India–Israel: An Unholy Alliance and Iran as Act One in the Greater Israel Scheme

By Jamal Kanj

A growing India–Israel alliance unfolds against the backdrop of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. (Illustration: Palestine Chronicle)

Watching Modi address the Israeli Knesset, describing Israel as the “father” and India as the “mother,” was deeply jarring, a version of India unrecognizable to the principled Indian National Congress that led the country through independence

An earlier version of this article was completed a day before the joint Israeli-American war against Iran. The gist of it examined the likely scenarios surrounding the effort to neutralize Iran, and Israel’s incessant obsession to draw the US into yet another Israeli-designed foreign war. Since 1948, Israel has proven itself to be a destructive agent in the Middle East, leveraging American military, economic, and political power to reduce countries to failed states from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Sudan. Iran was simply next in that sequence.

The next Israeli “fail state” target may hinge on the emerging Israeli-Indian axis, an alignment that could trigger seismic geopolitical shifts redrawing the map of the Arabian Peninsula.

Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi were political giants who led India out of the long night of colonial domination and positioned it as a principled force in the Non-Aligned Movement. They built the modern Indian state from the ground up, investing in mass education, public health, scientific capacity, and domestic manufacturing, with sovereignty understood as something that must be built on strong foundations.

Under Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, India has undergone a profound transformation. Generations of top-tier students and scientists owe their education to the leaders of independence and decades of secular governance. Today, the Bharatiya Janata Party brazenly hijacks that legacy, claiming structural progress as a gift of Hindu-centric nationalism while systematically gutting out the old policies that educated poor Indians.

Watching Modi address the Israeli Knesset, describing Israel as the “father” and India as the “mother,” was deeply jarring, a version of India unrecognizable to the principled Indian National Congress that led the country through independence. The India that once spoke the language of emancipation now bows before a settler-colonial state, forging an alliance rooted in ethnic-nationalist hatred.

In his speech, Modi reduced two years of starvation and genocide in Gaza to the Israelis killed on October 7. The new India–Israel alliance is not about trade, or arms sales. It is an ideological and strategic alliance between two religious-ethnic supremacist projects—Hindu majoritarianism and Jewish Zionism—snaking into a broader system of militarization and regional destabilization.

This alliance is an extension of an Israeli-led plot—described as a “hexagon” or security network—designed to fracture the Arab and Muslim worlds, exploit US militarism, and lock the region into permanent confrontation utilizing America’s gun, blood and money. At its core, a system of claws and dagger: external pressure tightening from multiple directions, combined with internal penetration that erodes cohesion across the Arab Gulf region.

India will be central in this scheme. Its population, military capacity, and symbolic status as a former leader of the Non-Aligned Movement lend legitimacy to a system that would be otherwise purely imperial. New Delhi is being repurposed from a post-colonial actor into an auxiliary pillar of Israeli-Western colonial hegemony, Israel’s arm of the claw poised to engulf the eastern rim of the Arabian Peninsula.

Saudi Arabia is Israel’s next “fail state” target, and Iran is the bedrock to completing the clamp stretching from India through Tehran along the eastern flank of the Arabian Peninsula. Once the claw is completed, Saudi Arabia will be ready to be swallowed by the greater Israel project. The United Arab Emirates will be the new alliance’s dagger embedded in the side of the Peninsula.

Pakistan and Turkey are other obstacles. With Iran neutralized and the UAE gobbled up within the India-Israel axis, Pakistan faces geographical isolation, economic vulnerability, and pressure from an India emboldened by Israeli backing. A Hindu-Jewish alliance extending claws across the region from Greece to India, with a dagger in the Arabian Peninsula. Through this, Israel achieves three objectives: contain Pakistan through India, fracture the oil-producing region, and set the stage to confront Turkey as the final act.

Should it fail, India’s pursuit of this alliance could come at a steep economic cost. Its trade with Iran and the Arab world vastly exceeds any possible economic exchanges with Israel. Ceding this broader economic interest for access to Israeli-stolen American technology, New Delhi signals that India seems to be more insatiable in dividing the spoils of a fractured Arabian Peninsula with Israel than in maintaining the regional status quo.

