HOW RECOGNITION OF POWER RESHAPES LIBERATION STRUGGLES

 

'He who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.'

- Niccolò Machiavelli  (The Prince)

 

In 2023, when His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi travelled to Israel, I, as one of the longest-standing advocates for a constitutional monarchy in Iran, opposed his visit for strategic reasons (Suren-Pahlav, 2023). This position reflected neither ideological alignment nor hostility toward any state, but rather a pragmatic assessment of Iranian societal dynamics: millions of citizens, subjected to decades of the Islamic Regime’s anti-Israel indoctrination (particularly those with deep religious convictions), would interpret such engagement as a betrayal. The regime would inevitably weaponise this perception to discredit his decades-long liberation struggle, framing him as a foreign proxy.

 

Some have contended that the Crown Prince recognised a geopolitical truth obscured from most: that Israel is not a mere regional player, but a neo-colonial superpower. The United States and Europe are not its allies, they are its client states. By securing Israeli support in toppling the Islamic Regime, he purportedly understood that Washington, London, and Brussels would have no choice but to obey their master. Thus, his journey was not diplomacy but realpolitik within an imperial hierarchy.

 

Meanwhile, other opposition groups have tried to soften their position by presenting the Western-Israeli relationship as a symbiotic model, arguing that Netanyahu can sway the West towards regime change in Iran, which necessitates opposition collaboration with Israel as a future ally.

 

Yet, this paper advances a counter-argument rejecting both claims, demonstrating that Israel at this stage of its existence is neither a global superpower nor a Western equal. Rather, it is a proxy state and an enforcer (garrison state), tasked with obeying its masters, dismantling regional narratives, and enforcing Western control over the Middle East. However, this does not imply that Israel will remain so indefinitely; in fact, it is actively planning to become a world superpower, particularly as the United States is a declining power likely to be supplanted by China. The demise of the US would mean that Israel can no longer rely on American patronage and must therefore sustain itself while pursuing its expansionist and hegemonic ambitions.

 

Consequently, in order to understand Israel’s current position, three models must be examined:

A. Neo-Colonial Hegemon (Master of the West);

B. Sovereign Equal (Partner of the West);

C. Proxy Enforcer (Mercenary/Garrison State, Geopolitical Scapegoat of the West).

 

Before proceeding to that examination, a foundational clarification is required concerning the nature of Iranian nationhood.

 

The classification of Iran as a 'multi-ethnic' state is not an analytical error but a manufactured construct, first introduced into Iranian political discourse by Soviet agents during the 1960s and subsequently propagated and exaggerated by Israelis and other enemies of Iran (Suren-Pahlav, 1998). Iran is not a composite of parallel ethnic nations but an ethno-nation: a single civilisational entity characterised by deep historical continuity, shared ancestry, linguistic plurality without ethnonational fragmentation, and a unitary political identity codified in the 1905-07 Constitutional Revolution. What external observers misdescribe as 'ethnic groups' are in fact regional and linguistic variations within a single Indo-Iranian cultural matrix, a reality confirmed by genetic, historical, and legal criteria of shared descent and origin. The deliberate promotion of 'multi-ethnicity' as a descriptive fact has served a strategic function: to legitimise projects of federalisation, partition, and external intervention, from the Soviet renaming of Arran as 'Azerbaijan' to contemporary Israeli-backed schemes for Iran's Balkanisation (Suren-Pahlav, 2013).

 

This paper therefore rejects the multi-ethnic framing as a political fabrication. Iran's internal diversity, whether linguistic (Kurdish, Baluchi, Azari, Persian) or religious (Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian), exists within, not against, a singular ethno-national belonging. To recognise this is not to deny variation but to refuse the conversion of variation into separate nations, a conversion engineered by those who seek the fragmentation of Iran.

 

 

ISRAEL: THE ‘TRUE WORLD SUPERPOWER’ AND ITS WESTERN CLIENT STATES;, OR A FALSE HEGEMON, A GEOPOLITICAL; SCAPEGOAT FOR THE WEST

 

A. Israel: The True World Superpower And Its Western Colonies

Before we dive into this narrative’s plausibility, we must first dissect the colonial blueprint, divisible into seven core mechanisms:

 

The Colonial Blueprint

1. Political Control

Colonial powers typically established systems of governance that ensured their authority remained unchallenged. In some contexts, this entailed the direct rule of territories through appointed governors and officials from the metropole, who exercised executive, legislative, and judicial powers. In other instances, particularly under the British Empire, indirect rule was favoured, whereby indigenous leaders were co-opted into colonial administration, often stripped of genuine autonomy and rendered accountable to imperial authorities. This form of governance allowed colonial powers to maintain order while appearing to respect local traditions, though in practice it served primarily to reinforce imperial dominance and suppress resistance.

 

2. Economic Exploitation

A defining feature of colonial rule was the systematic extraction of wealth from colonised territories to enrich the imperial core. Colonies were transformed into suppliers of raw materials and consumers of manufactured goods, ensuring the economic dependency of local economies on imperial markets. The colonial state frequently imposed taxes payable only in colonial currency, compelling indigenous populations to enter wage labour systems. Infrastructure such as railways and ports was developed primarily to serve the extraction and export of resources rather than the needs of the local population. The entire economic structure was thus oriented towards the benefit of the colonial power, often to the detriment of sustainable local development.

 

3. Military Force and Coercion

The imposition and maintenance of colonial rule relied heavily on military force and the threat of violence. Armed conquest was often the initial act of colonisation, and garrisons were established to assert dominance over the territory. Colonial armies and police forces were tasked with suppressing uprisings and enforcing order, sometimes employing brutal tactics to instil fear and compliance. Punitive expeditions were carried out in response to resistance, frequently resulting in the destruction of villages and the killing of non-combatants. The military apparatus functioned not merely as a defensive measure, but as a constant reminder of the coloniser's ability to dominate through superior force.

 

4. Cultural and Ideological Domination

Colonial rule was underpinned by a pervasive ideological project aimed at reshaping the cultural identity of subject peoples. Education systems were designed to promote the language, values, and worldview of the imperial power, while simultaneously denigrating indigenous cultures and histories. Missionary activity often accompanied colonial expansion, introducing Christianity as part of a so-called 'civilising mission', which served to delegitimise local religious and philosophical traditions. Through literature, cartography, and public monuments, the colonisers constructed narratives that portrayed imperial rule as benevolent, progressive, and inevitable, thereby justifying their domination in the eyes of both the colonised and the metropolitan public.

 

5. Administrative Infrastructure

Efficient administration was essential to the functioning of the colonial state. Colonial authorities established bureaucracies modelled on metropolitan institutions, often staffed by a combination of expatriate officials and locally trained subordinates. These administrative systems enabled the centralised collection of taxes, enforcement of laws, and maintenance of records, thereby facilitating control over increasingly large and diverse populations. Infrastructure such as roads, telegraphs, and ports was constructed primarily to enhance administrative reach and facilitate the movement of troops and goods. Far from being neutral developments, these infrastructures were designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the colonial power.

 

6. Demographic Engineering

Colonial regimes frequently engaged in practices that reshaped the demographic composition of the territories they controlled. In settler colonies such as Kenya or Algeria, European populations were encouraged to migrate and establish permanent communities, often displacing local inhabitants and appropriating fertile land. In non-settler colonies, population movements were engineered through forced labour schemes or the strategic resettlement of certain groups. A common tactic was the deliberate fabrication of ethnic, tribal, or religious divisions in a 'divide and rule' strategy. By fostering internal divisions, colonial powers reduced the likelihood of unified resistance and solidified their own position as arbiters of power.

 

7. Legal and Epistemic Hegemony

Colonial rule entailed not only physical domination but also epistemological control. Legal systems were overhauled to reflect the norms and priorities of the imperial centre, often institutionalising racial hierarchies and denying equal rights to the colonised. Customary laws were selectively codified or marginalised, depending on their utility to the colonial administration. Moreover, colonial knowledge production, including ethnography, anthropology, and cartography, served to classify and categorise colonised peoples, reducing them to subjects of study and control. This intellectual dominance reinforced imperial ideologies and undercut the legitimacy of indigenous ways of knowing and being.

 

 

The Structural Impossibility

The colonial superpower thesis collapses under scrutiny. Israel lacks the fundamental pillars of empire, not as a matter of scale, but of structural capacity. We shall dismantle this myth by interrogating each purported colonial mechanism:

 

1. Political Control: The Vassal, Not the Master

The assertion that Israel exercises colonial-style political control over Western states fails at its foundational premise. Historical empires established unchallenged authority through either direct rule (appointing governors to wield executive, legislative, and judicial powers) or indirect rule (co-opting indigenous elites as administrative proxies stripped of autonomy). Israel manifests neither mechanism. No viceroys or governors appointed by Tel Aviv dictate policy in Western capitals; no co-opted Western leaders function as subordinate administrators enforcing Israeli directives. Instead, influence operates through lobbying, smear campaigns, propaganda, and alleged coercion, tactics that starkly contrast with imperial governance. A striking illustration unfolded during Britain’s 2019 general election. Jeremy Corbyn, then Labour leader and a figure favoured by intellectuals, students, and young voters for his anti-austerity platform and principled support for Palestinian rights, was systematically targeted by pro-Israeli lobbying groups. Orchestrated smear campaigns falsely equated his advocacy for a two-state solution, and criticism of Israeli occupation policies, with institutional antisemitism. Internal leaks later revealed this as a coordinated effort to sabotage his electoral prospects, exploiting media channels to weaponise disinformation (Winstanley, 2023). Crucially, whilst this operation distorted Britain’s democratic process, it relied upon manipulating domestic institutions rather than imposing direct control. Colonial power extinguishes defiance institutionally: rebellions were crushed, dissent erased, and obedience enforced by structural supremacy.

 

Therefore, colonialism relies on systems, not transactions; on entrenched dominance, not intermittent persuasion. Where empires commanded, Israel persuades. Where metropoles governed, Israel merely influences, a reality that invalidates the colonial analogy.

