PNN – A Haaretz columnist, noting the end of the unipolar world order, stated that war has transformed Iran into the region’s dominant power.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; while hardline Zionist media outlets aligned with the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu—Prime Minister of the occupying regime—attempt to boost public morale by claiming that a US-Israeli aggression against Iran could achieve at least some of the stated objectives, academic elites as well as political and security sources within the occupying regime warn that history will repeat itself and that Iran will once again withstand a brutal US attack.
According to the newspaper Rai al-Youm, Avner Ben-Zaken—a Zionist historian and head of the organization known as the “Israel Thought Institute”—stated the following in an article published in the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz: Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister cannot be explained solely by his political skills, the weakness of his opponents, or the transformations Israeli society has undergone—as is commonly assumed.
This Zionist historian added: Netanyahu’s tenure as prime minister coincided with the era of a unipolar world—a time when the United States was the globe’s sole superpower. This unipolar order granted the U.S. a privilege rarely seen in international politics: the right to make mistakes without facing punishment or suffering damage to its global standing.
He emphasized that every superpower makes mistakes; however, if there is no formidable rival capable of exploiting those errors, they do not alter the global balance of power. This reality prevailed for many years, enabling the United States to wage protracted wars, maintain vast military bases worldwide, and simultaneously extend unconditional support to Israel—even when doing so was not in America’s own interest.
The article continues: The special relationship between Israel and the United States is itself a product of the unipolar global order. The strategic alliance between Tel Aviv and Washington gradually took shape starting in the early 1960s—marked by the supply of Skyhawk aircraft to Israel in 1968—and was subsequently reinforced by the airlift of military aid during the 1973 war. This alliance reached its peak following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period that also saw the height of AIPAC’s influence in Washington.
The aforementioned Zionist historian emphasized that the Israel lobby operated within an international system in which the United States possessed sufficient power and margin for error to provide virtually unlimited support to Israel without incurring any strategic costs.
He stated that Netanyahu benefited from this unlimited U.S. support—facilitated by the unipolar world order—throughout his various terms as prime minister, which is why his political career outlasted that of his collective opposition. Notably, Netanyahu was willing to align himself with the conservative camp in the United States—where white nationalist movements were gaining momentum—and risk an open confrontation with the first Black U.S. president (Barack Obama), operating on the assumption that the strategic alliance between the two sides was robust enough to withstand the growing polarization of American politics.
According to this article, when the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump adopted Netanyahu’s stance during his first term in 2018 and effectively withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran, some believed that Netanyahu’s gamble had paid off and that Washington had adopted a policy closely resembling the views of Netanyahu’s cabinet. Nevertheless, the conditions were not yet ripe to transform Netanyahu into Israel’s most powerful leader.
The Haaretz article further emphasizes that, in the wake of these developments—specifically the US-Israeli war against Iran and its consequences—the United States no longer possesses the room for maneuver it had enjoyed for three decades since the Gulf War; it is no coincidence that Robert Kagan, a thinker closely associated with neoconservatism and the concept of American hegemony, chose the title “Checkmate in Iran” for his post-war article in The Atlantic.
The aforementioned Zionist historian continued by noting that the article in The Atlantic magazine signified an admission—by one of the foremost theorists of American hegemony—that the unipolar era had come to an end. The post-war landscape demonstrates that the United States can no longer afford to make mistakes at will when contending with China, Russia, and other global and regional powers, as it once could.
He noted with a touch of irony: This war was supposed to contain and weaken Iran, but instead, it transformed the country into a dominant regional power in the Persian Gulf. This signifies a narrowing of the margin for error for the United States—meaning the U.S. can no longer act however it pleases or commit mistakes with impunity.
In conclusion, this Zionist historian emphasized: The era of a unipolar world has come to an end, and with it, the Netanyahu era has also ended.