Israel's War with Iran: A Distraction from Gaza?
Both during and after the brief war that Israel waged against Iran, one line of analysis suggested that the war was launched by Israel as an attempt to distract global attention from its war in Gaza. For instance, leftist academic Assal Rad (who previously worked with the National Iranian American Council that encouraged engagement with the Islamic Republic) wrote on 19 June: “If you are talking about Iran without saying a thing about Gaza, then you don’t even understand what’s going on. Israel started a war with Iran to distract from its atrocities against Palestinians and continue its destruction across the region.” Similarly, in a recent assessment of the war, Aaron Bastani argued that Netanyahu “sought to deflect attention from the ongoing genocide in Gaza, while attempting to relieve domestic political pressure.”
While there is a link to Gaza in the case of this war, this link is not what that these commentators suppose. The link to Gaza is also secondary to the root of the conflict between Israel and Iran- a root that is the result of Iranian decision-makers’ ideological and strategic choices. By way of preface, the following analysis is not to be taken as an endorsement of specific Israeli policy choices towards Gaza or Iran, but simply to explain why the notion that what is now informally dubbed the ‘Twelve Day War’ cannot be reasonably seen as driven by a motive to distract from Israeli actions in Gaza.
