Genocidal Israel Escalates With Assault On Iran

Even as it tightens its gruelling genocide of Palestine, Israel seized the opportunity to launch a long-awaited assault on Iran that began a shooting war between the two regional powers at the start of summer.

The attack, for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-Mileikowsky and much of the Israeli establishment has lobbied for a quarter-century, interrupted stalled negotiations over the country’s nuclear programme, wiping out much of Iran’s military command before Tehran rallied with its own missile attacks on Israel. In the process, a West that has scarcely bothered to conceal its partiality for Tel Aviv has scrambled to cover for Israel’s escalation, giving Netanyahu-Mileikowsky a welcome respite from international attention over the Israeli-enforced starvation of Gaza.

Background

It is almost ten years to the month since the 2015 Geneva Accord between the United States and Iran, meant to limit and negotiate the terms of Iran’s usage of nuclear energy. Although Ali Khamenei’s regime has long officially disavowed nuclear armament, Israel and its cacophony of -largely but not exclusively neoconservative- cheerleaders in the United States have long insisted that Iran is on the threshold of nuclear armament and called for an invasion of Iran. This was one of the motivations behind the generation-long war on terror, one where Iran ironically helped the United States overthrow their mutual enemy, the Baath regime in Iraq, before fighting over the spoils in that unfortunate country.

Neoconservatives in the West, and countless Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu-Mileikowsky himself, have made no secret of their ambition to oust Khamenei’s “Islamic revolutionary” regime, and searched for one pretext after another to affect this. The fact that the United States shared several mutual enemies with Iran in the region -largely among Sunni Arab groups independent of the monarchies that Washington prefers as its vassals- helped delay the push, as did the heavy cost of the war on terror in terms of American wealth, life, and prestige.

Having unilaterally scrapped the 2015 Geneva Accord with Iran in his first term, Donald Trump promised to make another one of his much-vaunted deals as he entered his second term. While his sincerity in the course might be questioned, even the formality of talks was too much for an Israel then knee-deep in genocide, and at last starting to attract some criticism, however muted and meek, over its genocide of Palestine. Israel has repeatedly insisted, without even the pretence of a regard for factuality, that Iran was remote-controlling its various Palestinian opponents, and Netanyahu-Mileikowsky resorted to his decades-long argument that Tehran was days away from nuclear armament.

On a personal level, Netanyahu-Mileikowsky is ensnared in corruption allegations: this means that his next stop after dethronement might well be a prison, and gives him every incentive to continue a war that retains widespread support in an Israeli society shorn of any consequences of war. On a systemic level, as Israeli sentiment shows, lashing out at one neighbour or another is always welcome in Tel Aviv, especially given the embarrassment caused by crackdowns against activists who tried to draw attention to the Israeli starvation of Gaza. Given that Israel enjoys an essential carte blanche from Washington in the region, there was little to stop Netanyahu-Mileikowsky, perched at a comfortably safe distance in Greece, from escalating into a war against Iran before any deal could be made.

Wipeout

Thus, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iran that quickly wiped out the Iranian military and praetorian command. These included lead negotiator and former defence minister, Ali Shamkhani; army commander Hossein Bagheri; praetorian military commander Hossein Salami; praetorian air force commander Amir Hajizadeh; and military commander Gholam-Ali Rashid. Also reported killed was Esmail Ghani, who leads the praetorians’ external operations, though his death remains unclear; subsequently, additional leading commanders Mehdi Rabbani and Gholam-Reza Mehrabi were also reported killed. It was a stunning blow to Iran’s military leadership; these were not simply generals but battle-hardened officers who had cut their teeth in the 1980s Gulf war with Iraq and subsequently dominated Iranian military adventurism in the region from Pakistan to Yemen.

A man walks past a billboard displaying images of top Iranian commanders and scientists killed in Israeli strikes early Friday, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

That was, however, not the end of the Israeli aggression: aiming to oust Ali Khamenei and Massoud Pezeshkian’s government entirely, Israel continued to hammer away at Tehran with indiscriminate airstrikes, which have killed many Iranian civilians. The attack bore similarities to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq -another misadventure encouraged by Israel in general and Netanyahu-Mileikowsky in person- where the attackers mercilessly bombarded the same people they claimed to liberate. The Iranian equivalent of Ahmad Chalabi -the Americans’ would-be vassal in Iraq right until it was discovered that he was cozy not only with Israel, but also with Iran, and thus discarded- is the exiled claimant of the hated Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Pahlavi, whose father was ousted in the 1979 Iranian revolution when he was just a teenager. Reza has since lived a comfortable exile abroad, reportedly having never worked a day in his life, but the echo chamber of Iranian monarchists, who yearn for the return of one of the Middle East’s most brutal, elitist, and tyrannical monarchies, gives Israel a handy client on which to lean.

A “Splendid Little War”? Unlikely

Unlike previous Israeli provocations -as in spring 2024– Iran was not slow or cautious in responding; though its air-defence has been exposed as alarmingly inadequate, it does possess a considerable missile arsenal, which has in turn been launched at Tel Aviv and sent the cossetted denizens of Israel’s capital scuttling to underground bomb shelters. Despite the clear aggression of the Israeli assault, which drew widespread condemnation even from regional states otherwise wary of Tehran, however, the calculus of pro-Israeli Western elites, whereby an Israeli inconvenience is more noteworthy than the deaths of thousands of Muslims, means that European leaders such as Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have interrupted their hesitant criticisms of the Israeli genocide to issue full-throated solidarity with Israel. Tel Aviv also attacked Yemen, claiming to have killed Houthi military commander Muhammad Amri.

Though the Israeli military cannot function without American protection and support, Tel Aviv is clearly angling for a full-blown American involvement in the campaign. Given that a considerable proportion of Trump’s more isolationist followers balk at foreign adventurism, but that a considerable proportion also share the American elite’s unfettered enthusiasm for Israel, this puts the United States in an interesting position. There are already reports of American warships heading in the direction of Iran, though whether they will actively partake in the Israeli assault or simply guard their own key sites is unclear. As yet, Iran has not resorted to closing the important straits in the Persian Gulf, perhaps fearing that this would give the United States a pretext to attack. On the other hand, the presence of thousands of Americans in Israel also means that Iran will have to tread with care to avoid an American assault.

If Trump’s past actions -in Afghanistan (2017), Syria (2025), and Yemen (2025) among others- are any indication, it is likely that he will give Israel a window of unchecked leeway but, if Iran rides out the storm, instead decide that it is no longer worth his while and return to talks. What is certain is that despite Trump’s words, the so-called “war on terror”-a pretext for attacking Muslim countries throughout the region, invariably with Israeli incitement- is still alive and kicking. If Gaza marks the most genocidal phase, Iran might mark a turning point.

-by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters

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