonial liberation movements, but of colonial arrangements. As former British protectorates, their political and security systems remain deeply intertwined with Western power. Their limited population size, territorial depth, and strategic autonomy render them dependent on external guarantees for survival.
With China still cautious in projecting military power, and unwilling—at least for now—to replace the United States as a security patron, these states remain anchored to Western political validation, military protection, and technological infrastructure.
From their perspective, the collapse of the existing order is not liberation—it is risk.
This helps explain the absence of any serious shift in their stance toward Israel, even when Israeli leaders openly articulate expansionist ambitions. Netanyahu himself has repeatedly framed Israel’s role in terms that suggest a broader regional project—namely “Greater Israel”—one that extends beyond partnership into dominance.
Such statements, while alarming to some, have not fundamentally altered the calculations of Arab regimes. They have long understood the nature of Israeli power, yet continue to operate within a system that rewards alignment with stronger actors, not resistance to them.
With all of this in mind, the US-Israeli war on Iran cannot be understood as a series of isolated decisions or short-term calculations. It is the outcome of a layered and cumulative historical trajectory.
Yes, Netanyahu seeks political survival. Yes, US policy remains deeply shaped by pro-Israel influence. But to reduce the war to these factors alone is to miss its structural function: the attempt to impose a new regional order.
It is precisely within this broader context that the Palestinian resistance in Gaza must be understood. It was never intended to defeat Israel in conventional military terms. Rather, its objective was to widen the scope of the conflict, disrupt Israel’s ability to unilaterally reshape the region, and challenge what can be understood as an emerging ‘Sykes-Picot II’—this time centered on Israeli dominance.
Israel is fully aware of this dynamic. Hence its constant framing of the war as existential, equating it with its founding moment in 1948—the Nakba, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Yet Iran’s powerful response, the sustained role of Hezbollah, the involvement of Ansarallah, and the broader consolidation of the Axis of Resistance suggest that Israel may not achieve its strategic objectives after all.
And this is precisely where much of the prevailing analysis falls short.
For the Axis of Resistance, victory does not require a decisive military triumph. It requires endurance. Not losing, in this context, is itself a strategic victory.
Such an outcome would not simply interrupt the existing trajectory; it would begin to reverse it. The strategic arc that followed the Iraq war—reinforced by the ‘pivot to Asia’, the collapse of the Arab uprisings, and the normalization process—would be fundamentally unsettled. Israel’s role as a regional ‘security’ guarantor would be weakened, compelling Arab regimes to reassess their alignments and, potentially, to explore new forms of regional coexistence—not with Israel, but with Iran.
In that same moment, the United States would face a narrowing set of options: either deepen its entanglement in a region it has been attempting to recalibrate away from, or accept an altered geopolitical landscape in which Iran and its allies are no longer peripheral actors, but entrenched and unavoidable forces in shaping the region’s future.
While this alone will not liberate Palestine or dismantle apartheid, it would nonetheless open new political, geopolitical, and legal spaces for Palestinians to operate—spaces made possible by shifting regional balances and a loosening of long-standing constraints.
If the US-Israeli war on Iran fails, the implications will extend well beyond the battlefield. What will begin to unravel is not only the existing balance of power, but the very language and assumptions that have governed the region for decades.
In that context, global powers such as China and Russia are likely to position themselves more assertively as alternative economic and strategic partners, seeking to capitalize on a changing regional landscape.
At the same time, some European states—already signaling discomfort with US policy—may attempt to negotiate new arrangements, particularly given the strategic centrality of the Strait of Hormuz and its direct implications for global energy flows.
Countries across the Global South may also draw lessons from this moment, exploring forms of regional cooperation that challenge inherited colonial frameworks and long-standing hierarchies of power.
Taken together, these shifts do not resolve the ‘Palestinian question’—but they do create openings. They expand the terrain on which Palestinians and their allies, including the global solidarity movement, can act, organize, and exert pressure.
With support for Israel declining among ordinary Americans, and with global solidarity for Palestine reaching unprecedented levels—including within Western societies—the contours of a broader political shift are already emerging.
The challenge now is not simply to recognize that change is underway, but to understand its depth and direction, so as not to remain confined to partial readings of the war on Iran. It must instead be engaged as part of a larger struggle over the future of the region, in which Palestine remains central.
Iran ‘Gone Wild’ in Dimona: Is Tehran Using Israel-US Madman Doctrine?
The wording is familiar. The urgency is always absolute. The implication is unmistakable: Israel is not choosing war. It is forced into it.
