The war’s link to Gaza is not that Israel wanted to use the war with Iran as a distraction from Gaza, but rather that the 7 October attack launched by Hamas and the subsequent conflict with the wider “axis of resistance” led to a shift towards a much higher risk tolerance and confrontational posture on Israel’s part towards Iran and the axis. An Israeli F-16 takes off for a mission against targets in Iran.
IDF Spokesperson’s Office
Both during and after the brief war that Israel waged against Iran, one line of analysis suggested that the war was launched by Israel as an attempt to distract global attention from its war in Gaza. For instance, leftist academic Assal Rad (who previously worked with the National Iranian American Council that encouraged engagement with the Islamic Republic) wrote on 19 June: “If you are talking about Iran without saying a thing about Gaza, then you don’t even understand what’s going on. Israel started a war with Iran to distract from its atrocities against Palestinians and continue its destruction across the region.” Similarly, in a recent assessment of the war, Aaron Bastani argued that Netanyahu “sought to deflect attention from the ongoing genocide in Gaza, while attempting to relieve domestic political pressure.”
The link to Gaza is also secondary to the root of the conflict between Israel and Iran—a root that is the result of Iranian decision-makers’ ideological and strategic choices.
While there is a link to Gaza in the case of this war, this link is not what that these commentators suppose. The link to Gaza is also secondary to the root of the conflict between Israel and Iran—a root that is the result of Iranian decision-makers’ ideological and strategic choices. By way of preface, the following analysis is not to be taken as an endorsement of specific Israeli policy choices towards Gaza or Iran, but simply to explain why the notion that what is now informally dubbed the ‘Twelve Day War’ cannot be reasonably seen as driven by a motive to distract from Israeli actions in Gaza.
Put simply, the root of the conflict is explained by long-standing Israeli concerns, which far predate this round of fighting or 7 October 2023, that the Iranian government seeks Israel’s destruction, and that the nuclear program is one of the means by which it seeks to realise that destruction. Contrary to what German-British journalist James Jackson suggests, such concerns are not merely based on a controversy nearly 20 years ago about the exact translation of then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s remarks in which he reportedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, but a constant and long-standing stream of rhetoric from Iran and the Iranian-backed ‘axis of resistance.’ Besides the more familiar ‘Death to Israel’ chants, one also finds routine use of phrases like ‘the temporary entity’ (Arabic: al-kayan al-mu’aqqat’) and ‘the entity will vanish’ to refer to Israel and its supposed coming demise.
Realising that this commitment to ending Israel’s existence is a sincere conviction on the part of Iran and the ‘resistance axis’ does not mean that one has to believe that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons in order to blow up Israel in a final apocalyptic battle. Rather, Iran’s most likely long-game hope was that the groups it supported in the ‘resistance axis’ could deter Israeli attacks on Iran while also eventually bringing about Israel’s collapse through continuously hitting away at it (or ‘death by a thousand cuts’, to borrow an idiom). Of course, that approach to confronting Israel has now taken a serious hit.
Amid all these setbacks for Iran and the “resistance axis,” Israel finally decided last month to attack Iran’s nuclear program, military leadership and other state assets because it saw an opportunity to do so and a risk worth taking.
Ultimately, this stance that the Iranian government takes towards Israel is an ideological choice made by the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an alternative world, the Islamic Republic from its inception could have decided to simply cut ties with Israel and leave the hostility at that level, making clear that there would be no restoration of ties barring, say, the establishment of a Palestinian state. In such a world, it is hard to imagine that Israel would have seen Iran as a threat. Consider for comparison Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The country has an Islamist government that is more hardline in its system of governance than that found in Iran, boycotts relations with Israel and clearly has no interest in establishing ties with it, and yet Israel does not carry out strikes against it, invest significant resources in trying to infiltrate the country or repeatedly sound the alarm about Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as being a threat. Why is that? Not because the two countries are in cahoots, but simply because the Taliban does not make the concept of destroying Israel as a centre-piece of its foreign policy.
Meanwhile, the war’s link to Gaza is not that Israel wanted to use the war with Iran as a distraction from Gaza, but rather that the 7 October attack launched by Hamas and the subsequent conflict with the wider ‘axis of resistance’ led to a shift towards a much higher risk tolerance and confrontational posture on Israel’s part towards Iran and the axis. Partly, the scale of the killing on 7 October has motivated this shift in behaviour, but also mistakes and failings on the part of the axis. In particular, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which arguably constituted Iran’s most important ally in the axis and main ‘forward defence’ line to deter Israel from attacking Iran, tried to engage in a strategy of calibrated pressure on Israel to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, rather than use its strongest assets right away in a bid to inflict maximum damage. In the end, Hezbollah handed the initiative to Israel to escalate, causing massive losses to Hezbollah and forcing the group to back down from its insistence on tying the Lebanon front to a ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah has agreed to a ceasefire arrangement that is frankly one-sided and a humiliating defeat for the group, and did nothing to intervene in the recent war between Israel and Iran, signifying the massive waste of Iranian investment in the group and failure of Iran’s strategy on the Lebanon front.
Meanwhile, pro-Iranian factions in Iraq and Yemen’s Houthis have proven unable to inflict enough damage on Israel to force a reconsideration of calculations, the Iranian-allied Assad regime collapsed in December 2024, and last year Iran ultimately failed to consistently hit Israel hard in response to Israel’s strikes on Iranian territory, Iranian personnel in Syria and elsewhere and key allies of Iran like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Appreciating the real root of the tensions in particular should make one realise that the conflict between Israel and Iran is far from over despite the ceasefire effectively imposed by Donald Trump.
And so, amid all these setbacks for Iran and the ‘resistance axis’, Israel finally decided last month to attack Iran’s nuclear program, military leadership and other state assets because it saw an opportunity to do so and a risk worth taking.
As can be seen, this analysis of why Israel finally went to war with Iran does not require one to endorse or oppose Israeli policies and decision-making, but simply understand the long-standing root of the conflict and the more immediate circumstances that led Israel to take the risk it did. Appreciating the real root of the tensions in particular should make one realise that the conflict between Israel and Iran is far from over despite the ceasefire effectively imposed by Donald Trump. Rather, so long as Israel’s destruction remains a cornerstone of the Iranian government’s foreign policy, there is a high risk of future Israeli strikes on Iran. The Iranian government, for its part, could try to break its international isolation on this issue and seek to reverse the immense economic damage it has suffered over the decades by dropping the focus on Israel and the whole ‘axis of resistance’ concept, but it is clear that the Iranian leadership is still ideologically committed to these ideas and broader ‘anti-Western’ sentiment.
In short, one can best summarise the problem in the words of prominent Iranian-American commentator Sohrab Ahmari (who was opposed to U.S. involvement in the war and particularly critical of the talk of ‘regime change’ that emerged during the war): “Can I tell you how stupid and self-destructive the Iranian regime’s Israel obsession has been? It can’t be overstated.”
Published originally on July 1, 2023.
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Israel’s War with Iran: A Distraction from Gaza? – Middle East Forum
