In the early morning hours of June 22, the United States directly bombed Iranian territory for the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. It struck Iran’s three main nuclear facilities — Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan — with 14 “bunker-buster” bombs, the heaviest weaponry in the U.S. conventional arsenal. Trump came to Benjamin Netanyahu’s rescue to put an end to his war against Iran which had begun to slide almost irremediably into a protracted war of attrition.
Israel’s “preemptive strike” against Iran and the attacks by the United States signify a leap in the decomposition of the proclaimed “rules-based order,” a masquerade by which imperialist interventions have been given “legitimacy” by UN Security Council resolutions and NATO. Trump has now dispensed with this minimal cover and claims for the United States — the greatest military power on the planet — the right to intervene and attack whoever it deems appropriate. This reinforcement of militarism in foreign policy is expressed domestically by a strong Bonapartist and authoritarian turn, the most recent example being the Senate vote that gave Trump free rein to use military force at will.
True to the rhetorical exuberance of the extreme Right, which tries to disguise its weaknesses and contradictions with bluster, Trump boasted that so-called operation “Midnight Hammer” had been a resounding success of “historic” proportions and that it had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Ironically, Trump thanked the Iranian regime for responding to the bombing with a choreographed attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, which passed without much fanfare. And he announced on Truth Social that what he dubbed the “12-Day War” had come to an end.
Three Sides, Three Victories?
But while the President was bragging on social media, a leak to the press of a Pentagon intelligence report — which White House officials quickly attributed to the “deep state” — recognized that the damage was limited and that it had only succeeded in delaying Iran’s nuclear development by a few months. This was confirmed by senators on the defense committee, citing classified information.
This forced Trump, along with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the head of the CIA to spend hours attacking the media and counteracting — unsuccessfully — the doubts about the true scope of the bombings. As a Washington Post editorial points out, the difference between “total destruction,” “degradation,” and “minor damage” is not semantic, but determines the outcome of the conflict with Iran and, by extension, U.S. strategy in the Middle East.
This ambiguity explains in part why, since the ceasefire came into effect, a strange situation has arisen in which all three parties involved are claiming victory. Trump and Netanyahu claim to have destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. Meanwhile, the ayatollah regime organizes demonstrations to celebrate having resisted the “Great Satan” (the United States) and having attacked “Little Satan” (Israel) with relative success. It defiantly claims that its nuclear development remains intact, while at the same time using the attacks to reinforce its repressive apparatus. For its part, Israel has resumed bombing Lebanon and continues to massacre Palestinians in Gaza, while Trump pushes for a new ceasefire with Hamas that is still being negotiated in Cairo as part of his attempt to revive the Abraham Accords.
Although it is impossible to know with certainty the extent of the damage inflicted, there are at least three elements — noted by analysts such as John Mearsheimer, for example — which support the hypothesis that the combination of operations “Rising Lion” (Israel) and “Midnight Hammer” (United States) has delayed but not destroyed the Iranian nuclear program.
Firstly, since it was an announced attack, it is highly likely that the Iranian regime moved and secured at least some of the nuclear material, whether it was equipment or enriched uranium storage — recall that Iran was subject to UN agency inspections so those nuclear locations were widely known (and spied upon). Second, Iran may have other, unknown, nuclear facilities. The third and most important element is that even though Israel has executed several scientists related to the nuclear program, Iran has already acquired the scientific and technical know-how necessary for uranium enrichment.
This would be the actual basis for the defiant speeches of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top leader of the Islamic Republic, who reiterated his willingness to open negotiations but claimed his country’s sovereign right to nuclear development. Nevertheless, the consequences of these events go beyond Iran. Recent history provides two examples that help to understand the dilemmas that the Iranian regime may face.
The fate of Libyan dictator Muammar Kadafi, who shocked the world in 2003 when he dismantled his nuclear and chemical weapons and was overthrown and killed by NATO intervention in 2011, continues to serve as a warning. To avert the “Libyan danger” and armor itself against possible attacks by western powers, the Iranian regime could choose to follow the example of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and accelerate the development of nuclear weapons. This lesson extends beyond the Middle East and calls into question the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a tool to maintain the exclusive possession of nuclear weapons as much as possible.
