On Sunday, the United States joined Israel’s campaign to bomb Iran that had begun on June 13. It is likely that the American goal is limited to destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and compelling Tehran to commit to not enriching nuclear material to levels above what is necessary for civilian purposes – though with Donald Trump, it is difficult to be certain.

Israel’s goals are largely in congruence with those of the US but they go a step further: regime change. And that is likely to turn out to be a fantasy.

For one, the Iranian system is less brittle than Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq was in 2003. Bombing alone will not cause the Iranian regime to fall.

The exhortation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Iranians last week to rebel against their rulers faces the classic dilemma before a regime-change strategy.

For mass uprisings to take place and succeed, protests must start in cities. However, Israel has no option but to bomb Iranian cities, both because of their strategic and symbolic value as well as to respond to Iranian bombings of Israeli cities – which would further turn Iranian citizens against Israel.

Furthermore, unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-styled liberators seem to lack a plan for replacing the current Iranian regime. Even if Israel had such a plan, it would need a ground invasion led by the US to put it into action. Though the US bombing of Iran means that Trump has violated his own campaign promise of not getting involved in the conflicts of other states, it is unlikely that he would commit American troops to a ground invasion in Iran.

As things currently stand, Iran is experiencing regime degradation. Israel has killed or wounded many of Iran’s top military and intelligence leaders – several within the first hours of its bombing campaign. It was even able to successfully target some of their replacements.

Its intelligence apparatus is compromised. Iran’s political leadership, including its top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is under threat of elimination. Iran’s broader elite is being terrorised, especially through attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists, media and intellectuals.

What is Israel’s endgame here?

Israel is seeking Iran's denuclearisation and demilitarisation, which is also what the US wants. But Tel Aviv’s endgame is the complete conquest of Palestine. Iran is the only serious military threat to that project that is still standing. For Israel to end the prospects of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state, Iran has to be neutralised.

But these recent developments need to be put into a wider perspective.

Israel has been justifying its aggressive military actions in the name of self-defence. But there is something unconvincing about the country’s argument that its defensive needs require actions of the sort that it has been undertaking across the region since October 2023, following Hamas’ terror attacks against Israel.

These actions include putting the Gaza Palestinians through a catastrophe not seen by any part of humanity since the Second World War; punitive assaults on Lebanon, Syria and Yemen; and now a war of regime change in Iran.

Israel’s military victories over the past 20 months have been staggering. Aided by morally bankrupt and strategically shortsighted western governments, it enjoys unprecedented impunity.

The complicity of the Gulf and Arab states, as well as the equivocation and inaction of “Global South” stalwarts such as India, China and Russia in response to Israel’s unprecedented attempt to militarily dominate the region show that each of these states is thinking short-term.

Take India’s response. An existentially threatened Iran will deepen the regional conflict and drag it for years. It would also endanger the safety of the millions of Indians working in the region as well as the country’s energy security. All these should have led New Delhi to urge restraint from Tel Aviv. Puzzlingly, it has chosen inaction in diplomacy and has appeared to subtly but indirectly indicate that it is not really bothered by Israel’s actions.

It is hard to believe that leaders of Russia, China or India – or indeed of Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – do not see that Israel’s attempts to establish military dominance across West Asia could plunge the region into a prolonged crisis and reconfigure the geopolitics of the wider world.

While economically struggling Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan could see domestic upheavals that threaten their regimes, the rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf could see their plans for building post-fossil fuels economies thoroughly upended.

Furthermore, if Iran goes under, it would hurt the Eurasian geopolitics that Russia and China have been shaping as a counter to the West in the past couple of years.

But it is likely that these states have assurances from the US and Israel that lines will not be crossed, which they take to be credible.

Israel’s actions – based on an exceptionalist ideology of national defence and supported in no small measure by a society open to countenancing the annihilation of their Palestinian neighbours – echo the words and deeds of the forces that caused the Holocaust and led Germany and Europe into the Second World War.

Israel also benefits from ideological allies – social media warriors as well as intellectuals in media and academia – who are delegitimising the practice of universal moral solidarity. If you express solidarity with the Palestinians, you will be treated with pity or scorn. People with little appreciation for individual choice will ask why you are not expressing solidarity for the Sudanese or Uyghur people. There will be whataboutery and equivalence over the suffering of Ukrainians.

This is also a clarifying moment for the myth that there is a transnational Muslim community that is prepared to die as one. The response of governments of Muslim countries to Palestinian degradation and the effort to change regime in Iran is driven by starkly secular concerns.

Notice for instance the lack of substantive action by Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, claimants of leadership of the so-called Muslim world.

Of course, there is anger amongst ordinary Muslims around the world – as there would be amongst Buddhists, Christians or Hindus were their coreligionists to face catastrophe as are the Gaza Palestinians. But it should also lead Muslim societies in West Asia to ask why Israel has sovereignty over their skies and why the technological gap between their countries and Israel is interplanetary.

At the beginning of his campaign in Gaza back in October 2023, Netanyahu had said that Israel’s response to Hamas’ attacks would change the Middle East. No elaboration was forthcoming at the time, but Israel’s military behaviour since then makes it possible for us to say with good deal of confidence what that remark implied: removing all military threats to Israel’s settler colonial project in Palestine.

Netanyahu has been immensely successful in clearing the ground. Pro-Palestinian armed forces such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have already been decimated. With the US joining his campaign, Netanyahu will likely succeed in degrading Iran enough to be left with no serious military threats to his plans to “solve” the Palestinian question.

The future for Palestine is bleak. There is no reason why the blockade that is starving the Palestinians in Gaza will be lifted. Whether they fall in their homeland or leave it emaciated is a question that is fast coming into sharp relief.

The West Bank is likely to be next, where settler colonialism has picked up pace. Over five million Palestinians live in their homelands across Gaza and the West Bank. Practices aimed at undoing Palestinian national self-determination – death, destruction, the degradation of life as well as physical displacement – may reach the ultimate stage.

Atul Mishra teaches international politics at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR. The views expressed are personal.