By Jeremy Salt
With a smirk on his face Netanyahu threatens Iran with “many surprises” beyond the weapons of annihilation already used. (Photo: video grab. Design: Palestine Chronicle)
Western governments have to recognize the dimensions of the threat they have created for themselves and their people by taking the side of the US and Israel in this war of aggression.
With a smirk on his face, Netanyahu threatens Iran with “many surprises” beyond the weapons of annihilation already used. If Israel has finally started the war, it can’t finish without the use of a nuclear weapon; there should be no hesitation in concluding that Netanyahu would be capable of reaching for it.
The destruction of Iran would be the endpoint of a campaign he has waged obsessively for four decades. It would remove the greatest obstacle to Israeli hegemony over the entire region, and now that he finally has Iran in his grip, Netanyahu is determined to finish it off.
Whatever it takes, including the use of a tactical nuclear weapon? That definitely cannot be ruled out.
Netanyahu has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The evidence against him is overwhelming. If he has not faced justice yet, that is because he has the protection of the US, which has thuggishly threatened the ICC and its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, if they dare to take the case any further.
In February 2025, the US imposed sanctions on Khan. He was added to the list of ‘Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.’ His bank accounts were frozen and email access blocked. US nationals employed by the ICC in the Hague were warned that if they travelled back to the US they could be prosecuted.
Needless to say, these actions were taken 17 months after October 23, 2023, and a year after the International Court of Justice ruled that the South African charge of genocide was “plausible.” The US was fully complicit in the genocide.
Enjoying immunity for decades, Netanyahu quickly moved from Gaza to genocidal mass murder and assassination in Lebanon. The overthrow of the Assad government in 2024 was the opportunity to occupy more Syrian territory and destroy the Syrian armed forces.
At the same time, through the agency of two other exterminationists, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, Netanyahu ramped up the scale or murders and destruction of Palestinian property on the West Bank.
Soldiers stood by as these crimes were committed, if in fact they did not join in. Again, the US gave Israel its full support. Its ambassador to Israel even looked forward to the day when Israel would engorge most of the Middle East. To their endless shame, and with few exceptions, ‘western’ governments, theoretically bound by moral and legal codes of conduct, did nothing to stop any of this.
Lying is stock in trade for Netanyahu. He has never produced any evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and could have one ready to be fired within months, weeks, or even days. The IAEA and intelligence agencies disagree with him, but he keeps repeating the lie.
No one believes him. In any case, the lie is told to conceal Netanyahu’s real reason for wanting to destroy Iran. This should by now be evident to everyone. Iran is a powerful state of 90 million people, virtually the last obstacle standing in the way of joint US-Israeli hegemony over all of West Asia.
Israel had good relations with Iran when it had a shah who played the role of regional policeman for the US and its allies. In 1979, he was overthrown and, since then, Iran has been steadfast in its support of the Palestinian resistance. It has oil wealth and has built up an armoury of ballistic missiles that can reach any part of occupied Palestine.
Up till the past two years, Iran was regarded as too big and too dangerous to be attacked directly. The chosen option was bringing down Syria, Iran’s strategic ally and the central pillar in the ‘axis of resistance.’
After 13 years, through the use of terrorist proxies, in a war that resulted in the death of 500,000 Syrian civilians and soldiers, this was finally achieved in December, 2024, leaving Hizbullah and Iran physically cut off from each other and vulnerable to more determined attacks by their enemies.
Netanyahu’s moment for the war that would destroy Iran would seem to have arrived. However, with the US and Israel telegraphing their punches, Iran had time to prepare, militarily by building up its stocks of missiles and drones and politically by cementing its relations with powerful countries, namely Russia and China.
Clearly, their own strategic interests would be threatened by a war on Iran.
Iran is also a founding member of the BRICS alliance, two of whose members, Russia and China, are now providing Iran with satellite intelligence and ‘over-the-horizon’ anti-stealth radar systems.
Iran has also replaced the GPS satellite navigation system with China’s more advanced Beidou-3. Russian weapons supplied to Iran include MANPAD air defence systems, attack helicopters, and Yak-130 combat training aircraft. One was recently shot down by Israel but as a relatively slow-moving trainer, its destruction was hardly a feather in the cap of the Israeli pilot.
Other Russian war material delivered to Iran includes armoured vehicles, advanced sniper rifles (to the IRGC), and SU-35 fighter aircraft. Chinese sales recently negotiated with Iran include the CM-302 supersonic missiles known as ‘carrier killers.’
Both China and Russia are clearly acting in self-defence and not just in defence of international law against its violation by the US and Israel. The collapse of Iran and its takeover by a US puppet government would put Iran’s oil wealth in US hands and directly threaten Russian and Chinese strategic and commercial interests across the Caucasus, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) linking Azerbaijan, Central Asia, India, Iran, and Russia to Europe.