Although Netanyahu appeared euphoric over the events in Iran, even going so far as to resume public appearances which he had abandoned due to his low popularity, his strategic problems have not disappeared after the war in Iran or the global display of the unconditional alliance with the United States.
It is true that attacking the Islamic Republic had internal consensus; indeed, Israeli public opinion shifted to the right following the attack, showing high support for the military incursion and the “great victory” announced by Bibi after the U.S. bombing of Iran. The “12-Day War” allowed him to consolidate a moment of national unity and to reinforce his precarious government coalition in which the extreme Right makes its participation contingent on achieving the “maximum objectives” of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the recolonization of the West Bank, and ultimately the “final solution” of expelling the Palestinian population.
Netanyahu managed to momentarily take the spotlight off the genocide in Gaza, which is liquidating the international legitimacy of the State of Israel and for which Netanyahu himself has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court — a move which Trump has said should be immediately dropped, calling it a “ridiculous witch hunt.” Once again, the chorus of Israel’s imperialist allies, alongside the groveling government of Javier Milei, supported this umpteenth war initiated by Netanyahu; yet again they appeal to Israel’s sacrosanct “right to defend itself,” invoked always and everywhere to give cover for Israel’s criminal actions against the Palestinian people and the Zionist state’s aggressions against countries like Iran. The alignment is such that the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, went so far as to claim that Israel was doing the “dirty work” of the West, even though ultimately it was the “West” (the United States) that had to finish the job in Iran.
Riding the wave of optimism, Netanyahu is considering bringing forward the elections, a risky gamble because there are no polls indicating that he could win. In fact, there are already signs that his window of opportunity could close prematurely, that is, before the 90 days between the dissolution of the current government and a new election.
Beyond the ups and downs of the current situation, Netanyahu’s political crisis is an expression of the strategic crisis of the State of Israel that the war with Iran has brought back to the forefront.
As the bomb dust clears, gaps are beginning to appear in the objectives Israel proclaimed at the beginning of the war: to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, eliminate its ballistic missile capability, and end collaboration with the so-called “axis of resistance.” To this Defense Minister Israel Katz added assassinating supreme leader Ali Khamenei and triggering a process of “regime change.” This is a dangerous gamble for the Zionist state. The eventual collapse of the current Iranian regime could lead to national disintegration or to a better prepared and organized sector of institutions such as the Revolutionary Guard taking power and installing an even more radical regime in opposition to the United States and Israel.
Moreover, historical tradition counts. The Iranian national identity has been forged in the resistance to colonial oppression (first against Britain and then against the United States) dating back to the “constitutional revolution” of 1905-11; the resistance to the CIA coup against the nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953; and finally the 1979 revolution against the Shah, commandeered by Ruhollah Khomeini who installed a reactionary, capitalist and oppressive regime, but one with significant contradictions with the imperialist powers and Israel. This explains why even the most abused opponents of the theocratic regime rejected the war and Israel’s intervention.
Netanyahu’s War Gamble and Political Crisis
As in the genocidal war in Gaza — where Israel, despite its military superiority and its capacity for destruction and annihilation, has not been able to defeat Hamas — in Iran Israel has also failed to achieve the maximum objectives it set for itself and which are clearly beyond the reach of an air war, even if the United States joins the attack.
Israel’s unconditional alliance with the United States has a double meaning. On the one hand, it strengthens Israel’s military power in the region, but at the same time it shows its dependence as a client state. Without the United States, Israel could not have attacked Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. This dependence was highlighted by Trump himself when he challenged Bibi for wanting to violate the ceasefire, showing who has the final say.
There’s no question about Israel’s military superiority or the capabilities of its intelligence services. Israel took over Iranian airspace and showed how far it had infiltrated the ayatollahs’ regime. However, the brief war with Iran left images of destruction in Tel Aviv and other major cities that call into question the rebuilding of Israel’s deterrent capability, which was seriously breached by Hamas’s actions on October 7, 2023. Iran demonstrated that Israel is vulnerable, despite having the “Iron Dome” — a sophisticated anti-missile shield — and counting on the collaboration of regional Arab allies who provide it with everything from intelligence to the use of airspace. Several buildings were reduced to rubble, 29 Israeli civilians were killed in the attacks, almost 10,000 had to leave their homes, and more than 40,000 requested state compensation for damage. On top of that, all economic and daily activity was halted and the sounds of sirens did not stop for several nights in a row.
