By Richard Falk
In this analysis, Richard Falk examines the Gaza genocide and the expanding US-Israeli war on Iran as interconnected expressions of a broader geopolitical project rooted in Western dominance and Israeli regional hegemony. Falk argues that the conflicts expose the collapse of international law, the failure of global institutions to restrain militarism, and the growing limits of coercive power in a rapidly changing world order.
Regional Linkages
Although the Gaza ordeal continues in the form of daily Israeli violations of the ceasefire, ongoing disruptions of humanitarian relief, and the deadly effects of prolonged hunger and a variety of long-unmet health challenges, it has moved toward the outer limits of global concern. And although added concerns arising from related genocidal spillovers to the West Bank and southern Lebanon are receiving some attention, the main focus of public and governmental concern has shifted to Iran for understandable reasons. The war of aggression launched on February 28 by the United States against Iran became a joint US/Israel joint military operation a few days later. This second Iran War was justified by alleged proliferation concerns combined with claims of lending decisive support to a regime-changing protest movement in Iran.
This second unprovoked attack on Iran within a time frame of less than a year, as did the first one, proceeded on these false and unacceptable premises, and yet has received little pushback from within the US Congress, although it is constitutionally unlawful and adds to the affordability crisis afflicting the majority of Americans. The United Nations unsurprisingly remained on the sidelines of public debate, and even Russia and China seemed reluctant to challenge Trump’s geopolitical militarism directly, given the escalation dangers and fears of his irrational petulance.
As long as the outcome of the Iran War remains dangerously unresolved, it is likely to dominate not only the news cycle but the fears and hopes of the political imagination worldwide. From its start more than two months ago, the war has already brought widespread devastation and displacement to the Iranian people, and forebodings of worse to come. The outset of the Iran War exhibited a shocking series of miscalculations from its start. These included the deliberate assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Minab, killing hundreds, mainly children. Not only were these combat tactics seen as evil, but they were entirely dysfunctional, creating a unifying nationalist unity in Iran that included many who were critics of the harsh internal practices of the theocratic government. It is hard to gauge the range of effects of such behavior from outside, but it might help to imagine that even a Western secular society would be horrified by a non-Western adversary that targeted religious leaders in an act of political violence, much less the start of a war.
What such atrocities confirmed is that the United States, and certainly Israel, are not interested in genuine peace negotiations, but in obtaining a victory that achieves victory by either political surrender or genocidal assault. As with the Palestinians, the Iranians, whatever their differences with the government in Tehran and the costs of sustaining their struggle, seem determined to resist rather than give in to genocidal threats and tactics directed at an entirely vulnerable society. Iranians of all persuasions also have enough historical awareness of the 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected government to be distrustful of all claims of good intentions emanating from Washington.
With this background in mind, it is not too soon to consider the Gaza Genocide in retrospect, while at the same time being fully aware that the people of Gaza are continuing to suffer severely from the continuing realities of Israel’s genocide and US material complicity by way of diplomacy, funding, weaponry, and intelligence sharing. A reason for this linkage between Gaza and Iran is to assess the connections between these two seemingly disparate undertakings. A primary contention is that Israel is not only a strategic ally, but is bearing the burdens of inter-civilizational struggle that was anticipated by Samuel Huntington as a sequel to the Cold War in the form of ‘a clash of civilizations’, with geopolitical faultlines in the Middle East. This perspective took on a more plausible form after the 9/11 attacks on US symbolic targets in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the responses of the US by declaring a worldwide war on terror that purported to engage all governments in the cause or be deemed enemies of the West, and incidentally, of ‘civilization.’
This contextualized the Zionist vision in its broader international setting, creating an arrangement that served the interests of Israel with those of the West as seeking to retain global dominance in a post-colonial world order. In effect, Israel was given a free hand with the Palestinians in exchange for doing the dirty work for the West in upholding its regional interests. The refusal to accept the outcome of the 1978-79 revolutionary movement in Iran represented the convergence of these diverse objectives as it both opposed Zionist aims and resisted Western regional encroachments, while resisting counter-revolutionary efforts to destabilize the new governing theocracy in Iran. The election of the extremist Israel coalition of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the ultra-right religious parties at the start of 2023, given a pretext for a military response by the October 7 attack, also gave rise to a renewed preoccupation with Iran as the centerpiece of what was dubbed ‘the axis of resistance.’
