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On Oct. 29, 1956, an Israeli paratrooper force landed at the Mitla Pass in the Sinai Peninsula. Two hours later, the Israeli army spokesperson issued a triumphant announcement: “IDF forces entered and attacked the Fedayeen units in Ras Al-Naqab and Kuntila and seized positions west of the Nakhel Road junction near the Suez Canal. This action followed the Egyptian military attacks on Israeli transportation by land and sea, which tend to cause destruction and deprive Israeli citizens of their peaceful lives.”
The statement, drafted personally by then Israeli army Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, was almost entirely false from beginning to end. The paratroopers at Mitla were not fighting Palestinian “Fedayeen units,” but regular Egyptian army forces. Nor was the operation a response to “Egyptian attacks” on Israeli transportation.
Instead, it marked the beginning of a war that Israel launched together with Britain and France, the major imperial powers of the time. As Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion put it just before the assault, the aim was to “reorganize the Middle East” and bring about the downfall of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose policies threatened British, French, and Israeli interests alike.
According to the IDF and Defense Establishment Archives, the invasion of Egypt that began at the Mitla Pass — later known in Israel as the Sinai War, and around the world as the Suez Crisis — “was unique in the history of the State of Israel” because “two European powers … joined it in a joint military move with Israel.”
For decades, this stood as a historical anomaly. Now, just 70 years later, it no longer does. For the first time since 1956, Israel has gone to war alongside a major Western power — indeed, the world’s largest — whose secretary of state recently lauded the West’s imperial legacy at the Munich Security Conference.
The Israeli army has described the joint assault with the U.S. military as a “preemptive strike,” but, as in 1956, this too is a lie. Few seriously believe Iran was on the verge of attacking. The current war is a war of choice, initiated by the United States and Israel, just as the Sinai campaign was decided in advance by Israeli, French, and British leaders.
In 1956, Israel had its own objectives: to stop Palestinian cross-border military operations organized from within the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and to thwart Egypt’s military buildup, reflected in its 1955 arms deal with the Soviet bloc.
But in hindsight, it is clear that the war bore unmistakably colonial features. Britain opposed Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, and France was troubled by his support for rebels in Algeria, then still under French rule. Ben-Gurion and Dayan believed Israel could exploit those colonial considerations for its own strategic ends, especially to advance the overthrow of Nasser’s regime.
Today’s war against Iran comes wrapped in its own justifications: eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities and ending its support for regional proxies in the Middle East — and, of course, liberating the people of Iran from their oppressive regime. But regardless of how real and pressing those concerns may be, it cannot be denied that both the United States and Israel share broader goals of a clearly imperial nature: toppling the Iranian regime and establishing a new order in the Middle East.
It is noteworthy that in the 70 years since the Sinai War, Israel has avoided openly enlisting in American wars, always presenting its campaigns as sovereign acts undertaken in its own name. Indeed, Israel has bristled at accusations of serving as a U.S. proxy. Even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared last summer that Israel was “fighting on behalf of Western civilization,” he still pretended that it was doing so out of its own free will.
This supposed independence was always somewhat illusory, since Israel’s wars and its decades-old occupation have depended on American money, weapons, coordination, and diplomatic backing. Still, both governments maintained that appearance of separation. In the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, the United States went to great lengths to distance Israel from the fighting. Even last June’s “12-Day War” with Iran was ostensibly an “Israeli” war, which Trump joined only at its denouement.
No longer. This time, Washington and Tel Aviv march openly in lockstep, and their shared objectives go beyond establishing a new regional order. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently praised Israel as a “capable partner” that fights “without stupid rules of engagement” unlike “so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.” His Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, could not have formulated today’s Israeli war ethic better.
If, in 1956, Israel could conquer the Sinai Peninsula alone, this time, too, it did not truly need a Western power to strike Iran and severely damage its nuclear and missile programs. It proved that last June. Therefore, the decision to act jointly appears tied precisely to the “larger” objectives: regime change and a reordered Middle East.