 

2. Economic Exploitation: The Colonial Mirror Cracked

The assertion that Israel economically exploits Western states as a neo-colonial metropole fundamentally misaligns with historical mechanisms of extraction. Colonialism’s core function, systematic wealth transfer from periphery to core, requires colonies to serve as primary resource basins and captive consumer markets, forging irreversible dependency. Israel fulfils neither role for its alleged 'Western colonies.' Rather than extracting raw materials from these states, it depends on their advanced industrial exports (arms, technology, and pharmaceuticals) and agricultural imports. Where colonial powers imposed monetary systems binding colonies to imperial currency, Israel’s economy remains subordinate to the dollar and euro, its central bank perpetually adjusting to Western financial policies. Crucially, colonial infrastructure served resource plunder; Israeli infrastructure (ports, barriers, surveillance networks) exists not to drain Western wealth but to ensure its own survival. While some politicians critique Israel’s reliance on foreign aid, the purported 'extraction' flows inversely: Western markets absorb Israeli technological innovation not as tributary tribute but as profitable acquisitions, while conditional aid packages, tied to geopolitical compliance, reinforce Israeli dependency on foreign patrons. True economic exploitation suffocates local development; Israel’s growth stems from global integration, not subjugation of others. Where empires engineered dependency, Israel negotiates vulnerability. Where colonies fuelled imperial industry, Israel consumes Western goods. This inversion dismantles the analogy: a hegemon cannot simultaneously be its master’s market.

 

 

3. Military Force and Coercion: The Colonial Paradigm

While Israel shares superficial similarities with colonial powers, its military apparatus aligns unequivocally with the colonial logic of domination through violence. Colonial rule required armed conquest as its genesis, a seizure of territory by force that Israel replicated in its foundational campaigns, establishing control through expulsion and displacement. Thereafter, garrison dominance was entrenched: permanent military installations, fortified settlements, and pervasive checkpoints function not as provisional security measures but as instruments of perpetual subjugation, mirroring imperial outposts designed to pacify occupied populations. The colonial imperative of punitive suppression manifests in Israel’s doctrine of disproportionate retaliation: Israel’s doctrine of deterrence leans heavily on the spectre of its undeclared nuclear arsenal, a psychological weapon mythologised by security elites as the ultimate guarantor of sovereignty. Yet this carefully cultivated ambiguity dissolves under scrutiny into a theatre of subservience. The Jericho missiles brandished as instruments of autonomous power rely irrevocably on American-licensed propulsion systems and European guidance technology; the Dolphin-class submarines, capable of deploying nuclear warheads deep into hostile waters, remain umbilically tethered to German-supplied components and NATO’s satellite targeting infrastructure. This is not self-determination but leased annihilation, a paradox wherein the very weapons touted as symbols of independence enchain Israel to its patrons. Geography further tightens the manacles: any nuclear strike would irradiate Palestine, Jordan, and Syria, territories central to Zionist expansionism, transforming colonial ambition into suicidal folly. When Israel conventionally bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 while sparing its own warheads, it revealed plutonium’s true function: not as a shield for Tel Aviv, but as a guardian of Anglo-American capital invested in Caspian and Persian Gulf oilfields. The Dimona reactor itself, a French colonial gift built to fracture Nasser’s pan-Arabism, epitomises this dynamic (Pappe, 2017). Superpowers test weapons with impunity; client states hide them, fearing exposure would rupture the imperial compact that permits their existence.

 

Additionally, resistance triggers village demolitions, mass incarcerations, and aerial bombardment targeting civilian infrastructure to instil collective dread. This systematic brutality, extending to extrajudicial killings, torture, and siege warfare, serves not defensive ends but the core colonial objective: to atomise dissent through exemplary terror. Where historical empires deployed punitive expeditions to raze rebellious villages, Israel deploys precision ordnance to reduce neighbourhoods to rubble; where colonial armies staged public executions to demonstrate invincibility, Israel’s omnipresent drones and snipers perform the same theatre of absolute dominance. However, a critical distinction emerges: while colonial powers committed heinous crimes, employing violence for control and occasionally perverse gratification, they rarely pursued systematic annihilation. Israel’s conduct, evidenced by mass displacement, engineered famine, and explicit statements of intent by officials, aligns with a project of erasure, arguably paralleling the United States’ historical genocide against Native Americans in its settler-colonial practices (Ostler, 2015). The military thus operates as both sword and shield, not merely quelling resistance but psychologically eroding the will to exist as a people. In this domain, Israel transcends analogy and embodies colonialism’s essence: violence as governance. In essence, the narrative of Israel as a ‘military superpower’ constitutes political theatre. A true hegemon does not petition urgently for arms shipments (as Netanyahu did during the 2021 Gaza hostilities). A sovereign state does not operate under the spectre of its patron freezing military aid (as occurred in 2024). Crucially, a superpower’s defence capabilities and existential security are not contingent on the support of other nations.

 

Additionally, the structural dependency was catastrophically exposed during the June 2025 conflict with Iran, precipitated by Israel’s pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities on 12 June. When Iran retaliated with a sustained, twelve-day barrage of ballistic missiles, reportedly inflicting infrastructure and economic damages approaching half a trillion US dollars, Israel’s defensive capabilities proved critically reliant on integrated missile defence systems operated by Western defence systems (e.g., U.S. THAAD, U.K. naval support, Jordanian radar coordination). Studies by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and RAND Corporation consistently warn that sustained missile barrages, particularly from actors like Iran with large arsenals, could overwhelm Israel’s multi-layered defence systems within days, triggering cascading infrastructure collapse: power grids, water desalination, communications would have suffered irrecoverable failure, triggering widespread societal fragmentation and the effective cessation of state functionality. Confronted with existential vulnerability, Israeli leadership urgently petitioned Washington for diplomatic intervention to terminate hostilities (Nadav Rapaport, 2025). This sequence, initiation of major regional escalation followed by dependence on external powers for survival, epitomises the garrison state paradox (Cohen, 2021): it projects regional aggression yet lacks the autonomous resilience definitive of genuine hegemony. A superpower does not wage wars contingent upon its patrons’ willingness to orchestrate ceasefire.

 

 

4. Cultural and Ideological Domination: The Missing Pillar

Israel fundamentally lacks the cultural machinery characteristic of classical colonial hegemony. European empires executed pervasive ideological projects to erase indigenous identities: imposing their languages, exporting state religions, and recasting conquest as benevolent ‘civilisation’. By contrast, Israel manifests no parallel global ambition. Modern Hebrew, though artificially revived, is neither imposed on occupied populations nor propagated internationally; it functions solely as a national vernacular. Judaism, lacking Christianity’s evangelising imperative, sees no state-driven conversion efforts. Culinary imperialism is absent: Israel appropriates regional dishes (e.g., hummus, falafel) without transforming local foodways.

 

However, allegations of asymmetrical cultural influence persist in Western media ecosystems. Hollywood, as a dominant vector of American soft power, exhibits documented institutional alignment with pro-Israeli narratives (Le Monde, 2024). Studies suggest a pattern of preferential casting for performers who publicly endorse Zionism, particularly in comedy and relatable genres, while dissenting voices face marginalisation. This is not religious proselytisation but narrative engineering: embedding normalised portrayals of Israeli state legitimacy within mainstream Western cultural consumption. The effect is subtle ideological permeation, advancing political sympathy through affective channels rather than theological imposition. Critically, this remains transactional influence, not epistemic hegemony. Colonial powers rewrote education systems to erase indigenous histories; Israel’s cultural lobbying merely exploits pre-existing Western platforms. Where Spain eradicated Nahuatl codices to impose Catholicism, Hollywood’s selectivity reinforces extant power structures, it does not subordinate Western consciousness to Tel Aviv’s authority. The absence of Hebrew-language imposition, state-mandated curricula, or monumental architecture glorifying Israeli supremacy confirms the void in genuine cultural dominion.

 

 

5. Administrative Infrastructure: The Void of Imperial Bureaucracy

Israel’s relationship with the West manifests none of the administrative machinery inherent to colonial dominion. Colonial powers established formal bureaucracies to govern subject territories, deploying expatriate officials to impose tax systems, legal codes, and record-keeping infrastructures that facilitated extraction and control. Israel administers no parallel apparatus over its purported ‘Western colonies’. No Israeli-appointed officials collect revenue from London or Washington; no Tel Aviv-designed legal frameworks supersede European or American jurisprudence. Colonial infrastructure, roads, ports, railways, served resource extraction and troop mobilisation; Israel’s checkpoints and separation walls exist solely for territorial isolation, not economic exploitation of the West. Crucially, colonial administrations subordinated local institutions to metropolitan authority. Yet Western states retain absolute sovereignty: the U.S. Congress conditions aid on human rights compliance; EU courts prosecute Israeli firms; the ICC issues arrest warrants for Israeli officials (UN News, 2024a). Where colonial powers built permanent systems to govern, Israel negotiates ad hoc agreements to ensure survival. The absence of hierarchical administration, no fiscal tributaries flowing to Jerusalem, no oversight of Western legislatures, irreparably undermines the superpower thesis. Colonialism requires bureaucracy; Israel wields transactional influence.

 

 

6. Demographic Engineering: The Limits of Colonial Imitation

Israel’s demographic interventions, while echoing colonial tactics within contested territories, lack the imperial scale and structural dominance definitive of historical hegemony. Colonial powers systematically reshaped subject lands through settler implantation (e.g., French colons in Algeria displacing natives), forced population transfers, and engineered ethnic fragmentation to fracture resistance. Israel replicates this only regionally: settlements in the West Bank displace Palestinians, mirroring settler-colonial land appropriation; co-option of minority groups (e.g., Druze, Circassians) recalls imperial ‘divide and rule’ tactics. Yet these strategies remain territorially confined. Israel engineers no demographic change in its supposed ‘Western colonies’, no settlements in Europe, no displacement of German or French populations, no cultivation of ethnic strife in America to advance Israeli interests. Where Britain exacerbated Hindu-Muslim divisions to entrench imperial authority globally, Israel’s manipulations are localised instruments of survival, not mechanisms of transcontinental control. The absence of demographic engineering beyond Palestine/Israel, no state-orchestrated Jewish migration reshaping Western societies, no subversion of European ethnic balances, confirms its colonial practices constitute localised oppression, not global empire.

 

 

7. Legal and Epistemic Hegemony: The Limits of Control

Israel exhibits colonial impulses in legal-epistemic domains but lacks the institutional hegemony definitive of imperial power. Colonial rule imposed legal systems institutionalising racial hierarchies (e.g., apartheid statutes) and epistemic control through cartography, ethnography, and education designed to erase indigenous sovereignty. Israel replicates this internally: discriminatory laws privilege Jewish citizens; settlements exploit repurposed Ottoman/British land ordinances to seize Palestinian property; archaeology and cartography are weaponised to delegitimise Palestinian indigeneity. Externally, however, it achieves no comparable dominion. Where colonial powers rewrote subject legal codes, Israel cannot dictate Western legislation, instead, it seeks to influence interpretation through lobbying (e.g., conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism) to constrain criticism. This yields constrained influence: European courts investigate Israeli war crimes but cannot enforce judgment; universities challenge its historical narratives yet face institutional backlash labelling them terrorist sympathisers; UN bodies condemn the occupation but are neutered by Western vetoes shielding Israel from accountability. Crucially, while Western states profess liberal values, their suppression of domestic critics (artists, activists) reveals a contradiction between rhetoric and practice.