For many, the claim is inherently contradictory. How can a state initiate war – and in Gaza’s case, sustain a genocide – while insisting that it is merely defending itself from annihilation? Yet within Israeli political discourse, and across much of Western media, this contradiction is rarely interrogated. It is normalized.
That normalization is not incidental. It is foundational.
Dimona is not an ordinary town. It lies adjacent to the Negev Nuclear Research Center, widely understood to be central to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
Located deep in the Naqab desert, the facility has long been treated as one of Israel’s most sensitive strategic sites, associated with plutonium production and long-term weapons capability.
That context gives the strike its meaning. The Iranian attack on Dimona came hours after a renewed US-Israeli strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier the same day.
According to international and Iranian reports carried by Reuters, the Natanz enrichment complex in Isfahan province was targeted on the morning of March 21, with the International Atomic Energy Agency confirming damage but no radiation leak.
The sequence is not incidental. Natanz was struck in the morning; Dimona was hit later the same day. Even without an exact hour-by-hour timeline, the proximity establishes a clear operational logic: a nuclear facility in Iran is answered with a nuclear-adjacent site in Israel within hours.
Since the beginning of the war on February 28, 2026, Iran has followed a consistent pattern. Every escalation is met with escalation, and every strike on strategic infrastructure is answered with pressure on equally strategic targets.
This breaks from the historical pattern of US and Israeli wars in the Middle East, where escalation largely flowed in one direction.
For decades, Washington and Tel Aviv defined the tempo and limits of conflict. Others absorbed, recalibrated, and survived. Iran has challenged that model by redistributing vulnerability across the battlefield – expanding the geography of confrontation and refusing to remain within predefined limits.
Today’s events illustrate this shift with unusual clarity. The targeting of Natanz and the subsequent strike on Dimona form part of a single chain of escalation, not separate incidents. The battlefield is no longer fragmented; it is structurally connected.
The intellectual roots of this approach, however, lie partly in Israeli military doctrine itself. During the 2008–2009 war on Gaza, then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni articulated this logic in unmistakable terms.
“Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.”
She was even more explicit in a separate statement: “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded.”
These were not slips of language. They were declarations of doctrine.
The idea was simple: overwhelming, disproportionate, and seemingly uncontrolled force would deter adversaries by making the cost of confrontation unbearable. Israel would not merely respond; it would escalate beyond predictability.
For years, that doctrine functioned largely in one direction. Israel could escalate with overwhelming and unpredictable force, while others were expected to absorb the consequences and recalibrate. The logic was not simply military, but psychological – deterrence through excess, through the projection of a state willing to go beyond conventional limits.
A similar logic had already been articulated decades earlier in the United States through what became known as the “madman theory,” associated with Richard Nixon. The idea was that a leader’s unpredictability – even the perception of irrationality – could itself function as a tool of coercion.
Under Donald Trump, that posture did not emerge for the first time but reappeared in a more overt and performative form, where unpredictability was framed not as risk, but as leverage, and at times deliberately amplified.
But Iran appears to have internalized this logic and turned it outward. The strike on Dimona is not only retaliation. It is replication. Tehran is applying the same doctrine back onto its originators, transforming deterrence into a shared and unstable framework.
Strike Natanz, and Dimona is no longer untouchable. Expand the battlefield, and the battlefield expands further. What was once a one-sided doctrine of domination becomes a two-sided mechanism of escalation.
This dynamic has unsettled Washington. US media, citing intelligence assessments, reported in mid-March that the Trump administration had been warned of Iranian retaliation, yet the scale and coordination of the response exceeded expectations.
On March 21, even as military operations continued, Trump indicated that Washington was considering options to “wind down” the war, even as additional forces were deployed. Retreat would signal a geopolitical defeat; escalation risks a deeper one.
Israel faces a different but equally dangerous reality. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, escalation has often functioned as a strategy, prolonging conflict and delaying internal crises. But Iran’s adoption of the same escalation logic complicates that approach.
When both sides embrace escalation as a principle, deterrence begins to erode.
Iran, however, appears to be operating with a longer horizon. Its capabilities extend beyond missile exchanges to include influence over maritime chokepoints, regional alliances, and actors capable of exerting pressure across multiple fronts.
Among these is the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where Ansarallah maintains the ability to disrupt global shipping. This adds another layer to a conflict already expanding beyond conventional battlefields.
