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Analysis: Middle East in Iranian Eyes

CrossFireArabia
April 19, 2026

CROSSFIREARABIA – During the Israeli Genocide on Gaza Benjamin Netanyahu used to stand up and say with a smirk: ‘We are changing the face of the Middle East’.

Upbeat about murdering the women and children of Gaza from the late 2023 onwards, he was talking about the further normalization of the Arab world as established by the Abraham Accords, establish an economic order under Israel’s hegemony and end Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis while clipping the wings of Iran.

Of course, Netanyahu’s face soon changed, albeit two-and-a-half years later, when Iran and Hezbollah were forced into a war generated by Israel and the USA on 29 February, 2026. While Iran got a battering, in the next 39 days, US ships and military bases in the Gulf and Jordan received such a hammering that soon forced US President Donald Trump to plead for a ceasefire.

In this war, Israel received a great shock, being attacked literally on an hourly and daily basis with its buildings, military basis and infrastructure taking directs hits while its millions of people living in underground shelters around-the-clock.

To use a metaphor Tel Aviv’s nose was being rubbed in the sand in a way that has never been imagined by Netanyahu nor his ilk of extremist right wing fascist politicians who started calling for the expulsion of Gaza Palestinians from their homeland ever since the Israeli genocide on them since 7 October, 2023.

Today’s Netanyahu’s vision of a new Middle East has been drastically changed, thrown in his face in fact! Iran’s political stances and its missiles have changed things around. The US and Israel were not able to change the current Iranian government in Iran despite killing the country’s spiritual leader Ali Khameini, have not ended the country’s nuclear program nor ended its ballistic missiles.

So what is Netanyahu talking about? Yes, today there is clearly a new Middle East emerging but it is not according to Netanyahu’s eyes nor his wishful thinking. If anybody should be ‘celebrating’ it is clearly Iran, it’s government, revolutionary guard, its Generals, officers and soldiers who are very probably changing the face of the Middle East and may even be setting the map of how the region should look like in form from now on.

From day one of the war, Trump started running scared despite his outlandish mutterings! He came to realize quickly that Netanyahu and the Mossad pushed him against Iran, convincing him it would be an easy fight and the government there would fall like a pack of cards. Trump since, started kicking himself as he finally fell to Netanyahu’s squinted prism to go after that country. Netanyahu kept pushing for this wild step since the 1990s through previous US presidents from Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

But they did not listen to him however, Trump fell into the trap and maybe this is why he is now privately kicking himself because he basically sent the globe into an economic tailspin and soaring exorbitant oil prices, a potentially deep recession and financial chaos.

In this war Netanyahu may have shot himself in the foot. His alliance with the USA juxtaposed by Hezbollah whose fighters laid dormant since November 2024 when it stopped firing at Tel Aviv was a big surprise to the latter. Israel had previously thought that Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire out of weakness and thus their entry into military action was unexpected. Hezbollah kept the military pressure on for six more days after Washington signed off with Iran and beating the Israeli army into submission.

On day 46 Trump intervened calling on the Israeli army to stop fighting Hezbollah. He had ulterior motive, he wanted to extract a normalization agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel; their ambassadors had just started meeting in Washington at the invitation of the US State Department in an upbeat atmosphere and inline for a final agreement to establish an accord between Tel Aviv and Beirut alongside the ones signed between Israel and four Arab states, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco starting September 2020.

Thus a normalization agreement would be a feather in Trump’s cap, a sort of prestige move for the US president. But his pressure may have been seen as a life-saving formula. Trump was saving Israel from Netanyahu’s insistence that his army to keep fighting in southern Lebanon. Its fight has already cost Israel at least 13 soldiers who were killed, more than 500 injured and more than 100 topnotch Merkava tanks destroyed. Israeli towns and cities were being hammered from the north.

Israel was being beaten from the north. Its towns, cities and military bases again were wide-open to incoming rockets from Lebanon and were not being deflected. It was a war that had to be stopped. This time Trump insisted. If a ceasefire with Iran was going to stick, then Netanyahu had to be forced to make his soldiers stop their fight in Lebanon.

