https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/culmination
Culmination
17 JUNE 2025
The Israeli assault on Iran – launched as the genocide against the Palestinian people grinds on – follows a grimly familiar script. As with its previous campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is pursuing a ‘decapitation’ strategy, aimed at eliminating key figures in the country’s political and security establishment while terrorizing its civilian population. Though framed in the deceptive language of ‘pre-emption’ or ‘non-proliferation’, the Israeli escalation signals a far more expansive and ambitious project: not just halting Iran’s nuclear programme, but dismantling Iran as a sovereign regional actor capable of resisting US-Israeli domination. This regime-change agenda should not come as a surprise to anyone who knows the recent history of the region. It has left a trail of destruction across Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon.
In a single night, Israel succeeded in assassinating Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the IRGC; Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces; Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces; Fereydoun Abbasi, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, president of Islamic Azad University. Ali Shamkhani, the former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader, who had played a central role in recent negotiations with the United States, was initially reported dead but is now believed to have narrowly survived the attempt on his life. In addition to attacking nuclear sites and military installations, Israel rained down bombs on residential buildings in densely populated areas, killing 224 and injuring an estimated 1,200 over the first three days. That such a high-level operation was able to proceed undetected speaks to a major intelligence failure within the Iranian security services – and likely signals deep penetration by Mossad, along with US intelligence.
The attacks followed renewed nuclear negotiations between Tehran and Washington which started in mid-April. It has been almost exactly a decade since Iran’s Rouhani administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreeing to limit uranium enrichment in return for sanctions relief: a deal which held until 2018, when Trump unilaterally withdrew and pivoted to the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ strategy, imposing sanctions designed to immiserate the Iranian population and stoke domestic unrest. Throughout this period, Iran continued to hold out hope for a diplomatic offramp which would allow it to preserve its right to civilian enrichment under the international monitoring regime. It faced substantial pressure – both from elites and the wider population – to restore some form of negotiated settlement. So when Trump returned to the White House this year and signalled that a new deal might be within reach, the incumbent Pezeshkian government agreed, perhaps credulously, to engage in further talks. It is now abundantly clear that this diplomacy was never serious. For the US, the goal was not to reach agreement, but to force surrender.
Beneath Trump’s talk of ‘deal-making’ was a maximalist demand: not only that Iran abandon its civilian nuclear programme, but that it dismantle its missile arsenal and regional alliances as well. This is what Netanyahu has repeatedly called the ‘Libya option’. Not détente or normalisation, but total capitulation, of the kind that Tehran was never going to accept. In light of this, the theatrics of Trump’s supposed ‘falling out’ with Netanyahu now look like a strategic manoeuvre rather than a real policy divergence: a means to disorient the Iranians while preparations for war were underway. Israel’s airstrikes, assassinations and acts of sabotage – aimed not only at degrading the enemy’s defensive capabilities but also at sowing fear and confusion among its people – thus caught Iran off guard. Its leadership was slow to respond, but has gradually adapted to the new reality.
The long-term strategy developed in Washington and Tel Aviv has been to use hybrid warfare as a means of de-development: hollowing out Iranian state and society, isolating it diplomatically and rendering it vulnerable to military incursion, so that the Islamic Republic can eventually be toppled. Israel has also used various methods of soft-power, such as grooming the exiled son of the former Shah – a figure with little political heft in Iran but who is nonetheless useful for foreign propaganda, frequently appearing on Western media to announce that Iranians are on the brink of rising up to overthrow ‘the regime’ and replace it with a Western-aligned one.
This fantasy bears the unmistakable imprint of early 2000s neoconservatism. It is a reheated version of the same delusions that underpinned the US invasion of Iraq: that a shattered, fragmented state could, with the acquiescence or even the support of its population, be reconstituted as a compliant outpost for Western capital, open to privatization, asset-stripping and geostrategic power projection. Also back in style is the tactic of using disinformation to manufacture consent for war, as with Netanyahu’s claims that Iran was right on the cusp of acquiring a nuclear weapon and intending to supply one to Yemen’s Ansarallah. We are entering territory so fantastical that the ‘dodgy dossier’ and ‘45-minute WMD’ seem almost quaint by comparison.
