23 June 2025
A police officer stands in front of a building hit by an Iranian missile in central Israel on 22 June.
Anadolu ImagesThis article has been updated since initial publication.
On Monday evening, Iran carried out a retaliatory strike on a US military base in Qatar and other US forces in the region were on alert.
Although the response appears to have been choreographed to avoid further direct escalation with the United States, the danger is by no means past.
Already, within hours of the US attack on Iranian nuclear sites Sunday, Iran responded with a sustained volley of missiles against Israel.
Videos of devastation soon emerged – at least the ones that escaped Israeli military censorship.
Iran sent another barrage of missiles 24 hours later, showing that Israel’s bombing hasn’t degraded Tehran’s ability to send millions of Israelis fleeing to shelters.
Israel is paralyzed. Less visible is the suffering it is inflicting on Iranians.By Saturday, Israeli strikes had killed 430 people and injured more than 3,500, according to the Iranian health ministry.
In Israel, 24 people are dead and another 500 wounded.
US enters the war
Despite fears of another endless war, US Vice President J.D. Vance insisted, “We have no interest in a protracted conflict, we have no interest in boots on the ground.”
He claimed the US attack was “surgical,” tailored to an “American national interest.”
But the Trump administration lies by default. Even if Vance is sincere, Washington is not in control.“If they’ve destroyed the nuclear program then they can now end the hostility towards Iran. They have no more concerns anymore,” said Mohammad Marandi, speaking from Tehran on Danny Haiphong’s geopolitics livestream on Sunday evening.
People in Israel “will start asking Netanyahu, ‘then why is Iran still bombing us? Let’s have a ceasefire,’” Marandi predicted.
He doubts the US did real damage to Iran’s nuclear sites, or that this was even the goal.
I joined the program, as did Sharmine Narwani of The Cradle and Greg Stoker, a military analyst with Mint Press News.
You can watch the video here:
Will Israel ever stop?
At a Sunday press conference, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue bombing Iran, while claiming it would not be a “war of attrition.”
“We won’t pursue our actions beyond what is needed to achieve [the goals], but we also won’t finish too soon,” the Israeli prime minister said.
Netanyahu has said similar things about Gaza for almost two years so we can be confident that he won’t stop the assault on Iran unless the price Israel pays is intolerable.
Israel may be getting there.
What are Netanyahu’s objectives? Obviously not the nuclear program, since his military claims it is significantly damaged, if not obliterated.
Netanyahu also cited Iran’s ballistic missiles. But who seriously believes Israel can destroy a decades-old missile program in days?
Instead, Netanyahu revealed his real purpose with bombs.
On Monday, Israel attacked what defense minister Israel Katz called “regime targets and governmental repression bodies” in Tehran.
They included the gate of Tehran’s Evin prison, undoubtedly an attempt to present Israel as a savior of Iran’s political opposition and foment a popular uprising.
This is an attempt at regime change.Israel will likely try – at some point – to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the US will likely assist in the attempt.
What else do Netanyahu’s vows to “change the face” and “redraw the map” of the Middle East mean?
Toppling the Islamic Republic and ending its support for resistance movements, especially in Palestine, is the objective.
After the Western-backed toppling of the Syrian government, Israel’s assassination of Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah and genocide in Gaza, Iran is next on the hit list.
Trump failed to annihilate Yemen’s Ansarullah movement in March, but that has not stopped this war.
By Sunday night Trump was back to threatening regime change in Iran.
What will China and Russia do?
If Israel and the US succeed in regime-changing Iran, they will not stop there. Washington will intensify its efforts against Russia and China.
Iran and Russia are near neighbors and strategic partners.
Iran is also a key link in China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, which the United States is keen to disrupt.
Whether the Israeli-American attack on Iran – which poses an enormous threat to their interests – will shock Moscow and Beijing out of their apparent complacency, remains to be seen.
Strong speeches in the United Nations Security Council will not do the trick.
Khamenei sent his foreign minister to Moscow on Monday.
Russia said its partnership with Iran is “unbreakable” and affirmed Iran’s right to self-defense. But there is no word on whether this will translate into military support.