Thus for the time being Netanyahu’s hand lie in check. Yet in the long run his dream for a new Middle East with Israel playing a central part in it may have been halted. After all, no Gulf or even Arab states now would think of normalizing with Israel despite the fact that Lebanon is being forced into it, but even for then its early days.

Netanyahu can kiss goodbye his long-life attempt to sign a normalization accord with Saudi Arabia for instance, a kingdom which is seen as a “major puller” in the Arab and Muslim world. It has already said that normalization is off the table with Israel. The Gulf has been disappointed in this war because it showed that America were not able to protect them from Iranian missiles that targeted their infrastructure as well the US military bases strewn across the region.

Netanyahu has lost on the economic level as well. His country stands economically devastated, army in ruins as admitted to by the Israeli chief of staff Eyal Zamir, and the dream of opening an ‘economic Middle East’ is definitely dashed for the time being.

America, as Trump knows, is left to pick up the pieces of a tattered world caused by war any choas in a region that is vital to the global system.

News

Trump Threatens to Leave NATO But Can He?

CrossFireArabia
April 2, 2026

US President Donald Trump on Thursday urged the members of NATO to gather the courage to send naval vessels to the Strait of Hormuz, again disparaging the longtime military alliance.

Asked why he had not mentioned NATO in his Wednesday night address to the nation, Trump said it was not a NATO speech but that he had referenced the strait and those who were absent. “They gotta get guts and go in and just send your ships up there and enjoy it,” he told Politico.

Pressed on whether he was frustrated with the alliance, Trump said: “I couldn’t care less. I didn’t need them.”

He added: “But if I ever did need them, they wouldn’t be there.”

NATO has invoked Article 5 – its collective defense clause – just once in its history, after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. NATO allies have criticized Trump for starting the war on Iran without consulting them.

The remarks are the latest in a string of pointed criticisms Trump has directed at NATO over its response to the Strait of Hormuz crisis. He has previously called alliance members “cowards” and, in a separate interview with British daily The Telegraph, described NATO as a “paper tiger” and said leaving the alliance was “beyond reconsideration.”

Leaving NATO unilaterally – a move Trump has hinted at since his first term – would face significant legal hurdles. A 2023 law bars any US president from withdrawing from the alliance without the backing of a two-thirds majority in the US Senate.

The strait, through which roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily, has been effectively disrupted since early March following Iranian measures taken in retaliation for the US-Israeli offensive on Iran that began on Feb. 28.

Trump has repeatedly urged European allies and Gulf states to take a more active role in securing the strait, arguing that countries dependent on its oil should bear responsibility for reopening it.

Trump will meet with NATO chief Mark Rutte in Washington next week, according to The Wall Street Journal. Anadolu

Analyses Uncategorized

How Will Trump Get Out of This War?

CrossFireArabia
March 14, 2026

By Ismail Al Sharif

“We are in an advanced position, and we will decide when the war will end,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister.

President Donald Trump, in coordination with the Zionist entity, is igniting a regional war with Iran which is an unprecedented event in the region. Analysis of the true motives behind this fateful decision vary. One school of thought believes the strategic objective lies in controlling Iranian oil wealth and containing growing Chinese influence. Another links this to the Epstein affair, based on claims of Zionist pressure threatening to expose him to sensitive information.

A third school believes that Trump is tied to political commitments made to Miriam Adelson, who generously funded his election campaign. Some go even further, alleging that Trump, known for his transactional negotiating style, received substantial financial compensation for engaging in this war. In a related context however, recent reports indicate that Trump himself has blamed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and several close advisors for instigating this latest military adventure.

Whatever the true motives behind igniting this war, one path seems almost certain to end it: Trump will hold a press conference declaring a unilateral and absolute victory. The precise timing of this declaration remains uncertain.

But the decision to cease hostilities does not rest with Trump alone; it is contingent upon the agreement of two other key parties: Tehran and Israel.

Israel shows no desire to end this war, as it is the primary beneficiary of its continuation. It systematically seeks to dismantle the structure of the Islamic Republic and sees no harm in the regime’s collapse leading to widespread chaos engulfing Iran and the entire region.