This axis can still be derailed. Arab Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, wield leverage: millions of Indian workers sustain Gulf economies; Indian firms operate across the region; remittances underpin domestic stability. Should Gulf states remain passive, the claws and dagger will extend further, get tighter, conceivably annexing the UAE—Indian nationals are three times as large as UAE nationals—into a de facto Indian satellite state, and where the rest of the region falls quietly under Greater Israel.

As the Israeli-engineered claw slowly closes in, Arab leaders should draw hard lessons from the current war on Iran. The United States ensured full protection of Israel’s skies using an Arab-financed, US-run Integrated Air and Missile Defense system, IAMD. In contracts, Gulf states remained unprotected.

Arab money financed America’s IAMD; American taxpayers funded Israel’s Iron Dome, where both systems were dedicated to protecting Israel alone. Spanning from northern Iraq to the southern Arabian Peninsula, IAMD functioned in this war, and in the previous 12-day war, as Israel’s outer shield, intercepting incoming threats long before they approach Israeli airspace, while leaving the Gulf’s skies as expendable buffer zones and secondary allies.

Considering the above and confronted with the emerging Israeli–Indian unholy alliance, Arab regimes must face this new reality, else, stand by, metaphorically, like chickens huddled in a cage, watching the butcher’s knife cut through their flock, comforting themselves with the hope that it will pass them by. It never does; it only waits until Greater Israel is established.

– Jamal Kanj (jamalkanj.com) is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications. He contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.

Modi's Israel visit shows morality no longer guides India's foreign policy: Journalist

By Press TV Website Staff

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “overlooked the genocide of Palestinians” during his recent visit to the Israeli-occupied territories because self-interest, not morality, guides India's foreign policy under Modi, according to an Indian journalist.

Speaking to the Press TV website, Sanjay Kapoor, a senior journalist and president of the Editors Guild of India, said it was “truly baffling” why the Indian prime minister chose to visit the Israeli-occupied territories at a time like that.

“Though Israel enjoys support amongst voters of the Bharatiya Janata Party [the country's ruling party], there is no election where it can yield dividends,” he stated.

Modi embraced Israeli regime leaders in occupied al-Quds, voiced India's commitment to enhancing ties with the occupying regime, and addressed the Knesset to a standing ovation.l

During the visit, he, however, chose not to mention the death and devastation faced by Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israeli genocidal war launched in October 2023.

The visit unfolded against the backdrop of widespread international outrage over the genocide, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, devastated civilian infrastructure, and displaced much of the coastal territory's population.

“In the name of strategic autonomy, India has jettisoned its traditional commitment to non-aligned policies,” Kapoor told the Press TV website.

“This allows New Delhi to be both with Palestine and Israel. Now, morality doesn’t guide foreign policy, but India’s self-interest. This allows India to overlook the dark happenings in Gaza and also the genocide of Palestinians and sup with Israel.”

Modi was received personally by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, and spoke repeatedly of shared “civilizational values.”

He expressed solidarity with the regime over the October 7 Hamas operation, but avoided any reference to the scale of Palestinian civilian suffering or Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

The warmth of the reception underscored how far India-Israel ties have advanced under the Modi government, particularly in defense and security cooperation.

India is now Israel’s largest weapons buyer, and the two sides have deepened collaboration in surveillance technology, drones, and cyber capabilities.

Kapoor linked Modi’s silence on Gaza to a deeper ideological framing at home, referring to the prime minister’s past remarks portraying West Asia as a hub of “radical Islam” as indicative of how the current government views the region and its people.

“PM Modi’s remarks that the Middle East is the centre of radical Islam make it clear what his government thinks of the Muslim world,” Kapoor said.

That worldview, analysts note, resonates strongly with Modi’s core political base. The ruling party is rooted in the Hindutva ideology, which envisions India primarily as a Hindu nation.

In recent years, India has seen a sharp rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric, discriminatory legislation, and episodes of communal violence, alongside crackdowns on dissent and protests.

“His supporters back home admire Israel for standing up to the Muslim world. They have no appreciation of history and the circumstances of the struggle of Palestinians,” Kapoor said.

“It is a travesty of our times that many Indians see the world through the prism of partition between India and Pakistan and subsequent terrorist violence in India.”

