Can Netanyahu Reshape The Middle East?

By Mohammad Abu Rumman

What happened on October 7th was not merely a surprise, bloody attack for Israel—it marked a watershed moment that redefined its security doctrine and the limits of its regional project. It was a moment strikingly similar to what the events of September 11th represented for the United States. Immediately after the launch of the Al Aqsa Flood operation, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted no time in drawing a direct comparison to 9/11.

This comparison was not just rhetorical or meant to rally emotions. It reflects a much deeper strategic vision. Netanyahu is using the shock of the attack to advance an old-new Israeli project: restructuring the region’s security and political landscape in a way that guarantees Israel near-absolute security in a demilitarised environment, free of any threats.

After the 9/11 attacks, US neoconservatives in the White House seized the moment to implement the “Project for the New American Century”—a vision developed by think tanks and figures like Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Founded in 1997, the project aimed to reshape the global order and maintain American dominance, with Iraq, Syria, and Iran at the heart of its ambitions. September 11th became the ideal pretext to accelerate this vision through the invasion of Iraq and redrawing the map of the Middle East.

Today, Netanyahu is doing something strikingly similar. He sees the Al Aqsa Flood as a historic opportunity to accelerate his own regional vision—one that is no longer confined to Gaza but extends to southern Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Gaza again, and even the political dynamics in Turkey and several Arab states.

Those following Netanyahu’s rhetoric—and that of his ministers—can clearly see that Israel is no longer content with merely deterring its enemies. It now seeks to re-engineer the entire geopolitical landscape of the region. In southern Syria, Netanyahu stated clearly: “We will not allow any military forces threatening our borders to remain in southern Syria, and we will not return to the old equation.” Defence minister Yoav Gallant added that Israel will reshape the reality there to ensure its strategic security—which essentially means preventing the Syrian army from returning to its previous positions and enforcing a safe corridor between Sweida and the Golan Heights in line with Israeli interests.

In Lebanon, the objective has shifted from merely weakening Hizbollah to explicitly disarming the group entirely and eliminating its missile capabilities, which pose a direct threat to Israel.

In Gaza, the discussion is no longer about reconstruction or humanitarian relief. The conversation centers on the “day after”—meaning the complete removal of Hamas, disarmament of all resistance forces, and transforming Gaza into a powerless entity under full Israeli security control.

Even the proposed Palestinian state mentioned in the recent New York declaration is envisioned as a demilitarized one—to appease Netanyahu. Yet, he still won’t accept it. Israel has already moved past the idea of any sovereign Palestinian state. What’s “allowed”, according to current Israeli thinking, are fragmented cantons and voluntary or forced displacement of Palestinians.

As for Iran, Israel’s confrontation with Tehran is open-ended, aiming to reduce its missile capabilities and eliminate its strategic threat. It is also plausible that Israel’s strategic vision may extend to shaping the political scene in Turkey—possibly by pushing for a government more aligned with Israeli interests—and exerting pressure on certain Arab states, even those officially labeled as “friendly” to Tel Aviv.

This project is no longer tied to Netanyahu’s personal political survival. It has become close to a national consensus among Israeli institutions and political elites. Leaders like Yair Lapid or Naftali Bennett are unlikely to reverse course or return Israel to the pre-October 8th status quo.

What’s unfolding today isn’t a series of short-term security tactics. It’s a long-term strategic plan aimed at reshaping the regional balance of power and cementing Israel’s status as the undisputed regional superpower.

The author is a columnist for the Jordan Times

CrossFireArabia

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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The Lebanese-Israeli Accord is War on The Resistance

Dr. Nassib Hateit

The announcement of the Lebanese-Israeli agreement, sponsored by the United States, constitutes a dangerous turning point in the war against the Lebanese resistance and its people. It is intended to compensate for the occupation army’s field failures in achieving its objectives of disarming and eliminating the resistance, after suffering significant moral and military losses and realizing its inability to achieve these illegitimate goals on its own.