If Trump fails to restrain Netanyahu, the latter will not hesitate to continue his military operations even after any official American declaration of a ceasefire. This may explain why Trump declared that any settlement to end the conflict would only be possible with Netanyahu’s consent and explicit blessing.

However, the Zionist entity might feign acceptance of a ceasefire while its Mossad intelligence apparatus works behind the scenes to fuel separatist and rebellious sentiments among ethnic minorities within Iran, such as the Kurds and Balouchis, potentially threatening the cohesion of the Iranian state from within. In response, Tehran would have no choice but to continue targeting the entity, which would then retaliate swiftly, potentially drawing Trump back into a cycle of military confrontation.

Adding to Trump’s predicament is the possibility that he might ultimately declare a ceasefire unilaterally, without any fundamental change to the structure of the Iranian regime, and without extracting any genuine concessions from Tehran regarding halting uranium enrichment, dismantling its missile program, or severing its ties with regional allies—the very pretexts used to launch the war.

Even more dangerous is the fact that the Islamic Republic’s resilience and its emergence from this crisis with its system intact will make it a unique and exceptional model: The first country to challenge American hegemony and emerge unscathed. This could encourage other countries suffering under the weight of Trump’s policies or ambitions—such as Venezuela and Greenland—to adopt resistance as a path, even if they lack Iran’s military capabilities.

It seems to me that President Trump may be following in the footsteps of his predecessor, George W. Bush, when he famously declared victory in 2003 from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was then—as it is today—at the eye of the American military storm. It is worth recalling here that Bush’s speech was a highly symbolic and premature declaration, one that was quickly contradicted by events, as the war on Iraqi soil continued for nearly a decade afterward.

The war has exhausted Iran and burdened it with immense hardships, making it seriously seek a cessation of hostilities. However, it simultaneously finds itself in direct confrontation with American will. Iranian officials have made it clear that any agreement to a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations is contingent upon receiving firm guarantees from Washington and Tel Aviv that the aggression will not be repeated. Should Tehran manage to withstand and overcome this phase, it is likely to add to its list of demands one of which is the lifting of some of the sanctions imposed upon it.

Therefore, it appears that the Iranian strategy is essentially based on a policy of systematic attrition; simultaneously exhausting the United States and Israel by driving oil prices to high levels and closing the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s vital energy artery. This would impose heavy economic burdens that might ultimately compel Washington to reconsider its calculations and agree to a ceasefire.

In short, Trump will not be in a position to deliver a victory speech in the next week or two, and any such declaration without genuine cooperation from Israel and Iran will amount to nothing more than empty rhetoric devoid of any real substance on the ground. There is no doubt that President Trump has put himself, his country, and the entire region in a very complex strategic predicament, from which the way out may not be as easy as those who made the decision to go to war imagine.

This analysis was originally written in Arabic and reprinted in crossfirearabia.com

Analyses Opinion

‘This War is Not Hours’

CrossFireArabia
March 11, 2026

By Dr Hasan Al Dajah

Events in the Middle East are accelerating, foreshadowing a comprehensive regional explosion. However, a deeper reading of the situation transcends the traditional narrative that attempts to portray the conflict as an “Arab-Iranian” or sectarian one that transcends borders. The reality emerging today from the rubble of burning military bases and oil facilities is clear: this war is not ours; it is a major strategic war led by Washington with direct Israeli planning, aimed at reshaping the region to serve absolute Western hegemony, even if the price is turning Arab capitals into arenas of destruction and settling scores in which we have no stake.

For years, the United States promoted the concept of “deterrence” and providing protection to allied countries in exchange for billions of dollars in arms deals and a massive military presence. However, Operation “True Promise 5” and the subsequent precise Iranian strikes have stripped away the fig leaf from these claims. Field reports indicate that US bases, once described as “impregnable fortresses,” have become vulnerable targets themselves, requiring protection. At Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, damage to the AN/FPS-132 early warning radar and the AN/TPY-2 facility resulted in a near-total paralysis of surveillance capabilities.

