https://arab.news/m8pgk
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been campaigning against Iran since the 1990s. He has used all possible excuses to demonize the Tehran regime, just as he incited Washington against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Assad regime. Yes, Iran, Iraq, and Syria were sworn enemies of Israel. But while Netanyahu used the US to threaten, penalize, and eventually attack these regimes, he made sure no one raised the essential question about why such hostilities existed in the first place.
The tragedy of Palestine lay at the heart of all three conflicts. Netanyahu never made that connection. For him, these countries represented an existential threat to the state of Israel out of pure hatred and animosity toward his country.
The Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack provided a beleaguered Netanyahu with the excuse to wage war not only against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but also Iran’s proxies in the region and, finally, against Iran itself on June 13.
Last week, he was able to lure the Trump administration into his war. The US attack on Iran’s nuclear site had fulfilled Netanyahu’s plan for what he has repeated several times: a new Middle East shaped by Israel. Since December 2023, the Israeli leader has been declaring that Israel was fighting a war on behalf of the Western world, seeking to reshape the Middle East. He has said many times that he is closer than ever to achieving this goal.
