The conflict between Israel and Iran over the past 12 days has redefined the regional chessboard. Here is a look at their key takeaways:
Israel: Pulled in the US: Israel successfully drew the United States into a direct military confrontation with Iran, setting a significant precedent for future direct (not just indirect) intervention.
Boosted political capital: This move generated substantial political leverage, allowing Israel to frame US intervention as a major strategic success.
Iran: Forged a new deterrence: Iran has firmly established a new equation of deterrence, emerging as a powerful regional force capable of directly challenging Israel, the US, and their Western allies.
Demonstrated independence: Crucially, Iran achieved this without relying on its traditional regional allies, showcasing its self-reliance and strategic depth.
Defeated regime change efforts: This confrontation effectively thwarted any perceived Israeli strategy aimed at regime change, solidifying the current Iranian government’s position.
Achieved national unity: In the face of external pressure, Iran saw a notable surge in domestic unity, bridging the gap between reformers and conservatives in a new social and political contract.
Asserted direct regional role: Iran has definitively cemented its status as a direct and undeniable player in the ongoing regional struggle against Israeli hegemony.
Sent a global message: It delivered a strong message to non-Western global powers like China and Russia, proving itself a reliable regional force capable of challenging and reshaping the existing balance of power.
Exposed regional dynamics: The events sharply exposed Arab and Muslim countries that openly or tacitly support the US-Israeli regional project of dominance, highlighting underlying regional alignments.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.
In the final strike before the ceasefire, Iranian missiles caused extensive destruction, killing and injuring several Israelis in the city of Beersheba. pic.twitter.com/b25fHPw2yD
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) June 24, 2025
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, held talks with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom yesterday in Geneva as Israel’s attacks on Iran entered a second week.
A US-based Iranian human rights group reports the Israeli attacks have killed at least 639 people. Israeli war planes have repeatedly pummeled Tehran and other parts of Iran. Iran is responded by continuing to launch missile strikes into Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have protested in Iran against Israel. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to give mixed messages on whether the US will join Israel’s attack on Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters, “I may do it, I may not do it”. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a new statement from the President.
KAROLINE LEAVITT: “Regarding the ongoing situation in Iran, I know there has been a lot of speculation among all of you in the media regarding the president’s decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved.
“In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president. And I quote, ‘Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.’”
AMY GOODMAN, The War and Peace Report:President Trump has repeatedly used that term, “two weeks,” when being questioned about decisions in this term and his first term as president. Leavitt delivered the message shortly after President Trump met with his former adviser, Steve Bannon, who has publicly warned against war with Iran.
Bannon recently said, “We can’t do this again. We’ll tear the country apart. We can’t have another Iraq,” Bannon said.
This comes as Trump’s reportedly sidelined National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard from key discussions on Iran. In March, Gabbard told lawmakers the intelligence community, “Continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”
But on Tuesday, Trump dismissed her statement, saying, “I don’t care what she said.”
Earlier Thursday, an Iranian missile hit the main hospital in Southern Israel in Beersheba. After the strike, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei, saying Iran’s supreme leader, “Cannot continue to exist.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the hospital and likened Iran’s attack to the London Blitz. Netanyahu stunned many in Israel by saying, “Each of us bears a personal cost. My family has not been exempt. This is the second time my son Avner has cancelled a wedding due to missile threats.”
We’re joined now by William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new article for The National Interest is headlined, “Don’t Get Dragged Into a War with Iran.”
Can you talk about what’s going on right now, Bill, the whole question of whether the U.S. is going to use a bunker-buster bomb that has to be delivered by a B-2 bomber, which only the US has?
Another Iraq: Military expert warns US has no real plan Video: Democracy Now!
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah. This is a case of undue trust in technology. The US is always getting in trouble when they think there’s this miracle solution. A lot of experts aren’t sure this would even work, or if it did, it would take multiple bombings.
And of course, Iran’s not going to sit on its hands. They’ll respond possibly by killing US troops in the region, then we’ll have escalation from there. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said, “It’s going to be a cakewalk. It’s not going to cost anything.”
Couple of trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of casualties, many US veterans coming home with PTSD, a regime that was sectarian that paved the way for ISIS, it couldn’t have gone worse.
