Iran and A Sense of Impending Catastrophe

Talking about the bloody absurdity of any war is depressing. Yet, there is no way to talk about politics in the Middle East without confronting the hideous and horrifying reality of the war. It looks like the wasting away of peace in this region of the world is accompanied by a sense of impending catastrophe. It has now become customary for people around the globe to take sides easily in the war between Israel and Iran and respond to the strategic and political needs of this confrontation rather than to answer to their own conscience.  Right now, the correct question to ask is why we got here and of course the right answer is that the ideological face to face between the state of Israel and the Iranian regime during the past forty years has been all about hegemony in the Middle East. On the one hand, the Iranian Shiite clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iran lived until very recently with the illusion that Iran was so powerful that it could fight back Israel and he US at the same time. For nearly five decades the Iranian regime made the mistake of being immensely loudmouth about the destruction of the state of Israel and minimizing the US power in the Levant. This state of mind was intensified after the end of the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with the role played by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and especially the Quds Force. The unexpected killing of Soleimani by the American military in Iraq during Donald Trump’s first presidency was a decisive step against the mastermind of Iran’s proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Despite the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian regime continued to push forward its revolutionary and hegemonic perception of international relations in the Middle East and beyond.

During the last five years the Iranian regime has tried to attack Israeli and American interests in the Middle East through its proxies, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Hamas and the Houthis of Yemen. The fact that Iran maintained and fed its proxies in the region with weaponry and financial support indicated that its strategic objective was about regional hegemony. The Iranian people had to pay the price of the presence of this “syndrome of hegemony” by being isolated economically and politically through Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign and the EU sanctions against Iran in response to its human rights abuses, nuclear proliferation activities and military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, despite Iran’s hegemonic moves in the region and its direct support for anti-Israeli and anti-American forces in the Middle Est, Iran continued to play a diplomatic game with the Biden administration and the EU, leaving Israel out of the equation each time that she engaged in a talk on the nature of Iranian nuclear sites. As a result, the Iranian regime tried for many years to attack the American and Israeli interests in the Middle East while not getting involved in direct clashes with these two countries. On October 1, 2024, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, and on October 26, Israel responded with three waves of strikes against Iranian military targets. However, unlike the present war between the two countries, Iran and Israel did not aim each others’ citizens, army officers or sensitive installations.

All has been different in the present war between Iran and Israel. First and foremost, Israel could count one hundred percent on Donald Trump’s political and military supports in an attack against Iranian militaries and to destroy the Iranian nuclear installations. On the other hand, Ayatollah Khamenei was asked by his close advisers and by the regime insiders not to escalate the war after the bombing of Iran’s main nuclear sites – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Thirdly, the Iranian regime kept open the option of firing missiles and drones at Israel, as it did hours after the US suggestion for an unconditional ceasefire, while knowing perfectly that the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran is at stake and as in the case of the 1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iran might run out of missiles and ammunitions. Last but not least, though some of the Iranian military commanders (those who have not been killed by the Israeli attacks recently) might have suggested a crushing response to the US by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than a quarter of world’s seaborne crude oil passes, but it goes without saying that even Russia and China, the two key allies of Iran have not accepted to get involved in a such a folly.

The Arab leaders of the Persian Gulf region, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar have tried to calm the tensions between Iran and the US, while not supporting and welcoming a Shiite Iran in search of hegemony in the Persian Gulf region. But they seem to be preoccupied by the sudden isolation of Iran and its future suicidal reactions as a result of its abandon by its weakened proxies and its two political allies, Russia and China, who are deeply embedded in the global economy and have much to lose from the turmoil in the Middle East.

As for Israel, she understood well that going for the regime change in Iran task is not an easy task. Until now, Israel and the US have been able to set back Iran’s nuclear capacities without permanently removing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats. Many questions remain after the United States joined Isreal in the war against Iran, pounding Iranian nuclear facilities with powerful bunker-busting munitions. First, what are the immediate consequences of Donald Trump’s “spectacular military success”? Second, would the Iranian authorities still go for a comprehensive nuclear deal with the US and Europe? Third, will the fragile US-brokered ceasefire between Iran and Israel hold? Lastly, will the Iranian regime turn once again its guns against Iranian civilians who will dare to ask about the moral legitimacy of the country’s leadership.  One way or another, the depressing days of war between Iran and Israel in June 2025 fully reflect a sense of impending catastrophe. Maybe, that is why, we should not forget that Iran (Persia) plays a prophetic role in the Bible’s prophetic timeline.