Editor’s note: Amit Segal is Chief Political Correspondent for N12News. You can find his column “It’s Noon in Israel” at https://www.amitsegal.net and his X posting: https://x.com/amitsegal. This is as-it-happens news; things can – and likely will – change. But Segal’s breakdown will remain important.
This has already become a prewritten script: every time the United States moves to strike a Middle Eastern dictatorship, it is preceded by a nerve-racking wait, followed by feverish diplomatic contacts—and above all, the local dictator refuses to grasp the severity of his situation until it is too late.
Abbas Araghchi will not be the first foreign minister to fly urgently to meet Americans in an attempt to prevent war. Before him came Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, in a futile meeting with his counterpart James Baker. Saddam Hussein promised both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush that the United States would discover hell in Iraq, that its forces would die there in droves, and that his country would stand firm. Aziz ended his life in a Baghdad prison; Saddam went to the gallows.
The Iranians are no more flexible, no less fanatical, and burdened with the same problems as their hated Iraqi predecessors. Their almost last hope of preventing action lies with the Sunni states of the Middle East. Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia publicly warn that an American strike could escalate into a regional war. In practice, a Middle East expert told me this week, what truly worries them is the almost inevitable outcome of eliminating the ayatollahs’ regime: Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
One does not need to believe Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s fantasies about Israeli attempts to conquer Mount Ararat, nor buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories about a secret Netanyahu government plan to restore the days of the Kingdom of David, to understand the pressure. Nadim Koteich, a leading journalist in the Arab world and a harsh critic of Iran, wrote last week: “Regardless of your political views, the following fact cannot be denied: Israel is emerging from the post–October 7 era with unprecedented military and intelligence dominance. Its operations systematically dismantled the Iranian proxies, reshaped the security architecture of Lebanon and Syria, and demonstrated strike capabilities unmatched by any other actor in the region. Its recognition of Somaliland and expansion into the Red Sea signal ambitions broader than the traditional ones. For Saudi Arabia, which cannot normalize relations with Israel without some Israeli-Palestinian agreement, this creates an uncomfortable reality: the strongest military power in the region is not subject to any influence from Riyadh.”
For years, the Iranian threat troubled the Middle East but also bound Israel and most of its resources to the struggle against Tehran and its proxies. Now, the Iranian carcass lies in the middle of the room. For most of the Middle East, it is convenient for it to remain there—without a death certificate and without a new, far more Israeli Middle East.