And so, this is a different beginning, but the end is uncertain, and I don’t think we want to go there.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the GBU-57, the bunker-buster bomb, and how is it that this discussion going on within the White House about the use of the bomb — and of course, the US has gone back and forth — I should say President Trump has gone back and forth whether he’s fully involved with this war.
At first he was saying they knew about it, but Israel was doing it, then saying, “We have total control of the skies over Tehran,” saying we, not Israel, and what exactly it would mean if the US dropped this bomb and the fleet that the US is moving in?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes, well, the notion is, it’s heavy steel, it’s more explosive power than any conventional bomb. But it only goes so deep, and they don’t actually know how deep this facility is buried. And if it’s going in a straight line, and it’s to one side, it’s just not clear that it’s going to work.
And of course, if it does, Iran is going to rebuild, they’re going to go straight for a nuclear weapon. They’re not going to trust negotiations anymore.
So, apparently, the two weeks is partly because Trump’s getting conflicting reports from his own people about this. Now, if he had actual independent military folks, like Mark Milley in the first term, I think we’d be less likely to go in.
But they made sure to have loyalists. Pete Hegseth is not a profile in courage. He’s not going to stand up to Trump on this. He might not even know the consequences. So, a lot of the press coverage is about this bomb, not about the consequences of an active war.
AMY GOODMAN: Right, about using it. In your recent piece, you wrote, “Israeli officials suggested their attacks may result in regime change in Iran, despite the devastating destabilising impact such efforts in the region would have.”
Can you talk about the significance of Israel putting forward and then Trump going back and forth on whether or not Ali Khamenei will be targeted?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah, I think my colleague Trita Parsi put it well. There’s been no example of regime change in the region that has come out with a better result. They don’t know what kind of regime would come in.
Could be to the right of the current one. Could just be chaos that would fuel terrorism, who knows what else.
So, they’re just talking — they’re winging it. They have no idea what they’re getting into. And I think Trump, he doesn’t want to seem like Netanyahu’s pulling him by the nose, so when he gets out in front of Trump, Trump says, “Oh, that was my idea.”
But it’s almost as if Benjamin Netanyahu is running US foreign policy, and Trump is kind of following along.
AMY GOODMAN: You have Netanyahu back in 2002 saying, “Iran is imminently going to have a nuclear bomb.” That was more than two decades ago.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Exactly. That’s just a cover for wanting to take out the regime. And he spoke to the US Congress, he’s made presentations all over the world, and his intelligence has been proven wrong over, and over, and over.
And when we had the Iran deal, he had European allies, he had China, he had Russia. There hadn’t been a deal like that where all these countries were on the same page in living memory, and it was working.
And Trump trashed it and now has to start over.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the War Powers Act. The Virginia Senator Kaine has said that — has just put forward a bill around saying it must be — Congress that must vote on this. Where is [Senator] Chuck Schumer [Senate minority leader]? Where is [Hakeem] Jeffries [Congress minoroity leader] on this, the Democratic House and Senate leaders?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, a lot of the so-called leaders are not leading. When is the moment that you should step forward if we’re possibly going to get into another disastrous war? But I think they’re concerned about being viewed as critical of Israel.
They don’t want to go out on a limb. So, you’ve got a progressive group that’s saying, “This has to be authorised by Congress.” You’ve got Republicans who are doubtful, but they don’t want to stand up to Trump because they don’t want to lose their jobs.
“Risk your job. This is a huge thing. Don’t just sort of be a time-server.
AMY GOODMAN: So, according to a report from IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, released in May, Iran has accumulated roughly 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is 30 percent away from weapons-grade level of 90 percent. You have Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, saying this week that they do not have evidence that Iran has the system for a nuclear bomb.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes, well, a lot of the discussion points out — they don’t talk about, when you’ve got the uranium, you have to build the weapon, you have to make it work on a missile.
It’s not you get the uranium, you have a weapon overnight, so there’s time to deal with that should they go forward through negotiations. And we had a deal that was working, which Trump threw aside in his first term.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the foreign minister of Iran, Araghchi, in Geneva now speaking with his counterparts from Britain, France, the EU.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I don’t think US allies in Europe want to go along with this, and I think he’s looking for some leverage over Trump. And of course, Trump is very hard to read, but even his own base, the majority of Trump supporters, don’t want to go to war.