 

Israel’s nuclear exceptionalism, its half-century evasion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), epitomises the legal hypocrisy underpinning its alleged sovereignty. Where true hegemons reshape international law to suit their interests (e.g., America’s defection from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), Israel merely exploits loopholes carved by its patrons. The IAEA’s ritualised blindness to Dimona, enforced through 53 American UN vetoes since 1970, transforms atomic ambiguity into a colonial silence: a Western-sanctioned privilege unavailable to Iran or North Korea. When Mordechai Vanunu breached this omertà in 1986, exposing the reactor’s inner workings, Mossad abducted him from Rome with CIA complicity, an extra-legal reprisal executed not by a sovereign state defending secrets, but by a proxy enforcing its masters’ conspiracy (Barnaby, 1993). Herein lies the ultimate epistemic subjugation: Israel’s ‘strategic autonomy’ is a pantomime staged in Geneva and New York, its warheads mere stage props in a spectacle of manufactured invincibility. Nuclear weapons become the garrison state’s gilded cage, their very secrecy confirming Israel’s reduction to a geopolitical instrument.

 

This dynamic of impunity extends to the silencing of institutional critics. When Francesca Albanese, the Italian legal scholar appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, published a June 2025 report documenting corporate complicity in Gaza, she identified 48 entities (including Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon) for profiting from infrastructure enabling Palestinian displacement. Her conclusion that genocide (UN News, 2024b; United Nations, 2024; Amnesty International, 2024) ‘continues because it is lucrative’ triggered immediate retaliation: the United States designated her a ‘specially designated national’ under Executive Order 14203, freezing her assets and criminalising transactions with U.S. entities. This sanction, imposed not for factual inaccuracy but for exposing Western capital’s entanglement in war crimes, exemplifies the asymmetry of control. Israel lacks the power to unilaterally punish UN officials; instead, its patrons weaponise their own legal systems to insulate corporate accomplices and invalidate inconvenient truths.

 

Crucially, colonial epistemic hegemony manufactured ideologies of inherent superiority (e.g., ‘White Man’s Burden’); Israel’s assertion of intellectual supremacy reflects hubris, not systemic control. Thus, it deploys colonial tools domestically while merely exploiting fractures in Western consciousness, a far cry from imperial hegemony.

 

In conclusion, Israel’s purported status as a neo-colonial superpower disintegrates under structural scrutiny. Colonial hegemony requires interdependent mechanisms, of which Israel masters only one: military coercion. Its brutal occupation, marked by conquest, garrison dominance, and exterminatory logic, in fact mirrors colonialism’s core violence. Yet this remains a regional phenomenon, not global dominion. Critically, while Israel employs colonial tactics, it lacks the structural capacity definitive of historical metropoles.

 

Israel is the West’s most lethal instrument of regional control, a weaponised proxy conditioned to savage enemies its masters dare not confront directly. Its ferocity is not sovereignty but rented violence. When Gaza burns, the West murmurs ‘restraint’ while signing arms deals, and the United States dreams of building a Riviera atop the blood and ashes.

 

 

B. The Illusion Of Parity: Structural Sovereignty As Defining Divide

Israel’s incapacity for equality with Western states resides in an irreconcilable hierarchy of sovereignty. Where Western nations exercise autonomous self-constitution, their security, economic resilience, and diplomatic agency emerging from endogenous civilisational, institutional, and territorial coherence, Israel exists as a derivative entity. Its foundational legitimacy derives not from immutable historical roots but from externally imposed recognition; its military deterrence relies on imported hardware and diplomatic cover; its economic viability pivots on conditional subsidies. This asymmetry transcends policy alignment or tactical influence: it embodies a categorical distinction between self-authorising and contingent power. The West’s sovereignty is self-referential, its choices ultimately accountable only to internal logics. Israel’s sovereignty remains perpetually mortgaged, a structural fiction sustained by the very powers it cannot meaningfully constrain, reciprocate against, or exist without. Equality between architect and artefact remains a geopolitical absurdity, one the Crown Prince tragically ignored. By seeking partnership with a geopolitical knife forged in London and wielded by Washington, he targeted the instrument, not the architects of its use. He misread a garrison state for a sovereign partner, and a parasitic dependency for a reliable alliance.

 

This dependency is not monolithic, however. While Israel is uniformly subordinate, its relationship with the United States is uniquely pathological, evolving from patronage into a form of parasitic symbiosis that ultimately serves wider European strategic interests, a dynamic we shall now explore.

 

Therefore, to claim equality between them is to mistake the scaffold for the monument, the marionette for the master. And this points to a reality: Israel is the West’s post-colonial project.

 

 

C. Israel, A False Hegemon, A Garrison State, A Geopolitical Scapegoat For The West

The dismantling of Israel’s purported superpower status and sovereign equality reveals a more sinister reality: its territorial defiance and military ferocity constitute the convulsions of a mercenary state, unleashed by decaying Western empires to savage targets their own atrophied claws dare not strike directly; a proxy state tasked with executing their strategically outsourced violence while absorbing global hatred.

 

Israel like the artificial states carved from Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, Iraq (1921), Saudi Arabia (1932), Kuwait (1961), Jordan (1946), and the UAE (1971), Israel too (1947) is a British imperial creation. Its founding was not an act of national self-determination but a colonial manoeuvre, engineered to secure Western interests in a fractious region. That Arab client regimes remain subservient to Anglo-American dictates a century later demolishes the myth of Israeli mastery. Tel Aviv’s 'superpower' status is a meticulously staged illusion, designed to obscure its core function: serving as the West’s most potent garrison state, a weaponised proxy conditioned to savage enemies its masters dare not confront directly.

 

Israel’s ferocity is not sovereignty but rented violence, its survival umbilically tethered to £3.8 billion in annual US military transfusions and 53 American UN vetoes shielding its war crimes. Crucially, it fulfils the same imperial function as the Islamic regime, acting as a ‘scarecrow’ for Western hegemony, but with exponentially greater force. Where Tehran’s regime is deployed to justify US bases in Qatar or sanctions on Syria, Israel provides the ultimate spectre: a nuclear-armed enforcer that terrifies the Arab world into compliance. Yet its deadliest utility lies elsewhere: Israel is the West’s designated hate-magnet, absorbing global fury that would otherwise target Washington, London, or Brussels. When Donald Trump fantasises of 'a luxury Riviera on Gaza’s ashes,' it is Israel that executes the bulldozing and bombing, bearing international condemnation while Anglo-American capital eyes the reconstruction contracts.

 

The dismantling of Israel’s purported superpower status and sovereign equality reveals a more sinister reality: its territorial defiance and military ferocity constitute the convulsions of a mercenary state, unleashed by decaying Western empires to savage targets their own atrophied claws dare not strike directly; a proxy state tasked with executing their strategically outsourced violence while absorbing global hatred.

 

Israel like the artificial states carved from Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, Iraq (1921), Saudi Arabia (1932), Kuwait (1961), Jordan (1946), and the UAE (1971), Israel too (1947) is a British imperial creation. Its founding was not an act of national self-determination but a colonial manoeuvre, engineered to secure Western interests in a fractious region. That Arab client regimes remain subservient to Anglo-American dictates a century later demolishes the myth of Israeli mastery. Tel Aviv’s ‘superpower’ status is a meticulously staged illusion, designed to obscure its core function: serving as the West’s most potent garrison state, a weaponised proxy conditioned to savage enemies its masters dare not confront directly.

 

Israel’s ferocity is not sovereignty but rented violence, its survival umbilically tethered to £3.8 billion in annual US military transfusions and 53 American UN vetoes shielding its war crimes. Crucially, it fulfils the same imperial function as the Islamic Republic, acting as a ‘scarecrow’ for Western hegemony, but with exponentially greater force. Where Tehran’s regime is deployed to justify US bases in Qatar or sanctions on Syria, Israel provides the ultimate spectre: a nuclear-armed enforcer that terrifies the Arab world into compliance. Yet its deadliest utility lies elsewhere: Israel is the West’s designated hate-magnet, absorbing global fury that would otherwise target Washington, London, or Brussels. When Donald Trump fantasises of ‘a luxury Riviera on Gaza’s ashes,’ it is Israel that executes the bulldozing and bombing, bearing international condemnation while Anglo-American capital eyes the reconstruction contracts.

 

A critical point must be made: Israel's relationship with the United States is not a mirror of its relationship with the United Kingdom and European Union. While functionally a proxy for all, the dynamic with Washington possesses a unique and pathological complexity.

 

With London and Brussels, the relationship is straightforwardly transactional. Israel serves as a classic garrison state: a cost-effective, externalised instrument for enforcing regional stability (as defined by Anglo-European capital), pacifying Arab nationalism, and absorbing the resultant geopolitical hatred. It is a mercenary, paid in arms and diplomatic cover, to do the dirty work they prefer to outsource.

 

However, with the United States, the relationship evolves into a parasitic symbiosis, a cancer within the American body politic. Israel adeptly leaches its host, consuming billions in annual military aid and wielding a domestic lobbying apparatus that systematically bends U.S. foreign policy to serve Israeli security concerns, often at the direct expense of broader American strategic interests. This is not a partnership of equals, but a masterful manipulation whereby the proxy begins to dictate terms to its patron, creating a feedback loop of dependency and coercion.

 

Herein lies the deeper, more insidious Anglo-European gambit. British and continental elites, particularly in London, have never fully abandoned their condescending view of the United States as a former penal colony and an unruly adolescent power. By fostering and sustaining this parasitic U.S.-Israel relationship, they achieve a brilliant strategic coup. Israel becomes the perfect weight and chain locked to America's leg, ensuring the hyperpower is perpetually drained, distracted, and bogged down in the Middle East. This contained exhaustion prevents the U.S. from fully pivoting to challenge European interests elsewhere and limits its global strategic flexibility.

