The recent 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran exposed the hypocrisy of both Israel and the West, particularly the US. The United States forced their backers—the United Kingdom, Germany, and France—to back its imperialist plans in the Middle East. Instigating regime change both inside and outside the target nation is one of its strategies. This strategy has been used as a weapon to stifle regional Arab solidarity against Israel. The notion of a slogan for regime changes against Iran, incidentally, failed because the people support the current government against all obstacles and Western propaganda because they believe in the indivisible sovereignty of their nation. President Trump’s media apparatus retreated after realising how widely supported the Ali Khamenei regime was by the populace. Iranians prefer to die in their homeland rather than fleeing to another country for safety, even though some Israeli settlers flee their homeland.
How long will Israel and the West continue to use regime change and nuclear bomb acquisition as tools to destabilise the area? This is a worrying question. The current Israeli prime minister, who has named seven nations that Israel must attack to remain in the region, later revealed that the pretext of Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear bomb acquisition was a fabrication used by the United States and its allies to attack Iraq. The nations on the list are Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan. One after the other, with the U.S. assistance, Saddam Hussein was slain, and Libya was thrown into a long civil war that resulted in Gaddafi’s untimely death and the overthrow of his government. Syria entered a long-lasting civil war, which eventually overthrew the Assad government, using the Arab Spring as a pretext. Sudan was uneasy and unstable. Israel and the U.S. were blamed for the destabilisation of the nations in this region during each of these crises.
Thus, Israel’s recent unilateral attack on Iran, which was intended to destroy their nuclear power plants that were thought to have enriched uranium to a maximum level of 60% and had the potential to quickly produce a nuclear bomb, turned into a 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF have underestimated Iran in their own hubris, believing they can bomb and run it into submission. Israel and its allies were alarmed by the Iranian missiles’ accurate strike on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. The Iranians responded to their bombing of Iranian military stations with military precision, targeting Israeli cities, military bases, airports, and other critical economic facilities.
According to the intelligence gleaned from Israel following the conflict, 3,000 Israelis were injured, and 29 Israelis were murdered by Iranian missiles. After spending $5 billion in the first week of the battle, daily military expenses reached a height of $725 million. Each interception costs $700K for the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, $3 million for Arrow 2, and $4 million for Arrow 3. Iranian strikes caused $1.47 billion in property damage. The conservative estimate of the war’s total cost to Israel in 12 days is $8.7 billion. In a similar vein, 610 Iranians were killed, 4,746 were injured, important nuclear plants (Fordow, Nataz, and Isfahan) were damaged, oil shipments fell from 2.25 million to 150K barrels per day, and over $1.4 billion in revenue was lost. Twenty military leaders, including the chief of staff, were also slain. The rial value fell more than 50%, inflation increased to 43.3%, and the growth estimate is currently down to 0.3%. At a cost of up to $4.7 billion, the IRGC claimed to have launched over 100 attack drones and 591 ballistic missiles. The Khorramshahr, the costliest Iranian missile, costs over $8 million each, while the Emad, the cheapest, costs $250K each. A conservative assessment of Iran’s war costs should be at least as high as Israel’s, if not more.
Notably, President Trump has wasted two recent chances to utilise diplomacy to constructively mediate Iran’s nuclear enrichment negotiations. He removed US representatives from the 2015 multilateral nuclear accord Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiations during his first term in 2018. The agreement would have helped Iran reduce its nuclear enrichment in return for the removal of international sanctions on its economy. Nuclear scientists and the media are debating the U.S. intervention in destroying the three Iranian nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan using GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs. The Iranian IRGC asserted that all the underground sites were undamaged, except for the entrance and exit sections, and that they had removed the uranium and other chemical components before the American stealth bomb was dropped on them. Iran denied the accusations, stating that the sites were only partially damaged, while the U.S. administration asserted that the three sites had been successfully destroyed. Can the United States and Israel’s deterrence strategy prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons? One fundamental reality is that Iran currently possesses the technical know-how, capacity, and capability to manufacture, refine, and launch nuclear weapons as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles and inter-ballistic missiles. It is impossible to erase the knowledge.
What has Netanyahu and Israel benefited from this war, if one may ask? Nothing at all; rather, like Iranian tragedy, their loss cannot be measured. The Israeli myth of military superiority and untouchability was shattered. The risks of assaults are greater than ever for the Israeli people. Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing conflict with all of Israel’s neighbours puts Israelis in danger and feeds antisemitism against Jews around the world. His personal animosity toward Palestinian Arabs was mistakenly interpreted as anti-Palestinian sentiment among Jews, which is not the case. In the past, Jews and Arabs have lived side by side in the area for millennia. Political analysts who have examined Netanyahu’s belligerent behaviour have generally concluded that it is a survival strategy to keep him in power because he knows that if he leaves office today, he may be detained and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity because of the genocide he carried out against the Palestinian people. This claim was supported by the former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s declaration during the 12-day conflict that “Mr. Netanyahu has long wanted to fight Iran, because that way he can stay in office forever and ever.”
Importantly, the Middle East, and particularly Palestine’s position, cannot be resolved through the region’s long history of brutal internal conflict and preference for using violence to settle disagreements; instead, a diplomatic and nonviolent approach is required. The United States, the only nation capable of resolving this historic problem, is instead caving in to the whims and fancies of globalists who are constantly eager to test their newly created war machinery by stoking conflict in the Middle East. Arabs, Persians, and Jews must coexist peacefully for the area to be socially and politically stable. Whether a person is Druze, Arab, Persian, Jewish, Palestinian, a settler, or someone else, their life counts.
Rotimi S. Bello, a public commentator, peace and conflict expert, and HR Advisor writes from Canada.
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