You’ve got people like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon saying it would be a disaster. But ultimately, it comes down to Trump. He’s unpredictable, he’s transactional, he’ll calculate what he thinks it’ll mean for him.
AMY GOODMAN: And what impact does protests have around the country, as we wrap up?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think taking the stand is infectious. So many institutions were caving in to Trump. And the more people stand up, 2000 demonstrations around the country, the more the folks sitting on the fence, the millions of people who, they’re against Trump, but they don’t know what to do, the more of us that get involved, the better chance we have of turning this thing around.
So, we should not let them discourage us. We need to build power to push back against all these horrible things.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, if the US were to bomb the nuclear site that it would require the bunker-buster bomb to hit below ground, underground. Are we talking about nuclear fallout here?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: I think there would certainly be radiation that would of course affect the Iranian people. They’ve already had many civilian deaths. It’s not this kind of precise thing that’s only hitting military targets.
And that, too, has to affect Iran’s view of this. They were shortly away from another negotiation, and now their country’s being devastated, so can they trust us?
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung is senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new piece for The National Interest is headlined, “Don’t Get Dragged Into a War with Iran.”
Republished from Democracy Now! under Creative Commons.
A Paris-based military and political analyst, Elijah Magnier, says he believes the hostilities between Israel and Iran will only get worse, but that Israeli support for the war may wane if the destruction continues.
“I think it’s going to continue escalating because we are just in the first days of the war that Israel declared on Iran,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview.
“And also the Israeli officials, the prime minister and the army, have all warned Israeli society that this war is going to be heavy and . . . the price is going to be extremely high.
“But the society that stands behind [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and supports the war on Iran did not expect this level of destruction because, since 1973, Israel has not waged a war on a country and never been attacked on this scale, right in the heart of Tel Aviv,” Magnier said.
“So now they are realising what the Palestinians have been suffering, what the Lebanese have been suffering, and they see the destruction in front of them — buildings in Tel Aviv, in Haifa destroyed, fire everywhere.
“The properties no longer exist. Eight people killed, 250 wounded in one day.
“That’s unheard of since a very long time in Israel. So, all that is not something that the Israeli society has been ready for,” added Magnier, veteran war correspondent and political analyst with more than 35 years of experience covering decades of war in the Middle East and North Africa.
Peters criticised over ‘craven’ statement Meanwhile, in Auckland, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) criticised New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters for “refusing to condemn Israel for its egregious war crimes of industrial-scale killing and mass starvation of civilians in Gaza”.
It also said that Peters had “outdone himself with the most craven of tweets on Israel’s massive attack on Iran”.
Iran missiles strikes on Israel for third day in retaliation to the surprise attack. Video: Al Jazeera
Co-chair Maher Nazzal said in a statement that minister Peters had said he was “gravely concerned by the escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran” and that “all actors” must “prioritise de-escalation”.
But there was no mention of Israel as the aggressor and no condemnation of Israel’s attack launched in the middle of negotiations between Iran and the US on Iran’s nuclear programme, said Maher.
“It’s Mr Peters’ most obsequious tweet yet which leaves a cloud of shame hanging over the country.
“Appeasement of this rogue state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months, have led Israel to believe it can attack any country it likes with absolute impunity.”
New Zealand is gravely concerned by the escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran. Any further retaliatory action significantly increases the risk of a regional war. This would have catastrophic consequences in the Middle East.
The Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ) has protested over Israel’s “unprovoked military strikes” against Iran, killing at least 80 people — 20 of them children, and called on the NZ government to publicly condemn Israeli’s actions.
An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, read out to a Palestine rally in Henderson yesterday by advocate Dr Adnan Ali, said the attacks — targeting residential areas as well as military and nuclear facilities — represented a “grave escalation in regional tensions and pose a serious threat to global peace and stability”.
“This act of aggression undermines international diplomatic efforts and risks igniting a broader conflict that could engulf the Middle East and beyond,” the letter said.
The council’s letter, signed by ICONZ president Dr Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi, said it was “particularly alarmed by the timing of the strikes, which come amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme”.
The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Friday protesting over the Israeli attacks on Iran. Image: APR
It said the Israeli attack set a “dangerous precedent” and violated international law and sovereignty.