Geopolitics by Design and Genocide in Practice
International law has been defied and the UN has been sidelined when it comes to genocide prevention. The UN would be better off accepting a condition of helplessness when requested to restrain geopolitical actors, those Member states usually identified with the five permanent members of the Security Council. By lending support to Trump’s diplomacy, the UN has demeaned itself further by a formal show of support for an approach that shamelessly throws symbolic weight behind the perpetrator of genocide while disregarding the rights and grievances of the victims. In UNSC Resolution 2803 endorsed unanimously on November 17, 2025, the opening paragraph exhibits its retrospective acceptance of the Gaza genocide:
Welcoming the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict of 29 September 2025 (“Comprehensive Plan”)(annex 1 to this resolution), and applauding the states that have signed, accepted, or endorsed it, and further welcoming the historic Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity of 13 October 2025 and the constructive role played by the United States of America, the State of Qatar, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the Republic of Türkiye, in having facilitated the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
In the substance of the resolution, it not only supports Israel’s role in shaping the future of Gaza in collaboration with the US, but calls on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to facilitate the reconstruction of Gaza from its present wasteland realities that subject the surviving Palestinian population to intolerable and punitive conditions of livelihood. This graceful performance at the UN was given a further boost by the Secretary General voicing his support for 2803 despite its implications from the perspective of the UN Charter and international law.
Undoubtedly, in part, the US and Israel chose this time of a Gaza ceasefire façade to attack Iran to divert attention from the ongoing Gaza ordeal, not expecting that it would bring harm and suffering to people near and far, including the United States. The Iranian government did not, as was wrongly expected, crumble in the face of this second aggressive, devastating military attack in less than a year, and seems to have emerged more unified internally and more feared and respected regionally. In the lead-up to the war, Netanyahu apparently convinced Trump that the theocratic regime in Tehran would immediately collapse, paving the way for a quick takeover by opposition forces that would be grateful for a military attack on their country. This makes some sense of the early invitations by Trump directed at the Iranian people ‘to take back your country’ and establish a new non-Islamic government with friendly relations with the West, including Israel.
Yet these quickly turned out to be false hopes. Rather than crumbling, Iran steadfastly absorbed the first round of attacks, countering with its own missiles that inflicted unexpected damage to US military assets throughout the Gulf, and also drawing upon its best strategic option at its disposal by blockading the Strait of Hormuz. It is illuminating to contrast these defensive tactics relied upon by Iran with the US commencement of the war and Trump’s later litany of genocidal threats, accompanied by Israel’s opposition to any ceasefire until ‘the job’ of destruction was completed.
Several genocidal threats by Trump and this Israeli resolve to proceed with the war have failed to produce Iran’s acquiescence. Additionally, regional tensions rose from the disruption of energy and fertilizer supply chains, imperiling global energy and food security. There is growing commentary and deepening anxieties about how long the aggressors can abide a diplomatic stalemate. The unpalatable options for the West are either to accept most of Iran’s war-ending proposals or, once more, seek Iran’s surrender by climbing even higher on the escalation ladder. At such heights, the prospects of threatening or even using a nuclear weapon are among the few remaining military options for Israel and the US, likely under current discussion in ‘situation rooms’ where war strategies are weighed and decided upon by security officials. It is highly relevant that these two countries share militarist mentalities and scorn the claimed Iranian commitments to resist even at the terrible cost of collective martyrdom. Iran, although open to genuine diplomacy, seems determined to refuse to back down in the face of geopolitical bullying or ceasefire facades that keep the conflict at knife-edge.
Is there a way out? Trump might settle for ‘defeat with honor,’ giving in without seeming to do so, but Israeli zealots are less easily appeased and seek nothing less than the destruction of Iran as a viable state so as to complete the non-Palestinian portion of their diabolical security plan by extinguishing once and for all meaningful resistance to their national expansionism and regional hegemony. Such speculation shifts concern back from Iran to Israel. Would Israel heed even a command to desist coming from the White House? Would Trump be prepared to finally disappoint Israeli donors to regain a scintilla of domestic credibility? Trump only needs to deliver a discreet order to cease and desist to Tel Aviv as far as Iran is concerned.
