Netanyahu wants Israel to become the hegemonic force in the Middle East. This is the strategic significance of the “Greater Israel” project, which is then shrouded in religious rhetoric. The rapprochement between Iran and its Arab and Muslim-majority neighbours preceding the war and the rising Sunni military bloc was the most significant obstacle. A key purpose of the war launched against Iran was to break it.
Israel’s project has been expansionist since its founding—as seen in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon—and its survival as a state depends on being able to maintain this project. It is uncertain where it ends, but it is clear that the goal is to become the regional hegemon. It is not just land that Israel is after, but control of resources, new alliances, and energy flows.
This is the significance of the Greater Israel project that Netanyahu says he feels “connected” to. He has stated that he is on a “historic and spiritual mission,” but he is not a religious man; he is a “secular Jew.” Therefore, we should probably view that statement more as historical than spiritual. He is a politician, and is very good at that, so he courts interests and shapes the narrative to suit his goals.
The Greater Israel project is effectively a way to pursue a “change in the face of the Middle East.” A policy paper published by the IDF argues that the military —and by extension Israel, since the military is the basis of the state— has to change from a “defensive” force to an “offensive” one capable of shaping a new balance of power and creating new security agreements.
The title of the IDF paper explicitly states the purpose of this shift: “Queen of the Jungle? On the Role of Israel’s Military Power in Establishing a New Regional Order in the Middle East.” ‘The Jungle’ is a common term used in Israeli circles to refer to the region where they are located. This speaks volumes about how Israelis perceive their neighbours.
This shift, which would allow Israel to continue its expansionist projects, has three concrete objectives. The first, as per the paper, is to achieve military supremacy. The second is to create a new web of alliances that Netanyahu has described as a “hexagon,” which, he says, would include Israel, India, Greece and Cyprus, along with other unnamed Arab, African, and Asian states.
The third is to redirect energy and trade flows to the West through Israel. When Israel targeted Iranian energy infrastructure and Iran responded in kind against the Gulf, Netanyahu took the opportunity to call for “alternative routes instead of the chokepoints of the Hormuz Strait and the Bab-al-Mandab Strait,” anticipating “oil pipelines and gas pipelines going west through the Arabian Peninsula right up to Israel, right up to our Mediterranean ports.”
These routes are part of the IMEC corridor that Netanyahu actively promotes. This corridor would link India to Europe, passing through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and arriving at Israel as the point of connection with Greece and Europe. The corridor would bypass critical choke points, such as the Strait of Hormuz, and would also establish a financial architecture in the region that would place Israel in the middle.
Iran alone was not a threat to this project. Iran and its proxies could be managed, degraded, or even used. The real threat to this project was the normalization of relations between Iran and its Arab and Sunni-majority neighbours. This alliance would be solidified if the Türkiye-led Road Development Project —which connects the Persian Gulf with Europe through Iraq, Türkiye, and Bulgaria— and China’s Belt and Road Initiative —which connects China with Europe through Iran and Türkiye— were completed. A third Turkish-led project, the Hejaz Railway project, which connects Türkiye with Saudi Arabia through Syria and Jordan, also carries religious significance beyond being a trade route. The centrality of Türkiye in these three routes helps explain Israel’s increasing rhetoric against Türkiye.
The change brought about by this scenario presented a critical threat to Israel’s hegemonic project.
This is the central argument of a paper published by the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) and written by two influential former Israeli security figures. The article, published days before the war, proposes that the cooperation between Iran and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar represented an obstacle to Israel’s goals.
The authors argue that this cooperation was based on the fear that U.S. and Israeli “victories” in the region were shifting the balance of power towards Israel. The authors argue that these nations feared that defeating Iran would create a pro-Western, pro-Israel “new Iran,” expand the Abraham Accords, cement Israel as the dominant regional power, and undermine their influence.