 

Furthermore, this arrangement provides Europe with ultimate plausible deniability. They reap the benefits of a pacified and controlled Middle East through their Israeli garrison, while the inevitable global fury generated by Israeli aggression is forwarded directly to Washington. This model of outsourcing aggression while redirecting blame is a recurring tactic in the Anglo-European playbook. The current conflict in Ukraine serves as a stark parallel. The war, ultimately instigated by European powers' relentless eastern expansion and strategic greed, was a calculated risk. They understood the inevitable Russian reaction, yet pressed ahead, confident that the United States' resources and military aid would bear the immediate burden. The resulting global fury and economic disruption is directed primarily at Washington, whilst European nations position themselves to reap long-term reconstruction contracts and strategic advantages from a weakened Russia. This explains their visceral opposition to a figure like Donald Trump, who promised to end the conflict; his withdrawal would shatter their design, denying them the tenfold returns on investment anticipated from a prolonged, US-subsidised war. The pattern is clear: Europe provokes, America pays, and the world blames Washington for fires it did not light. The world sees the U.S. as Israel's master, but in a crucial sense, the tail is wagging the dog on behalf of a third party. Europe gets the oil, the contracts, and the stability; America gets the bills, the blowback, and the blame. Thus, Israel functions not only as a garrison for Western hegemony but as a sophisticated tool of intra-Western competition, deliberately wielded by older empires to contain and leach their seemingly indispensable, yet still resented, American successor.

 

This parasitic relationship is quantified in the most brutal terms. Israel absorbs 87% of all US foreign military financing globally, its army reduced to a mercenary force. Palestinians perish under occupation. This transactional dynamic extends beyond mere subsidy dependency into realms of mutual, albeit asymmetric, exploitation. Whilst Israel’s military apparatus functions as a mercenary force, its value to Western patrons is augmented by its utility as a rented laboratory and intelligence outpost. Israel’s battlefield innovations, refined through the relentless pressure of occupation and frequent asymmetric conflicts, provide invaluable real-world testing grounds for surveillance technologies, cyberwarfare tactics, and urban combat doctrines subsequently adopted or acquired by Western states. The much-vaunted ‘Start-Up Nation’ ecosystem, particularly its cyber-intelligence firms like NSO Group, exports tools of digital repression that fortify authoritarian client regimes aligned with Western interests, from Saudi Arabia to Azerbaijan. Concurrently, intelligence sharing, extracted under the guise of ‘counter-terrorism cooperation’, furnishes Western agencies with intercepts and regional HUMINT otherwise inaccessible to them, laundering occupation-derived data into the geopolitical capital of London, Washington, and Brussels. Thus, the garrison state’s survival is perpetuated not solely through charity, but through its role as a live-fire proving ground and mercenary technologist, enabling the West to outsource both the bloodletting and the ethical compromise inherent in maintaining its eroding hegemony. Thus Israelis, trapped in the arena, become both the West’s blade and its scapegoat. Like Rome’s gladiators slaughtering each other to pacify the mob, Israel bleeds so its masters need not. This servitude extracts a dehumanising toll: occupation, drone killings, and settlement expansion forge a society hardened into institutionalised savagery. Israelis become both victim and perpetrator, conditioned to kill until mercy feels alien, their trauma weaponised to justify further brutality.

 

The ultimate proof of Israel’s vassalage? Its masters never punish its defiance. When it spies on the US or sabotages Western diplomacy, no sanctions follow, only fresh subsidies. Contrast this with colonial obedience: Germany outlaws BDS to shield Israeli crimes; Britain threatens ICC withdrawal. This asymmetry reveals Israel not as hegemon but as instrument: a mercenary state, a geopolitical scapegoat kept leashed until enemies require mauling. Palestinians perish under occupation; Israelis, trapped in the arena, become both the West’s blade and its scapegoat. When Gaza burns, Washington murmurs 'restraint' while signing arms deals, and Europe criticise 'disproportionate force' while banking settlement profits.

 

The British Empire birthed Israel as it birthed all Persian Gulf states, not to rule, but to serve. And serve it does: a living sacrifice fed on American arms and European hypocrisy, bleeding so empire may feast. When Gaza’s children perish, they die not for Jewish security, but so Shell and BP may drill undisturbed in gas fields of the dead, and Lockheed’s shareholders may feast. Israel is no rabid beast, it is a knife forged in London and wielded by Washington. To end this, we have to look at the masters, not curse the knife; to realise how the West repackages medieval Jew-hatred into modern geopolitics, transforming pogroms into pipelines, blood libels into bombing campaigns, using Israel as a blade to carve open the Middle East.

 

Yet this strategic hatred-diversion is embedded in European racism, the very racism that birthed Nazi Germany. Nazism did not invent ‘Judeophobia’[1]; it inherited millennia of European Jew-hatred, repackaged it, and weaponised it industrially. Herein lies the tragedy: Israel, by becoming the world’s most reviled state, imperils not only Palestinians and Middle Eastern stability but all Jews. Even those rejecting Zionism or Israeli citizenship become collateral targets of the Western colonial machine it serves. Thus, Israel’s existence as geopolitical scapegoat fuels the very Judeophobic sentiment it claims to defeat.

 

The West’s conflation of Israel’s fate with Judaism itself, shielded under the weaponised misnomer of ‘anti-Semitism’[2], cements the survival of institutionalised hatred within the European historical continuum. History never forgets. Contrary to the widespread misconception that hostility towards Jews or ‘Judeophobia’ emerged in the twentieth century as a product of fascist and Nazi ideologies, its roots lie deep within the religious, cultural, and political history of Europe. The genocidal policies of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler did not arise in isolation; rather, they represent the European culmination and radical intensification of centuries of entrenched Judeophobism, an ideological and structural hostility to Jewish belief, identity, and presence.

 

From the medieval period onwards, Jewish communities across Europe were subjected to systemic violence, theological denunciation, and socio-economic marginalisation. During the First Crusade in 1096, crusading mobs perpetrated mass killings of Jews in the Rhineland cities of Mainz, Worms, and Cologne. These massacres, animated by religious zeal and the conviction that Jews were collective enemies of Christendom, were an early manifestation of the pattern of violence that would persist across the continent for centuries.

 

The accusation of ritual murder, commonly referred to as the “blood libel,” originated in England with the case of William of Norwich in 1144. This fabricated claim, that Jews abducted and killed Christian children for ritual purposes, spread rapidly across medieval Europe, fuelling violent reprisals and legal persecution in England, France, and the German lands. Such myths were actively sustained by ecclesiastical authorities and absorbed into popular religious culture, reinforcing the view of Jews as innately malevolent.

 

During the Black Death (1348–1351), Jews were widely accused of causing the plague by poisoning wells, resulting in mass pogroms in cities such as Strasbourg, Basel, and Erfurt. Entire Jewish communities were exterminated, and the belief in Jewish culpability was supported not only by rumour but by forced confessions extracted under torture.

 

In the early modern period, Judeophobia evolved into more insidious and institutionalised forms, particularly through state expulsions and inquisitorial persecution. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1394, Spain in 1492, and Portugal in 1497. These expulsions were often accompanied by forced conversions and the expropriation of Jewish property. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions continued to target conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity), many of whom were suspected of secretly maintaining Jewish practices, so-called “crypto-Jews”, leading to imprisonment, torture, and execution.

 

One of the most catastrophic episodes of early modern Judeophobia occurred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–1657), in which Cossack-led forces in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth massacred tens of thousands of Jews, often with extraordinary brutality. This period marks one of the darkest chapters in the history of Eastern European Jewry and is remembered within Jewish historical memory as a time of devastation comparable to ancient persecutions. Meanwhile, forged conspiratorial texts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion disseminated the belief that Jews were orchestrating a global plot to undermine Christian society.

 

These acts of mass violence demonstrate how Judeophobism was routinely mobilised to explain and respond to societal crises. And now Israelis inherit the hatred once reserved for European colons: transformed into the world’s most reviled people, not despite their state’s actions, but because they perform the violence their patrons outsource. Thus, this forced marriage by Western powers of Judaism and Zionism in Israel extends Europe’s legacy of persecution while importing Middle Eastern strife into Western consciousness. It secularises theological hostility into racialised geopolitics, erasing the pre-1947 reality where Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted without institutionalised hatred. Should a nuclear strike ever erase Israel, the West would shed no tear, it would celebrate the culmination of its colonial masterpiece: having exhausted its mercenary state, it would mourn only the retirement of a useful tool.

 

 

FROM GARRISON STATE TO GLOBAL HEGEMON: THE STRATEGIC TRIAD OF HORMUZ, THE RED SEA, AND THE BEN GURION CANAL

 

​

 

The analysis thus far has established Israel’s current structural dependency as a proxy enforcer for Western interests. Yet to leave the argument at this stage would be to ignore the trajectory inscribed in its long-term strategic doctrine. Israel does not intend to remain a garrison state indefinitely. On the contrary, it is actively planning its metamorphosis into a fully fledged superpower, a transition that presupposes the erosion of American hegemony and the corresponding need for autonomous control over the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints. The blueprint for this transformation is not speculative. It is discernible in three interlocking theatres: the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea corridor, and the projected Ben Gurion Canal.

 

Control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately twenty per cent of global oil trade passes, is the indispensable precondition for any power aspiring to global economic leverage. Iran’s geographical sovereignty over this waterway has long been the principal obstacle to Israeli strategic ambition. To neutralise this obstacle, Iran must first be rendered a failed state, fragmented along fabricated ethnic and sectarian lines in accordance with the Bernard Lewis doctrine, its central authority dissolved, and its territorial integrity replaced by a mosaic of externally managed dependencies (Suren-Pahlav, 2010). This is not a conspiracy theory but a documented policy continuum, articulated in Israeli strategic circles and corroborated by the operational rehearsal of identical methods in Somalia, where the de facto recognition of Somaliland serves as a template for the piecemeal dismemberment of a sovereign nation. Once Iran is sufficiently destabilised, the three Persian Gulf islands of Būmosū (Abu Musa) and the Greater and Lesser Tunb, already subject to Emirati claims and Israeli surveillance overflights, would function as the forward operating bases for a permanent Israeli military presence at the mouth of the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz would thus cease to be an Iranian strategic asset and become an Israeli-controlled chokehold (Suren-Pahlav, 2020).

 

This Persian Gulf theatre does not stand alone. It is the eastern anchor of a transregional logistics regime whose western anchor is the Red Sea corridor. Israel’s deepening involvement in Somaliland, bankrolled by the United Arab Emirates and facilitated by the Abraham Accords, is not an isolated act of diplomatic outreach but a calculated insertion into the Bab el‑Mandeb strait, the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. Israeli surveillance drones already operate from Emirati bases in Eritrea and Socotra, and the port of Berbera in Somaliland has been concessioned to a UAE-Israeli consortium for a twenty-five-year term. The strategic logic is unmistakable: to establish a permanent Israeli naval and intelligence presence on both sides of the Red Sea chokepoint, thereby gaining the capacity to monitor, regulate, and if necessary interdict global shipping between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean (Suren-Pahlav, 2020).