In Bahrain, home to the Fifth Fleet, the destruction of satellite communications stations led to a loss of centralized control over naval vessels. In Kuwait and the UAE, the casualties and the destruction of F-15 fighter jets revealed that advanced US technology was incapable of countering waves of drones and missiles that disrupted even civilian air traffic and struck vital facilities at Jebel Ali Port, reducing military installations and oil depots to ashes.

This resounding failure raises a fundamental question about the viability of relying on a “security umbrella” that has failed to protect its own perimeter and has become a security burden, attracting attacks rather than repelling them. This is no longer mere political analysis; it has become a public admission emanating from the corridors of Washington. What Senator Lindsey Graham recently revealed represents the pinnacle of terrifying candor. He confirmed that the true agenda is not about spreading “democracy” or protecting allies, but rather about embroiling the Gulf States as the military front and human cannon fodder in a direct confrontation with Iran. This is a prelude to seizing oil wells and managing the region’s wealth for Washington’s benefit, thus paying the price for the American presence, while simultaneously imposing full normalization and strangling China’s energy lifeline.

The United States’ recent attempt to seek refuge in French bases in the UAE, such as Al Dhafra Air Base and Camp de la Paix, is nothing more than a desperate effort to spread losses and hide behind the European umbrella after the deterioration of the original American bases. However, even these shared bases have not been immune to attack.

The strikes have proven that any facility supporting Western operations is a legitimate target in this zero-sum confrontation. The effects of this war extend beyond the military arena, striking at the very heart of daily life. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz has triggered seismic repercussions in global markets. The price of a barrel of oil jumped to around $116, an increase of more than $38, while gas prices in Europe rose by more than €25, and oil shipping costs soared by over 90 per cent, foreshadowing an uncontrollable wave of global inflation.

The United States, which today expresses its “displeasure” at Israel exceeding expectations in striking Iranian fuel depots, is not acting out of a desire for peace, but rather out of fear that the economic game will backfire on it and on oil markets, which cannot withstand the loss of Gulf supplies, especially given the 11 per cent increase in gasoline prices in America and the 70 per cent increase in jet fuel prices. What is happening in Jebel Ali, Manama, Doha, and Kuwait is not a struggle to defend Arab sovereignty, but rather a settling of scores between major powers that want to use Arab land as a chessboard.

The American bases that are groaning today under the weight of the strikes have proven to be a “paper tiger” when it comes to protecting allies, and that their presence is nothing but a magnet for crises that drains Arab capabilities for the benefit of foreign agendas that do not take into account Arab national security.

Arab capitals must realize, before it’s too late, that the “illusion of protection” has completely evaporated under the weight of missiles and drones. To be drawn into Israel’s desire to destroy the region, and to accommodate American ambitions to seize energy resources to finance its expansionist policies, is strategic suicide by any measure.

This raging war is not our war, and staying out of the inferno of this manufactured conflict is the only way to ensure that our wealth and the future of our generations do not become fuel for the schemes of Netanyahu, Trump, and the war profiteers behind them.

The time has come to seriously seek a self-reliant regional security system, one that originates from within the continent and is based on the shared interests of the region’s countries, far removed from foreign bases that today lack even the most basic military effectiveness and have become a strategic burden that itself needs protection after its defensive vulnerabilities have been exposed.

False American promises only increase our subservience and dependence on a modern colonial project that sees Arabs as nothing more than insignificant figures on its debt list, or mere cheap tools in its proxy wars. The true protection of homelands begins today with disengaging from these destructive agendas, and with the explicit acknowledgment that bases that have failed to protect their own walls and platforms will never be a shield for others.

Hasan Al-Dajah, a Professor of Strategic Studies at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, is a columnist in the Jordan Times.

Opinion

The US General Who Swallowed His Own Truth

CrossFireArabia
March 6, 2026

By Jassem Al-Azzawi

General Dan Kaine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a confidential warning to President Trump with the utmost candor—the kind of candor that democracies rely on and empires routinely ignore. He said: “We don’t have enough ammunition to win this war. It’s not going to be pretty.” This warning wasn’t born of cowardice; it was the last vestige of institutional integrity that still flickers within the halls of American military power.

