Even as a Ceasefire Looms, Netanyahu Speaks the Language of War
In an interview with CBS News, Netanyahu stated that "the war with Iran is not over" and that nuclear enrichment facilities must be dismantled, while highly enriched uranium must be removed. The formula is anything but innocuous: it means that in the eyes of the butcher of Gaza, the cessation of hostilities is merely a tactical pause, never a durable political perspective.
This logic is part of a continuum. For months, the Zionist state has been conducting military operations of extreme intensity in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and now in the context of the confrontation with Iran. In Lebanon, repeated strikes against civilian areas are justified by the fight against Hezbollah (a strike killed 7 people last weekend); but behind the security argument, a broader strategy is emerging: maintaining a permanent state of confrontation, where each front feeds into another and war becomes a mode of governance as much as a geopolitical tool.
Netanyahu's statements are revealing of this headlong rush. Even as Washington mentions a fragile ceasefire with Tehran, he expands the objectives of the conflict: elimination of enriched uranium, dismantling of nuclear facilities, halt of the Iranian ballistic program, and neutralization of Iran's allies in the region. In other words, it is no longer just a matter of preventing an immediate threat, but of reshaping the entire strategic balance of the Middle East through force.
This ambition carries a major danger.
No country, even a militarily dominant one, can impose a total transformation of a regional power like Iran without unleashing an uncontrollable spiral. Recent history in the Middle East has shown this: wars presented as preventive or limited often produce lasting destabilizations, new radicalizations, and endless cycles of reprisals.
The paradox is that this escalation occurs at the very moment when the populations of the region are exhausted. Gaza is devastated, the South of Lebanon lives under the permanent threat of bombardments, Syria remains fragmented, and civilians everywhere pay the price of strategic calculations that exceed them. Yet, in this already ravaged landscape, some leaders continue to spread the idea of a total, absolute, and definitive victory; as if war could finally resolve what it has only exacerbated.
Netanyahu appears today to be a prisoner of his own logic. Politically weakened from within, contested for his management of crises, and pursued for corruption charges, he finds in war a means to tighten ranks and shift the focus of debate. War becomes not only a military strategy, but also a personal political necessity.
But an entire region cannot remain indefinitely suspended by the survival needs of a man or a government. By considering each ceasefire as a mere pause before the next offensive, the risk is to transform the Middle East into a space of perpetual conflicts where peace is no longer an objective, but a temporary anomaly.