Visiting Tel Aviv in February, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, referred to his “wondrous friendship” with Israel’s genocidal prime minister. As INSTC was an Indian, Russian, and Iranian initiative, Modi’s fast-developing love affair with Netanyahu and Israel has alerted Russia and China to its dangerous strategic implications.
Israel has always obliquely warned that it will use nuclear weapons in the event of an existential threat. That is why they were developed in the first place and why no other regional state can be allowed to have them, giving Israel a permanent stranglehold over the entire region.
An existential threat that was always a propaganda tool now seems to be taking shape in reality. In June 2025, Israel launched a war against Iran, which it could not win. After 12 days of enduring Iranian missile attacks, it could take no more and asked Trump to seek a ceasefire through Omani mediation. Despite its attempts to hide the truth, whatever damage it is inflicting on Iran in the current war, it is suffering significant and unprecedented damage itself.
Israel is a small country with no strategic depth. Iran is a large country with endless strategic depth in terms of size and population.
The ‘shock and awe’ blitz launched by the US and Israel has not worked.
Neither is prepared for a long war. Iran is. Neither the US nor Israel has the stocks of weapons necessary to maintain a long war. From all reports, Iran does.
The Israeli public broadly supports the war, but the American public does not. The Iranian people, on the other hand, have closed ranks behind their government and the military. None of this augurs well for the US and Israel.
The western media war on Iran is based on the threat of nuclear weapons it does not have, while paying no attention to the threat of the nuclear weapons that Israel does have.
In the 1960s, the US could have thwarted Israeli nuclear weapons development by withholding the supply of tanks and fighter aircraft unless Israel signed the NPT.
In the White House, however, President Johnson betrayed the State Department officials negotiating with Israel. He assured the then-Israeli ambassador, Yitzak Rabin, that Israel would get the weapons it wanted without having to sign the NPT, and this is subsequently what happened.
As Israel has never allowed international inspection of Dimona, the number of weapons stockpiled there or elsewhere is not known in the public sphere. According to the estimates of the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, however, as of June 2025, it had 90 plutonium-based bombs and enough plutonium to make 100-200 more.
Its fleet of F15, F16, and F35 could deliver nuclear ‘gravity bombs’ (i.e., falling to the ground like the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945). Its Jericho ballistic missiles and Dolphin-class submarines could fire nuclear warheads from land or sea.
SIPRI (the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) estimates that Israel has 80 nuclear weapons, consisting of 30 gravity bombs and 50 ready for delivery by Jericho II missiles, which are believed to be stored with mobile launchers in caves at a military base east of Jerusalem, that is, in territory certified by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as occupied Palestinian territory.
The ’Samson option’ is now complemented by the ‘Hannibal directive.’ Existentially threatened, Israel could, in the last resort, use nuclear weapons and take everyone else down with it.
That is the ‘Samson option.’ The ‘Hannibal directive’ was ordered on July 7, 2023, leading to the killing of an unknown number of Israelis by their own military. The ‘Samson option’ has never been declared, but in the hands of Netanyahu, is Israel drawing closer to that point?
Would Israelis support the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against Iran? All the polls taken in 2023-2025 have shown moral indifference among most Israelis, even to the slaughter of Palestinian children.
Asked what they thought of the performance of the military, the replies were ‘excellent,’ ‘good,’ and ‘should go even further.’
Having supported what much of the rest of the world regards as genocide, even critics of the government have now come in behind Netanyahu. A recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute showed that 93 percent of Israelis support the war on Iran and 74 percent support Netanyahu.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has referred to a “just war against evil.” Again, what the rest of the world sees is an unjust war co-launched by an evil human being, the Israeli prime minister.
Public support for the army as an institution has always been high. Israel wins wars. In the public mind, it doesn’t lose them, but what if Israel has launched a war that it can’t win on its own terms?
What effect would this have on the collective Israeli Jewish psychology? What if Israel cannot maintain the war any longer and seeks a ceasefire, but Iran chooses to fight on to destroy the threat to its own existence?
One existential moment would precipitate another. Israel could still ‘win’ by using nuclear weapons. Having committed one genocide already, it is certainly possible that Netanyahu could reach for this last resort.
He speaks as someone on a God-given mission. He repeatedly invokes the Biblical command to destroy Amalek. ‘Victory’ would establish him as perhaps the greatest hero in Jewish history. His Christian Zionist supporters in the US are already looking forward to the Armageddon that he could precipitate.
All of this is completely mad, but history has many examples of madmen who were stopped only when it was too late.
Western governments have to recognize the dimensions of the threat they have created for themselves and their people by taking the side of the US and Israel in this war of aggression.
While Israel and the US are acting together, it seems that, whereas Trump is already looking for an ‘off-ramp,’ Netanyahu is determined to keep going until Iran is destroyed. An extraordinarily dangerous moment for the world is rapidly approaching.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press) and The Last Ottoman Wars. The Human Cost 1877-1923 (University of Utah Press, 2019). He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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