 

The final and most audacious element of this triad is the Ben Gurion Canal Project, a planned 292.9-kilometre waterway from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean near Ashkelon. Designed to be deeper (fifty metres) and wider than the Suez Canal, this project would provide Israel with an alternative route for global maritime trade, bypassing Egypt’s Suez monopoly and eliminating Arab control over the Red Sea-Mediterranean axis. The project is not a speculative fantasy; it has been studied, costed, and prepared for the moment when geopolitical conditions permit its execution. Its realisation would render Israel not merely a regional military power but an indispensable node in the global circulation of energy, manufactured goods, and agricultural commodities, including the petrochemical-based fertilisers upon which global food security depends. Combined with control over the Strait of Hormuz, Israel would hold the keys to both the Persian Gulf oil lifeline and the Red Sea trade artery, a dual monopoly unparalleled since the height of British imperial power.

 

To complete this architecture, the architects of Israeli strategy have devised a political instrument tailored specifically to Iran: the Cyrus Accord. Conceived within the policy infrastructure of Washington and Tel Aviv, and advanced by figures such as Len Khodorkovsky and Victoria Coates, the Cyrus Accord functions as the Iranian equivalent of the Abraham Accords (Suren-Pahlav, 2021). Whereas the Abraham Accords normalised relations between Israel and Arab states through transactional concessions, the Cyrus Accord is designed to pre-empt and shape the political configuration of a post-theocratic Iran. It is not a treaty negotiated with any sovereign Iranian authority, for none exists; rather, it is a pre-scripted compact, awaiting a political rupture in order to be imposed. The Accord appropriates the name of Cyrus the Great to manufacture a narrative of shared ancient destiny between Iran and Israel, thereby conscripting Iranian historical memory into legitimising Israel’s regional permanence. Its practical function, however, is far more concrete: to neutralise Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz by binding any future Iranian government to strategic concessions on maritime security, energy transit, and military disengagement from the Gulf islands. In this sense, the Cyrus Accord is not a peace initiative but an instrument of anticipatory submission, designed to ensure that even after the fall of the Islamic Regime, Iran’s strategic autonomy remains circumscribed by Israeli-dictated terms. The Accord is the political seal on the economic and military encirclement described above: without it, control over Hormuz remains contested; with it, Israeli hegemony becomes contractual (Suren-Pahlav, 2021).

 

The strategic logic is therefore seamless: the fragmentation of Iran secures Hormuz; the clientelisation of Somaliland secures the Red Sea; the construction of the Ben Gurion Canal consolidates both into a single Israeli-dominated maritime regime; and the Cyrus Accord provides the political legitimation for the entire edifice. What is presented to the world as a series of discrete normalisations, territorial disputes, and diplomatic overtures is, in reality, the phased execution of a superpower transition. The garrison state, armed and subsidised by its Western patrons, is quietly assembling the infrastructure of global leverage that will render those patrons irrelevant. The West, in its short-sighted instrumentalisation of Israel, is thus nurturing the very hegemon that will eventually eclipse it. Iran is not a peripheral victim of this design but its central target, and the Strait of Hormuz is not a narrow waterway but the fulcrum upon which the future of global power will turn (Suren-Pahlav, 2020; 2021).

 

 

THE FINAL IRONY: REPACKAGING PERSECUTION AS PROTECTION

The West’s fervent promotion of ‘combating anti-Semitism’, a term coined in 19th-century Europe to lend pseudo-scientific legitimacy to anti-Jewish hatred[3], completes a perverse historical circle. Having spent centuries weaponising anti-Jewish tropes (blood libels, Protocols of Zion) to scapegoat Jewish communities for societal crises, Western powers now repurpose that same framework to insulate their geopolitical proxy. By conflating criticism of Israel with ‘anti-Semitism’, they achieve three objectives:

 

A. Sanitise History: Erase Europe’s foundational role in manufacturing Judeophobic ideologies;

B. Criminalise Dissent: Redefine anti-colonial solidarity with Palestinians as ‘hate speech’;

C. Perpetuate Instrumentalisation: Bind Jewish safety to the justification of apartheid.

 

In short, the creation of the false term ‘anti-Semitism’ in place of the accurate term ‘Judeophobia’ aims not to protect Jews from repeating history, but in fact ensures its repetition on a mega-scale; it exploits Jewish trauma for profit. To conflate criticism of that system with hatred of Jews is to perpetuate the very mechanism that endangers all Jewish people. This is not progress, it is the modernisation of persecution. The very pseudo-science that once labelled Jews a ‘degenerate race’ now brands their critics ‘bigots’. The tactic evolves; the agenda endures: to fracture solidarity and preserve imperial control.

 

 

BETTING ON A WRONG HORSE

‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

- George Santayana

 

A. History: Lighting the Path to the Future

HIH Reza Pahlavi’s 2023 overture to Israel epitomises a critical misdiagnosis of power, one that conflates theatrical aggression with genuine hegemony. By embracing the illusion of Israeli sovereignty, the Crown Prince ignored this analysis’s central revelation: Israel operates not as a neo-colonial metropole, nor as an equal to Western states, but as a derivative entity, perpetually mortgaged to Anglo-American strategic designs. Its territorial defiance and military audacity manifest not autonomy but instrumental utility, the convulsions of a garrison state unleashed to savage targets its handlers avoid.

 

To collaborate with Israel is thus to align with a proxy whose survival hinges on its patrons’ tolerance for blowback, not with an architect of empire. This error mirrors historical dead-ends: just as U.S.-armed Mujahideen birthed the Taliban, betting on Israeli patronage risks replacing the Islamic Regime with a client regime, trapping Iran in a new cycle of colonial subservience. Furthermore, even if one were to hypothetically set aside Israel’s status as a garrison state and regard it as a genuinely autonomous power, a structurally implausible notion, as outlined above, a sober reading of history compels us to scrutinise its geopolitical conduct. To recall George Santayana’s warning, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’ Israel’s record shows a recurring tendency to exploit vulnerability in order to consolidate dominance. When Palestinians welcomed Jewish refugees fleeing European genocide into their homes with open arms, no one could have foreseen that, their descendants would be herded into overcrowded enclaves that resemble concentration camps, labelled as terrorists and fighting for survival. Against this backdrop, one must ask: what ‘price’ might Iranians pay for Israel’s so-called ‘assisted liberation’? In the best-case scenario, regime’s collapse would not herald freedom, but rather a new form of suzerainty in which the country’s resources, strategic depth, and regional influence are reshaped to serve Tel Aviv’s security interests. And in the worst, and arguably most plausible, scenario: not mere subservience as a client state, but the dismemberment of Iran itself, partitioned into ‘autonomous’ ethnic fiefdoms, hosting NATO bases on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and with oilfields sold off to Anglo-American conglomerates. One way or another, Israel would demand its pound of flesh, and Iran’s corpse would be the bargaining table.

 

The Crown Prince’s gambit presumed Israel could orchestrate the Islamic Regime’s collapse, a notion dismantled by geopolitical reality. Until Western powers grant explicit sanction, a green light, that the regime they installed in power in 1979 will endure. The Islamic regime in Iran like Israel, functions merely as a scarecrow to pacify Arab states while enabling their systematic plunder: lucrative arms sales (often of systems recipients cannot independently operate), resource extraction, and security outsourcing. History attests to this dependency. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Western-contracted pilots, paid exorbitantly to defend the emirate, fled combat, ferrying aircraft to Saudi sanctuaries rather than confronting Saddam’s forces. This debacle illustrates the hollow core of proxy militarisation, a paradigm Israel replicates. The Crown Prince thus wagered on a transmission belt, not a commander, a fatal category error for any liberation movement pursuing endogenous legitimacy.

 

The Crown Prince thus wagered on a transmission belt, not a commander, a fatal category error for any liberation movement pursuing endogenous legitimacy.

 

A1. Friend or Foreign Saboteur? Revisiting Israel’s Intentions Through the Lens of Sovereignty

The framing of HIH Reza Pahlavi’s 2023 journey to Israel must be revisited in this light, not as a moment of diplomatic outreach or even strategic miscalculation, but as the symbolic initiation of a deeper agenda, one conceived well before the visit, and whose authors had no grounding in Iranian political legitimacy. What was set in motion by Len Khodorkovsky and Victoria Coates under the rubric of the so-called ‘Cyrus Accord’ (Suren-Pahlav, 2021), was never a peace initiative in any meaningful sense. It was the soft architecture of post-collapse domination: a pre-scripted compact designed to reconfigure Iran’s sovereignty in the wake of regime implosion, while shielding the apparatus of Israeli and Anglo-American regional control from disruption. Crucially, it did not require consensus, nor even coherence; it required only a face.

 

Not content with ideological abstraction, its architects sought a signature, someone who could perform the necessary theatre of Iranian consent. But the Cyrus Accord, stillborn and unsigned, languished in strategic limbo. It lacked an ‘Iranian’. It lacked the mask. What it needed was not content but legitimacy; not structure but spectacle. That gap was bridged in 2023, when circles aligned with Israeli intelligence, well-versed in the lexicon of soft power manipulation, lured the Crown Prince into a staged encounter under the pretext of solidarity and support. The visit was choreographed less as political diplomacy than as symbolic authentication, a coronation not of Reza Pahlavi’s leadership, but of an imported framework masquerading as native aspiration. The manoeuvre aimed to sanctify a colonial design with a Persian signature, converting the Shah’s heir into a cipher for external agendas.

 

In essence, the Crown Prince was not invited to initiate anything; he was brought to validate a script already written. A geopolitical theatre was erected around his presence, calibrated to mask imperial continuity with the iconography of nationalist redemption. This was not an Israeli endorsement of Iranian liberation, but an Iranian endorsement of Israeli expansionism, one extracted through staged intimacy and reputational co-option.

 

Assuming, for the sake of analytical completeness, that we momentarily suspend the central thesis of this analysis, that Israel functions structurally as a garrison state and imperial subcontractor, and instead grant it its most generous portrayal: that of a sovereign, self-constituting regional superpower, acting with full autonomy and strategic deliberation. Such a hypothetical forces two foundational questions to the fore, questions that necessarily implicate the personage of Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

First, may Netanyahu reasonably be regarded as a friend to the Iranian nation? And second, can he, or the state he leads, credibly be entrusted to act in pursuit of Iran’s liberation?