Hence, the paper proposes “peace through strength,” repeating the U.S. current administration’s infamous statement. Israel and the U.S. should use power to create deterrence, then engage in dialogue from a position of strength. In other words, the U.S. and Israel should attack Iran—despite the pressure of other countries in the region—to break the emergent rapprochement between Iran and its neighbours, halt the development of trade and energy routes, and make Israel indispensable to the West in the region.
The spillover from the war to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – was not an unfortunate consequence. From the standpoint of Israel, it was a predictable and desirable consequence in order to make them dependent on Israel for security and energy export routes, and to drive a deep wedge between them and Iran.
Netanyahu correctly assessed that he could pressure the U.S. to join a strike against Iran and try to turn the tide. However, the attack is not yielding the intended results. Iran has proven to be far more resilient than expected by Israel and the U.S. and, if it continues to hold its ground, could actually have the opposite effect: strengthening Iran’s position vis-à-vis its neighbours and further isolating and weakening Israel.
There are several reasons for the current U.S. and Israeli failure. Israel has underestimated the capacity of Iran and its allies. The JISS paper states that from 2023 to 2025 Israel degraded Iran’s capabilities and those of its allies, judging that the country was at its “weakest point.” However true that statement might have been, Iran’s resistance and counteroffensive against the U.S. and Israel, and Hezbollah’s operations in Lebanon—which are confronting the Israeli military—show that Iran was far from the “collapsing” narrative promoted by Israel.
The paper also mentions Assad’s fall in Syria. Although this would seem like a significant step against the Iranian axis, it has proven to be much more unpredictable. There are reports that the current Syrian government is allowing help to reach Hezbollah in even larger quantities than during Assad’s final stages. Israel has not managed either to push the Syrian government to join its effort against Hezbollah or to take the bait to fight against them. This might or might not be true, but it points to an understanding of events in the region that is generally ignored.
Whichever opinion you hold of the current Syrian administration, I believe it should be much more nuanced than what is usually presented in either the mainstream media or the alternative one. Al-Sharaa has proven to be a much more adept actor than a simple Western puppet. His trajectory, even acknowledging that he was part of Al-Qaeda, is that of a man with agency while dealing with all sorts of external influence. He turned against Al-Qaeda when pushed to join ISIS. He managed to unite different factions fighting against Assad and take control of Idlib. He gained the trust of Türkiye and, through it, other Western powers. When Assad fell, he had the guts to go to Russia to dialogue with Putin.
I am not trying to make an apology; there is much to criticize as well. What I’m trying to point out is that he can’t be understood only as a CIA/Mossad puppet. As far as I know, he is the only leader of a country right now that has been in battle himself—except for, perhaps, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. You may very well despise both men and think that they are “terrorists.” But if you are serious about understanding what is happening in those regions, you can’t afford that simplistic view.
This is the critical failure of the Israel-U.S. project in the Middle East: a lack of recognition of the agency of local actors and a lack of acknowledgment of their history and that of their people. The countries in this region share thousands of years of history, languages, religions, and cultures. The current emergence of regional trade and military blocs is not a foreign mandate but its opposite. It is the region’s awakening to the end of post-Sykes-Picot Western control and the end of U.S. hegemony, with all the upheaval it might bring.
For Israel and the U.S., the narrative of the Middle East starts in 1948. But for others, it has been thousands of years.
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“The spillover from the war to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – was not an unfortunate consequence. From the standpoint of Israel, it was a predictable and desirable consequence in order to make them dependent on Israel for security and energy export routes, and to drive a deep wedge between them and Iran.”
This is a shrewd, if ruthlessly cynical move.
From this perspective, I believe it is a bit premature to state that the Israeli strategy
“if [Iran] continues to hold its ground, could actually have the opposite effect: strengthening Iran’s position vis-à-vis its neighbours and further isolating and weakening Israel.”
