NYRB Joost Hiltermann What will come of the US igniting yet another war in the Middle East?

 

Fool’s Errands

Joost Hiltermann

What will come of the US igniting yet another war in the Middle East?

March 4, 2026

Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Images

A mosque standing near the ruins of a police headquarters destroyed in a US–Israeli airstrike, Tehran, Iran, March 2, 2026

It took Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu many years of persistent effort before he succeeded in finding a US president willing to help him realize his ambition to neutralize Iran, and maybe even end the Islamic Republic. Barack Obama pursued the diplomatic path, signing a nuclear deal in 2015. This was not to the liking of his successor, Donald Trump, who threw out the deal less than halfway through his first term. For the most part shunning military action (the notable exception being the US’s killing of Qasem Soleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander), he imposed heavy sanctions on Iran to force it to negotiate a deal more favorable to US and Israeli interests. Joe Biden opted once again for diplomacy, making a failed—some would say half-hearted—attempt at restoring the accord, and declined to join Israel when it fought with Iran in April and October 2024.

Now Netanyahu can at last cry victory. Whatever the outcome of the war he and President Trump have started, the US is deeply involved for now, and at the least Iran will almost certainly emerge with its power severely diminished. Attacking Iran with “the assistance of the United States” and its military, Netanyahu announced in an address on Sunday, “allows us to do what I have yearned to do for forty years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised—and this is what we shall do.”

It should be clear at the outset that this was a war of choice, with Iran posing no imminent threat to either Washington or Tel Aviv. Indeed, as The New York Times’s David Sanger rightly pointed out, the claims Trump made to justify the assault do not stand up to scrutiny. Iran was not close to producing a nuclear bomb and would still need years to manufacture ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. It had given no inkling of having immediate designs on US interests in the region, and in fact had once again conceded to sit down for negotiations—only to once again be betrayed. The US had already diminished—or “obliterated,” in Trump’s words—Iran’s main nuclear facilities last June, burying its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Israel, meanwhile, had decimated its air defenses, destroyed a number of missile sites, and killed senior military commanders and scientists. But all of this is beside the point. Both Israel and the US have long considered this adversarial regime’s existence a provocation, albeit for different reasons: say “Iran” in the US and many Americans are more likely to think “hostage crisis” than “nuclear weapons,” “ballistic missiles,” or “proxies running amok in the Middle East.”

Fathoming Trump’s motives for attacking Iran now is a fool’s errand. His stated reasoning does not wash, and he hardly seems to have a consistent line of thinking. But his actions doubtless reflect how little US military strategists still understand the power of Iranian nationalism, or indeed of Iran. In Washington’s blinkered view, possibly reinforced by the ease with which the US removed Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, it would be a swift, simple matter to decapitate the Iranian leadership and open the way toward the establishment of a regime more amenable to US and Israeli demands. But the US government is liable to underestimate the Iranian public’s enduring animosity toward foreign intervention. Most Iranians have hardly forgotten their country’s treatment at the hands of the US, going back to the violent CIA-engineered overthrow of the popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. They may hate the regime and may even try to seize the opportunity to topple it, but many are far from enthusiastic about the prospect of the US and Israel providing a military helping hand.

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Iran’s leaders have made miscalculations of their own. The biggest was to build an alliance—part of what they called their “forward defense”—with uncontrollable allies, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, whose motives do not necessarily include rushing to the aid of an embattled Islamic Republic. For the leaders in Tehran “forward defense” meant building up—but not using—the country’s own military capabilities and maintaining deterrence by encouraging its nonstate allies, when necessary, to remind Israel of Iran’s ability to retaliate: the rockets and drones Hezbollah fired from Lebanon could, and did, wreak havoc inside Israel. Yemen’s Houthis may not have been so effective in targeting Israel, but they managed to drive up the cost of global trade by paralyzing Red Sea commercial traffic. Hezbollah proved a trusted, willing, and disciplined partner—and later suffered for its loyalty. But Hamas had an altogether different priority, namely to do what Iran only said it would do—liberate Palestine—and to do so with Iran’s funds, weapons, and training, but in the case of Gaza in October 2023 without its consent.

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Hamas’s attack on Israel pushed Iran toward direct confrontation when it would have preferred to stay in the shadows. Hezbollah, too, found itself in a predicament: it dared not tempt Israel into all-out war, yet it felt the need to do something to maintain its credibility with its supporters. In all its actions, therefore, it signaled an intent to keep the conflict within manageable limits. (Regardless, the fighting caused destruction and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.) This approach came back to haunt it. Once Israel had pushed back Hamas, it turned its guns on Hezbollah and soon succeeded in decapitating the movement. Left exposed, Iran then suffered increasing damage to its own military capabilities—and its national pride—over the three rounds of war it fought with Israel in 2024 and 2025.

The current war has already done much greater harm. Iran is clearly inflicting less severe damage in Israel than in the previous round, but this may also be because it is directing its fire toward the Gulf Arab states as well—an indication that the leadership feels it is fighting for its survival. For now the missiles and drones keep flying, and the outcome may be determined by which lasts longer, Iran’s remaining weapons stocks or its opponents’ access to interceptors. Iran has one advantage: it seems to be able so far to absorb waves of US and Israeli attacks, whereas it may hope that a single strike of its own—destroying a major oil facility, say, or causing mass casualties—will change Arab states’ calculations and put pressure on Washington to end the war.