Yet Netanyahu and Trump appear to have underestimated the resilience of Iranian nationalism in its diverse forms. Their attacks have already had a significant rally-around-the-flag effect. Even among those deeply disillusioned with the Islamic Republic, including former political prisoners, calls for national unity and the defence of the country have resonated. There is a growing recognition that this is not merely a war on the Islamic Republic but on Iran itself: an attempt to turn it into a patchwork of ethnic enclaves, internally divided and too weak to enjoy sovereign development, let alone pose a regional challenge. Saddam Hussein once harboured similar ambitions, but they came to nothing. Israel, it seems, hopes to succeed where others have failed.
As the civilian death toll mounts, images of the dead are circulating widely: a young boy in his taekwondo uniform, a child ballerina in a red dress, a 16-year-old figure skater, a graphic designer affiliated with a prominent periodical, a young female poet. Grief and outrage have spread across the country as Israel has expanded its campaign to Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including fuel depots and airports, plus an attack on its national broadcaster live on air. The government has responded to the aggression by launching strikes on Tel Aviv and Haifa, signalling its capacity to inflict costs previously unthinkable for Israel. But the asymmetry remains profound. Iran has no nuclear umbrella, no standing alliances, no NATO; Israel is backed unconditionally by the US, with advanced air defences, real-time intelligence sharing and near-total diplomatic impunity. Iran is fighting for deterrence; Israel for unchecked dominance.
For decades, experts have warned that treating diplomacy as a trap and negotiations as cover for coercion would force Iran to opt for nuclear deterrence. We are now approaching that threshold. At the time of writing, there is still no indication that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, and it continues to cooperate, albeit under increasing strain, with what many see as a politically compromised International Atomic Energy Agency. Nevertheless, a growing chorus of Iranian voices – both political elites and the wider public – is arguing that had Iran taken this step long ago, it would not have ended up in such a precarious situation. North Korea, they observe, better understood the logic of US power and acted accordingly. The prevailing view in these circles is that if Iran still possesses the technical capability, now is the time to use it.
Meanwhile, a central question is whether Iran can sustain its current campaign of retaliation. Unless it imposes a sufficiently high cost on Israel, it risks emboldening its enemy and increasing the intensity of further strikes. Iranian planners are likely assessing whether they can put their existing industrial base on a war footing, following the Russian playbook. This is a tall order for a state long weakened by corruption and endemic mismanagement, but necessity may prove the mother of invention. Decades of sanctions have forced Iran to cultivate a nascent domestic military-industrial complex – one which is far from flawless, yet still capable of asymmetrical deterrence at great human cost.
There is also significant uncertainty over whether Israel’s decapitation strategy will lead to fragmentation and paralysis on the Iranian side, or whether it will usher in a younger generation of Revolutionary Guardsmen – less cautious and more prepared to escalate. Though full-scale regime change is unlikely to succeed, a war of this magnitude will almost certainly reshape the Islamic Republic. It may deepen the militarisation of state and society and further entrench the IRGC at the core of its political and economic life. As Charles Tilly famously observed, ‘war made the state, and the state made war’. The idea that a robust democratic force or progressive social movement might flourish under such conditions seems fanciful. If anything, this turn of events is likely to set the struggle for civil rights and a more democratic system back by decades.
Iran also has a last-resort option to defend itself: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz – a strategic chokepoint through which approximately 21 million barrels of oil pass each day, accounting for nearly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption, along with around 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas. Markets are already anxious at the prospect of such a move. While it would constitute an extreme escalation, Iran may consider it necessary if the United States decides to intervene militarily on Israel’s behalf. At that point, we would be entering unprecedented and perilous terrain.
The Israeli garrison state has made clear that it is not satisfied with overwhelming regional military superiority; it also seeks the permanent incapacity of its neighbours. Israel and its patron-in-chief will not tolerate a sovereign, independent Iran capable of constraining, however modestly, their freedom of action. This is not a diplomatic failure. It is the calculated foreclosure of diplomacy. Not a deviation from standard policy, but the logical culmination of a decades-long consensus in Washington and Tel Aviv: that no independent power in the Middle East should be able to escape the architecture of subordination.