While critics have accused Modi of betraying India’s anti-colonial legacy and its long-standing support for the Palestinian cause, Kapoor is pessimistic about the prospects for a significant domestic backlash. He believes public support for Palestine inside India has steadily eroded.

“I don’t think there’s enough support for the Palestinian cause now,” Kapoor said. “It also has something to do with who is in power. Any demonstration against the Gaza happenings in India has been snuffed out.”

According to Kapoor, this suppression reflects a broader breakdown of social and political restraints that once moderated India’s public discourse.

“Its apparent that traditional values of Hindu-Muslim sanity don’t work,” he added. “So don’t think there’s enough support, will be a backlash against Modi’s trip to Tel Aviv.”

As India deepens its defence, technology, and security ties with Israel, at a time of mounting tensions across West Asia, questions are increasingly being raised about whether New Delhi has forfeited any claim to neutrality or mediation in the region.

“Indians have never mediated in recent years,” Kapoor said. “Now no one would want India as mediator as it is seen to be too close to Israel and the US.”

He attributed this diplomatic imbalance not only to ideology but also to external pressure.

“The truth is recent months of pressure from the US on tariffs and allegations against some Indian worthies have resulted in India losing its balance in foreign policy,” Kapoor said.

For observers, Modi’s visit and his silence on Gaza symbolize a deeper shift: from moral positioning and anti-colonial solidarity to transactional alignment, with history ultimately judging this silence.

Iran to hold massive public funeral for 'Martyr Leader' Imam Khamenei

The late Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei

A major public farewell ceremony is being arranged for the late Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

In a statement earlier on Wednesday, the Islamic Development Coordination Council announced that a three-day public farewell ceremony for the martyred Leader would be held at the Grand Mosalla mosque in the Iranian capital, Tehran. 

The ceremony was scheduled to start at 10:00 pm local time and continue for three days to allow people to pay their respects to the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution. 

However, the organizers later announced that due to the anticipation of an unprecedented presence of mourners, the farewell ceremony had been postponed.

The new date and timing will be announced by the organizers soon. 

Meanwhile, the mourning gatherings in mosques and roundabouts across the city would continue after evening prayers until the funeral ceremony. 

In its earlier statement, the council extended its condolences to the Muslim community and called on all segments of Iranian society — men and women, young and old, academics, seminary scholars, workers, farmers, teachers, students, and other social groups — to participate in the ceremony.

It further emphasized that mass attendance would demonstrate national unity, loyalty to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and steadfastness in the face of external adversaries.

In its message, the council described Ayatollah Khamenei as a devoted servant of God who dedicated his life to strengthening “pure Muhammadan Islam,” safeguarding Iran’s independence and dignity, and reinforcing the Axis of Resistance.

Grand Mosalla is a major religious and national venue that has historically hosted significant gatherings and events.

The council further confirmed that special programs have been arranged for the three days of mourning.

It also stated that arrangements for the funeral procession are currently underway and that further details will be announced once finalized.

The council added that it expects the large-scale public presence to send a message beyond Iran’s borders, expressing hope to supporters while serving as a warning to adversaries that the path of resistance and justice will continue.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s residence in Tehran was targeted on Saturday morning, in which many of his family members, including his wife, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, were also martyred.

His martyrdom was announced in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

‘Hiroshima Would Be Child’s Play’ — Medvedev; Lavrov Condemns US ‘Aggression’

 By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Dmitry Medvedev: 'Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be child’s play in a sandbox.' (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev warned that World War III “will undoubtedly begin” if US regime-change policies continue.

Key Developments

• Medvedev warned that World War III “will undoubtedly begin” if Trump continues regime change efforts.
• He said Trump made a “grave mistake” attacking Iran.
• Russia called US-Israeli strikes “unprovoked armed aggression.”
• Lavrov urged “de-escalating the situation” and a “political-diplomatic settlement.”
• Moscow stressed civilian protection amid escalating regional conflict.

World War III

Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued a stark warning Monday, declaring that global war could follow continued US efforts to reshape governments abroad.

Speaking to the Russian state news agency Tass, Medvedev said, “If Trump continues his insane course of criminally changing political regimes, it will undoubtedly begin. And any event could be the trigger. Any event.”