The disparity between the ambitious objectives (unrealistic, according to several analysts) and the concrete achievements is disappointing Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing partners such as Bezalel Smotrich, the fascist finance minister who is agitating for genocide in Gaza, who declared that the “great victory” had left a “bitter taste” and that it was not enough to remove an “immediate existential threat.”
Divided Strategies for an Empire in Decline
The comings and goings, the 180-degree turns in the position of the White House, and Trump’s pragmatic turns express the divisions in the government between “neoconservative hawks,” “realists,” and “neo-isolationists,” which include the figures of the MAGA movement. These sectors have no institutional weight and are marginal in the White House, although they have some allies in Congress such as the colorful right-wing representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. But their importance is not in the palace but in the “street,” or more precisely in the digital public space, where they have millions of followers and speak to the 53 percent of Trump voters who oppose getting involved in a war with Iran.
In this dispute, Trump seems to have adopted an unsophisticated “hit hard and get out fast” strategy. The expectation seems to be that the brutal deployment of American military might will save the United States from having to get directly involved again in a forever war in the Middle East, or propping up foreign-imposed governments and funding “nation-building” experiments after the disastrous experiences of invasion, “regime change,” and military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The same logic is behind its policy of trying to end the Russian-Ukrainian (NATO) war. In all cases, the difficulties Trump encounters in imposing terms and conditions on allies and enemies alike speaks to the loss of leadership by U.S. imperialism.
Some analysts compare the situation in Iran to different moments in America’s protracted confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s regime. The specter of the 2003 Iraq War — which the United States sold to both its population and the world as necessary to destroy the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Hussein never had — hovers over the White House. At that time, then Republican president George W. Bush, encouraged by the neoconservatives who influenced his administration, saw an easy triumph against a dictator hated by his people. The war was supposedly going to be a “walk in the park” given the enormous imperialist military superiority, and the people of Iraq were going to welcome the invading troops as “liberators.”
As we know, that happy ending never occurred. The occupation of Iraq went on for a decade (and for two decades in Afghanistan), absorbing the military, economic, and political resources of the United States. During those years it lost positions to China in regions such as Latin America. The “regime change” in Iraq not only led to a bloody civil war, in which U.S. troops were involved, but also had adverse effects undesired by imperialism, Israel, and its Arab allies. Among them were the strengthening of Iran’s regional power and the emergence of the Islamic State. In short, the “preventive war” strategy of Bush and the neoconservatives ended up further eroding U.S. hegemony in the context of the emergence of China as a competing power.
The fight over the most appropriate strategy to reverse the decline of U.S. leadership is replicated in other areas, such as the scandalous divorce between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which had as a backdrop tensions between “globalist” neoliberals like most Silicon Valley CEOs and the more protectionist wings.
Although it is too early to know how the situation will evolve, the “12-Day War” will undoubtedly have strategic consequences in a convulsive international situation, in which the decomposition of the “liberal order,” the hegemonic decline of the United States and the emergence of China as a rival, and other middle powers are boosting militarism and warlike tendencies. Trump compared the possible consequences of the attack on Iran to nothing less than the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Beyond the difference in scale with that horrific war crime, there is no decisive event — as was World War II or the American triumph in the Cold War — that can resolve the balance of power. This gives an unstable character not only to changing alliances but also to the situation as a whole.
For this reason, as revolutionary socialists, we do not give any support to the Iranian theocratic regime, but in the war we stand unconditionally for the defeat of its imperialist aggressors.
As shown by the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against genocide, which continues to develop despite harsh repression and persecution, the youth’s rejection of the militarism of the great powers, and the massive mobilizations that have begun in the United States against the brutal anti-immigrant policies of Donald Trump, these conditions are creating the basis for the emergence of a force from below that unites the confrontation with imperialism and its wars to the struggle to end the capitalist system.
This article was originally published in Spanish on June 29, 2025 in La Izquierda Diario