The enemy’s impotence has driven it to resort to using the Lebanese government, whose legitimacy and constitutionality are still guaranteed by the resistance forces (in the dual alliance). This provides the government with a constitutional—albeit immoral—cover for cooperating with the enemy and legitimizing a comprehensive war against the resistance. It also involves assembling a US-led military coalition that includes Arab and international (multinational) parties, mirroring the “Desert Storm” coalition led by the United States against Iraq.

The aim is to support a beleaguered Israel and eliminate the resistance in all its cultural, economic, social, and health-related aspects, not just its military ones. This agreement confirms the beginning of a new phase of confrontation following the end of the “Hundred Days’ War,” in which Israel failed to achieve its objectives, despite the resistance suffering approximately 20,000 martyrs and wounded, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, and the destruction and occupation of more than 50 villages and towns.

This shifts the war from a confrontation between Israel and the Lebanese resistance to a war between the resistance and an international coalition led by Washington, with the participation of Israel and the Lebanese government and opens the door for the involvement of Arab and foreign armies, most notably the new Syrian regime army, which US President Trump announced he would task with eliminating the resistance.

This will be facilitated by the Lebanese government’s initiative to formally request the support of Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government for the Lebanese army and will force the resistance to fight on three fronts:

Against the Israeli enemy in the south

Against the US military, multinational forces, and the Lebanese army within Lebanon

Against the Syrian army and takfiri groups in the Bekaa Valley. The US has effectively nullified the first clause of the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran through the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations in Washington, placing the memorandum in a precarious position that threatens its collapse. According to its terms, violating the first clause invalidates the remaining clauses. This precariousness is further evidenced by the timing of the agreement’s announcement, coinciding with the US airstrikes in the Strait of Hormuz. It reinforces concerns that the 60-day period the US needs to reassess its position might be shortened or canceled, or that it could be exploited to forcibly separate the Lebanese and Iranian tracks through the Lebanese government. The aim would be to break the military and political alliance between the resistance and Tehran, and to further fragment the axis, isolating its members and preventing them from uniting their forces to compensate for the imbalance of power.

This agreement grants the Israeli enemy a clean bill of health by the Lebanese government, implicitly acknowledging that the invasion was a response to threats from the resistance. It also includes a pledge not to file any complaints or seek compensation before international institutions and courts—a clever preemptive move by the enemy to shield its military and political officials from accountability and represents a complete surrender by the Lebanese government, which has become something akin to the “12th Division” of the occupation army.

The initial response to this surrender document should be as follows:

Restraining this government and ceasing the sin of granting it legitimacy and constitutionality. It must abandon its hesitation, ambiguity, and incompetence in ministerial representation, the latest glaring example of which is passing the agreement’s presentation to the cabinet without objection from the resistance ministers, who merely issued a statement that condemns them more than it exonerates them.

The Islamic Republic of Iran should take the initiative to freeze the implementation of the MoU with the United States, given that Washington is responsible for this agreement, which contradicts the memorandum’s first clause. The Resistance Axis (Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen) has declared its complete readiness to engage in the new round of war, united and collectively, without delay, and to move from a state of “finger on trigger” to one of “fire.” Otherwise, the Axis’s fronts will fall one by one, as Israel and America plan.

The coming phase is the most dangerous since the outbreak of war in 2023 due to the expansion of the fronts and the multiplicity of parties participating against the Resistance. It comes after a war of attrition and exhaustion that has plagued the Resistance and its support base for three years, necessitating the formulation of a new defensive strategy. The Lebanese government must be considered an “unfriendly” entity, having made the Resistance a common enemy for itself and Israel. Participation in a government that collaborates with the enemy against the Resistance is unjustifiable, as experience has proven its futility.

We are not weak… the proof is the global mobilization against us, which cannot be countered with motorcycles and statements!

Manage the power you possess wisely! Take advantage of the enemy’s motto against you (kill first) and kill the government “politically” and bring it down to prevent it from carrying out its plans!

Dr Hateit  is a Lebanese writer. An architect by training from Nabatieh in south of Lebanon he teaches at the Institute of Fine Arts in the Lebanese University and is a political columnist contributing to different Lebanese newspapers. This article is published in the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website and reprinted in crossfirearabia.com.