It is not certain those goals can be achieved (at least through the chosen means of aerial bombardment), but what is clear is that Israel lacks the sufficient military power and political capital to attempt such a project alone. That can only be done shoulder-to-shoulder with a global power like the United States — and only through an openly imperial war.
Israel’s gamble
In 1956, Israel won quickly. Within five days, it had conquered the Sinai Peninsula with relatively few casualties. But the political outcome was a different story.
An extraordinary American-Soviet coalition forced Israel, Britain, and France to withdraw, leaving them humiliated. Israel had to shelve Ben-Gurion’s grand vision of a “Third Kingdom of Israel,” proclaimed with characteristic pathos at the war’s end. And above all, Nasser emerged victorious. In the decade leading up to the 1967 War, he became the undisputed leader of the Arab world and one of the most prominent figures of what was then called the Third World.
A few days into the current war, the Islamic Republic has suffered severe blows, first and foremost the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Even if the regime proves capable of sustaining a protracted conflict, the military superiority of Israel and America is absolute: almost any country would struggle to match the combined force of the world’s most powerful military alongside the strongest army in the Middle East.
The core question, then, is not only about how the war proceeds militarily, but about its political endgame. And here the situation is far more complicated. If the Iranian regime indeed collapses — or undergoes “Venezuelization,” meaning it remains formally intact while bending to American dictates — Israel will claim a prominent seat at the table shaping a new Middle Eastern order.
Such an order, based on the unchecked use of force, could grant Israel wider latitude not only to “restrain” Iran but to accelerate annexation in the West Bank and crush the Gaza Strip. It is very possible, too, that Netanyahu’s timing is tied to his desire to forestall any transition to a second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza. After the Israeli prime minister has emerged as such an intimate partner in the Iran war, it is hard to see how Trump could pressure him to withdraw from half the Strip without completely disarming Hamas.
But if the larger objective fails — if the Iranian regime survives — Israel’s decision to wage a joint war with the United States may backfire.
Support for the bombing campaign among the U.S. public is weak, and critics are already calling it “an Israeli war.” Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson has argued that the “war broke out because Israel wanted it to break out … it did not break out in the name of American national security interests.” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy warned that “the idea that Netanyahu can decide where America goes to war, risking the lives of hundreds and perhaps thousands of American soldiers, is chilling.”
Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially suggested the United States joined only because Israel struck first — remarks he later walked back to align with Trump, who quickly sought to dismiss this notion (“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand”). Should the war fail to achieve its aims and result in dozens of American casualties, Israel could well become the scapegoat in the United States.
In Israel, officials have welcomed the harsh rhetoric against Iran coming from Gulf states that were attacked, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain, interpreting it as a sign of converging interests against the common enemy, Iran. But that may misread reality.
A Saudi commentator recently complained on Al-Araby that Iran was attacking targets in neighboring Gulf states instead of hitting Israel harder, citing a strike in Beit Shemesh as an example of a successful Iranian attack. In other words, the “Saudi partner” Israel longs for wants more Israeli casualties. Another Saudi commentator told Al Jazeera that despite anger at Iran, the Kingdom “cannot join an Israeli attack.”
At present, Iran appears to be betting that its attacks on Gulf states, along with its closure of the Strait of Hormuz — despite the negative sentiment these acts generate across the Arab world — will pressure those states to urge the United States to end the war. There is some logic in this; in fact, Qatar and the UAE are reportedly pressuring Trump to end the war as quickly as possible. The Gulf states may be angry at Iran, but they may also blame Israel for starting this war.
If the war ends due to such pressure, Iran will struggle to declare victory after absorbing heavy losses. But Israel’s image as the all-powerful state in the Middle East may be weakened rather than strengthened. After all, it will have deployed its full military might, enlisted its great U.S. ally, and still failed to achieve its political goals.
Less than a week into the war, it is impossible to speak of “the day after.” For now, what can be said is that Israel has defied a 70-year practice, hitching its wagon to the largest imperial power in the world and openly waging war alongside it. This may seem like a strategic wager, but the fact that Israel chose to erase the distance between itself and the United States — perceived by many in the Arab world as the primary source of the region’s instability — may ultimately work against it.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.