Indeed, if Gulf States did not view Iran favourably before the war, from now on several of them (esp. Bahrein, Kuwait, UAE) will truly loathe Iranians, adamantly refuse to cooperate with them, and probably sabotage efforts in this direction; the devastation inflicted by Iran may apparently cow them, but will also have made them staunch enemies.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman seem to be more crafty players.
The nugget I get from this post and the recent ones at NC about the Caucasus is the underestimated and growing importance of Turkey. From being a key node for oil and gas pipelines from Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, from its role in existing or forthcoming trade routes, from its involvement in Syria and in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, from its geostrategic position at the intersection of Europe, the Near East, the Caucasus and its control of the Straits to the Black Sea, from the size of its population, military, and economy: Turkey has many, many more trump cards than Israel — whose only real advantage is the unconditional support of the USA, the UK, and Germany.
I wonder if Turkish politicians will be skillful enough to turn their country’s advantages into a diplomatic and economic preeminence.
One could probably count the Lebanese Sunnis as an honorary member of the GCC, especially in the Israeli context, probably more like Bahraini roysls than anyone else listed here….
Yes, from what I have read the Shia Arabs in Lebanon were considered second rate citizens, and they were the poor and very poor… Their communitarian approach and uprising against the Israeli occupation, and support within the community, which was later emulated by Hamas, is something that the Sunni elites loath, wherever they are.
The GCC Plantations are ruled by an elite who know what they are. What they don’t want is a Muslim countries that might give the populations ideas as they remember the Hashemite Kingdoms. They didn’t have foreign mercenaries like the US to put down trouble.
It’s the same with Israel as it would reduce the idea of Israel as our unsinkable aircraft carrier. They don’t want Muslim democracies hence their constant attacks on Lebanon and now their claims against Turkey.
I have read several articles recently on the trade route angle for the Iran war. From what I can gather, the big “win” is to facilitate imports to western Europe – particularly it seems by exports from India. I wonder to what extent this goal is past its sell by date.
Ouch ! Excellent point.
I just came back from Czech Republic. The TV news consisted mostly in politicians very very worried saying that the fact that the Governement is poised to give population help and sponsorize energy, food and gasoline / benzine prices would mean that the country would effectively become a socialist state. (Gasp) They were freaked out : “we will have socialism !” Maybe it was supposed to frighten the viewers ?
I thought : do these young politicians really know that socialism is not comunism ?
Then they put on an israeli official spouting hate against lebanese and iranian “terrorists”. I asked my mother to turn that off. She said : “You know, I don’t understand this war”. No wonder….
Some good stuff to consider, Curro.
“The spillover from the war to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – was not an unfortunate consequence. From the standpoint of Israel, it was a predictable and desirable consequence in order to make them dependent on Israel for security and energy export routes, and to drive a deep wedge between them and Iran.”
I’d started wondering about this type of plan. The most diabolical part is that if it doesn’t work, they didn’t have to use their own missiles trying.
I’ve been reading the House of Saud site and their daily hand-wringing and sweating over their predicament in the Gulf. Whew!
Note: That’s a “whew!” as in a reference to someone wiping the sweat from their brow.
This is a brilliant article. Very penetrating.
The points in your conclusion are well taken. From the Israeli side of the grand chessboard, after October 7th, 2023, there was an opportunity to destroy what they viewed as Iranian allies or proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, Bashar al-Assad, the PMF in Iraq. Some of their strategists saw themselves as having an Iranian gun to their head in Gaza, which genocide would solve. They also saw one in Hezbollah in Lebanon, being resupplied by Iran through Iraq and Syria. Toppling Assad would cut those supply lines, it was thought, and then they could wage an air war on Iran with American assistance and dominate the region. One of the problems with this picture is of course that the world is decidedly not a chessboard with pieces to be moved around in conference rooms by policy intellectuals; it’s a great deal messier than that, more human.
It’s a monstrous plan, akin in scope and scale to Operation Barbarossa. In the U.S. we have our famous note about five countries in seven years, but the Israelis have attacked Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar in just three; with of course a continued attack on and blockade of Palestine.