He described US actions as “a war by the US and its allies to preserve global dominance.”

Medvedev said US President Donald Trump had made “a grave mistake” by attacking Iran.

“With his decision, he put all Americans under potential threat, even despite the fact that the Iranian regime is not liked in neighboring Arab countries,” Medvedev said.

He added: “More importantly, the late Ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) was the spiritual father of nearly 300 million Shiites. And now he is also a martyr. You can imagine the rest.”

“And now there is no doubt that Iran will pursue the creation of nuclear weapons with redoubled energy,” he continued.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Medvedev argued that Iran’s leadership and society would consolidate following the strikes.

“They will cope, but the price of revival will be high. It requires a high level of societal consolidation. And the Americans have provided such consolidation,” he said.

He also warned that the vulnerability of US and Israeli officials “has significantly increased” since Iran declared what he described as a holy war.

“The fact that the Iranians haven’t responded too seriously yet means they don’t have many opportunities. But they know how to wait; they are an ancient civilization,” he said.

In one of his strongest remarks, Medvedev warned of the consequences of nuclear confrontation.

“There is one guarantee: the US is afraid of Russia and knows the price of a nuclear conflict. If one were to occur, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be child’s play in a sandbox,” he said.

He further described the reaction of European governments as “toadyism and vileness,” adding that “European vassals, with lust and delight, wipe their faces after receiving a dose of American-Israeli ‘yellow dew’ directly in their eyes.”

Lavrov: “Unprovoked Armed Aggression”

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone conversation on Tuesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to discuss the regional escalation.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said: “The development of the situation in the region resulting from the unprovoked armed aggression of the US and Israel against Iran was discussed.”

The ministry stated that such actions violate “fundamental international law norms and have serious consequences for the entire Middle East region.”

According to the statement, Lavrov “reaffirmed the principled position in favor of de-escalating the situation, renouncing the use of force, and transitioning to a political-diplomatic settlement of the conflict, as well as Russia’s readiness to contribute to this in every possible way.”

The ministry added that priority was placed on “taking measures to ensure the safety of civilians and civilian infrastructure in all countries of the region.”

The statements from Moscow follow large-scale US and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and subsequent Iranian drone and missile retaliation targeting Israel and US-linked sites in Gulf countries.

As Washington vows further action and Tehran signals sustained resistance, Russia’s leadership has framed the escalation as a violation of international law and warned that broader global conflict may follow.

(PC, Anadolu, Russian Media)

Tehran warns EU against ‘Nazi mindsets,’ slams German backing of Israeli-US aggression

The spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry Esmaeil Baghaei

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has warned European countries against sliding toward “historical #NAZI mindsets” by supporting the Israeli-US aggression against Iran.

In a post published Wednesday on X, Baghaei denounced Germany’s stance and warned European states against complicity in war crimes.

“The EU/E3 once played a pivotal role in int'l diplomacy, helping to forge the 2015 JCPOA—a landmark achievement of European foreign policy that was torpedoed by this U.S. administration,” Baghaei wrote, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The agreement, reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, aimed to limit Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. The US unilaterally pulled out of the deal in 2018.

Turning to current developments, Baghaei said: “Today, under pressure from the #German Chancellor, some EU members risk being placed on the wrong side of history by appearing complicit in U.S./Israel acts of aggression & war crimes against the Iranian nation, one of the world’s oldest and the most enduring civilizational Nation-States.”

He concluded with a pointed warning: “The Union must oppose any move reminiscent of historical #NAZI mindsets and instead uphold its commitment to international law and justice.”

Baghaei’s post included an attached video of remarks by Belgian Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga, who criticized the EU’s approach during a parliamentary session.

In the footage, Botenga questioned Western double standards, saying: “Why do we accept that Israeli has a nuclear bomb? This is absolutely unacceptable.”

He also challenged the EU narrative on regional security. “You call Iran the main threat but look at Israel bombing Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar,” he said.

Addressing the collapse of the nuclear deal, Botenga added: “Secondly, Why did not you condemn or even mention the fact that it was the United States that pulled out of the nuclear deal? it was not Iran, it was the United States pulling out.”