Direct Russian or Chinese involvement risks turning the conflict Israel started into a direct superpower confrontation. But doing nothing is just as dangerous while the United States and Israel burn the planet unchecked.
How much damage did US bombs do?
Trump boasts his strikes did “monumental damage” to Iran’s nuclear sites.
But former US marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter called them “an act of political theater” and a military failure.
The three sites – at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo – had been emptied long ago, Ritter told Andrew Napolitano on his Judging Freedom show on Sunday.
The US strikes had “zero impact,” said Ritter, who did bomb damage assessment for the US military during the 1991 war with Iraq.
Greg Stoker told Haiphong that “the strike package” was designed and practiced under President Joe Biden, underscoring how there is “no daylight between Democratic and Republican foreign policy.”
Whatever the result, Stoker believes it will spur nuclear proliferation.
“You basically just de-incentivize everyone from not having a nuke,” Stoker said.
Where and how will Iran respond?
Iran’s attack on the US base in Qatar appears to have been calculated to solve a dilemma.
“Iran needs to make the Americans understand that if they attack Iran, they have to pay a heavy price,” Marandi said. But Iran does not want to face a full-scale hot war with the United States.
“Iran coordinated the attacks on the American air base in Qatar with Qatari officials and gave advanced notice that attacks were coming to minimize casualties,” The New York Times reported, citing Iranian officials.
“The officials said Iran symbolically needed to strike back at the US but at the same time carry it out in a way that allowed all sides an exit ramp,” the Times added.
That appears to suit Washington. The Trump administration was anticipating Tehran would retaliate “and the president does not want more military engagement in the region,” CNN reported, citing a senior White House official on Monday.
I told Haiphong that many people in the region, among them prominent Lebanese analyst Nasser Kandil, see logic in Iran focusing on Israel, the most dangerous US asset in the region.
Weakening Israel’s ability to perpetrate genocide in Gaza may be the most strategic use of Iran’s force.
It also makes it politically harder for Trump to continue direct US involvement. A big hit against US bases may give Washington domestic cover to escalate.
But Iran’s deterrence also has to be weighed against maintaining global support.
“Iran wants to make sure that the international community, the Global South and its allies across the world see it as the responsible actor,” Marandi said. “We don’t want to destroy the global economy.”
Even US-backed Arab regimes traditionally at odds with Tehran have strongly condemned Israel’s war of aggression. Iran won’t be quick to alienate them by threatening their oil routes.
Yet Iran’s decision to proceed with direct attacks on at least one US base may indicate that Tehran recognizes the existential nature of the threat it faces and that moderating its response in the past has only invited more attacks from its enemies.Even if it ends, it’s not over
With the UN and the “international community” failing to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza and aggressions against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and now Iran, Tehran sees its only real defense as being to hit back hard.
Negotiations are a dead end. Washington and its European vassals use talks as a cover for perfidy and when they do reach agreements, break them at will.
On the other side of the ledger, Israel may be close to its pain threshold: It has reportedly sent messages to Iran via the US and Arab partners that it wants to seize on the supposed success of the US strikes to end the war it started within days.
If Iran’s direct retaliation against the US remains limited, there could be a choreographed end to this conflagration. But there should be no illusion that it would end the war. And all this could be another deception.
For Israel and the United States, a truce is just a continuation of war by other means: Any agreement would not stop the Israeli-American regime-change attempts through subversion, assassination, terrorism and an eventual renewal of outright military assault.
So Netanyahu’s war of attrition is already here, unless Iran strikes a blow strong enough to deter Israel and Washington.
Indeed, according to analyst Justin Podur, we’re already in a far worse situation.
“We are not on the brink of a catastrophe, we are in a catastrophe,” Podur said on his latest “sit rep” report.
“We are not on the brink of genocide in Gaza, we are in a genocide in Gaza. We are not on the brink of World War III, we are in World War III and we are not on the brink of nuclear war, we are in a nuclear war.”
When nuclear-armed states bomb nuclear facilities, Podur said, “you’re in a nuclear war.”
Add new comment