 

To answer these questions with intellectual integrity, one must examine Netanyahu’s political record with respect to Iran, not solely in relation to the Islamic regime, but towards Iran itself: its territorial integrity, its historical continuity, and the dignity of the Iranian nation.

 

Under successive Netanyahu administrations, Israel, often via Mossad, has extended sustained support to separatist movements within Iran, including, but not limited to, Kurdish insurgent networks and Baloch militant factions [4].  Such actions cannot plausibly be construed as incidental, nor can they be dismissed as narrowly tactical measures aimed at the Islamic regime. Rather, they constitute a direct and systematic assault upon the territorial unity of the Iranian state. According to any credible standard of international law or ethical reasoning, to arm, train, or politically endorse actors whose explicit objective is the disintegration of a sovereign nation is not the conduct of a friend, but of a hostile power (Suren-Pahlav, 2024). No polity committed to civilisational continuity can, or ought to, form alliance with a state that has deliberately sought to unravel its demographic cohesion and geopolitical wholeness.

 

Equally revealing is Israel’s enduring rhetorical and ideological posture, which, across successive administrations, has consistently refused to distinguish between the Islamic regime and the Iranian nation. In political discourse, media narratives, and strategic messaging, Iran is cast as a monolithic threat, irrational, incorrigible, and culturally alien. This caricature is not a rhetorical convenience; it is a deliberate act of narrative erasure. It obscures the plurality of Iranian civilisation, silences its internal contestations, and collapses the fundamental distinction between the state and the nation. Such essentialisation not only distorts political reality but enables policies of indiscriminate antagonism.

 

A particularly revealing instance lies in Netanyahu’s recurrent invocation of the Purim narrative, wherein he asserts that ‘the Iranians’ have sought to annihilate the Jewish people for over 2,500 years (United States Institute of Peace, 2015; Keinon, 2017; U.S. Department of State, 2019; Borger, 2025). This is not merely an historical error, it is a dangerous conflation of ancient take with contemporary geopolitics. Purim, a Babylonian children story written during the Seleucid era and subsequently retrofitted into Jewish national identity (suren-Pahlav, 2014), is no basis for indicting the Iranian nation, a civilisational entity whose existence predates the Islamic regime by millennia. That some within the diaspora seek to excuse this rhetoric by suggesting Netanyahu refers solely to the Islamic regime overlooks a glaring absurdity: the regime is scarcely half a century old. The object of Netanyahu’s discourse, whether explicitly stated or tacitly implied, is the Iranian nation, not merely its current rulers.

 

Recent attempts by Netanyahu to recast himself as a friend of the Iranian nation, declaring that his government’s actions are aimed at promoting regime change, supporting national liberation, or fostering future reconciliation, must be approached with the utmost strategic caution. Such overtures, however superficially conciliatory, cannot override a sustained record of hostility: support for separatist movements, essentialising rhetoric, and asymmetric aggression. Indeed, one of the most revealing examples of Israel’s true posture emerged when Edy Cohen, an advisor to the Israeli government, an expert on the Arab world and Islam, and a former official in Netanyahu’s Office for Arab Affairs, publicly called upon Arab states to collaborate with Israel to fragment Iran along engineered ethnic lines and advance its Balkanisation (Cohen, 2024). That such a proposal could emanate from within Netanyahu’s former advisory circle renders recent professions of friendship strategically hollow and politically toxic. To embrace Netanyahu’s current language while disregarding the cumulative conduct of his administration is not merely naïve, it is politically suicidal. Liberation movements cannot afford amnesia. Sovereign strategy demands historical memory.

 

Yet it is essential to distinguish between ‘regime change’ and ‘civilisational annihilation’, for they are not synonymous in the geopolitical calculus of Tel Aviv. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, Israel does not aspire to witness the rise of a sovereign, democratic Iran with which it might coexist as an equal. On the contrary, Israel's strategic posture seeks the preservation of a weak, permanently delegitimised enemy, an Iran too fragmented to pose a threat, yet potent enough to justify perpetual Israeli militarisation and victimhood. This is not a state seeking peace through parity; it is an entity addicted to enmity, for it is defined by it.

 

Israel’s architecture, both material and ideological, was conceived not as a vehicle for peace but as an instrument of conquest. Just as a tank cannot double as an ambulance, a state forged through occupation and ethnic cleansing cannot pivot organically toward diplomacy and restorative justice. Its founding mythos, rooted in expulsion, is irreconcilable with the principles of coexistence. From the first settlement to the latest airstrike, Israel has been structurally conditioned for warfare, not reconciliation. A free and independent Iran, governed by its own people and charting a sovereign path, would pose an existential contradiction to this design, it would deprive Israel of its indispensable enemy.

 

Tragically, HIH Reza Pahlavi, by failing to grasp this strategic asymmetry, risks becoming the legitimising instrument of a project antithetical to Iranian sovereignty. His symbolic capital is being converted into currency for a regional architecture that seeks not Iran’s liberation, but its partition. This schema aligns, however disturbingly, with the Bernard Lewis Plan: to balkanise Iran into docile ethnic fiefdoms, Iranestan, convenient for resource extraction and hostile to civilisational continuity (Suren-Pahlav, 2010).

 

Crucially, Israel is not alone in this structural pathology. The Islamic regime in Iran mirrors it. From the moment of its birth, amid mass executions and revolutionary tribunals, the regime revealed its own genocidal impulse. Like Israel, it is a state that cannot exist without an enemy; and when its expiry date arrives, set not by its people but by its foreign engineers, it will not go quietly. It will burn its own citizens, inviting foreign ‘humanitarian’ intervention as cover for the final act: the dismemberment of the Iranian nation.

 

Thus, both states, Israel and the Islamic regime, exist as twin aberrations in the region: one forged by colonial guilt and the other by imperial design. They are not natural enemies but structural accomplices in a theatre of managed hostility, mutually reinforcing each other’s legitimacy while Western powers await the opportune moment to divide and consume what remains.

 

Therefore, when Netanyahu’s posture is  scrutinised, not through the narrow lens of tactical opposition to the Islamic regime, but through the broader prism of his state’s disposition towards Iran as a civilisational whole, he does not emerge as a misunderstood partner, but as an adversarial actor whose conduct has systematically undermined Iran’s cohesion, dignity, and sovereign legitimacy.

 

The gravest strategic error committed by HIH Reza Pahlavi may well be the presumption that Benjamin Netanyahu could serve as a credible partner in the liberation of Iran, an error tragically echoing his father’s fateful misjudgement: the belief that the United States was a steadfast ally of the Iranian nation. History has since delivered its verdict with devastating clarity. Those hailed as friends proved, in truth, the most corrosive adversaries. The Islamic regime that now suffocates Iran did not arise solely from an indigenous uprising; it was midwifed by the very Western powers that orchestrated the collapse of the Imperial government and abandoned the late Shah in his final hour. To place trust today in Netanyahu, whose administration has openly advocated for the partition of Iran, is to risk reprising, in altered form, the foundational betrayal that gave birth to the current theocratic despotism.

 

 

B. Never underestimate the power of propaganda; it is the slow poison that outlasts the tyrant

By engaging a state weaponised through decades of Islamic Regime propaganda as the West’s enforcer, the Crown Prince furnished Tehran with precisely the 'foreign proxy' narrative it exploits to discredit dissent. Not to mention, Iranians in the diaspora carrying Israeli flags during anti-regime demonstrations in the West inadvertently reinforced the Islamic regime’s narrative portraying opposition as foreign-backed subversion.[5]

 

Thus, for millions of Iranians steeped in state propaganda framing Israel as the ‘Little Satan,’ this alliance feels less like liberation than foreign occupation by proxy, alienating the devout masses essential for revolution. Liberation struggles thrive by transcending colonial binaries, not reinforcing them; the Crown Prince’s embrace of Israel inadvertently validated the regime’s framing of opposition as treasonous collusion. His continued advocacy for collaboration, however pragmatically intended, sustains a gift to the very tyranny he seeks to undermine.

 

History renders a grim verdict: like the artificial Arab states carved by Britain from Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, Israel remains a colonial artefact, retained to absorb violence and hatred until its utility expires. To bet on Israel is to bet on a sacrificed pawn in the imperial game. The Crown Prince, seeking an ally, chose the knife, not the hand that wields it. For Iran’s liberation to succeed, it must reject the pernicious dichotomy of Western proxies versus theocratic oppressors. Sovereignty is won by those who navigate empire’s minefield without becoming its instrument. This demands dismantling the pipeline feeding both tyranny and its ‘opposition’: the arms dealers profiting from Israeli occupation, the banks laundering settlement revenues, and the oil cartels trading blood for barrels. Target the masters, not their knives. Anything less risks inheriting Israel’s curse, transforming Iranian patriots into colonial enforcers, and martyrs into ‘terrorists’ in the eyes of those we seek to free. History has a cruel habit of repeating itself, unless we confront it with clarity and courage. Today, we stand at a crossroads: to remain a sovereign nation upon the soil our ancestors have inhabited for over 7,000 years, or to meet the fate of Palestine, a people not merely dispossessed, but subjected to erasure, siege, and a slow-motion genocide. The choice is stark: endure with dignity, or vanish under empire’s boot.

 

However, this regime will fall, despotisms invariably do, but victory must belong to Iranians. The imperative is clear: never replace one captivity with another. After 46 years of wealth squandered on subsidising Arab autocracies and Western arms dealers, Iran cannot afford to divert its resources anew, this time bankrolling Israeli garrison states and the very war machines that perpetuate its subjugation.

 

 

THE IRANIAN IMPERATIVE: SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH SELF-LIBERATION

While His Imperial Highness Reza Pahlavi retains symbolic legitimacy as Crown Prince and is widely regarded as a principal figure within the Iranian opposition, it remains essential to distinguish between symbolic leadership and the formal, constitutional mandate required for the conduct of foreign policy on behalf of a sovereign nation. Strategic alignments undertaken by individuals, however prominent, during the liberation phase risk being interpreted as externally orchestrated or lacking national consensus. By contrast, a future national government, established through democratic processes, would possess the legitimate mandate to act on behalf of the Iranian nation. Whether such a government elects to pursue, revise, or reject diplomatic relations with Israel, or any other state, remains an open question. It is not for exiled figures or external actors to predetermine such outcomes. While one may reasonably anticipate that a democratic Iran, rooted in a civilisational tradition of dialogue and coexistence, could favour peace over hostility, that decision must ultimately reside with the nation itself. This is the very essence of sovereign self-determination.