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The Story Behind The War on Iran

By Ismail Al-Sharif

Whenever the United States moved closer to improving relations with Iran, the war criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu would call for a war, relying on repeated claims that Tehran was seeking to acquire a nuclear bomb to use against him. However, these claims were never supported by conclusive evidence. Iran consistently denied seeking nuclear weapons, granted UN inspectors complete freedom to inspect its nuclear facilities, and its Supreme Leader issued a religious edict prohibiting the production of nuclear weapons.

Under President Obama, things seemed to be moving toward de-escalation. In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed, under which Iran committed to a framework for peaceful uranium enrichment, without any mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Germany and France were tasked with monitoring the Iranian nuclear program through established monitoring and verification mechanisms. In return, the economic sanctions imposed on Iran were supposed to be partially eased. However, this commitment was not fulfilled.

The sanctions continued to tighten their grip on the Iranian people, and the war criminal Netanyahu continued his intense pressure on Washington to withdraw from the agreement, while also continuing assassinations targeting Iranian scientists.

For years, the nuclear weapons narrative was used as a pretext for targeting Iran, while the real objective to seek regime change there because of Tehran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Despite the widespread destruction inflicted on these two movements, attempts to eliminate them have failed.

The major shift came with Trump’s rise to power in 2017, when he tore up the nuclear agreement and reignited tensions. This move was accompanied by a broad media campaign against Iran that focused on internal issues, particularly women’s rights, and accusations of Mossad infiltration into Iran to instigate unrest similar to what occurred in Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia.

These movements became known as “color revolutions,” where the CIA encouraged affiliated organizations to adopt specific colors as symbols of protest; pink in Georgia and orange in Ukraine, in an attempt to replicate the same model in Iran. This strategy relies on exploiting genuine grievances to ignite unrest, then co-opting the protests, infiltrating their ranks, and pushing them toward escalation, so that they are met with government repression. The resulting public anger is then redirected toward a path aimed at overthrowing the government and installing one loyal to the United States.

With Biden assuming the presidency in 2021, succeeding Trump, the momentum toward a direct military confrontation with Iran diminished, but sanctions remained in place, and negotiations did not resume. Today, with Trump back on the scene, the Israeli entity sees the moment as opportune to reopen the issue.

The “maximum pressure” campaign led to a sharp decline in the Iranian economy, and thousands of impoverished people and students took to the streets to protest living conditions. With the intervention and support of Mossad and the CIA, some protests escalated into violent clashes, met with a harsh security response that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protesters and police officers. These events were quickly used as a new pretext for escalating tensions with Iran.

Once the government regained control, the warmongers reverted to their initial argument: the claim of a military nuclear program, a scenario reminiscent of what happened in Iraq when allegations of weapons of mass destruction were used as justification for the invasion, before their non-existence was proven. Demands then intensified for halting the Iranian missile program, which, if implemented, would render Tehran unable to defend itself against Israel.

Israel does not tolerate the existence of a regional power challenging its hegemony. It seeks to expand its influence and topple any regime it perceives as a challenge. From this perspective, Iran is not the final target; attention is also turning to Türkiye. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described Turkey as the “new Iran” during his address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, calling for the weakening of other regional powers after Iran and asserting that defense alone is insufficient to guarantee protection, whether with or without European support.

His speech also included mentions of countries like Egypt, Qatar, and Pakistan as potential adversaries, within a strategy based on waging continuous wars. This approach aligns with what is described as the American expansionist approach, articulated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference in clearly expansionist language and colonialist terms, aimed at consolidating the Israeli entity’s hegemony over the region within a broader distribution of roles in the global balance of power.

The war criminal Netanyahu has finally succeeded in dragging the United States into a confrontation with Iran. Just as the fall of Iraq constituted a turning point that disrupted the Arab-Israeli balance of power, opening the door to a wave of unrest and revolutions, and leading to the disintegration of the regional order and the escalation of sectarian conflicts; If Iran falls, it will not be a passing or isolated event, but a pivotal turning point leading to complete Zionist hegemony over the region, a hegemony that will not stop at the borders of Iran, but will later extend to other countries.

This opinion appeared in the Arabic Addustour newspaper.

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