In June 2025, the Middle East was once again plunged into chaos—this time by an unprovoked Israeli blitz against Iran, backed by the United States.

What followed was not only a military confrontation but a diplomatic and moral crisis that exposed the West’s double standards, reignited calls for resistance, and reshaped the regional balance of power.

This article examines the origins, objectives, and consequences of the Israeli-led assault, and what it reveals about the future of diplomacy, deterrence, and domination in the region.

At the center of this escalation was Israel’s long-standing campaign to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program—a goal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pursued for over three decades. In April 2025, he demanded that the United States deploy bunker-buster bombs to destroy Iran’s underground Fordo facility. This time, he got his wish. American bombers dropped their full payload on Iran’s most critical nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan.

As is often the case in the Middle East, the escalation began with Israel. On Friday, June 13, Israel launched unprovoked blitzkrieg on Iranian soil, violating international law. According to Iranian state media outlet IRIB, at least 627 people were killed, and another 4,870 other people were injured in Iran during its conflict with Israel in the period between June 13 and June 25. Among the dead are ten nuclear scientists and four senior military commanders.

According to the Times of Israel, Israeli intelligence viewed the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists as the most critical element of Operation Narnia. Unlike military leaders or hardware, they argued, scientific knowledge is far harder to replace. 

The ten scientists were reportedly killed in their sleep, in a coordinated strike designed to prevent any warning. “They believed they were safe at home,” a senior Israeli official told Channel 12, noting that past assassinations occurred during commutes. These targets had been marked since November 2024, tracked for months, and eliminated in a single night.

Such attacks by Israel are not new. We may recall that on 1 April 2024, Israel conducted an airstrike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, destroying the building housing its consular section.

Sixteen people were killed in the strike, including eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and two Syrian civilians. On 31 July 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an Israeli attack.

Within hours of Israeli blitzkrieg, President Trump, in a display of imperial bravado, claimed Iran had lost the war and demanded “unconditional surrender.” Yet Iran struck back, sending missiles deep into Israel, exposing its vulnerability and dependence on U.S. support.

If Trump was wishing for an Iranian capitulation, it did not happen. Once a critic of endless U.S. wars and the Iraq invasion, he abandoned anti-war conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson, and embraced the very lobby he once resisted. His shift reflects the grip of the pro-Israel lobby.

Trump had been in daily contact with Netanyahu, who’s long pushed the U.S. to fight his wars. Since 1992, Bibi has claimed Iran was weeks away from a nuclear bomb—yet decades later, no bomb exists, and IAEA inspectors found no evidence.

Following the utter devastation of Gaza in a genocidal campaign, Netanyahu turned his sights on Iran, openly calling for ‘regime change’. But such ambitions are not only reckless—they’re futile.

Israeli attacks have unified Iranians as never before since the 1980s. Bombing nuclear sites may delay Iran’s program, but it cannot erase scientific knowledge. History shows that assassinating ten scientists will only inspire hundreds more to take their place.

Rather than deterring Iran, these strikes may push her—and others—to follow North Korea’s path: secrecy, acceleration, and defiance. Iran may yet follow Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity. Israel’s military campaign against Iran pursued four strategic objectives: to neutralize Iran’s nuclear capabilities, cripple its capacity for retaliation, incite internal unrest that could weaken the Islamic Republic’s hold on power, and reaffirm Israel’s dominance as the region’s preeminent military force.

Not surprisingly, a familiar figure has re-emerged in Western media: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, who has positioned himself as a transitional figure for a post-Islamic Republic Iran. Pahlavi’s lineage is inseparable from Iran’s autocratic past.

His father, Mohammad Reza Shah, ruled with an iron fist, suppressing dissent through the SAVAK secret police and deepening socioeconomic inequalities under the guise of modernization.

The 1953 CIA- and MI6-backed coup that restored the Shah to power—overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh—remains a historical wound that Pahlavi has never meaningfully addressed. 

To most Iranians, especially those inside the country, Pahlavi represents not hope but regression. His alignment with pro-Zionist and anti-Iran factions in the diaspora have further alienated him from the very people he claims to represent.

This raises both ethical and strategic questions: Can a foreign-backed, ideologically hollow figure—an ‘Ahmad Chalabi’ without grassroots support—truly deliver democratic governance in a nation of 92 million with long, bitter memories of foreign interference? Or is this yet another case of regime change driven more by external agendas than internal legitimacy?