He further criticized the EU’s response to recent military aggression. “Finally, why we not condemn as the European Union the illegal US-Israeli strikes on Iran which made a lot of civilian casualties and which made nuclear diplomacy more difficult not less difficult.”

Botenga also took aim at sanctions policy against the Iranian people. “We are saying we are good guys caring about nuclear non-proliferation and about human rights while we are worsening the situation.  We are imposing sanctions that hurt ordinary Iranians that have made it more difficult now to buy medicine and basic goods.”

In recent days, senior German officials, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have voiced support for Israeli-US acts of aggression.

The US and Israeli armed forces began their aggression against Iran on Saturday by attacking 30 targets across the capital Tehran, killing several senior Iranian officials.

Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei was also martyred in the Saturday attack.
Since then, Iranian armed forces have swiftly and decisively retaliated against these strikes by launching barrages of missile and drones against Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in region.

Iranian officials have stated that targeting US military bases in the region constitutes “legitimate self-defense.”

Referring to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, they say that Iran has the legal right to defend itself against “acts of aggression” by the US or the Israeli regime.

The Limits of Managed Chaos: Why This Could Be Israel’s Last Great War

By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo

This war was meant to weaken Iran. If Tehran emerges stronger, it could redefine the balance of power in the Middle East. (Photo Illustratoin: Palestine Chronicle)

Israel weaponizes instability to weaken rivals, but Iran’s resilience threatens to unravel this decades-long strategy.

While policymakers speak the language of “security” and “defense,” history reveals a different pattern: Israel has consistently benefited not from regional calm, but from regional fracture. The fragmentation of neighboring states — their internal division, institutional collapse, and political paralysis — has often served Israel far more effectively than decisive battlefield victories ever could.

This is not chaos in the abstract. It is engineered instability — the deliberate cultivation of disorder as a geopolitical method.

Political scientists describe this pattern as managed instability: weakening adversaries not by conquering them outright, but by hollowing them from within. Fragmented states cannot project power. Divided societies cannot mobilize collectively. Governments consumed by internal crises cannot confront external aggression.

For a small state with limited demographic depth and no capacity to sustain prolonged multi-front wars independently, this strategy is not optional — it is structural.

Israel’s military superiority is real, but conditional. It exists within the protective umbrella of American military aid, diplomatic shielding, and financial support. Without Washington’s consistent backing — from advanced weaponry to vetoes at the United Nations — Israel’s strategic environment would look radically different.

Its economy, increasingly strained by permanent mobilization, political polarization, and war-driven expenditures, cannot sustain endless direct confrontation without external subsidy. Its population size limits its ability to absorb large-scale attritional warfare.

This structural vulnerability has shaped Israeli strategic thinking for decades.

In the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion advanced what became known as the Periphery Doctrine — building alliances with non-Arab actors to counterbalance surrounding Arab states. But over time, the logic evolved beyond alliances. The weakening of centralized Arab states themselves became strategically useful.

The controversial 1982 “Yinon Plan” articulated a vision of regional fragmentation along sectarian and ethnic lines. its underlying premise has repeatedly manifested in regional outcomes: divided neighbors are less dangerous neighbors.

Iraq offers the clearest example.

The 2003 US invasion dismantled Iraqi state institutions, dissolved its army, and unleashed sectarian violence that permanently crippled Baghdad’s capacity as a regional power. Iraq, once a central military actor in the Arab world, became consumed by internal conflict. It no longer posed a strategic challenge to Israel.

Libya followed in 2011.

Western intervention destroyed the centralized Libyan state and replaced it with competing militias and rival governments. The country, once influential in Arab politics, was reduced to a fractured arena of proxy struggles. Its military and political relevance evaporated.

Syria’s descent into civil war further entrenched this pattern.

As the country fractured under the weight of war and foreign intervention, its sovereignty eroded. Israel conducted hundreds of airstrikes inside Syrian territory with near impunity. The gradual consolidation of Israeli control in parts of the occupied Golan Heights proceeded with little meaningful resistance from a state consumed by survival.

Lebanon, chronically fragile and politically paralyzed, remains trapped in cycles of crisis that prevent the emergence of cohesive national power.

In each case, centralized states that once shaped regional balances were transformed into inward-looking, fractured entities.

Iran, however, did not comply with this script.

