Israel’s Expanding Wars

Whether Benjamin Netanyahu remains prime minister or is replaced matters less to the region than the direction in which Israeli politics has moved. The two-state solution, always contested, has been pushed increasingly beyond the boundaries of the dominant political consensus.

Security pursued through overwhelming military superiority, neighboring states denied the capacity to challenge Israel, and occupation sustained in the name of defense.

Within this outlook, the distinction between security and expansion has become increasingly blurred. Keeping neighboring states militarily weak, contributing to their political destabilization and occupying their territory cannot indefinitely be presented as temporary responses to immediate threats. Together, these practices reveal the ambition to shape the regional order around Israeli dominance.

The idea of “Greater Israel” gives this ambition a religious and ideological horizon. Netanyahu’s public expression of attachment to that vision in August 2025 demonstrated how far it had travelled from the ideological margins towards the center of political power. The vision is openly advanced in influential Israeli political and strategic circles as a long-term territorial ambition and, among its religious nationalist advocates, a historic obligation to be fulfilled. Its growing political prominence makes such ambitions increasingly difficult to dismiss as biblical imagery without contemporary consequences. Each successive war risks strengthening the forces that regard territorial expansion as both a strategic gain and the fulfilment of a historic entitlement.

Against this background, preparations for another major assault on Iran acquire a significance extending beyond the immediate confrontation. ABC News has reported, citing Israeli sources familiar with the planning, that American and Israeli military officials have prepared plans for renewed joint strikes, potentially after the 3 November US midterm elections. Associated Press reporting describes Netanyahu pressing Trump for another extensive air campaign even as diplomatic efforts continue. A final decision has not been publicly confirmed, unresolved struggle over government is unfolding alongside military preparations that could plunge the region into another devastating phase of war.

The nuclear dimension makes this prospect still more alarming. Even public speculation about nuclear weapons as a conceivable option deepens the apprehension surrounding another war whose limits no one can confidently define. Such speculation does not establish that their use is being planned, it exposes the catastrophic possibilities now entering discussion. With decisions of such consequence resting in the hands of Trump and Netanyahu, the region is being asked to trust the restraint of leaders repeatedly willing to threaten further military escalation. Where another assault on Iran might lead, what retaliation it might provoke, and whether escalation could still be contained are questions without reassuring answers.

Yet the approaching confrontation is only the immediate expression of a deeper danger. Israel’s pursuit of regional dominance, inseparable from the continuing dispossession of Palestinians, perpetuates conditions in which each war becomes the prelude to another. Any new assault could engulf neighboring countries, devastate civilian populations, disrupt energy supplies and shipping, and carry consequences far beyond the Middle East. The uncertainty also concerns what further confrontation could emerge from its aftermath. Even an eventual ceasefire would offer little reassurance if occupation, territorial expansion and the forcible weakening of neighboring states continued unchecked. The region is being compelled to contemplate the next war before the impending one has even begun.

Amid this recurring resort to force, a logic often described in Israeli strategic discourse as “mowing the grass”, what choices remain for regional countries, particularly Türkiye? The expression itself reveals the limits of a security outlook that treats successive military campaigns as routine maintenance rather than a failure to achieve a political settlement. Combined with an expansionist drive, this approach threatens to make permanent instability the organizing condition of the regional order.

Must the countries of the region reconcile themselves to Palestinian dispossession, accept occupation as an enduring reality and concede to Israel the authority to determine their security, sovereignty and political futures? Or must they collectively challenge the assumption that Israeli security requires the permanent insecurity of its neighbors? A dignified regional order cannot rest on the acceptance of injustice or the surrender of sovereign equality to military supremacy.

The first responsibility is to organize a sustained diplomatic response capable of preventing war and addressing the conditions that repeatedly produce it. This requires the Muslim world to move beyond episodic expressions of solidarity towards a common political framework, while pursuing a serious dialogue with Europe and the United States. Washington, as the principal military backer of Israel, bears a particular responsibility, it cannot credibly promise regional stability while continuing to furnish the means of its destruction. A dialogue of civilizations would acquire practical meaning here, as a sustained effort to reconcile shared security with Palestinian freedom, sovereign equality and enforceable restraints on aggression.

The diplomacy, however, cannot become an indefinite appeal for restraint while each successive war extends the reach of Israeli power. If dialogue fails to check Israel’s expansionist ambitions, and the countries of the region refuse, as they must, to accept occupation and coercion as the foundations of their collective future, the prospect of a wider war becomes increasingly difficult to escape.

An expanding claim to regional supremacy will eventually collide with the determination of sovereign nations to resist subordination. Israel’s continuing pursuit of regional supremacy through military force will ultimately compel neighboring states to assert and defend their sovereignty. Unless diplomacy succeeds in restraining that aggression, a wider confrontation is a question of when, not whether.

Türkiye’s responsibility arises from its strategic position and also from its consciousness of belonging to a civilization whose historical continuity spans centuries. That inheritance calls for leadership in pursuit of a peace grounded in justice and sustained by dignity. Making such a peace possible must remain its foremost purpose. Preparing for the gravest eventuality, however, is equally necessary, to uphold a regional order in which no country’s independence and no people’s rights can be subordinated to another state’s claim to supremacy.

Türkiye must therefore retain the initiative: building regional solidarity, sustaining diplomatic engagement and strengthening the capacity to resist coercion. Türkiye must avoid being drawn into a war whose timing and terms are chosen by Israel to favor its own strategic designs. It must guard against an Israeli assault justified as pre-emptive, but calculated to seize the military initiative and advance expansionist objectives. Strategic patience, nevertheless, must be matched by preparedness, so that the pursuit of peace does not become acquiescence in an expanding order of domination.

Should a wider war nevertheless become unavoidable, its purpose must be to establish the conditions for a durable and just peace. The aspiration must be to break the cycle of aggression that has marked the Palestinian tragedy and successive regional conflicts for nearly eight decades. Success must be measured by whether the resulting peace restrains expansion, protects the sovereignty of neighboring states and secures the freedom and rights of Palestinians. Otherwise, even an immense sacrifice would leave the region awaiting another war.

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Firdous Syed is a Kashmiri political analyst. Formerly involved in the region’s 1990s resistance

movement, he later turned his efforts toward civil society, peacebuilding, and development. Over

the years, he has written extensively on Kashmir, South Asian politics, and international affairs

for various publications.