More fundamentally, can the world’s most contentious issues truly be resolved through force? Well, Iran was in a dialogue with the USA. The diplomats from the two countries had met five times and were preparing for a sixth round of talks when Israel launched unprovoked strikes on June 13.

This wasn’t spontaneous—it was premeditated and coordinated with the White House. To put mildly, the negotiations with Iran were a calculated exercise in strategic misdirection. Perhaps recognizing the hard reality that Iran could not be decisively defeated—and that the joint strikes had, paradoxically, bolstered the Iranian government's domestic popularity—President Trump called for a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Monday, June 23, after Tehran had launched a limited retaliatory strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar that day.

He phoned Netanyahu after the American bombing on Sunday and told him not to expect additional U.S. military attacks and that he should seek a diplomatic solution with Iran. A fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel appears to hold after initially faltering, and U.S. President Donald Trump expressed frustration with both sides.

Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, June 24, that the Islamic Republic emerged “proud and steadfast” from the aggression by Israel and the United States. “This proves one simple truth more clearly than ever: diplomacy and dialogue are the only path to resolving the unnecessary crisis over Iran’s peaceful program,” he said.

President Trump is now also adopting the language of diplomacy—a shift that may have been influenced by concerns over jeopardizing his Nobel Peace Prize nomination and a desire to regain support among anti-war constituencies.

At a press conference concluding the NATO summit in The Hague on June 25, he announced that the U.S. would meet with Iranian officials the following week to discuss a potential nuclear agreement, though he repeatedly downplayed the necessity of such a deal, stating he didn’t believe it was “that necessary.”

More revealing during this crisis, however, was the West’s Orwellian hypocrisy. EU leaders, who condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, applaud Israel’s unprovoked strikes on Iran.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reaffirmed Israel’s “right to defend itself,” while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz praised Israel for doing "the dirty work" of Europe—openly admitting Israel’s role as a Western outpost.

This isn’t new. As far back as 1986, Joe Biden declared that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it. As president, he’s taken that logic to its extreme—turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza and erasing Palestinian rights from the global agenda.

Europe’s moral and diplomatic collapse hasn’t gone unnoticed. Two respected global voices have sharply criticized Europe’s stance on Middle East violence. Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog, rebuked Germany for endorsing Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites—reminding Berlin that such actions violate both the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter.

Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur for Palestine, condemned French President Macron’s selective outrage. She tweeted, “On the day Israel, unprovoked, has attacked Iran, killing 80 people, the president of a major European power, finally admits that in the Middle East, Israel, and only Israel, has the right to defend itself”—laying bare Europe’s double standards.

We are once again reminded that bombing hospitals is a red line - unless Israel is doing it. Thus, when an Iranian missile struck near Soroka hospital in Beersheba, Israeli leaders erupted in outrage.

Israel's defense chief accused Iran of war crimes and said its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be held accountable. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has launched over 700 attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system, reducing once-functioning hospitals like al-Shifa and Nasser to rubble.

The contrast is stark—and telling. Tears for Beersheba and silence for Gaza! And the hypocrisy deepens. As of June 20, Israel reportedly attacked five Iranian hospitals. Strikes on Hakim Children’s Hospital in Tehran, Farabi Rehabilitation Hospital in Kermanshah, and Red Crescent facilities have killed and injured scores of patients and medical staff. Yet Western leaders remain mute.

The Iran-Israel conflict is not just a regional power struggle; it is a clash of visions for the Middle East. On one side stands a nuclear-armed Israel, emboldened by U.S. and EU backing and driven by a messianic vision of territorial entitlement—from the Nile to the Euphrates. In this vision, Palestinians are expendable, and regional dominance is the ultimate goal.

On the other side is Iran, a nation under siege, facing significant external threats, particularly from the two devils: the United States and Israel. They see themselves as protectors of the Islamic Republic and its ideology, emphasizing national pride and positioning itself as a bulwark against Western hegemony. As part of the so-called Axis of Resistance, Iran views its nuclear ambitions as a sovereign right—one setback won’t end that pursuit.

Only time will reveal which vision prevails: one rooted in colonial ambition—where conflict, occupation, and hegemony are inevitable outcomes—or one grounded in the ideals of justice, human fraternity, and popular resistance to foreign domination.

One thing is certain: the ceasefire with Iran will not hold indefinitely. Israel has a long history of breaking such truces when they no longer serve its strategic interests. As long as the vision of Eretz Israel—stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates—remains embedded in its political imagination, the cycle of provocation and violence is bound to continue.