Even if Iran’s power in the region ends up severely curtailed, the regime might still survive. Indeed, its repressive apparatus at home could well intensify, crushing any hint of dissent among the sizable proportion of the Iranian people whose hatred of their leaders and executioners has been on full display. As we witnessed not even two months ago, the state is willing to go to great, cruel lengths to keep itself in power; the perpetrators of such bloodshed cannot risk defeat. The US has signaled no appetite to build up an alternative state, so it is possible that parts of the Revolutionary Guard will have the opportunity to reassert power.

If it does survive the war, the regime could also try to pivot to China as its primary external sponsor. It had already begun doing so before the latest upheaval, although it still clung to hopes for economic and trade relations with Europe and the US, despite stifling sanctions and the ongoing dispute over its nuclear program. For years there has been a lively debate in Iran about giving up on the West for better friends to the east. But many of Iran’s elites are Western-educated and generally value ties with the US and EU, and in any case trade with China never yielded enough revenue to sustain Iran on its own. The war could push Iran to depend more heavily on that relationship, though China is unlikely to embrace Iran unreservedly when its oil needs require it to have diverse suppliers, including Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states. Washington may rue an Iranian turn toward China, but Israel is likely to view the further attenuation of Iran’s relations with the West as a net gain.

If the regime falls, by contrast, all bets are off. Chaos would ensue in the absence of a readily available, organized, and legitimate (presumably secular) substitute for the Mullahs. There are bound to be many contenders, while Iran’s manifold ethnic and religious minorities will start straining to secure their own rights and autonomy.

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What will come of the US igniting yet another conflict in the Middle East? Having started a war unjustified by self-defense, and put US regional interests at risk in the process, Trump seems to have scored an own goal. If he expected the usual rallying-around-the-flag response from the US public, it did not come. A recent CNN poll found that 59 percent of the US public disapprove of the war. That number could climb if Iran succeeds in turning it into a war of attrition, with mounting costs to the US.

Full-throated support within the administration and Congress has come mainly from anti-Iran hardliners with strong pro-Israel inclinations. The administration has its own internal tensions between war hawks and high-ranking “restrainers” who want to limit the US’s global military footprint and are reluctant to embark on new, draining adventures overseas. As an institution, Congress, which according to the Constitution holds the power to declare war, has remained sidelined, relegated to debating resolutions ordering an end to hostilities that may or may not make it to the president’s desk and will surely be vetoed if they do.

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Especially consequential may be the alienation of Trump’s non-interventionist “America First” base. Tucker Carlson fulminated against the decision to go to war (“absolutely disgusting and evil”), as did Marjorie Taylor Greene. Nick Fuentes even counseled his followers not to vote in the midterm elections because of it, or, “if you do, vote for Democrats.” Others in the US saw in it yet another attempt by the president at diverting attention from the Epstein files.

The potential ramifications in the region, meanwhile, are ominous. They will be shaped in large part by Israel’s military primacy—but not necessarily in the ways Israel might wish. In 2025 Israel was engaged in hostilities in no fewer than seven countries or territories in the region. Those not touched took note all the same, including the United Arab Emirates, which was keen during the first Trump administration to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, even at the expense of collective Arab weight on the question of Palestine. Although the Israeli–Emirati bond remains strong, Gulf Arab states are now probably less inclined to formalize and expand their ties with Israel. It is one thing to trade and share surveillance technology and welcome Israeli tourists, but quite another to suddenly find oneself in a US-sanctioned Pax Israelica. This is especially so when the new power configuration is led by a country that tramples on its neighbors’ sovereignty (as it has in Qatar and Syria, for example) and offers protection in exchange for compliance, including what to Arab publics is a thick red line: acquiescence to the permanent subjugation of the Palestinians.

People in the region do tend to overestimate either their adversaries’ territorial ambitions—be they Iran’s or Israel’s—or their ability to realize them. But even the US’s allies in the Gulf, including the UAE, felt compelled to issue denunciations when Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Carlson in an interview that he would have no problem with Israel seizing much of the Middle East. (The Organization of Islamic Cooperation called the suggestion “dangerous and irresponsible.”) Netanyahu is overseeing a transformation in perceptions of Israel, which much of the Middle East has come to see not just as a usurper of Palestinian land but as an emerging hegemon, seeking to impose the balance of power it wants in the region. In addition to its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights (which it purports to have annexed), in the past couple of years Israel has also seized control of part of Lebanon and more of Syria.

US elections are rarely decided on the basis of foreign policy, but come the November midterms it is not hard to imagine Republicans paying some political price for Trump’s Middle East adventure—the precise sort of adventure he railed against as a candidate. By then Netanyahu could well have prevailed in yet another Israeli election, his political legacy secure and his three lingering court cases on corruption charges consigned to the dustbin of history. Arab autocrats, for their part, may accede to the trade corridors he envisions. But they also know that their own publics consider any collusion with Israel anathema, and Israel is sure to encounter much opposition, overt and covert. This is the emerging shape of Netanyahu’s long-ballyhooed “New Middle East.”