Trump’s response was that of a circus clown, not a commander-in-chief. Through his “Truth Social” platform—that distorted mirror of American political life—he dismissed the warning with the arrogance of a street vendor, saying: “Oh, no, no, no. If we do it, we’ll win easily.” Thus, a sober assessment became mere publicity, and caution a lie.

But the biggest lie came later. When Kaine’s warning leaked, Trump not only rejected it but completely reversed it. With the confidence of a man who has never been held accountable for anything, he told the American public the general had said the exact opposite—that the United States had plenty of missiles, munitions, and everything else. “That’s not what he said at all,” Trump declared, putting words of false victory in the mouth of a man who had offered only warnings.

And General Cain remained silent

This silence is not just a footnote in this story; it is the story itself. By remaining silent, Cain allowed the American public to absorb the falsehood as truth. He did not say: “No, Mr. President, that’s not what I said.” He did not invoke his oath, nor the soldiers who would pay with their lives for the gap between political rhetoric and logistical reality. He chose the safety of silence over the danger of truth, and in doing so, he betrayed not only himself but the Republic. This is the rot at the heart of American militarism.

As historian Andrew Bacevich has long warned, the professional military has become more of an instrument of imperial ambition than a defender of democratic values, with senior officers more concerned with their next post than with the Constitution they swore to uphold. Kaine’s silence was not a mere slip of the tongue; it was a symptom of a deeper malaise.

The logistical picture Kaine described in private was not theoretical; the calculations were unforgiving.

Current stockpiles of interceptor missiles and precision munitions could not sustain a prolonged air campaign against a country three times the size of Iraq. The Wall Street Journal documented a “worrying gap” in U.S. missile stockpiles, noting that reserves were “far below” the requirements of intensive and sustained operations. Pentagon contractors were instructed to “double or even quadruple” production of Patriot, SM-6, and precision-strike missiles—a tacit admission that the arsenal built for Cold War scenarios is inadequate for the war being fought today.

Consider Gaza: Israel, the most heavily armed military power in the Middle East, with complete air and naval dominance, has turned a tiny coastal strip into a moon-like landscape of devastation over two and a half years, yet it has not broken Hamas. Gaza is only 37 kilometers long. Iran, on the other hand, is a nation of 90 million people, with mountainous terrain, strategic depth, fortified infrastructure, and a combat-hardened Revolutionary Guard. The idea that it will collapse under a few weeks of American airstrikes is not strategy; it is wishful thinking. “God help us if this continues, if it gets to four weeks,” Colonel Daniel Davis warned on the Deep Dive podcast. He was speaking in military terms, and the same prayer applies. Politically.

When Trump now raises the prospect of sending ground troops, he is not escalating from a position of strength, but rather improvising from a position of denial. Admitting that air power and missiles alone cannot achieve the political objective is an admission that the original objective was never honestly assessed. This is the pattern of American wars at the end of an empire: Glittering promises, disastrous calculations, and then a grim and horrific reckoning paid in blood by those who had no seat at the table where the lies were told.

The costs are already piling up—not just in the currency of munitions and riches, but in the currency that empires always ultimately spend and regret most: credibility. America’s word, already devalued by two decades of contrived justifications for war, is getting cheaper by the day.

Democracies can tolerate miscalculations, and they can tolerate bad presidents, but what they cannot long tolerate is the institutionalization of a culture where the truth is whispered behind closed doors and swallowed whole in front of cameras. When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff allows his words to be weaponized for propaganda — when the man in charge of counting missiles refuses to correct a president who pretends they are plentiful — something far greater than military credibility collapses.

What is crumbling is the social contract between the governed and those who send them to their deaths.

Caine’s silence was not cautious; it was complicity. And in an imperial machine suffering from a shortage of ammunition and a shortage of truth, complicity is the only resource that seems inexhaustible, because when the missiles finally run out, slogans won’t replace them.

Reality will.

Al-Azzawi is an Iraqi writer who contributed this piece to Al Rai Al Youm which was translated and appeared in crossfire.com