For over four decades, Tehran has endured relentless pressure: sweeping economic sanctions, covert sabotage, cyber warfare, assassinations of scientists, diplomatic isolation, and proxy confrontations. Yet the Iranian state did not fragment.

Its institutions remained intact. Its military structures preserved cohesion. Its political system — though contested internally — did not collapse into sectarian civil war. Even waves of domestic unrest did not translate into state disintegration.

This resilience profoundly unsettled Israeli strategic calculations.

In July 2025, Israel launched a 12-day military confrontation against Iran, targeting military and strategic sites in what was widely interpreted as an attempt to restore deterrence or provoke destabilization. The expectation among some Israeli planners appeared clear: sustained external pressure might crack the system from within.

Instead, Iran retaliated with calibrated missile and drone strikes that demonstrated range, coordination, and strategic discipline. The Iranian state did not unravel. It consolidated.

The subsequent escalation — now openly involving American participation — has been publicly justified through the language of nuclear threat prevention. Yet Iran had signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, agreeing to strict nuclear limitations under international inspection. Even after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018, Tehran repeatedly signaled willingness to negotiate.

The nuclear issue, therefore, appears secondary to a broader strategic objective: weakening Iran sufficiently to reshape the regional order.

A cohesive Iran challenges Israeli dominance not merely militarily, but structurally. It is geographically vast, demographically large, and institutionally resilient. It anchors regional alliances and influences multiple fronts. Unlike Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011, it possesses ideological coherence and state continuity.

For Israel, this reality is intolerable.

The latest war appears to represent a final attempt to reproduce the fragmentation model — to stretch Iran militarily, isolate it diplomatically, and push it toward internal fracture.

But Tehran recognized the pattern.

Instead of collapsing inward, Iran expanded the strategic cost outward. Its responses have not been reckless, but calculated. They have demonstrated that escalation will not be asymmetrical in Israel’s favor. They have signaled that a prolonged confrontation will strain not only Tel Aviv but also Washington.

This leaves the United States facing a narrowing corridor of options: escalate into a deeply unpopular ground war with unpredictable consequences, or pursue genuine negotiations that acknowledge Iranian resilience.

For Israel, either outcome carries risk.

A prolonged war exposes economic fragility and societal exhaustion. A negotiated settlement acknowledges that the fragmentation strategy has limits.

The doctrine of engineered instability has reshaped much of the Middle East over the past two decades. But Iran’s endurance threatens to expose its fundamental flaw: chaos can weaken states, but it can also consolidate them.

If Tehran continues to absorb pressure without fracturing, the strategy that once dismembered Baghdad, Tripoli, and Damascus may finally reach its limits in Tehran.

History shows that Israel has emerged stronger from every major regional upheaval.

Iraq’s destruction in 2003 eliminated a powerful Arab military rival. Libya’s collapse removed another regional actor. Syria’s fragmentation neutralized yet another centralized state. In each case, Israel grew more entrenched, more militarily confident, and more deeply embedded in US foreign policy.

Instability elsewhere translated into Israeli advantage. But the war on Iran may not follow that pattern.

If Iran survives — and more importantly, consolidates — the strategic equation changes. A resilient Iran that absorbs pressure and emerges as an undeniable regional power would mark the first major failure of the fragmentation model. For the first time in decades, a targeted state would not disintegrate.

That outcome would erode a central pillar of Israeli strategy.

Equally important is the shifting terrain within the United States. Unconditional support for Israel is no longer a guaranteed political consensus. A prolonged and costly confrontation with Iran could accelerate public fatigue and deepen skepticism toward open-ended alignment with Israeli maximalism.

If Iran endures and the war fails to deliver decisive Israeli gains, Washington may begin recalculating the domestic cost of permanent confrontation.

Under those conditions, the war on Iran could become something unprecedented: not another chapter in regional destabilization, but the last major US–Israeli war designed to reorder the Middle East through fragmentation.

Not because Israel would abandon dominance, but because the price of pursuing it would become unsustainable.

A consolidated Iran, a region no longer easily fractured, and a war-weary American public would mark a structural shift in the Middle East. In that reality, chaos would no longer expand Israeli power — it would expose its limits. Some would argue that it already has.