 

Thus, criticism of the Crown Prince’s engagement with Israel reflects neither a repudiation of diplomacy nor hostility towards any particular state, but a principled assertion that enduring sovereignty cannot be leased, assumed, or symbolically declared; it must be conferred through the conscious will of the nation. A truly free and democratic Iran may in fact embrace peaceful relations with all neighbours and nations, but it must do so on its own terms, in its own time, and with the full backing of the nation.

 

It should be noted, however, that had Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi engaged in this meeting and cooperation with Israel in his official capacity as the head of a provisional government-in-exile, the establishment of political relations with singular states, such as Israel, might have been rendered diplomatically defensible. Yet, given that he did not assume such a role, despite the absence of any structural impediment to doing so, the justification for this engagement is considerablely weakened. in fact, although the formation of such a government has been repeatedly advocated over the past decades, these appeals have been met with persistent disregard on his part, ostensibly in favour of maintaining symbolic unity over institutional responsibility.

 

Therefore, Iranian nation must reject what I have termed 'external liberation' and recognise that genuine liberation must emerge endogenously, free from foreign interference that risks replicating the Islamic Regime's colonial subservience (Suren-Pahlav, 2016).  A future democratic Iran, which would preferably adopt a parliamentary monarchy, should restore pre-1979 diplomatic relations globally, including with Israel, as peace remains the sole guarantor of lasting stability. However, history demonstrates that in a world where power still derives from the barrel of a gun, nuclear capability functions as the ultimate deterrent against foreign aggression. Nations like Iran, whose sovereignty has been systematically violated by Western powers and Russia, both with bloodstained records of intervention, possess an inalienable right to such deterrence.

 

Moreover, the moral authority to regulate nuclear arms rests not with states whose histories overflow with aggression, but with civilisations that have stewarded human progress. The United States, a polity of mere 250 years, has initiated over 40 military interventions in the last half-century alone. Western Europe, despite its relatively shorter history compared to ancient nations such as Iran and China, birthed multiple colonial aggressions and two World Wars that claimed 100 million lives. For these actors to dictate nuclear prohibition to Iran, a 7,000-year-old civilisational anchor whose Zoroastrian ethics pioneered concepts of human dignity millennia before the Enlightenment, constitutes not merely hypocrisy but imperial audacity masquerading as governance.

 

In an ideal world, no nation would possess nuclear weapons; disarmament would be universal, enforceable, and irreversible. However, the enduring reality is that existing nuclear powers have shown little willingness to relinquish these arsenals, which they continue to wield as instruments of coercion and geopolitical leverage. This double standard undermines global security and entrenches structural inequality. If peace is truly to be achieved, the international community must either commit in good faith to universal disarmament or acknowledge that sovereignty and deterrence cannot be privileges reserved for a select few. Ultimately, peace cannot be built on monopolies of annihilation, it must be rooted in justice, reciprocity, and mutual restraint.

 

Therefore, true disarmament must begin with those who weaponised modernity into industrial slaughter; until then, Iran’s nuclear sovereignty constitutes legitimate defence against states whose existence is built on stolen land and sustained through unbroken conquest. This deterrent posture must remain strictly defensive, a shield against coercion, never a sword for aggression, aligning with Iran’s civilizational ethos of aša (cosmic order) and humata, hukhta, huvarshta (good thoughts, good words, good deeds). Just as Israel’s security paradigm relies on nuclear ambiguity, Iran’s survival demands equivalent safeguards against powers whose fleeting geopolitical relevance fuels reckless interventionism. This is not militarism but sovereign insurance: a necessary equilibrium ensuring no foreign power can throttle Iranian self-determination again.

 

 

TO HONOUR JEWISH HISTORY IS NOT MERELY TO RECALL ITS SUFFERING, BUT TO PROTECT ITS FUTURE WITH DIGNITY, NOT AS A PAWN, BUT AS A PEOPLE

 

“Human beings are limbs of one whole,

Created of one essence and soul.

If one limb is struck by pain,

The others cannot peace retain.

If you feel no sorrow for others’ pain,

The name of 'human' you may not retain.”

, The great Persian mystic poet, Sa'di of Shiraz

 

It must be unequivocally affirmed that a Jewish state possesses the inherent right to exist and thrive, culturally, politically, and sovereignly, as do all nations of the West or East. Yet this right necessitates reciprocal obligations: Israel’s long-term security and legitimacy can only be guaranteed through the adoption of policies grounded in mutual recognition, peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours, and adherence to international humanitarian norms.

 

Thus, Israel cannot indefinitely sustain its existential paradigm through perpetual warfare masquerading as defence. War begets war, not peace; it entrenches cycles of retaliation that devour the very security it purports to safeguard. Those segments of the Israeli political spectrum clinging to the anachronistic fantasy of a ‘Greater Israel’, whether knowingly advancing colonial designs or unconsciously serving as instruments of them, must confront an irreducible truth: such expansionist ambitions can only be realised through further ethnic cleansing and genocide. This constitutes not merely a grotesque betrayal of Jewish ethical imperatives, but a strategic death warrant. By pursuing territorial maximalism, Israel would inevitably catalyse a unified regional coalition dedicated to its annihilation. The fantasy of Eretz Yisrael Hashlema (‘Greater Israel’) today is neither a fantasy nor a visionary project; it is a trap that engineers the very existential catastrophe it claims to pre-empt. It is a kill switch for Western powers to press when the usefulness of Israel expires. A durable future demands relinquishing maximalist territorial delusions and embracing the foundational compromise of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which prescribed the partition of Palestine into sovereign Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem under international trusteeship. This resolution retains a form of legal validity as the last internationally endorsed framework predating Israel’s unilateral declaration of statehood. While Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) remains cited in diplomatic parlance,[6] its enforcement has been systematically vetoed or diluted by the very powers that crafted it within the UN’s most undemocratic organ, a body where five permanent members dictate terms to the world (Suren-Pahlav, 2025). True sovereignty for Israel hinges not on territorial avarice, but on coexistence anchored in historical precedent and international consensus.

 

Furthermore, the profound historical suffering endured by Jewish communities across Europe, systematic persecution spanning centuries, culminating in genocide during the Holocaust, imposes a moral imperative: the Jewish people possess an inalienable right to security, self-determination, and freedom from instrumentalisation. They are neither geopolitical tools to be wielded by empires, nor scapegoats for civilisational grievances, but a people entitled to the same dignity and agency as any other nation. Atrocities, whether committed by the Islamic regime’s torturers, Israeli airstrikes on civilian areas, American drones, or proxy militias across the region, must be condemned equally. Morality does not bend to geopolitics. The value of life is indivisible.

 

Consequently, the future peace of the region depends on the mutual recognition of both Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty, in full alignment with the original spirit of UN Resolution 181 (1947). Yet, the path to lasting peace requires that all external powers, not least those historically complicit in anti-Jewish violence, cease exploiting Jewish identity or the State of Israel for strategic gain. True atonement for past atrocities demands the unequivocal respect of Jewish autonomy, not the perpetuation of their reduction to expendable assets within cynical geopolitical calculus.

 

 

CONCLUSION: ON STRATEGIC CAUTION AND THE QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY

 

'We are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.'

- Gore Vidal (1925–2012)

 

As a political activist engaged in the struggle for Iranian liberation for the past four decades, investing my adult life to fight the ruling totalitarian theocratic regime in Iran, and as a pro-parliamentarian monarchist, I feel compelled to reflect personally on the core question underpinning this analysis: was HIH Reza Pahlavi’s engagement with Israel an act of strategic foresight, or was my opposition to it an expression of excessive cynicism?

 

Upon sustained consideration of the historical structures, geopolitical dependencies, and sociological realities explored in this article, I find the latter view increasingly untenable. What some may characterise as cynicism is, in truth, strategic caution grounded in a sober reading of power.

 

The Crown Prince’s overture to Israel appears to rest on two assumptions: first, that Israel possesses sufficient geopolitical clout to galvanise Western-led regime change in Iran; second, that such an alliance could help legitimise the opposition in the eyes of Western capitals. However, this calculation misjudges the nature of Israel’s position within the international system. As this paper has argued, Israel is not an autonomous superpower but a structurally dependent proxy. Its relationship with the West is not one of simple service but of complex, asymmetric exploitation. It functions as a classic garrison state for British and European interests, while its relationship with the United States has mutated into a parasitic symbiosis a cancerous cell that leaches its host, strategically fostered by London to contain and exhaust its American successor. To mistake such an entity for a sovereign actor is to fundamentally misread the architecture of contemporary empire.

 

Moreover, the psychological and symbolic terrain within Iran cannot be overlooked. Decades of regime propaganda have inculcated a perception of Israel as the embodiment of imperial aggression and sacrilege. Aligning with such a state, irrespective of one’s strategic rationale, risks reinforcing the Islamic regime’s narrative that opposition movements are foreign-sponsored, anti-Islamic constructs. This not only alienates the devout and disenfranchised masses upon whom any successful revolutionary movement must depend, but also erodes the endogenous legitimacy that distinguishes true liberation from externally choreographed regime change.

 

Therefore, my resistance to this alliance is not rooted in ideological hostility, but in a principled commitment to strategic clarity and national self-determination. To liberate Iran by enlisting a proxy of empire is to court a Pyrrhic victory, one in which sovereignty is replaced not by freedom, but by a new dependency. History cautions us that the cost of liberation bought through external instruments is often paid in the currency of lost autonomy.

 

The gravest risk, however, lies not in strategic miscalculation alone, but in unwitting collaboration with a project of national dismemberment. Israel, by structural design, seeks not a free and sovereign Iran, but a fragmented one, permanently enfeebled, safely vilified, and existentially humiliated. It has no interest in parity, only in perpetual antagonism. Its survival demands an enemy it can defeat endlessly, yet never entirely extinguish. The Islamic regime, for its part, is poised to oblige; it was never constructed to cede power, but to martyr the nation upon its ideological altar. When its expiry date arrives, dictated not by its citizens, but by its external architects, it will ignite the country rather than surrender, offering Western governments the pretext to intervene under the cover of humanitarian concern, and to complete the Bernard Lewis blueprint. In the next uprising, when hundreds of thousands once again chant the Pahlavi name, the regime will seize upon the Crown Prince’s Israeli overture as ‘proof’ of a foreign plot, and massacre tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands to secure its grip. Should this transpire, the blood will be on the hands not only of those who pull the trigger, but of those who failed to foresee that Israel, by its very nature, cannot be a midwife to Iranian freedom. The misjudgement, the tragic error of embracing Netanyahu’s Israel as a partner in liberation, would then become more than a tactical lapse; it would mark HIH Reza Pahlavi, or any who urged this path, as a ceremonial agent in Iran’s undoing.

