19.06.2025

Zionism’s dual war aims

Netanyahu has been wanting to attack Iran for years. Now that the war with Iran has begun, he can finish the job in Gaza and the West Bank, warns Moshé Machover

Israel’s war of aggression against Iran is anything but surprising. In fact, I predicted all this back in 2012, when I explained why Israel, specifically under the Netanyahu government, is drawn towards attacking Iran.¹ Since then it has been a recurring theme in Netanyahu’s call on the United States to allow Israel to do the job. He has repeatedly made ‘weapons of mass destruction’ speeches, alleging that Iran is preparing to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.

Long time

The reason why this war has taken so long to come about is that previous US administrations were wary of allowing Israel to start a conflict that may end up in a larger war involving the US itself. America still recalls the bitter experience of previous conflicts in which it got entangled, and which ended not too happily for America - although much less happily for the people attacked (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so forth). However, the current president is less inhibited. Donald Trump had the reputation of being ‘peace-loving’, preferring economic warfare to the armed kind; but he is notoriously volatile. There is no doubt that he personally gave the green light to Israel’s latest unsurprising attack.

I think it is useful to explain the background to this, because it is not just a coincidental act on Israel’s part; so let us look at the motivation and the reasoning behind it. It is a consequence - an offshoot - of Israel’s overriding strategic aim: to complete the Zionist project of colonisation over the whole Land of Israel, which includes, of course, the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River at the very least.

In fact, the actual coveted area is ill-defined, but is ultimately rooted in the divine promise of Jehovah to Abraham in the book of Genesis.² Completing the Zionist project of colonisation implies, entails and necessitates territorial expansion (that is to say, annexing added bits of the ‘promised land’) and ethnic cleansing over the whole of this territory. The Zionist project aims to establish a Jewish nation-state in that land, which means that it must be inhabited by a stable, large majority of Jews, whereas the Palestinian, or non-Jewish, inhabitants are surplus to requirements, and must be got rid of one way or another.

Another precondition for completing the Zionist project is securing regional hegemony. Israel must be a regional superpower, an absolute nuclear monopolist. Israel must not only be the only regional state in possession of nuclear weapons: it must be the only state in the region that has the potential to develop nuclear bombs. That is to say, Israel aims at becoming a monopolist of not only nuclear weapons, but nuclear capability, which is not the same thing at all, because there are several states in the world that have nuclear capability, but are, for one reason or another, not actually in possession of nuclear weapons. These aims - territorial expansion, ethnic cleansing and securing regional hegemony - are interconnected. One follows from the other and, in fact, one entails the other.

One reason why the completion of the Zionist project requires Israel to be a local hegemon on the most elementary level is that colonisation provokes opposition by other states. There is obviously regional opposition to the expansion of the state of Israel. Therefore, because colonisation and the completion of the Zionist project entails territorial expansion, it provokes opposition by the neighbouring states, at whose expense Israel is expanding, or who regard Israel’s expansion as a potential danger to themselves. It also provokes opposition and solidarity by the people in the surrounding region - that is to say, most of the population in the Arab east, who are motivated by solidarity with the Palestinian people and who are therefore pushing their governments, despite themselves, to show some opposition. So, on this very elementary level, Israel needs to be militarily superior to the surrounding states.

Natural mother

On a more profound historical level, the Zionist project has always been in need of imperialist sponsorship. It did not have a natural mother country, and therefore it needed a surrogate. Compare this to a local mafioso who needs to sell himself to a global mafia boss, for whom Israel is the best choice for regional deputy. So Israel needs the protection of the dominant hegemonic imperialist state - currently the United States - granting it the position of ‘sheriff’ or deputy in the Middle East region. There is a mutual interest, therefore, in promoting Israel as a powerful local ally and enforcer: that is to say, Israel has a particular value for imperialism. While the USA is an extremely powerful state, in order to secure its interests in the region, it must rely on a local powerful state - so Israel has an inbuilt need to show itself as the most powerful and most ruthless.

The local wars provoked by Israel are an excellent opportunity for expansion and ethnic cleansing in order to further the strategic aim of the completion of the Zionist project of colonisation. To illustrate this: The Guardian of June 14 has the headline, “Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza”.³ In other words, in the weeks before Israel’s assault on Iran, there had been an increasing acceptance (albeit too little, too late) by western governments of the pressure from below to ‘do something’ about the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. In the UK, France and even Germany there was mounting pressure to demand that Israel call a halt to the genocide.

But now that Israel has attacked Iran on behalf of the western imperialist ‘community’, the pressure has been eased. Its strikes on Iran ease the pressure on it to end the starvation of Gazans. This is an illustration of how a regional war - in this case quite openly initiated by Israel - helps to further the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing.

Here is another headline, this time from Haaretz: “Gaza residents say IDF escalated attacks in the Strip since Israel launched war on Iran.” Israel’s genocidal stranglehold on Gaza has not abated, now that it is concentrating on its war with Iran. Not at all - actually quite the contrary. Since Israel’s attack on Iran is condoned by western imperialist states, the pressure on it has been eased, at least for the moment, and this enables it to perpetrate ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip - and no doubt very soon in the West Bank too - without incurring diplomatic pressure on the part of the western powers.

So Israel’s war on Iran serves two of its aims: asserting regional hegemony; and serving as a smokescreen, behind which ethnic cleansing can proceed all the more ruthlessly. But then, of course, as Keir Starmer keeps reminding us, “Israel has the right to defend itself”.

Articles by Yassamine Mather and Moshé Machover are edited versions of their June 15 Online Communist Forum talks.

See ‘Netanyahu’s war wish’ Weekly Worker February 9 2012: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/900/netanyahus-war-wish.↩︎
See ‘Promise myth as template’ Weekly Worker July 25 2024: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1501/promise-myth-as-template.↩︎
.www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/14/israel-attack-on-iran-slows-diplomatic-momentum-to-halt-gaza-war.↩︎