The council urged the NZ government to:
Publicly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities;
Engage diplomatically with international partners to de-escalate tensions and promote peaceful resolution;
Support humanitarian efforts to assist affected civilians in Iran; and
Reaffirm NZ’s commitment to international law, peace and justice.
The council said New Zealand had “long been a voice of reason and compassion on the global stage” and it hoped that this would guide Luxon’s leadership.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting on its territory, said attacking Iran allowed Israel to deflect attention away from Gaza.
“Israel says the focus of its military activities is now on Iran and not on Gaza. But it also conveniently allows . . . the focus of attention on what’s happening in Israel to move from Gaza to Iran,” he said.
“Until Israel hit those targets in Iran, it was coming under increasing international scrutiny over the conduct of the war in Gaza.”
The Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ) has protested over Israel’s “unprovoked military strikes” against Iran, killing at least 80 people — 20 of them children, and called on the NZ government to publicly condemn Israeli’s actions.
An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, read out to a Palestine rally in Henderson yesterday by advocate Dr Adnan Ali, said the attacks — targeting residential areas as well as military and nuclear facilities — represented a “grave escalation in regional tensions and pose a serious threat to global peace and stability”.
“This act of aggression undermines international diplomatic efforts and risks igniting a broader conflict that could engulf the Middle East and beyond,” the letter said.
The council’s letter, signed by ICONZ president Dr Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi, said it was “particularly alarmed by the timing of the strikes, which come amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme”.
The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Friday protesting over the Israeli attacks on Iran. Image: APR
It said the Israeli attack set a “dangerous precedent” and violated international law and sovereignty.
The council urged the NZ government to:
Publicly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities;
Engage diplomatically with international partners to de-escalate tensions and promote peaceful resolution;
Support humanitarian efforts to assist affected civilians in Iran; and
Reaffirm NZ’s commitment to international law, peace and justice.
The council said New Zealand had “long been a voice of reason and compassion on the global stage” and it hoped that this would guide Luxon’s leadership.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting on its territory, said attacking Iran allowed Israel to deflect attention away from Gaza.
“Israel says the focus of its military activities is now on Iran and not on Gaza. But it also conveniently allows . . . the focus of attention on what’s happening in Israel to move from Gaza to Iran,” he said.
“Until Israel hit those targets in Iran, it was coming under increasing international scrutiny over the conduct of the war in Gaza.”
Well it looks like the US is on the precipice of war with Iran again.
US officials are telling the press that they anticipate a potential impending Israeli attack on Iran while the family members of US military personnel are being assisted with evacuation from bases in the region.
This comes as Tehran issues a warning that it will strike all US military bases within range of its missiles if it comes under attack. There are reportedly some 50,000 US troops in 10 bases which could come under fire should this occur.
The US is also evacuating its embassy in Iraq, and has authorised the departure of non-essential personnel from its embassies in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Asked by the press about the evacuations, President Trump said, “They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens. We’ve given notice to move out.”
Trump is openly declaring a willingness to strike Iran if nuclear negotiations fall through, while saying he is now “much less confident” that any deal will be made.
Staring down the barrel of war with Iran. Video: Caitlin Johnstone
“If they don’t make a deal, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon; if they do make a deal they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon too,” the president said in an interview published on Wednesday, adding that “it would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying.”
If the US backs an Israeli attack on Iran and then Iran retaliates by killing a bunch of US military personnel, we could be looking at a full-scale direct war between the US and Iran.
As I’ve said in this space many times before, this would be the absolute worst-case nightmare scenario for the Middle East, unleashing horrors that dwarf all the other terrible abuses currently happening in the region.
As Trump’s now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in 2019 (back when she publicly opposed Trump’s warmongering), “What is important that the American people know is a war with Iran would make the war in Iraq look like a cakewalk.”
It’s so stupid that this keeps happening. This could all be avoided by the US simply ceasing to support the genocidal apartheid state of Israel no matter what it does.
The fact that Washington has continued to pour weapons into Israel despite all its warmongering and genocide since 2023 means the US supports everything that Israel has been doing.
If a war with Iran does occur, you will doubtless hear Western pundits and politicians trying to spin this as America getting “drawn into” another war in the Middle East, or Trump being tricked or manipulated into war.
But make no mistake: the US could have turned away from this path at any time, and still can.
If this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be because the US empire knowingly chose to open it.