Iran, Israel, & the Logic of Escalation

In June 2025, direct military confrontation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the State of Israel marked a rupture in the strategic order of the Middle East. On June 13, Israel launched a series of aerial strikes on Iranian targets in Tehran, Kermanshah, and Mashhad, resulting in over 200 deaths and widespread infrastructural damage.^[1] Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles into Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Haifa, causing further casualties and underscoring the unprecedented scale of the exchange. This conflict arose in the context of a global system in which deterrence—the threat of force as policy—has increasingly replaced diplomacy, and in which legal norms are subordinated to strategic interests. The erosion of multilateral frameworks, the militarization of policy, and the entrenchment of asymmetrical alliances have normalized a landscape in which escalation is expected, even managed.

The historical relationship between Israel and Iran has long been marked by dramatic reversals. Before 1979, under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran was one of only two majority-Muslim states to recognize Israel de facto; the other was Turkey. Israel and Iran cooperated extensively on intelligence-sharing, arms transfers, and regional containment strategies, particularly in response to the rise of Arab nationalism in Egypt and Iraq. This arrangement was enabled by Cold War security logics and facilitated by the United States, which considered both countries vital regional allies. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, however, precipitated a complete reorientation of Iranian foreign policy. The newly established Islamic Republic severed ties with Israel, delegitimized it as an extension of American imperialism, and redefined its own geopolitical identity through support for Palestinian resistance and ideological opposition to Zionism. Over the following decades, Iran positioned itself as a central node in an anti-Israel axis, supporting groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israeli policymakers increasingly regarded Iran as their most formidable long-term adversary.

Notwithstanding the antagonistic rhetoric and proxy engagements that have defined Israeli-Iranian relations since 1979, direct confrontation between the two states remained relatively rare until the current escalation. The timing of this shift coincides with the collapse of a multilateral diplomatic initiative aimed at recognizing Palestinian statehood. France and Saudi Arabia had been preparing a summit in early June 2025 to reintroduce Palestinian sovereignty onto the global agenda.^[2] This initiative was forestalled by Israel’s strikes on Iran, which were justified publicly by claims of imminent nuclear proliferation. In response, Western governments largely abandoned the diplomatic track and reverted to a familiar security script—framing Israel as a beleaguered democracy under existential threat and Iran as an outlaw state acting outside the norms of international conduct.

Despite repeated assertions from Israeli officials— (most prominently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu— ) that Iran is actively racing toward nuclear weaponization, the available evidence does not support this claim. According to concurrent assessments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran is enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, which is below the 90 percent threshold typically associated with weapons-grade material.^[3] Moreover, no credible intelligence indicates that Iran has undertaken the additional engineering work required for warhead development or reliable delivery systems. While Iran’s accumulation of enriched uranium may serve as a form of strategic leverage, it does not, in itself, constitute an active weapons program.

The effects of the current escalation have been especially devastating to civilians, with Tehran the epicenter of fear and dislocation. Eyewitness accounts from the capital describe frantic attempts to flee the city amid massive traffic jams and fuel shortages. While Israeli strikes have hit urban areas (including a hospital in Kermanshah and a government-linked building in a busy commercial square), the Iranian government has failed to implement basic civil protections: reporting from Mediapart reveals that Iranians have no access to bomb shelters, air raid sirens, or coordinated emergency response. Civil society figures describe an atmosphere of paralysis and despair, as state messaging emphasizes martyrdom rather than civilian safety. This transforms vulnerability into a tool for stirring national confidence while offering little in the way of actual protection.^[4]

In the international arena, one of the most revealing shifts has been the collapse of French diplomatic autonomy. President Emmanuel Macron, who had previously positioned himself as a potential mediator in Middle Eastern affairs, responded to the June 13 Israeli strikes by affirming Israel’s “right to live free from the threat of annihilation,” while offering no acknowledgment of the strikes’ civilian toll in Iran or Gaza. Shortly afterward, Macron postponed a high-profile conference on Palestinian recognition that he was scheduled to co-chair with the Saudi crown prince, effectively sidelining the issue amid renewed conflict. This rhetorical and strategic repositioning marked a break with France’s traditional foreign policy, which—under both socialist and conservative governments—sought to maintain critical distance from U.S.-Israeli security alignment. As journalist Ilyes Ramdani has reported, Macron’s shift drew sharp criticism from observers such as Jean-Paul Chagnollaud and Bernard Hourcade, who described it as a “political rupture” and a capitulation to a neoconservative posture more often associated with early 2000s U.S. foreign policy.^[5] The European response signals a reversion to an Atlanticist consensus in which Israeli military action is granted political legitimacy, while Palestinian statehood is quietly dropped from the agenda.