Some of Iran’s capabilities are visible. Others remain deliberately undefined. This allows Tehran to escalate while preserving strategic depth, maintaining pressure without exhausting its options.
Ironically, the doctrine now shaping the war is one Israel helped normalize.
On March 21, with Natanz and Dimona linked within the same day of strikes, that transformation became unmistakable. The war is no longer defined by who escalates – but by what happens when both sides choose, deliberately, to ‘go wild’.
Those who had the misfortune of growing up in a war zone require no explanation. War is hell, it is true—but for children, it is something else entirely: a confusing, disorienting fate that defies comprehension.
There are children who live only briefly, experiencing whatever life manages to offer them: the love of parents, the camaraderie of siblings, the fragile joys and inevitable hardships of existence.
There are over 20,000 children in this category who have been killed in Gaza over the span of roughly two years, according to figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry and repeatedly cited by United Nations agencies. Some were born and killed within the same short timeframe.
Others remain buried beneath the rubble of the destroyed Strip. According to humanitarian and forensic experts cited by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), thousands of bodies are still missing under collapsed buildings, with recovery efforts hindered by the scale of destruction and lack of equipment. In some cases, extreme heat, fire, and the use of heavy explosive weaponry have rendered identification nearly impossible, meaning that many of these children may never be properly accounted for, let alone mourned at a grave.
These children will not have graves to be visited. And if they do, many will have no living parents left to pray for them. But we will always do.
And then, there are those who are wounded and maimed—tens of thousands of them. Visiting Amro, the wounded son of a relative who perished along with his entire family in Gaza, I witnessed one of the most heartbreaking sights one could possibly endure: the wounded and maimed children of Gaza in a Turkish hospital.
There were a few teenagers, many without limbs. Hospital staff had adorned them with the beloved Palestinian keffiyeh. Those who could flashed the victory sign, and those who had no arms raised what remained of their limbs, as if to tell every wandering visitor that they stand for something deep and unyielding, that their losses were not in vain.
But then there were the little ones, who experienced trauma without fully comprehending even the magnitude of their tragedy. They stared in confusion at everyone—the unfamiliar faces, the incomprehensible languages spoken around them, the empty walls.
My nephew kept speaking of his parents, who were meant to visit him any day. They were both gone, along with his only brother.
I was in kindergarten in a refugee camp in Gaza when I witnessed my first military raid. The target was our school. I still recall our teachers pushing back against soldiers as they forced their way into the building. I remember them being physically assaulted, screaming at us to run toward the orchard.
We began running while holding hands with one another. We were all wearing matching red outfits with stickers on our faces—none of us had any understanding of who these men were or why they were hurting the people who cared for us.
If the killing of children in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and across the Middle East is normalized, then it will become just another accepted feature of war. And since “war is hell,” we will all move on, accepting that our children—anywhere in the world—now stand on the front lines of victimhood whenever it suits the calculations of war.
I have thought about this often in recent years—during the devastation in Gaza, the wars across the region, and the killing of students at a school in the Iranian city of Minab.
Minab is not just an Iranian tragedy; it is our collective loss. Evidence from international investigations indicates that the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school was not an accident, but the result of deliberate targeting within a broader military campaign.
Amnesty International concluded that the school building was directly struck with guided weapons. Investigations by major outlets, alongside US military sources, suggest the site had been placed on a target list despite being a functioning school. The result was devastating: children killed, families shattered, and yet another atrocity absorbed into the relentless rhythm of war.
The US administration may deny intent as often as it wishes. But we know that the killing of children is not incidental. It is evidenced in Gaza, where the scale alone defies any claim of accident. As UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stated, “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children.” That reality alone should end any debate.
I could pause here to tell you that all children are precious, that all lives are sacred, and that international law is unequivocal on this matter. I could invoke the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that “protected persons (…) shall at all times be humanely treated,” and that violence against civilians is strictly prohibited.
Yes, I could do all of that. But I fear it would make little difference.
Everything we have said and done has failed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and much of our region. International law, once seen as a shield, has become little more than a point of departure for conversations about its ineffectiveness and hypocrisy.
Speaking to Palestinians about international law often generates not reassurance, but frustration and anger. So I will spare you that, too.
Instead, I want to make a call to the world.
A call on behalf of Amro, and the many others from our family who were killed, and the thousands more who perished; a call on behalf of the frightened children of the Flowers Kindergarten in my old refugee camp in Gaza: please, do not allow them to normalize the killing of children.
Do not settle for indifference, or mere concern, or even moral outrage that is never followed by action.
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