Iran has exhibited to date more responsible statecraft than have the aggressors. It has put forward a phased plan to resolve the crisis based on an initial agreement to open Hormuz to all shipping for an end (not a ceasefire) to the war, reinforced by guarantees that war would not be later resumed, followed at an unspecified time by renewed negotiation of an agreement about the production of enriched uranium. Accepting even such a reasonable process would almost certainly be opposed by Israel, perhaps not openly, and by the most activist elements in the Iranian diaspora that want the war to end only after the leaders in Iran disappear or agree to democratizing reforms that many Iranians living in exile believe will forge a path for regime change, culminating in the return to power of the Pahlavi Dynasty and the return of Iran to a Western geopolitical identity.
Concluding Remarks
As matters stand, the current crisis is multidimensional. It is a rarely given opportunity for the political realists in Washington who shape US foreign policy to endorse a war prevention strategy. Such a posture would create the opportunity to bring stability to the Middle East. Most important of all it might lead to a geopolitical compact among the US, China, and Russia to work cooperatively in win/win modes rather than persist in the catastrophe-prone lose/lose modes that have risen to dangerous heights not experienced since the worst breakdowns of the Cold War.
Thinking constructively, if an acceptable off-ramp is soon found for both sides in relation to Iran, it might encourage a positive recalibration of relations with Israel and Palestine in both the US and Europe. And given time, it might awaken even Israeli hardliners to the realities of the future that increasingly pose a stark choice between continuing lose/lose dynamics or beginning a belated search for a win/win outcome.
This latter greatly preferred options requires a long deferred recognition that neither party has any prospect of achieving a true win/lose outcome in its favor, regardless of what state propaganda and an obedient media claim. This latter assessment applies principally to Israel as Palestinian leaders of long been receptive to a true compromise as distinguished from an Israeli victory disguised by the breadcrumb diplomacy of a demilitarized mini-state. Israel has, for at least half a century, manipulated this Palestinian receptivity for accommodation. This was especially evident during the 1990s when the Oslo Diplomacy was a source of false hopes for Palestine and of accelerated settlement expansion by Israel that not only was expansionist but was a dagger aimed at killing prospects for viable Palestinian statehood. To this day, an international consensus supportive of a zombie two-state solution continues to be affirmed despite steps taken by Israel to make sure it can never happen. For decades the leadership of Israel has used salami tactics of taking what it could get at a give stage without getting go of its ultimate the outcome commitment to a single Israeli state from the river to the sea in which Jewish primacy is given deep roots in Israel’s Basic Law.
Such is my reading of the central challenges of conflict resolution in the Middle East after this preliminary viewing of the Gaza Genocide in retrospect. It is worth reiterating that reading is mindful of the reality that Israel has yet to forego its genocidal approach to the challenges of a continuing Palestinian presence, itself viewed as a form of resistance to Zionist maximalism, which by all appearances yearns for a second Nakba of large-scale and permanent Palestinian expulsion. It is also sensitive to the weakening of European support for Israel, a dimension of the Trump antagonism toward maintaining the collective unity of the Atlantic Alliance that unified the Western liberal democracies during the world wars and the Cold War of the last century in their successful struggles against fascism and communism. But now, for Trump, they have outlived their utility in his transactional worldview.
Finally, it should not be forgotten that the Palestinians have won the Legitimacy War that determines control of the high ground of international law and morality. This symbolic victory has proved more decisive in most colonial wars since 1945 than the battlefield results measured by deaths and devastation. Military superiority failed to control the outcome in India, Indochina, Algeria, South Africa, and elsewhere. These examples suggest that even if it takes decades of further Palestinian struggle and suffering to achieve a political victory, the flow of history is on the side of Palestine. It should not be forgotten that civil society activism and solidarity initiatives are stimulated more by law-grounded considerations of legitimacy than academic debates and state propaganda.
– Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies. He was also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.