Equally striking is the relative stability of global oil markets amid this escalation. Brent crude rose modestly following the initial strikes but returned to pre-conflict levels within days.^[6] This is largely due to the continued operation of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-third of the world’s seaborne oil supply flows.^[7] Both Iran and Israel have so far avoided actions that would disrupt the Strait or damage key infrastructure nodes such as Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export terminal. Analysts suggest this restraint is not incidental but strategic: a recognition by both parties that interfering with global energy flows would incur disproportionate economic and diplomatic costs. The result is a paradoxical configuration in which significant military escalation can proceed unimpeded, provided it does not threaten the stability of commodity markets or global supply chains. Here, markets function as instruments of selective concern responding to disruptions in logistics, rather than to mass death or displacement or as neutral indicators of geopolitical risk.

The Israeli strikes may have inadvertently weakened the very safeguards they were intended to reinforce. By attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel has disrupted the IAEA’s ability to inspect and monitor key sites such as Natanz and Fordow. Surveillance has been suspended or significantly reduced, limiting international visibility into Iran’s nuclear activities.^[8] In response, Iranian officials have threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—a move that would dismantle the last formal mechanisms of international oversight. Meanwhile, political discourse within Iran has begun to shift. Figures who once adhered to the country’s long-standing taboo against nuclear weapons are now publicly questioning that restraint. The previous posture of maintaining technical capacity without pursuing a weapon may give way to a more openly confrontational stance. Rather than halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel’s campaign has obscured them further and expanded the domestic political space for weaponization.

Domestically, the Islamic Republic remains durable, despite intensifying economic pressures and widespread public discontent. The regime’s coercive institutions—notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—retain significant control over the state apparatus, and there is no unified opposition movement capable of mounting a credible challenge. Analysts such as Ali Vaez have emphasized the regime’s preference for strategic patience and symbolic confrontation over either capitulation or full-scale escalation.^[9] This disposition is rooted in historical memory, particularly the Iran-Iraq War, which serves as a foundational narrative of survival through sacrifice. Ayatollah Khamenei, who assumed power in 1989, has consistently framed resilience in the face of siege as a political virtue. Within this paradigm, limited retaliation and carefully managed escalation are interpreted as evidence of ideological consistency and national fortitude.

The escalation between Iran and Israel in June 2025 reveals the fragility of international institutions and the selective application of legal norms. Civilian deaths in Iran have elicited little more than muted concern from Western powers, whose responses have centered on alliance preservation and threat management. Mechanisms once thought to guarantee oversight—nuclear inspections, multilateral diplomacy, humanitarian protections—have either stalled or been openly disregarded. The language of international law, while still deployed rhetorically, no longer carries the force of obligation. Instead, it serves as a tool for legitimating strategic interests, applied unevenly depending on a state’s position in the global hierarchy. Still, a more charitable reading of the international system is possible.

To be sure, this account risks overstating the coherence and intentionality of the international order. It may be objected that the failures of legal institutions and multilateral diplomacy reflect not a system designed to preserve domination, but one overburdened by conflicting mandates, great power rivalry, and institutional inertia. The persistence of flawed but meaningful mechanisms such as nuclear inspections or ceasefire negotiations could be read less as evidence of moral bankruptcy than as signs of a world order straining under asymmetry, not cynically orchestrating it. Likewise, to equate the strategic calculations of Iran and Israel without attending to the profound differences in their political systems, regional alliances, and ideological commitments risks flattening important distinctions. Yet such critiques, while valid in part, do not displace the deeper problem: the routinization of strategic violence as a mode of global governance. The issue is not simply that law is inconsistently applied, but that its application is structurally conditioned by hierarchies of power and legitimacy that produces a system where accountability becomes contingent, and human vulnerability is weighed against commodity flows. If there are still islands of normativity within the global order, they are increasingly isolated, and their efficacy is often determined less by procedural ideals than by geopolitical utility. Recognizing this does not entail rejecting diplomacy or law wholesale, but rather demands a clearer acknowledgment of how strategic interests shape (or even hollow out) the moral vocabulary used to justify global action.

The architecture of escalation, therefore, is not a disruption of the international order; it is its method. Violence is administered through legal and institutional procedures that present themselves as neutral while shielding power from accountability. Civilian deaths are absorbed without consequence, folded into the background of policy decisions and risk assessments. Law continues to be cited, but its enforcement is contingent, shaped by strategic interest rather than anything resembling ethical consistency. States wielding force with impunity define the very substance of the international system; what protection exists is uneven and unreliable. The destruction of infrastructure, suppression of dissent, and abandonment of civilian life have become the routine outcomes of a global order designed to protect the interests of military powers. Peace under these conditions becomes a term of appeasement, not justice.

Resisting this order requires more than opposing its violence; one must refuse its claims to legitimacy. Resistance means rejecting the substitution of legal formalism for political justice. We must call into question the global regime that apportions protection and disposability according to strategic political calculus. Emancipatory futures will not be brokered within the terms of the existing order—they will be forged anew by outsiders.