From the 12-Day War to the 40-Day War: The winner is apparent, as is the loser

İbrahim Varlı Israel and the US ’s efforts to reshape the Middle East have centred on Iran . The path to Iran ran through Palestine, Lebanon, Syria , Libya and Iraq . These countries were areas that needed to be cleared before the invasion of Iran could take place. This strategy is based on the “octopus doctrine” formulated in 2018 by Naftali Bennett, then Israel’s Defence Minister. According to the doctrine, the head of the “octopus” should be targeted rather than its tentacles in the region. To do this, the tentacles must be severed. And so it was. The dismantling of Hamas, Hezbollah and Damascus was the result of this strategy, implemented step by step. Once the conditions were in place, the focus finally turned to Iran. 7 WARS TO BE FOUGHT IN 5 YEARS Professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the UN Secretary-General, would describe at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum how Netanyahu and the US had set out to shape the Middle East for Israel as follows: “ This programme has a name: Operation Timber Sycamore. Syria is one of the six wars provoked by Israel ; Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan. And then there is Yemen. General Wesley Clark provided the Pentagon with a list of seven wars to be instigated over five years in 2011 . Of these, only one, the Iran-US war which Israel desperately wanted has not yet been instigated . None of these wars were inevitable; they were chosen.” ‘THE ONLY WAR THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN’ HAS HAPPENED! The war that Sachs described as the “ only war that did not happen ” broke out on 13 June 2025 . With US support, Israel launched an operation named “Rising Lion” and declared war on Iran . The Netanyahu administration’s pretext for the attack was Iran’s...