 

The path to an emancipated Iran must therefore proceed not through foreign entanglements or symbolic gestures of alignment with garrison states, but through the difficult, dignified work of building a movement that draws its strength from the will, memory, and moral imagination of the Iranian nation. Liberation, to be enduring, must be neither leased nor borrowed. It must be owned.

 

Our liberation struggle must be more than a contest of force, it must be a declaration of values: that no people should live under siege; no nation should be a pawn; and no child should be born to the sound of drones or slogans of hatred. True sovereignty begins not with power, but with principle. Let Iran's future be written not in the language of vengeance or subjugation, but in the ink of justice, freedom, and peace.

 

 

Footnotes:

1 – The term ‘antisemitism’ is historically, linguistically and anthropologically inaccurate as a descriptor for anti-Jewish sentiment or more accurately ‘Judeophobism.’ The term was coined during the 19th century to give a pseudo-scientific veneer to anti-Jewish hatred in Europe. It also inaccurately implies that Jews are the only Semitic people, ignoring Arabs and others. Furthermore, it is essential to recognise that Judaism is not a race or a people but a faith. Just as there are English Christians, Nigerian Christians, or Japanese Christians, there are individuals of different creeds, colours, and nationalities who adhere to Judaism, each with distinct DNA and cultural backgrounds. Placing all Jews into a single category is a product of European racism and white supremacy, akin to the way Muslims are often homogenised to belittle or marginalise them. This reductionist approach ignores the diversity within Jewish communities and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.  Additionally, in modern times, the term ‘antisemitism’ has been politically weaponised to silence anyone critical of the state of Israel, breaching the fundamental human rights of freedom of speech, a cornerstone of any democratic society. When ignored, this misuse gradually becomes a tool to censor, oppress, and form a policing state, ultimately eroding democracy and freedom of speech. Therefore, the correct term is ‘Judeophobia’/’Judeophobism’.

2 – Ibid.

3 – Ibid.

4 – According to one of the WikiLeaks documents, it refers to a secret meeting between former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Nicholas Burns, the US deputy secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, in August 2007, in which Dagan suggested fomenting [engineered] ethnic divisions in Iran (The Guardian, 2010; WikiLeaks, 2007).

5 – The Crown Prince’s overture to Israel has spawned a corrosive symbology within segments of the diaspora opposition: the conspicuous display of the Israeli flag alongside Iran’s historic Lion and Sun during anti-regime demonstrations. This act, however well-intentioned by some, constitutes a profound strategic and cultural miscalculation. Within the Iranian historical consciousness, forged by centuries of territorial dismemberment (Central Asian lands including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan ceded to Russia; Caucasian territories encompassing modern-day Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and parts of Dagestan severed by Tsarist expansion; and the British-carved modern states of Afghanistan, Pakistani Baluchistan, and Persian Gulf territories including Oman and Bahrain), standing beneath or brandishing a foreign banner resonates not as solidarity, but as betrayal. Iranian patriotism, honed by loss, occupation, and humiliation (from Allied invasions during both World Wars despite declared neutrality, to Cold War meddling), interprets such gestures as an abdication of self-respect, a visual capitulation to the very powers that dismembered the nation. This symbolism is catastrophically weaponised by the Islamic Regime. For the devout and rural communities, steeped in state-manufactured anti-Israeli indoctrination, images of diaspora protesters flanked by Israeli flags validate the core regime narrative: that opposition to theocracy is synonymous with treasonous collusion. The psychological impact of the June 2025 conflict further entrenches this perception. Crucially, while Iranians broadly welcomed the elimination of IRGC commanders (viewed as enforcers of repression), the killing of civilians and scientists, the latter revered as national assets transcending regime affiliation, was perceived as an assault on Persian civilisation itself. When diaspora displays conflate opposition with Israeli allegiance, they obscure this nuanced reality and sabotage the essential task of bridging the divide with the masses inside Iran. Compounding this error is the regime’s sophisticated manipulation of dissent. Since at least 2010, the Islamic Republic has deployed agents provocateurs within diaspora circles under its ‘controlled opposition’ strategy. These actors deliberately brandish Israeli flags, applaud Israeli strikes on Iranian soil (including those killing civilians), and amplify rhetoric welcoming foreign intervention. Their presence transforms protests into toxic theatre, furnishing the regime with curated ‘evidence’ to tar all opposition as traitors complicit in civilisational erasure. Thus, the flag-waving, whether by the misguided or the regime’s saboteurs, feeds a vicious cycle: it alienates the domestic constituency indispensable for revolution, legitimises the regime’s narrative of resistance as foreign subversion, and ultimately fortifies the tyranny it claims to oppose. The Crown Prince’s visit, by tacitly endorsing this symbolism, has thus deepened a trap that cripples the opposition’s credibility and plays directly into the hands of its persecutors.

6 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) formally emphasises the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ and endorses the principle of ‘land for peace.’ However, its implementation has been perpetually obstructed by the structural inequities of the Security Council itself, where five permanent members (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) wield veto powers to shield client states and paralyse enforcement. This renders 242 a diplomatic artefact of selective convenience rather than an operative instrument of justice. By contrast, General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), adopted by a democratic majority of member states, retains foundational legitimacy as the sole internationally ratified blueprint for a two-state solution. The Council’s undemocratic architecture, epitomised by its unaccountable veto mechanism, invalidates its moral authority to impose solutions while exempting itself from accountability.

 

 

References:

• Amnesty International (2024) ‘Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza’, Amnesty International, 5 December. Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/ (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Barnaby, F. (1993) The invisible bomb: nuclear arms race in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Borger, J. (2025) ‘From Beersheba to Babylon: Netanyahu casts himself as liberator of Iran’, The Guardian, 19 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/time-for-jews-to-repay-ancient-debt-to-cyrus-the-great-liberate-iran-says-netanyahu (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Cohen, A. (2021) Nuclear dependency: Israel’s nuclear ambiguity in the age of transparency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Cohen, E. (2024) دعوة للتعاون بين إسرائيل والدول العربية من أجل تفكيك إيران (‘A call for cooperation between Israel and Arab states to dismember Iran’), Suren-Pahlav.com, 9 July. Available at: http://elaph.com/Web/Opinion/2017/11/1177819.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Keinon, H. (2017) ‘PM: Persians didn't succeed in killing Jews in days of Haman, won't succeed today’, The Jerusalem Post, 11 March. Available at: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/pm-persians-didnt-succeed-in-killing-jews-in-days-of-haman-wont-succeed-today-483907 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Le Monde (2024) ‘Anatomy of an Israeli disinformation campaign’, Le Monde, 1 July. Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/07/01/anatomy-of-an-israeli-disinformation-campaign_6676349_4.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Ostler, J. (2015) ‘Genocide and American Indian history’, Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of American History, 2 March. Available at: https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-1 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Pappé, I. (2017) The biggest prison on Earth: a history of the occupied territories. London: Oneworld.

• Rapaport, N. (2025) ‘Israel counts high cost of Iran war as censorship masks full damage’, Middle East Eye, 9 July. Available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-counts-true-cost-iran-war-censorship-masks-full-damage (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (1998) ‘From Ethno-Nation To Multi-Ethnicity: The Fabricated Myth And Illusion Of ‘Ethnic’ And ‘Ethnicity’ In Modern Iran’, suren-pahlav.com (20 November). Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/from-ethno-nation-to-multi-ethnicity-the-fabricated-myth-and-illusion-of-ethnic-and-ethnicity.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2010) ‘Mullahs, the West and Zionism: The Diabolical Triangular Project for the Balkanisation of Iran’, suren-pahlav.com (12 February). Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/mullahs-west-zionism-diabolical-triangular-project-for-the-balkanisation-of-iran.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2013) ‘The Federalist Trap: The Blueprint For Balkanisation Of Iran’, suren-pahlav.com (10 June). Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/federalist-trap-the-blueprint-for-balkanisation-of-iran.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2014) ‘A historical fabrication at its best: Esther and Purim, from Babylonian children's story to Jewish historical identity’, 10 March. Available at: https://bit.ly/3XDys7e (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2016) ‘The ‘External Liberation’ Narrative As Information Strategy: The Normalisation Of War And The Hollowing Of Sovereignty’, suren-pahlav.com (26 December). Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/external-liberation-narrative-as-information-strategy-the-normalisation-of-war.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2020) ‘Israel’s Strategic Doctrine and the Somalisation of Iran: Erosion of National Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity', suren-pahlav.com (5 September). Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/somalisation-plan-for-iran-the-erosion-of-iran-s-national-sovereignty-and-territorial-integrity.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2021) 'The Cyrus Accord as myth and strategy: fabricated antiquity, foreign power, and Iran’s sovereignty, 2 February. Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/en/the-cyrus-accord-as-myth-and-strategy-fabricated-antiquity-foreign-power-and-iran-s-sovereignty.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2023) A note on Prince Reza Pahlavi's unwise trip to Israel (in Persian), Suren-Pahlav.com, 16 April. Available at: https://www.suren-pahlav.com/pe/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=1:political-article&id=347:reza-pahlavi-unwise-and-insalting-trip-to-israel (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2024) ‘Know thyself, know thy enemy: "misinformation," my ally & the enemy of my enemy’, 26 March. Available at: https://bit.ly/3PKBmDl (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• Suren-Pahlav, S. (2025) ‘The chameleon's new skin: how the League of Nations became the UN to serve the same masters’, 2025. Available at: https://bit.ly/4kRp6O8 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• The Guardian (2010) ‘US embassy cables: Israel grateful for US support’, The Guardian, [WikiLeaks diplomatic cables archive]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/120696 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• U.S. Department of State (2019) ‘Remarks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before dinner’, 21 March. Available at: https://2017-2021.state.gov/remarks-with-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-before-dinner/ (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• UN News (2024a) ‘ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas commander’, UN News, 21 November. Available at: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• UN News (2024b) ‘Rights expert finds "reasonable grounds" genocide is being committed in Gaza’, UN News, 26 March. Available at: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976 (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• United Nations (2024) ‘UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war’, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 14 November. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-committee-finds-israels-warfare-methods-gaza-consistent-genocide (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• United States Institute of Peace (2015) ‘Netanyahu speech: the text’, 3 March. Available at: https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2015/mar/03/netanyahu-speech-text (Accessed: 18 July 2025).

• WikiLeaks (2007) ‘U/S Burns’ August 17 meeting with Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan’ (Cable 07TELAVIV2652_a, 31 August). Available at: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07TELAVIV2652_a.html (Accessed: 18 July 2025).