I recall reading a book from some policy institute about the geopolitics of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Interesting, as far as it goes, with the geology, resources, and historical and modern trade routes, but ultimately, all that strategy rests several steps beneath the best thinking we can do as humans. Cold, Kissingerian detachment and the dehumanization which comes with it can only exist to the extent that it does in these decisions with distance. That distance can be a lot of things: geographical, cultural, having to do with perceived race; I think a lot of it is the distance of class, which has an ‘otherness’ to it which is at least a cousin of racism. It’s how someone can think of others as pawns. I detest geopolitics, as fascinating as I often find it, and I am grateful for others wading so deeply into it to bring us these insights.
As a minor point, I had a couple of business trips to Israel in 2013.
I wandered around Tel Aviv on the weekend (Friday,Sat) and visited Jaffa.
As I recall, there was a plaque mentioning Napolean visited his troops in the early 1800’s in Jaffa.
There was a French siege of Jaffa in 1799.
Lots of conflict history in the Middle East after Biblical times.
There’s a place in Galilee called May’yan Harod or Ain Jalut, depending on Hebrew or Arabic, where the Mongols, allied with the Crusaders, were beaten by the Egyptian Mamelukes. The battle basically ended the Mongol invasion of Africa for good (along with the Mongolian civil war in which the Golden Horde in Russia, who converted to Islam, made war on the Ilkhanate in the Middle East–the second Ilkhan, Abaqa, had a Byzantine princess as a wife–after Abaqa died, she came back to Constantinople and became a nun, re-founding an old church that became known as the Church of St Mary of the Mongols–the only Byzantine era church in Istanbul that continues as a church without interruption to this day. Another interesting fact: Kitboga, the Mongolian general at the battle, was a Nestorian Christian, of which there were surprisingly many in Mongolia at the time.). More history in the region after biblical times.
Ah, European values!
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/european-diplomatic-academy-opening-remarks-high-representative-josep-borrell-inauguration-pilot_en
“As far as I know, he is the only leader of a country right now that has been in battle himself—except for, perhaps, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
Well, this statement is clearly incorrect. The current Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, is a veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war which I would consider a far more serious military conflict than the kind of insurgent terror ops that Al-Sharaa was involved in.
Right. Several commenters noted that many, if not most, of Iran’s leaders in all fields are combat veterans of the war against Iraq, truly like post WW1 generation in Europe, in a way.
5,200 (at least) Marines getting assembled for their turn at Trump and Nuttingyahoo’s excursion, right into a post -Iran/Iraq bloodfest.
Unfathomable. Hoisted form Jesse’s Cafe Americain:
“The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy. Yet often a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing, on devastation. Yet the resources needed for healing, education, and restoration are nowhere to be found.
The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters. Jesus told us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ But woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic, or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.
Those who rob your land of its resources, generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilization and death. It is a world turned upside down, an exploitation of God’s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience.
We must make a decisive change of course, a true conversion that will lead us in the opposite direction onto a sustainable path rich in human fraternity. in this region that has suffered so greatly. Yes, my sisters and brothers, you who hunger and thirst for justice, who are poor, merciful, meek, and pure of heart, you who have wept. You are the light of the world.”
Leo XIV, Cameroon, 16 April 2024
So the Pope joins Obama and Biden in enabling nuclear proliferation; it make sense as they’re all American liberals, condemning a war designed to prevent the proliferation. Are these tyrants the ones killing their own people and the Kurds?
Escapekey has a substack blog that outlines much of the same political plays, involving directing energy flows through Haifa, the israeli controlled choke point, from a systems analysis approach. The idea is to make other flow channels for energy and goods more costly or dangerous — especially belt and road flows from china. This is all part of cold war 2.
The Guardian had an article written by Daiel Levy on the same topic:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/13/benjamin-netanyahu-middle-east-greater-israel