What is Israel’s objective?
Israel’s regional moves, initiated following 7 October 2023 and escalating into a full-scale war with direct US involvement by 28 February 2026, represent an attempt to establish a new status quo along a broad geopolitical axis stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf of Basra, from the Red Sea to the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb and the Arabian Sea. This multi-dimensional strategy, in which military expansion, control of energy resources and demographic engineering tools are mobilized in concert, is aimed at becoming a ‘proxy hegemonic power’ by exploiting power vacuums in the Middle East.
At the heart of Israel’s new regional strategy lies the dismantling of Iran—which it has designated as its greatest enemy—and its network of proxy forces. In this context, Tel Aviv has succeeded in integrating American military power into its own strategy, thereby risking an open-ended and protracted regional war launched on 28 February. Washington, however, has been swept into a position serving Tel Aviv’s priorities due to the extreme vagueness of the ultimate strategic objective in this war.
The target set for Israel’s military attack on Iran, with US support, goes beyond a mere act of military weakening, focusing instead on the total elimination of Tehran’s leadership, command-and-control, deterrence and institutional survival capabilities. In this regard, the Tel Aviv-Washington alliance aims to paralyze Iran’s asymmetric force projection at its source by destroying integrated air defense systems, ballistic missile production facilities and nuclear infrastructure in critical locations such as Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Kerman. Another move in the alliance’s military doctrine involves conducting systematic decapitation operations targeting the Revolutionary Guide and senior Revolutionary Guards generals, with the aim of collapsing the regime’s ‘centre of gravity’.