Iran war spreads to Iran’s South Pars oil field

The Iran War continues to escalate. Israel’s goal, which has been Benjamin Netanyahu’s dream for decades, as he himself recently said.

For at least three decades, Netanyahu had spoiled for a fight with the theocratic regime committed to Israel’s annihilation. Successive US administrations and his own security establishment had frustrated him, deeming it too risky to take on a country with a population more than nine times larger than Israel’s. Now, with Trump back in office, Netanyahu’s dream was within reach. Styling himself as Israel’s Winston Churchill, he enlisted the world's biggest military to make it come true. [my emphasis] (1)

It seems clear from the actions we see and from what experienced analysts like John Mearsheimer are saying that Israel’s goal is to turn Iran into a fragmented “failed state.” Netanyahu is aiming at creating a situation in Iran analogous to Israel’s longtime policy in Gaza, which they cynically call “cutting the grass.” Which basically means in additional to the daily violence they impose in Gaza and the West Bank, they periodically conduct a larger military operation to kill Palestinians and destroy more of the infrastructure of daily life in Gaza.

They do this of course with weaponry and substantial financial support from the United States and from various European countries, including Germany. Israel and its American supporters, notably including the far-right Christian Zionists who have made a fundamentalist prediction of the end of the world, which is crassly anti-Semitic at even a superficial look, a reason to support hardline Israeli policies and even genocide against Palestinians.

Israel just attacked the South Pars field in Iran, their most important gas field. Netanyahu at the moment seems to be leading an addled Donald Trump around by the nose. As a result, Trump has put the United States into a war for which it didn’t properly prepare either militarily or diplomatically. And Iran currently is in the position of having “escalation dominance.”

The Middle East Institute, a think tank heavily funded by oil companies and Arab oil state and state, has an article by Chuck Freilich, the editor of the Israel Journal on Foreign Affairs and a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, writes two days before the latest attack on the South Pars field:

As things stand now, the joint US-Israeli war risks ending in military victory but becoming a strategic failure. For Iran’s regime, merely surviving an armed conflict with the US constitutes victory. If it further succeeds in preserving its remaining nuclear capabilities, including the 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (sufficient for 10 bombs) still buried in the rubble of the June 2025 war, and at least some missile capabilities, which it will surely rebuild rapidly in the post-war period, this will be the icing on the cake.

For 30 years Israel dreamed of a scenario in which the US might go to war with Iran, with the minimal objective of removing the existential threat posed by its nuclear program, and ideally to topple the regime. Now that this scenario has emerged, a failure to achieve both of these objectives would be a significant strategic setback for the US and carry dire ramifications for Israel. [my emphasis] (2)

Freilich notes that Iran holds the escalation dominance at this state of the conflict. He suggest that one way for the US-Israel side to reverse that situation would be to close the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian oil shipments, which are currently going through. How that would prevent Iran from blocking other countries from using the Strait.

He paints the following picture of a scenario that Israel might use to achieve escalation dominance and (though he doesn’t describe it this way) to turn Iran into a fragmented “failed state”:

Still a further step up the escalatory ladder would be to begin attacks on Iran’s civil infrastructure, including power, communications, financial, and transportation systems, and potentially other sectors as well. The US and Israel have so far refrained from doing so, primarily out of concern that this might cause a rallying around the flag effect, turn the Iranian public against them, and hamper the prospects of regime change. Some such attacks might prove necessary, however, in a final play for escalation dominance, should the already ongoing effort to weaken the regime and create a possible opening for the people to take to the streets by steadily destroying the regime’s instruments of repression — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the paramilitary militia Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed (Basij), Iranian police, and other capabilities — prove insufficient to the task. Actual regime targets (for example, the parliament building) and other pillars of the ruling establishment, such as its means of communicating with the public (TV, radio, internet), might also be attacked. A broad cyber campaign would be a part of this next phase as well. [my emphasis]

We’re already seeing that rally-round-the-flag response in Iran. Ever since using planes to bomb an enemy became reality in 1912 with an attack by a Bulgarian pilot on a Turkish railway station during the First Balkan War, some air strategists to this day fantasize about mass bombing attacks on civilian targets will lead the population to revolt against their own government. There is enormous evidence over more than a century that this doesn’t happen. But for militarists, this kind of faith dies hard.

This is another reminder that the kind of nationalistic “isolationism” for which some of Trump’s rightwing admirers praise him – or used to! – is actually a form of unilateralism and militarism. Trump’s most important political mentor, the despicable Roy Cohn, was very much part of that McCarthyist fringe. (Cohn himself was the chief counsel for McCarthy’s witch-hung committee).

With Trump that gets transmuted into an Incredible Hulk comic-book version: “Me no like Iranians. Me drop big bombs. Big bombs go boom and kill lots of Iranians. Me win!”

We’re seeing in real time what the real-world version of that looks like. Apologies to the Incredible Hulk for dragging him into a degrading comparison like that!

US-Israeli military and strategic cooperation have never been so close, Israel’s standing in the US never so low. Given the war’s unpopularity in American public opinion, a further casualty of the conflict — and one that Israel can ill-afford — will be a significant hit to the bilateral relationship. This is amplified by the growing but unsubstantiated claims that it was Netanyahu who led Trump into the fight; there is no doubt that he has long hoped that the US would ultimately go to war with Iran ...

Freilich then goes on to say that, no, Netanyahu was trying to hold Trump back from doing it!

If you believe that, let me tell you about a hot new cryptocurrency investment that will triple in value in a few days after you buy it!

But he closes with, “Israel will have to weigh whether whatever gains were achieved vis-à-vis Iran were worth the price to its relationship with the US.” In other words, it’s clear that Israel’s wars are souring large numbers of American voters on the long-standing close alliance with Israel.

The Republican Party seems to be locked into that relationship. And many of them locked into the Christian Zionist ideology that helps to fuel religious fanaticism and warmongering. The Democrats have become more critical of Israel than at any time since Israel’s founding in 1948. But it will require real leadership among Democratic elected officials to avoid being drawn back into a de facto deference to Israel, even on occasions when their actions are contrary to the interests of the US or when they violate the laws against genocide.

Also from March 17, Christiane Amanpour and Tina Brown discuss the Iran War:

Notes:

(1) Coles, Isabel (2026): How Trump brought Netanyahu’s longtime dream of Iran’s destruction within reach. The Observer 03/15/2026. <https://observer.co.uk/news/international/article/how-trump-brought-netanyahus-longtime-dream-of-irans-destruction-within-reach> (Accessed: 2026-19-03).

(2) Freilich, Chuck (2026): How the US and Israel can stave off strategic failure in Iran. Middle East Institute 03/17/2026. <https://mei.edu/publication/how-the-us-and-israel-can-stave-off-strategic-failure-in-iran/> (Accessed: 2026-19-03).

(3) Is The Iran War Spiraling Beyond Trump’s Control? Christiane Amanpour Presents YouTube channel 03/17/2026. <https://youtu.be/6q_ZesE0wqY?si=xUmoMaMkoWHMewbu> (Accessed: 2026-19-03).